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Trouble cooling robo-miners in space


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So this is basically what you'd expect from the title. I've got bunker doors protecting things in space, the doors open and dump regolith everywhere, the miners clean it and overheat because they can't dissipate heat. I built a cooling system to run chilled (~-10°C) petroleum through pipes into the area, and ran it through iron radiant pipes behind all the buildings where I had also built granite tempshift plates. But that didn't work; it seemed to not touch the temperature of the robo-miners or anything else except maybe the tempshift plates. I guess it still needs a gas or liquid to exchange heat between pipes, tempshift plates, and buildings.

I've looked around a bit, but the only solutions I could find were either vent cold gas out next to the miners with a few tiles of drywall around to slow the gas being sucked off into space, or put the miners on a window floor and cover the floor in a 25kg layer of petroleum to cool. I don't really have an abundance to gas to just cool and vent into space except for a chlorine geyser, which makes for a band coolant, or two hot PO2 geysers, which would take a lot to cool from 300°C to something usable. And I'm not sure how the petroleum on the floor worked for the guy that did it considering petroleum absorbs 80% of light (at least according to the wiki), not leaving much for solar panels below. 

Anyone got any advice? Pics below of my current set up.

Edit: Oh, and it may be worth noting that I'm still playing on the live build, not on preview yet.

20190415183336_1.jpg

20190415183430_1.jpg

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this is a re-post but I'll share my solution 

In the screenshots I use wheezeworts but you can use other cooling methods

I allow the miners to get burred and the regolith becomes a bridge between the cold glass tiles and miners cooling them

20181102085928_1.thumb.jpg.9b0a7ae9f8e2b354b65a1a452dcb255e.jpg20181020131303_1.thumb.jpg.264633945feb9e9a53dd632b9bc5f7fa.jpg20181020131327_1.thumb.jpg.1e589d5b575c25e1fad885f14e401ade.jpg20181020131333_1.thumb.jpg.af1f96cb1f802592a2efaca7cff8d1d3.jpg20181020131354_1.thumb.jpg.18e917bec6866fc773725020fb4a1065.jpg

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Just now, Neotuck said:

check the lux count above and below the petroleum

is it the same?

Hrm. Spoke too soon. It does absorb light, and the amount of light it absorbs depends on the amount of petroleum. In my build it's around 0.3-1%. Negligible, but still there.

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Just now, Neotuck said:

It's negligible in my build too, once the regolith is cleared only the glass and hydrogen absorb light before reaching the pannels

In my case there's neither hydrogen nor glass in there. :)

image.thumb.png.c3ebb8ab5916c5699700dae85ab7a4fd.png

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Just now, M.C. said:

In my case there's neither hydrogen nor glass in there. :)

image.thumb.png.c3ebb8ab5916c5699700dae85ab7a4fd.png

I assume you have a layer of petroleum sitting on top of the airflow tiles?

I'll have to run some tests to see what absorbs more light, glass and hydrogen or petroleum

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4 minutes ago, M.C. said:

 In my build it's around 0.3-1%. Negligible, but still there.

Maybe the wiki meant petroleum absorbs 80% of light if it's a full tile of 1000kg. So if there's only like 25kg or so the amount of light lost would be negligible.

Also Neotuck, that is a very impressive build, but considering I'm on survival mode I'm not sure I could generate enough cold to cool off fresh regolith before it starts overheating and breaking the miners. Your setup looks like it'd have to be absorbing a massive amount of heat fairly quickly.

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Just now, Cryocrat said:

Also Neotuck, that is a very impressive build, but considering I'm on survival mode I'm not sure I could generate enough cold to cool off fresh regolith before it starts overheating and breaking the miners. Your setup looks like it'd have to be absorbing a massive amount of heat fairly quickly.

if all your miners are made of steel the damage is minimal and will cool down before the miners mine up the regolith

I was lucky to have an ice planet where I got most of my wort seeds but it's possible to do it without using a steam turbine cooling method

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Oh okay, I haven't made it to rockets yet. So I don't have anything you don't get from the home meteor lol. So nowhere near that many wheezeworts. I think for where I'm at though, just starting out building in space, a little petroleum on the floor around the miners is the way to go since a little bit of petroleum won't instantly absorb 80% of the light passing through it.

