So Theoretically Steam Turbine Is Impossible To Run Surplus Using No Exploits And External Heat Souce?

[goatt]

Just curious.

If I do the math, 5 ports open sucking steam 15 kg/s. Edgy case, the input hot steam is 500 K and output is 423 K, resulting at minimum of 73 K, translating to 73 * 4.179*15kg= 4576000 DTU/s heat loss. Without space tech, water has the biggest thermal capacity which his 4.179. So for aquatuner, biggest heat input will be 4.179 * 10kg * 14K =  585000 DTU/s. To negate the heat loss, it will require 4576/585 = 7.82 Aquatuner processing water. That's doesn't look like power slurplus is possible without block ports / vacuum ports

Edit added:

So if I block 4/5 ports, and 1 ports need roughly 1.56 aquatuner. The steam turbine's temperature is always between 150 C output temperature and 227 C input temperature,  i'll just assume in a equilibrium turbine's temperature is 200 C, add some extra 30 C to aquatuner's work. (30 * 3k * 4.179 + 4576000/5) / 58500 = 2.2 Aquatuner, exceeding 2400W power.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

Using power to generate heat and then generate more power is a wrong direction.

 

[goatt]

@R9MX4 lol i remember that from primary school.

[impyre]

He's just pointing out that using an aquatuner to produce heat from electricity, then a steam turbine to produce electricity from heat is *supposed* to be impossible (Otherwise what's the point of the OP?). The solution lies in using outside "free" heat, like cooling an iron volcano. Even so, using aquatuners to heat up water isn't a terrible plan if you're planning on cooling something else. Feeding them steady water (in addition to coolant) just means that you're using steam engines to recapture a lot of that lost power (not all) to help make cooling cheaper. Essentially using your steam generator + a bit of extra electricity to cool your fridge/sleet wheat/refinery coolant/base/etc. The convenient part of this is that all the heat gets dumped into a central location, but it can be brought in from all over the base. The inconvenient part is that it's unsustainable long-term unless you vent the steam to space.

[avc15]

You have to recover heat from your exhaust to run it at a surplus, without perpetual motion cheats or exhausting tons of heat.

You assume the only option is direct condensing using brute force.

If you don't want to recover heat, you could send the exhaust into space somehow, maybe even make use of it as fuel for a rocket.

This has been hashed out in detail so many times, not too critical about that just not eager to break it open for the 19th time.

[goatt]

@avc15 I'm trying to discuss from a specific angle here. That is whether there is a way to recover the heat loss. Not "you don't want", but am I able to. Details of a working prototype will be nice, but I'm simply looking for confirmation of my theory.

[JohnFrancis]

32 minutes ago, goatt said:

@avc15 I'm trying to discuss from a specific angle here. That is whether there is a way to recover the heat loss. Not "you don't want", but am I able to. Details of a working prototype will be nice, but I'm simply looking for confirmation of my theory.

It may be possible but it would required someone knowledgeable and willing to invest a large amount of time in a design with no practical use outside debug. Considering all the easier power alternatives out there your best bet is to fire up debug and start testing.

[goatt]

13 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

It may be possible

that's exactly what I had been thinking. But then I did the math, it seems impossible to me, and I freaked out. And i need confirmation. Are you sure it's possible?

[avc15]

Your math assumes brute force condensation. to make it efficient you'd have to use the heat from exhaust to boil & preheat your input steam. This idea is known as heat recovery, and real powerplants use it. Google heat recovery.

 

Yes it's possible and I've been tinkering with this for a long time (since before steel was added to the game). As goatt points out it'd be largely a curiosity because there are easier ways to get it working by cheating physics in some way.

 

The short list

Door pumps

Escher waterfall

Pressure cheat (deletes some steam)

 

... Directly condensing is a loss, and I feel that may be intended. You have to boil & preheat your feedwater with the turbine's exhaust. Or use one of the cheats I listed, or dump the steam into space, .... Etc.

 

Again, this conversation is like groundhog day, you can find just my own ideas on this matter in about 10 different threads. I say that not because it's bad to start threads but more because you'll find it hard to get us to take it apart in detail.

 

[goatt]

35 minutes ago, avc15 said:

Your math assumes brute force condensation.

Yes, that's partially true. I also included door pumps. Since the output steam temperature has the same drop.

41 minutes ago, avc15 said:

you'd have to use the heat from exhaust to boil & preheat your input steam.

Yes, I have included that in my original calculation, cuz I was using 150 C as extreme case input temperature, instead of 100 C, which is the actually water boiling point.

So I'm curious how do you make it possible using door pump/ condensation/ waterfall under those condition, just to be clear, which are:

1. 5 open ports

2. no tricking steam turbine using other gases.

My imagination is currently limited by my calculation. But I do wish it can work. If you know some posts, pls share, thx

[avc15]

I'm sorry, friend, you aren't picking up what I'm putting down.

I urge you again, to google the term "heat recovery boiler".

What you're talking about is not what I'm talking about.

[goatt]

49 minutes ago, avc15 said:

This idea is known as heat recovery, and real powerplants use it. Google heat recovery.

you really confused me there. I was like, why does he wants me to google real life example.

I'm glad you share this with me, this is what i'm looking for. i'll look up later. thx

@avc15 

is this what you were talking about? I can't find one relevant to steam turbine, this is the only thing i've found. 

[TOOK14]

I find steam turbines are only really good for one thing, and that's deleting heat without exploit or pumping mass into space.  There is actually no way to use pumps to move enough steam fast enough to prevent under pressuring some of the time.  That said I find this to be the best setup to use steam turbines, cooling both an aquatuner and my refinery coolant, the trick here being the two layers of hydrogen on top to push the steam down, avoiding "underpressure".  The simple way to measure out everything in survival is 2 reservoirs of hydrogen, and 1 ton to 1.1 tons of water, using automation to take direct control.

