Plastic manufacturing in Frozen biome

[Angpaur]

15 hours ago, Lawnmower Man said:

If you just rely on a pool beneath the floor, that pool will eventually heat up and boil

Can you tell how long it will take to boil the pool if it for example holds 32t (8x4 tiles) of pwater at 30C?

15 hours ago, Lawnmower Man said:

or the heat will need to escape your room into the surroundings

So you've never heard about insulated tiles?

[chemie]

15 hours ago, Lawnmower Man said:

Basically, you are exporting your heat to everywhere your CO2 touches.  That means your slime biome is slowly heating up, as you're using it as a heatsink.  That's fine for now, but unless your CO2 can expand to a very large area, or there's another heatsink at a lower temp nearby, I'd guess that your presses will heat up to 100 C pretty soon and vaporize the steam they are emitting.  How many cycles have they been running?  Slime biomes start out around 20-30 C, so I'd be interested in seeing the thermal overlay for this area.  My guess is that you have a ticking time bomb.

not from this screen shot but last base this was fine for hundreds of cycles.  it does not have to be co2...and skimmer would remove that heat.  my bases typically end up at 60c everywhere except main base as I dump all heat there from machines and geysers etc.  anyway  worst case built it out of steel which was my point about not needing to be in ice biome or have elaborate cooling.

[Denisetwin]

On 1/23/2019 at 9:01 AM, Neotuck said:

I recommend dripping a cooling liquid on top of the polymer press while it's running.  They overheat fast and drip cooling is an easy way to dissipate the heat

@Neotuck, I haven't played in so long, is it still viable to just have a thin slick of oil on the floor in a small polymer press/oil refinery room, fill with hydrogen and a single wheezie will work fine for a long time?  Or have they nerfed the small slick of oil on floor will keep things cool for awhile?

[Neotuck]

Just now, Denisetwin said:

@Neotuck, I haven't played in so long, is it still viable to just have a thin slick of oil on the floor in a small polymer press/oil refinery room, fill with hydrogen and a single wheezie will work fine for a long time?  Or have they nerfed the small slick of oil on floor will keep things cool for awhile?

the heat will transfer to the oil yes but it's nothing more than a buffer.  A single wheezie won't be able to keep up with the press for long

[Denisetwin]

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

the heat will transfer to the oil yes but it's nothing more than a buffer.  A single wheezie won't be able to keep up with the press for long

Thanks for the update, I ran an small insulated press/refinery room with hydrogen and an oil slick forever "back in the day".  There have been so many changes, I feel a bit lost, my "tried and true" are not true anymore!

 

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, Denisetwin said:

I feel a bit lost, my "tried and true" are not true anymore!

I know the feeling, most of my most impressive builds are outdated and useless in the current update

[chemie]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

the heat will transfer to the oil yes but it's nothing more than a buffer.  A single wheezie won't be able to keep up with the press for long

I bet a single bottle delivered to emptier every 50 cycles would be fine.  also, run dry  steel works without overheating

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, chemie said:

I bet a single bottle delivered to emptier every 50 cycles would be fine.  also, run dry  steel works without overheating

I never tried steel but I can see that working as the steam emitted would keep it cool 

[KittenIsAGeek]

7 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I never tried steel but I can see that working as the steam emitted would keep it cool 

Prior to the temperature clamping, this wouldn't work as the temperature of the steam would be high enough to turn your plastic in to naptha.  If your press got that hot, you wouldn't produce plastic, you'd produce only naptha.  So I'm not sure its that great of an idea.  Sure, your press won't take heat damage, but if they alter the temperature clamping, you would start losing your plastics again.

[Neotuck]

well I always focus on mass glossy drecko ranching but that's just my play-style 

[Lawnmower Man]

26 minutes ago, chemie said:

I bet a single bottle delivered to emptier every 50 cycles would be fine.  also, run dry  steel works without overheating

Try that with an insulated wall around your press.

