Rocket heat cone

[Sleeping Insect]

Hi there, human beings!

I have this rocket launch setup and I've found out that regardless of isolation, some tiles below the rocket still get heated regardless. But only those that have free flowing gas on them. That's why pipes in that intersection don't heat up when I launch rockets. Was a real mystery to me at first when I noticed some of my machinery getting overheated with this type of insulation.

Has anyone tested what exactly is the heat cone of a rocket launch?

[snoozer]

It´s 9 tiles high and 3 tiles wide for the petrolengine.

[Sleeping Insect]

3 minutes ago, snoozer said:

It´s 9 tiles high and 3 tiles wide for the petrolengine.

Thanks. What about other types?

[snoozer]

I can´t test it right now, but I think it´s the same for hydrogen. Not  sure about  steam.

[Sleeping Insect]

3 hours ago, snoozer said:

I can´t test it right now, but I think it´s the same for hydrogen. Not  sure about  steam.

Tested it out on petroleum engine. Have a gap of 10 tiles, it works.
Can't test on hydrogen engine cause I'm not there yet. But if you can find time to test it out, It'd be very much appreciated.

[Maxeek]

Hydro is same as petrol. I always leave 10 tiles of space and place the engine on mesh tile to prevent melting. The steam comes out at 2600°C so its better to vent as much as possible to space or it can do serious damage. Also use steel and obsidian for everything if you plan on using hydrogen.

[Coolthulhu]

All of them have the same range and upper heat cap (3200C). The only things that differ are emitted gas and amount of heat applied.

[qqqqqqqqqqqq]

3x9

 

[JohnFrancis]

@Sleeping Insect The below video covers most of what you need to know about exhausts, I'v put it to the correct time stamp so you only need about the first 60 seconds.

Spoiler

 

 

[0xFADE]

Oh thanks.  I was just wondering if I would need to make wider silos for the exaust.

[Gus Smedstad]

Nope. Visually it looks like the exhaust covers a 5 or even 7 wide swath below the pad, but in truth it's only 3 wide and 9 high.

I built a wall bordering the exhaust zone, and it only gets hot from heat conducted from the pad tiles. Which was intentional in my case because my hydrogen rocket pad was getting really, really hot, in danger of melting the steel bunker tiles I used to make it, and I wanted a way to conduct heat away to where I could safely deal with it with a petrol cooling loop.

[Fallonius]

Based on the cone picture, I decided to see how I could capture the heat for steam turbine usage. Let me tell you, it's A LOT of heat. Does anyone have recommendations of maintaining a more stable temperature than metal tiles? Temp shift plates that are iron/steel? The problem is the steam heats up about 200 degrees when they all land and launch roughly the same time. I should stagger them to maintain a more median heat through multiple cycles. I think the goal is to maintain a cap on the steam heat which is around 200 degrees for maximum power.

Appreciate any feedback!

[Tobruk]

Just now, Fallonius said:

that's a lot of metal

[Nitroturtle]

1 hour ago, Fallonius said:

Based on the cone picture, I decided to see how I could capture the heat for steam turbine usage. Let me tell you, it's A LOT of heat. Does anyone have recommendations of maintaining a more stable temperature than metal tiles? Temp shift plates that are iron/steel? The problem is the steam heats up about 200 degrees when they all land and launch roughly the same time. I should stagger them to maintain a more median heat through multiple cycles. I think the goal is to maintain a cap on the steam heat which is around 200 degrees for maximum power.

Appreciate any feedback!

Here's the setup I used in a prior base with the old steam turbines.  I imagine the same concept would still work to get the heat to your turbines.  It's all diamond tiles with thermium pipes with steam flowing through them and a little bit of super coolant under the rockets (100kg per tile) that turns to gas when they launch.

I'm not sure if you'd have issues moving the heat with pre-space materials, but if so, just build a setup with an automated row of doors to control the heat transfer to your steam chamber.

[mathmanican]

2 hours ago, Fallonius said:

Does anyone have recommendations of maintaining a more stable temperature than metal tiles?

Adding more steam will balance out the heat gain/loss, and keep things stable.  Double the steam content and leave the metal as you have it, and it'll only heat up the steam 100C instead of 200C. 

Alternately, deconstruct all the metal tiles, put in background tiles (cheap igneous if you want), and then fill the entire room with steam.  The rockets output a set amount of heat, not like the aquatuner's set temp change, so you can use steam (one of the highest SHC's in the game) to absorb the heat.  No need for the metal tiles. Just beware that igneous will melt if you can't process all the heat (so some people would use obsidian to prevent that).