You can consider this an exploit too, but nothing here isn't an intended mechanic, aside from maybe the position of where the turbine detects pressure, and probably the tiles choking off some fans, but so much about turbines needs tweaking, I find no issue working with what we have now, and I will be happy if/when it is improved.

[goatt]

@TOOK14 yeah i think so. I guess it's fair that it can't be a perpetual motion machine. Quick question, how did you make the heavy wire bridge in that vacuum. do you have some neat trick or didyou just do it?

[goatt]

27 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Do you consider power transformer's heat generation to be an exploit?

Seriously, it's not an exploit. In my understanding, everything in this game has a managable side effect besides its intended functionality. 1 kW is totally acceptable. But casually, yeah, that's a nice exploit. Good job for finding it. 630 Power transformers sound so maniac, but i like it.

30 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

By the way, aquatuners are bad generators of heat. They convert 1.2kW of electricity into 0kW of heat. So they don't work for your condition of no external heat sources.

It is bad. my thinking process at the time that I wrote this topic was a bit rigid. But that's good cuz seeing comments help me figure out stuff.

[TOOK14]

@goatt I make the whole room a vacuum with a gas pump and the liquid airlock in the bottom left corner, then build the little wire bridge chamber, then after everything is built, I fill the turbine room.  It's a bit labor and time intensive, but it's a maintenance free system if you set it up right.
 

@nakomaru Thank you for pointing that out, but that's not why I have that aquatuner in there.  The tuner is there because turbines are a good place to concentrate heat to be dealt with, not because aquatuners are an efficient source of heat for the turbine.  Regardless, you are right, and I'm technically a bit off topic. 

Also, just for completeness, the radiant pipe radiator to the right is how I cool off the petroleum I use for my metal refinery just off screen, which I find to be an excellent solution for survival.

[ishakaru]

Using door pumps(or 2 gas trick?) you can get constant surplus power using 6 aquatuner(water), 5 1 port turbines, and a tepidizer(no trick). No extra heat needed. According to the math anyway.

[TOOK14]

Does the door pump still work reasonably?  I thought it destroyed large amounts of gas.  Regardless, The main issue with door pumps from my experience is the same issue as gas pumps, but even worse,  The steam turbine moves so much steam that the gas can't disperse fast enough to keep up, no matter how quickly you try to move it once it reaches the edges of the turbine's tiles.  This is worse for door pumps than gas pumps because door pumps require more space than gas pumps, and even with 12+ pumps I couldn't keep up with a single steam turbine.

[lee1026]

One note I would like to add is that the metal refinery offers an absurd amount of heat for very little cost.

 

If you run it from iron to steel, for example, you get 2 million DTU per second for a mere 1200 watts. If you have a dupe with 20 tinkering, you get an amazing 6 million DTU for 1200J. I  believe that is enough to run the steam turbine at a profit if you somehow were able to recycle the gas for free.

 

Granted, getting enough lime to be able to run the steel refinery 24/7 is going to be interesting. 450kg of egg shells per cycle if my math is correct. 5K or so Pacus will do the job.

[goatt]

14 minutes ago, lee1026 said:

you get 2 million DTU per second for a mere 1200 watts

that's my only heat source in survival, plus sometimes i use it to cool hot glass. With 5 ports open, i think turbine eats 4.5 million DTU/s, which is more than twice of what refinery's steel refining can offer. With a dupe of 20 tinkering, the speed may be limited by how fast coolant gets filled, i'm not sure tho.

 

18 minutes ago, lee1026 said:

5K or so Pacus will do the job

I wanna see that. lol

2 hours ago, TOOK14 said:

Does the door pump still work reasonably?

For short, yes it does. But it can only run continuous when room is hot enough, and 4 ports are blocked.

I was gonna make a debugging example to show you, but I'm tired today. So i'll link an old example DoorTurbine. Look at the 2 rows of doors, now I put them one at each side of the turbine instead of side by side together, which can move steam faster. I didn't power the doors, they are also a lot faster when powered, maybe allow you to open 2 ports? but again, not enough heat.

Another important thing to do to make sure it runs continuously is to add enough steam. Since gas is moved to vaccum (door area) by percentage I believe, so if it has 100 kg steam at a tile, 10% moved down, there is still 10 kg gets moved. In game it's more than 10%. With 1000 kg per tile intensity for example, moving 3 kg/s is trivial.

[lee1026]

With one port open, it eats  625500 DTU, so with 5 open, it will be 3 million DTU.

 

With 20 tinkering, the metal smeltery will be limited by the coolant filling, so you might need two smelters. It doesn't consume power while it is just filling up.

[goatt]

On 2/22/2019 at 6:22 PM, goatt said:

5 ports open sucking steam 15 kg/s. Edgy case, the input hot steam is 500 K and output is 423 K, resulting at minimum of 73 K, translating to 73 * 4.179*15kg= 4576000 DTU/s heat loss.

@lee1026 is my math wrong? how do you get your result of 3 million?

4 minutes ago, lee1026 said:

With 20 tinkering, the metal smeltery will be limited by the coolant filling, so you might need two smelters. It doesn't consume power while it is just filling up.

ah i see, my lack of imagination.

[lee1026]

I thought it was 10kg/s steam?

[TOOK14]

@goatt  Weird, I used to run a setup very similar to that, but post nerf I couldn't get the timing to work right without power, and even powered it destroyed a significant amount of gas, and was woefully under performing regardless.  Perhaps I gave up a bit too soon, or the differences between mine and that one are important.

[goatt]

2 hours ago, lee1026 said:

I thought it was 10kg/s steam?

Ah I see. It’s actually 3 kg/s * 5 ports, do not 10 kg/s