[Neotuck]

9 minutes ago, Lawnmower Man said:

Try that with an insulated wall around your press.

read my response

the steam emitted from the press has a set temp so it should work

[Lawnmower Man]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

read my response

the steam emitted from the press has a set temp so it should work

Interesting.  So the additional mass introduced by the steam guarantees that the heat produced will cause a completely sealed Press (minus venting the CO2) to asymptotically reach 207.8 C, which is the steam temp + heat produced.  So a steel press will not melt down, but that is a pretty useless configuration, since your plastic will all turn to naphtha at 160 C.  I guess the only question is whether a sealed press will overpressurize steam to an arbitrary mass.  If so, then that means the most efficient configuration is a sealed steel press with a sweeper that removes the plastic immediately but does no cooling.  I assume that even in a 200 C steam room, the plastic will not melt before the sweeper can whisk it away.  Perhaps with several tons of steam, the plastic will eventually melt faster than it can be removed.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, Lawnmower Man said:

Interesting.  So the additional mass introduced by the steam guarantees that the heat produced will cause a completely sealed Press (minus venting the CO2) to asymptotically reach 207.8 C, which is the steam temp + heat produced.  So a steel press will not melt down, but that is a pretty useless configuration, since your plastic will all turn to naphtha at 160 C.  I guess the only question is whether a sealed press will overpressurize steam to an arbitrary mass.  If so, then that means the most efficient configuration is a sealed steel press with a sweeper that removes the plastic immediately but does no cooling.  I assume that even in a 200 C steam room, the plastic will not melt before the sweeper can whisk it away.  Perhaps with several tons of steam, the plastic will eventually melt faster than it can be removed.

your math is way off

better just test it yourself and see

[Lawnmower Man]

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

your math is way off

better just test it yourself and see

I have a Steel Polymer Press in an insulated room, and it heats up pretty quickly when I am not actively cooling it.  Here's some math for you:

• Press generates 32.5 kDTU/s
• Emits 8.3 g/s steam @ 200 C
• Emits 8.3 g/s CO2 @ 150 C, which we ignore because we carry it away in a pipe

Now, if the press starts out much cooler, like, say 40 C, then the emitted steam will transfer heat to the press in addition to the heat generated by the press itself.  But eventually, the press should heat up to match the temp of the steam (because the mass of the press does not increase even if the steam does), and then both will increase temp together in thermal equilibrium.

To simplify the calculations, we can ignore the heat transfer from steam to press and just pretend like the steam magically stays at 200 C while the press heats up.  Then, we only need to calculate how long the self-heat from the press raises it to 200 C.  Here we go:

• Steel has an SHC of 0.490 kDTU/kg*C
• A press has a mass of 400 kg, giving us 196 kDTU/C
• Given the 32.5 kDTU/s self-heating above, we have a heating rate of 0.166 C/s
• That doesn't sound like much, until you realize that it's 99.5 C/cycle
• Thus, the press should reach 200 C in well under 2 cycles, assuming perfect insulation (or even just really good insulation, frankly)

In the limit where the steam mass goes to infinity, each increment of heat will be distributed over an ever-increasing mass of steam + press.  But we can easily compute an upper bound, which is the case where all of the new heat goes into the new steam.

• Steam has an SHC of 4.179 kDTU/kg*C
• So 32.5 kDTU/s / (4.179 kDTU/kg*C * 8.3 g * 1 kg / 1000 g) = 937 C

Of course, that assumes that the mass of the press is negligible and that it has already achieved thermal equilibrium with the existing steam.  In reality, it will take ~80.3 cycles for the steam just to match the mass of the press.  Now, the calculation above makes one critical assumption: that the plastic is removed infinitely fast, so that no heat transfers to it!  Of course, this is not possible, and even a sweeper will take ~1-2s to remove the plastic in the best case.  So let's go the other direction, and see what happens if we just *let the plastic sit there*.

• Plastic has an SHC of 1.9 kDTU/kg*C
• It comes out of the press at 500 g/s @ 75 C (it's really quantized at 30 kg chunks, but let's ignore that for a moment)

If we dump all 32.5 kDTU/s into the plastic instead, what happens?  Well, a funny thing happens:

• The plastic goes up by 32.5 kDTU / (1.9 kDTU/kg*C * 500 g * 1 kg / 1000 g) = 34.2 C
• That is, the plastic would end up at 109.2 C, well under it's melting point

However, the steam is sitting there at 200 C, so obviously thermal equilibrium is higher than 109.2 C.  Let's see if we can figure that out.

• Plastic contributes 1.9 kDTU/kg*C * 75 C * 500 g/s * 1 kg / 1000 g = 71.25 kDTU/s
• Steam contributes 4.179 kDTU/kg*C * 200 C * 8.3 g/s * 1 kg / 1000g = 6.94 kDTU/s
• And the press itself contributes 32.5 kDTU/s
• So we have total thermal delta of 110.69 kDTU/s
• Plastic accepts 1.9 kDTU/kg*C * 0.5 kg = 0.95 kDTU/C
• Steam accepts 4.179 kDTU/kg*C * 0.0083 kg = 0.035 kDTU/C

Now we just need to find T such that 0.95 kDTU/C * T + 0.035 kDTU/C * T = 110.69 kDTU.  And the answer is: 112.4 C.