Separating your heat collection from your steam turbine rooms will allow you process the extra heat when you need it, rather than burning through the extra heat to prevent melting. 

[Fallonius]

Thanks Nitro!

Math; would you use background tiles or temp plates? Any preference for one over the other?

Additionally, when you mean separate the rooms; You mean one room has the all the heat and you leak in the heat slowly by opening/closing doors when a set temperature needs to be achieved?

[mathmanican]

34 minutes ago, Fallonius said:

Math; would you use background tiles or temp plates? Any preference for one over the other?

Additionally, when you mean separate the rooms; You mean one room has the all the heat and you leak in the heat slowly by opening/closing doors when a set temperature needs to be achieved?

Whichever you want. Tempshift will soak up more heat for smaller temp changes.

There are lots of ways to separate rooms. Using a gas or liquid loop between the rooms works well or your idea with doors is great too. 

[Fallonius]

4 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

Whichever you want. Tempshift will soak up more heat for smaller temp changes.

There are lots of ways to separate rooms. Using a gas or liquid loop between the rooms works well or your idea with doors is great too. 

Thank you, i'll take note of that!

[Fallonius]

Math, do you know how much heat the rockets put out? Also, do the solid booster rockets put out a 3x9 cone too or how do they work?

Do the solid booster rockets also generate the same amount of heat?

[Nightinggale]

18 hours ago, Fallonius said:

Based on the cone picture, I decided to see how I could capture the heat for steam turbine usage. Let me tell you, it's A LOT of heat. Does anyone have recommendations of maintaining a more stable temperature than metal tiles? Temp shift plates that are iron/steel? The problem is the steam heats up about 200 degrees when they all land and launch roughly the same time. I should stagger them to maintain a more median heat through multiple cycles. I think the goal is to maintain a cap on the steam heat which is around 200 degrees for maximum power.

I ran a test to control steam room temperature when the heat source (magma) is way too hot. It turned out to be easy to control with great precision. You should be able to do something similar for your rockets. Just make sure all pipes are always at least 100 C because you really want steam in your pipes, not water.

 

[mathmanican]

6 hours ago, Fallonius said:

Math, do you know how much heat the rockets put out?

I ran some tests a while ago. I'm sure others have better info.  Here's a link to what I did. 

Spoiler

 

 

[Nightinggale]

Calculating on the new info (or old if you knew the link), launching one rocket will provide enough heat to make a steam turbine deliver 514 W for one cycle. That's not horrible considering the heat is there anyway meaning it's basically free energy.

The question is how to capture it efficiently. Considering the amount of energy, I would say just build a steam room and heat the steam directly. Next build another steam room next to it and connect the two like in my link (metal-door-metal). This should allow you to harvest the energy while the doors will even out the bursts of heat to a more constant flow of heat suitable for steam turbines.

You can build steam pipes to circulate steam around each steam room to even out the temperature, but it should also work without them. You can likely get the steel requirements down to like 6 metal tiles, which are then connected to 3 metal doors (melt temperature doesn't matter, just high thermal conductivity) and 6 metal tiles at max 200 C (read: copper). Add one thermal sensor and a bit of wire (no melt risk) and you have the amount of refined metal needed. It's much less than what @Fallonius used in his screenshot.

Note: this is planning/calculations as I haven't actually tested this. It's close enough to my tested magma powerplant for me to say it will most likely work just fine though.

[Craigjw]

This is my take on the rocket heat thing.

 

Don't use gold tiles in your heat sink, Hydrogen engines will melt them.  With hydrogen, the lower turbine spins up to 195 easily.

The upper turbine cools only the drills & only goes above 160-ish during take off & landing, if the coolant for this goes above 195, I divert it's flow to the lower turbine first, as this takes the liquid down to 160, which can then be further cooled by the upper turbine before going back to cool the drills.

One other thing to note, if you decide to fill your launch pad area with petroleum, so that it renders some really cool colour swatch, the extra sour gas emitted will tend to cause the drill coolant pipes to break as the extra mass of hot gas heats up the pipe contents too quickly

 

 

[Tobruk]

Guys, the rockets are insane

[Craigjw]

Nicely placed, although 10 tiles to the left would be perfect for the dupe working at their desk below.