Condensing steam turbine, no exploits

[gamengineering]

Hello ladies and gentlemen

 

I'm presenting you condensing steam turbine that function without any exploits.

So here it is.

As you can see there are actually 4 of the steam turbines, and there is a reason for it.

Theoretical background:

A steam turbine uses 10ks/s of steam.

Steam output temperature around 160-170deg. C. (in theory);

So we need to cool down 10kg/s of steam to about 90deg.C. so condensation can take place. 

deltaT=80 deg.C;

To remove this amount of heat from the steam we need at least 3 aquatuners working on supper coolant.

And a liquid pump to pump water to evaporation chamber under the steam turbines.

Additional heat needs to be applied because aquatuners is not enough to run steam turbines. In this example I use magma, but you can use other heat sources (regolith, oxygen/hydrogen condenser, petroleum boiler, etc.)

Difficulties:

Due to the high heat conductivity of the steam turbine, there is a lot of heat leaking through it, so steam temperature after steam turbines is much higher than theroetical calculations.

Through extensive engineering and lucky coincidence, I manage to balance system with 4 steam turbines and 4 aquatuners.

A system provides a very small surplus of power, but it can be further increased by adding more steam turbines (If you can get this much heat). No need for additional aquatuners.

Below you can find picture of the system with pipe and power overlay.

Also, I made a short video about it, you can check it out on youtube, link below:

 

[gamengineering]

Just to add up. It might function better if make two condensing chambers on both sides of the evaporator(steam turbine section). But this is design for the next time

[Saturnus]

A hint when stacking steam turbines. If you turn the steam turbine off with automation no steam passes through it.

And yeah, you probably do need to increase the condenser to keep up.

[Neotuck]

what do you do when you run out of magma?

[Angpaur]

22 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

what do you do when you run out of magma?

You cry and gnash your teeth then 

[gamengineering]

@Neotruck.

Here I show the principle of the condensing steam turbine, not magma to the power machine. In this example, I used magma as a heat source, only for demonstration purposes. In the real base there are hundreds of heat sources that you need to deal with: oxygen/hydrogen condenser, cooling your farms, base or powerplant.

[Angpaur]

2 minutes ago, gamengineering said:

In the real base there are hundreds of heat sources that you need to deal with: oxygen/hydrogen condenser, cooling your farms, base or powerplan

But most of them needs a power to be consumed. So that consumption must be included in that build. That is why people are looking for powerless heat sources. A volcano probably would do the job. Also if you are lucky you can have access to some huge magma pocket.

I like the design, but I think there could be a way to avoid that liquid pump and just make water to drop below turbine and evaporate there.

[Grimgaw]

48 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

what do you do when you run out of magma?

The regolith magma multiplier still works in QoL2.

[Angpaur]

I wonder how temperature of super coolant is behaving? Is it changing or is stable? Seems like the upper aquatuner needs to deal with more heat then the lowset one. Does avarage coolant temperature rises in the first one and slowly decreases in the lowset one? Or I just get it wrong?

[gamengineering]

Angpau. Yes, you are right most of the heat sources need more power for transportation. But there are some exceptions like metal refinery with coolant in a closed loop or rocket exhaust.

Avoid liquid pump probably not really possible, because the lower chamber is really hot and if you have a tunnel connecting condenser and evaporator heat will escape and start boiling the water in the condenser. And its power consumption, compared to the whole system is small. But you can try.

Super coolant target temperature is 95, but only lower one can keep it at this temp. All aquatuners operate full time. 

Again, in theory, only 3 auatuners should be enough, but due to heat licking through the steam turbine and heat steam after steam turbine, I put one more aquatuner. Also, I think in this design steam/water flow rate is something like 7-8kg/s, which is lower than expected. But this is a limitation of the condenser.

I hope if condenser will manage to condense 10kg/s of steam, steam will move fast enough to be not heated by the steam turbine.

In other words, this system needs more balancing.

An alternative method is to use 20 gas pumps, which is difficult to build, due to needing 10 gas pipes. And power consumption is 4800W. Power wise it is better than current build 5040w, But, in theory, optimized condenser should take only 3840w, so more efficient than pumps.