So, the paradoxical conclusion to all of this is that if you seal a Steel Polymer Press in a thermally isolated room, removing only the CO2 and the plastic, then the press can heat up to 937 C (or technically, 275 C, at which point the press breaks).  *But*, if you *leave the plastic in the room until equilibrium*, then it will only heat up to a relatively cool 112.4 C.

Ironically, it means that the plastic could be considered an essential part of the cooling of a polymer press.  But who really wants 112 C plastic?  And that forces all your steam to stay as steam.

Fun stuff!

Note that all calculations made the unrealistic assumption of infinite thermal conductivity.  In reality, hotspots may form which cause local temps to deviate significantly from the equilibrium values above.

[Neotuck]

[The Plum Gate]

I'm kind of in agreement with the math there - I didn't see anywhere mentioning the heat conducts between two or more objects at whatever has the lowest thermal conductivity ( or did they get rid of this mechanic )? And I'm guessing steam and water are the lowest conductors of all the things in the math.

[chemie]

I am not sure why you are testing something in an insulated room.  my point was that you do not need to have the press in an ice biome.  anywhere except the oil biome works fine.

[greggbert]

I used this approach on my 3rd or 4th playthrough.  I suggest doing it.  There are some flaws with the design but you will discover them as you play.  There's nothing wrong with building all your heat generating machinery in a cold biome in one of your first playthroughs.   It's a great way to get your plastic and refined metal up and running quickly.  It will also generate lots of water and polluted water for you to use.

You will eventually melt the first cold biome, which is fine, since you have others to use later in the game.  The advantage it will give you (many more turns before you ever have to worry about heat) will be totally worth it.

[Hellshound38]

So in laziness and simplicity I usually use a cold slush geyser to cool a small contained power plant.

2 Petro Gens + 3-4 Gas gens + Polymer Press + Sleeve + 2 Aqua tuners all cooled by the Cool slush, with the warmed up polluted water from the bottom sleeved and cooled by the tuners goes to bristles to create food.

A small pump siphons the top layer of water that forms over polluted bottom as well.

This means I have a lot of food and a heat stable power system with very little dupe interaction, eventually none with a oil boiler.

[chemie]

38 minutes ago, Hellshound38 said:

So in laziness and simplicity I usually use a cold slush geyser to cool a small contained power plant.

2 Petro Gens + 3-4 Gas gens + Polymer Press + Sleeve + 2 Aqua tuners all cooled by the Cool slush, with the warmed up polluted water from the bottom sleeved and cooled by the tuners goes to bristles to create food.

A small pump siphons the top layer of water that forms over polluted bottom as well.

This means I have a lot of food and a heat stable power system with very little dupe interaction, eventually none with a oil boiler.

you dont need tuner for berries.  take fresh slush water, cross exchange with sieve water (which is feed by slush water after exchanger) and get 20c water since flow is exactly matched.

[Craigjw]

On 25/01/2019 at 12:22 AM, Neotuck said:

your math is way off

better just test it yourself and see

No, your math is way off,  I have it on good authority from Meep himself, that the correct spelling is actually Maff.

[Lawnmower Man]

9 hours ago, chemie said:

I am not sure why you are testing something in an insulated room.  my point was that you do not need to have the press in an ice biome.  anywhere except the oil biome works fine.

I'm not testing.  I have been isolating all my buildings to preserve the thermal environment of the wilderness (makes the wild flora/fauna survive better without intervention).  My goal is to make all processes as close to thermally neutral as possible so I don't end up with growing hotspots on my map.  For now, that means dumping as much heat as I can into consumed water, petro, and crude.

So yeah, you can use your slime or caustic biome as a heatsink, but not indefinitely.

[The Plum Gate]

On this topic, My plastic presses I've set up in cold bones generally tend to cause it to rain ice or hail. This goes on until the biome melts.

[chemie]

10 hours ago, Lawnmower Man said:

I'm not testing.  I have been isolating all my buildings to preserve the thermal environment of the wilderness (makes the wild flora/fauna survive better without intervention).  My goal is to make all processes as close to thermally neutral as possible so I don't end up with growing hotspots on my map.  For now, that means dumping as much heat as I can into consumed water, petro, and crude.

So yeah, you can use your slime or caustic biome as a heatsink, but not indefinitely.

Kind of since it works for 1000's of cycles.  it is somewhat limiting since geysers will cap at ~100C and you are actively removing heat via many of those machines.  My 3000 cycle base stabilizes at 65C in the biomes where I leave things free-range.