Alien v0.5: perpetual TRUE glitchless free-energy Steam Turbine | No vent covers | (Sandbox prototype / proof of concept).

[Boxman_90]

I'm all for giving credit where it's due, and truth be told someone linking me to his build did inspire me to re-evaluate stacking on the Mantis as he'd proven the concept, however I did come up with the same idea in my very first test-build, before I had even seen your great collection of research @mathmanican. Sitting right there while I was building, all I had to do was scroll right in my own save :P 

Just a note. Of course, all credits to @Nickerooni, he clearly came up with it long before I did. 

We'll see if I get to building a door-less Alien now.. Maybe someone should tell me it can't be done? >:D

[mathmanican]

@Nickerooni, let me correct what I said.  The idea of stacking turbines is not your original idea, rather using stacked turbines to limit the flow to 2kg/s (feasible for condensation purposes), is the new idea.  Stacking turbines was done by practically everyone once the turbine came out.  Using the flow reduction that comes by stacking, was an awesome new addition.

@Boxman_90, I love your addition of heating at each layer. 

I've gone through the save.  The pressure requirements are always sufficient that he's always sucking a full 2kg/port (no vacuum like conditions - my favorite exploit). The temperature requirements are pretty much always met (he's got his temp sensors set at 237, and even the end points on turbines far from the aquatuners are above 227C, often in the 230 range). There might be a stray 225C bit for a half second or so every once in a while under a green turbine. So he's got an average temperature difference above 75, probably above 76. 

1 hour ago, Nickerooni said:

Math:

aquatuner costs 1200W to transfer 1232 kDTU/s from supercoolant to the steam

2000W of aquatuner can transfer ~2 MDTU/s

A steam turbine at minimum running legitimately turns 10 kg/s of 228 degree steam into 10kg of 150 degree steam. That’s 3259 kDTU/s.

This math, after double and triple checking, is solid. There is no way that aquatuners can keep things going without external heat added. Both @wachunga and @Nickerooni are right. I stand corrected (the math does not work out for your build). There is some other bug happening. The build should not work. Yet it does. 

Gonna have to play with this some more to find out what we're missing. Thanks for the find.

[Boxman_90]

It helps to evaluate in a "lumped component" style of thinking. Evaluate the "5-stack" as a black box with one input (bottom 5 ports) and one output (top 5 ports), forget the internal dynamics for now as they are mostly irrelevant, there are two inputs (steam and heat) and one output (electricity).

• The bottom 5 ports are active for 1 every 5 seconds; that sucks in a net 2kg/s of steam.
• The top 5 ports are active for 1 every 5 seconds; that expels a net 2kg/s of steam
• The entire 5-stack produces an average of 2000W as on average always 1 steam turbine is running internally in the ideal case (it is a little less than that due to some other heat-loss and inefficiencies)
• The energy input location is varied to ensure homogeneous temperature distribution depending on where the currently running turbine is, but is always duty cycled to have on average 2 aquatuners running at the same time.

The total result is a "very big" Steam Turbine component that requires netto 2kg/s of steam and produces netto 2000W. These are the numbers that should be used for static math.

The error is in assuming "at each stage there is 10kg/s flow for 2000W, so this is the min requirement" as this evaluates only one dynamic part of the blackbox Steam Turbine. You cannot apply static maths at that point. Time and duty-cycle is very important when analyzing the build.

The maths had me confused like 5 or 6 times myself, there are difficult pitfalls when analyzing the individual components and tying that together.

Though I'll add the disclaimer that my analysis might as well be flawed, I'll see if I can prove it mathematically and confirm experimentally that the blackbox works as a single 2kg/s steam turbine. So let's keep the theories flowing.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. Obviously oversimplified things and most of what I said applies to my own  approach - fail. At this moment I'm convinced my line of thinking was fundamentally flawed due to wishful thinking and accidental yet erratic 'confirmation by prototype'.

Sorry guys!

[wachunga]

The bug appears to be with power. On cycle 301 the turbines made 2119.2kJ and the aquatuners consumed 3823kJ. Not sustainable. Running the numbers, that would mean the turbines are deleting 85C of heat which seems about right looking at the build. Investigating further.

3823kJ means an average of 5.31 aquatuners (3823 / 600 / 1.2). 5.31 aquatuners means 6274kW of heat produced (5.31 * 8.44 * 14 * 10).

2119kJ means an average of 1.77 turbines (2119 / 600 / 2). 1.77 turbines means 85C lost per turbine ( 6274 / 1.77 / 4.179 / 10).

 

It appears the transformers output more power than they should. Rewire the aquatuners to run off the main heavi watt line and the build dies.

[Boxman_90]

GG well played.

[Lifegrow]

13 minutes ago, Boxman_90 said:

GG well played.

[Boxman_90]

Wondered what took you so long to show up 

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, Boxman_90 said:

I'm not sure what I was thinking. Obviously oversimplified things and most of what I said applies to my own  approach - fail. At this moment I'm convinced my line of thinking was fundamentally flawed due to wishful thinking and accidental yet erratic 'confirmation by prototype'.

Sorry guys!

  Hey - you still did add something awesome to the forums, mainly the idea of heating the steam at each level.  This might help @Nickerooni get the 100kDTU he's loosing in his build below when he said, "It was decently net power positive, but, it looks like what I set up is leaking a few 100kDTU/s of heat."

Fun times.  Keep going.

[Lifegrow]

33 minutes ago, Boxman_90 said:

Wondered what took you so long to show up 

 

Seems it's not just me that you refuse to listen to.

Spoiler

 

[Boxman_90]

Sticks and stones, big boy. Apparently I've left an impression for you to care enough to start name-calling out of nowhere. Go on then, if you must!

[JoeW]

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[Nickerooni]

3 hours ago, mathmanican said:

  Hey - you still did add something awesome to the forums, mainly the idea of heating the steam at each level.  This might help @Nickerooni get the 100kDTU he's loosing in his build below when he said, "It was decently net power positive, but, it looks like what I set up is leaking a few 100kDTU/s of heat."

 

Agreed. I like the idea of really amping up on heating the whole area next to the turbines. I should have done that with all the incoming heat from the volcanoes. That adds a good deal of efficiency. Enough to make it appear net positive at first glance  . Mostly, I’ve joined the rest in deciding that turbines are far too broken to use in survival - even if you go all out to make something legitimate.