Do we need to build insulated pipes from insulationr?

[Lifegrow]

6 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

So, insulation (material) is virtual not capable to transfer heat. 

Does it makes sense to build insulated pipes from insulation, or does a normal pipe made from it work too?

The reason is, insulated pipes use 4 times the amount of material compared to normal pipes. And insulation is rare.

Lots of conjecture in this thread, but the tl;dr - ceramic insulated pipe is absolutely fine for transporting lox/lh

You may lose a couple of degrees between pump -> rocket for example, so I always cool to the coldest temps possible to accommodate that (so liquid hydrogen should be near solid temps, lox has a more generous margin)

You may get a few pieces of damage from the first few uses, but shouldn't realistically break the pipe.

More importantly however : Ensure that your pump isn't delivering directly to the consumer, whether that be a rocket or a vent. In case you're unaware, pumps have a tenancy to move partial packets on the first pulse, and a 2kg partial packet of liquid hydrogen will much more likely boil in your pipe. To mitigate this, feed your pump to a reservoir, then use the reservoir to feed the consumer. Worth nothing that you will need to either disable the reservoir with a door, or use some timed automation between pump/shutoff to allow the reservoir to build up a buffer, otherwise it'll just work as a straight through feed.

[Christophlette]

32 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

More importantly however : Ensure that your pump isn't delivering directly to the consumer, whether that be a rocket or a vent. In case you're unaware, pumps have a tenancy to move partial packets on the first pulse, and a 2kg partial packet of liquid hydrogen will much more likely boil in your pipe. To mitigate this, feed your pump to a reservoir, then use the reservoir to feed the consumer. Worth nothing that you will need to either disable the reservoir with a door, or use some timed automation between pump/shutoff to allow the reservoir to build up a buffer, otherwise it'll just work as a straight through feed.

Very good advice here. I encountered the problem with a chlorine liquefactor I made myself and damn it was painfull.

[Sasza22]

I didn`t see anyone mention that the Insulation material is basically abyssalite. It`s thermal conductivity isn`t actually 0 but it`s very low. This means that unlike vacuum or neutronuim it will transfer heat just very slowly. Making a normal pipe out of insulation would be comparable to making it out of insulated ceramic (maybe even worse) while making an insulated one guarantees almost no heat loss on really long pipes.

[KittenIsAGeek]

4 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I didn`t see anyone mention that the Insulation material is basically abyssalite. It`s thermal conductivity isn`t actually 0 but it`s very low. This means that unlike vacuum or neutronuim it will transfer heat just very slowly. Making a normal pipe out of insulation would be comparable to making it out of insulated ceramic (maybe even worse) while making an insulated one guarantees almost no heat loss on really long pipes.

Not quite.  The thermal conductivities might be similar, but an insulated pipe made from insulation is both an order of magnitude better at insulating, and it uses the lowest of the conductivities for all calculations.  A regular pipe made from insulation will use the log average of the two material's conductivities.

[Xuhybrid]

13 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

I need insulation for a specific reason. LOX and liquid hydrogen. And for that i need perfect insulation. The question is, is non-insulated pipe made from insulation as good as insulated pipe made from insulation?

Non-insulated pipe uses the average unfortunately.

[JohnFrancis]

14 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

I need insulation for a specific reason. LOX and liquid hydrogen. And for that i need perfect insulation. The question is, is non-insulated pipe made from insulation as good as insulated pipe made from insulation?

The short answer is no. Insulated pipe made from insulation will not exchange heat with the contents of the pipe. Regular pipe made of insulation will, I have tested this. So to make it simple if you use regular pipe made of insulation your LOX and LHO will exchange heat with the pipe eventually hitting boiling point and cracking the pipes. You have three options.

1 Make insulated pipes out of insulation.

2 Make insulated ceramic pipes and rotate the liquid through constantly, out to the rockets then back to the cooling chamber so it constantly gets re chilled.

3 Use Radiant pipes and pre chill them until they hit the required temp so they no longer have heat to exchange, gets tricky around rocket exhausts as they will heat the pipes back up.

This Video tutorial covers how to do option 2.

[MorsDux]

10 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Insulated sandstone has a thermal conductivity of 0.029.  Oxygen has a thermal conductivity of 0.024.  So.. oxygen is a slightly better insulator than insulated sandstone.  EXCEPT that because it's tagged as an insulator because of the tile, heat will always transfer to insulated sandstone using the lowest thermal conductivity.  Oxygen, on the other hand, will use the log average.

Yeah but mass counts for something too does it not? Insulated pipe is 400kg, insulated tile is 400kg but oxygen ks lets say only 2kg?

[hacksaw12]

Don't know if it's changed in the latest update, I'm not nearly to space yet in this one. But in my last colony, with the previous update, I had a lot of luck with using a mini pump to radiant pipes in vacuum. 1kg packets didn't change state, so as it's cooling down the pipe, you get some scary looking temp values in the pipe, but nothing breaks. I was using a liquid reservoir for storing at the launch silo, and after a bit of cooling, the reservoir temp settles down to nice numbers again. On exit from the reservoir, I used a couple of insulation insolated pipe sections to get back past the reservoir and back into vacuum, then a liquid valve set to 1kg and on to the rocket. Again, scary temp values until the previous rocket heated up radiant pipes cooled again, but no damage. I guess this wouldn't work if you were going for min time refueling, but on my more casual style, it worked great.

[lee1026]

I can confirm that if you leave the LOX sitting in ceramic pipes, insulated or not, for several cycles, bad things happen. Same goes for normal pipes in insulation.

 

Insulation insulated pipes work like a dream though.

[Hellshound38]

7 minutes ago, lee1026 said:

I can confirm that if you leave the LOX sitting in ceramic pipes, insulated or not, for several cycles, bad things happen. Same goes for normal pipes in insulation.

 

Insulation insulated pipes work like a dream though.

You can just loop the pipes to drop back into the cooling chamber so the liquid never sits still.

Then no issues with ceramic.

[lee1026]

Of course looping things back work, but I prefer simple solutions. Besides, when I am adding new rockets as fast as the printing pod will print out replacement dupes, making the loop longer every time is painful compared to just dragging out the pipe.

 

This is why I have a massive dranko sheering program, with multiple dupes devoted to the grooming of drankos.