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29 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I assume you have a layer of petroleum sitting on top of the airflow tiles?

I'll have to run some tests to see what absorbs more light, glass and hydrogen or petroleum

Yup.

I am pretty sure the glass alone would absorb more (10% for a solid glass tile vs <1% for a thin layer of petroleum).

22 minutes ago, Cryocrat said:

Oh okay, I haven't made it to rockets yet. So I don't have anything you don't get from the home meteor lol. So nowhere near that many wheezeworts. I think for where I'm at though, just starting out building in space, a little petroleum on the floor around the miners is the way to go since a little bit of petroleum won't instantly absorb 80% of the light passing through it.

For bonus points, collect heat from regolith chunks (like I do in the picture above) and feed it to a steam turbine. Just make sure your buildings are made of steel because your coolant is going to be pretty damn hot.

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I have understood you didn't have that much gas to vent into space, but seriously, this has proven to be the best solution for me. The trick is to control the flow so that gas is used only when the Robo Miner are working after a meteor shower. Here are pics (the design is quite messy but it works very well)

F6E1CE1BB2F5BF0FEBDE785E73633315227303DC

This is the general design. As I said, it's a little bit messy and it was built too close from the no-go zone on top of the map.

6E6056E1DF3D94071D36CE8CA71E080F1494E91E

These pics were taken right after a meteor shower, knowing the robo-miners have been built something like 200 cycles before. The were all built in Gold for maximum heat transfer and have never left the 20-70°C zone (depends on the intensity of the shower)

B4EB66C4C6CD8305D30AFB1F36866CA6F3960558

This is the amount of gaz left after cooling the robo miners. The flow is controled by gaz shutoffes and there are 6 of them.

916AF7F20A81789A2909ECA7D8727CCE836C83B1

The opening of the Shutoffes is directly link to meteor detection, and more precisely to the end of the meteor shower. The trick is to use a XOR gate in order to close the shutoffes after a delay.

DCBFCDDD68004E47BA54C1D9392FB268CE6056B3

How is it done ?

Simplified, Space Scanners detects the end of a meteor shower, its signal turns from FALSE to TRUE (in reality it is more complicated, because I have tried to make a design that saves power during meteor showers)

Signal is sent to two filters, one with a 60s delay, the other one with a 105s delay.

As you know, the output signal of a XOR gate is TRUE only when one of is input is TRUE. It is FALSE when both inputs are TRUE or FALSE. Which means that :

- Both Filters are FALSE : XOR output is FALSE, Shutoffs are closed. This happens during a meteor shower and when the bunker doors are opening.

- The 60s Filter is TRUE, the 105s Filter is FALSE : XOR output is TRUE, Shutoffs are opened. Robo-MIners are destroying the Regolith and the Oxygen is cooling them

- Both Filters are TRUE : XOR output is FALSE, Shutoffs are closed again. Skies are peaceful, no meteor Shower is happening.

 

As for the amount of Oxygen it consumes, it's minimal.

DC34D35906953768A595C11ABBB7C90DE1BC3503

This is the Electrolyzer setup I'm using and it's the only one I'm using right now, knowing I have 12 Dupes. I still have enough oxygen to sustain 30 Atmo Suit Docks (12 in the Hot Biome, 12 in Space, 2 for the Drecko Farm, 2 for the Morb-Puft Farm and 2 for my Chlorine Chamber) and to produce Oxylite very frequently. Other sources of Oxygen include two Algae Terrarium, a Contaminated PO² geyser, a small Morb farm and the evaporation of various PH²O puddles in the Swamp Biomes. Currently I only use Petroleum and Oxylite for my rockets. I plan to but an other Electrolyzer setup when I'll switch to LOX and Liquid H².

Hoping it'll help :)

 

EDIT : just a small edit, but Tiles and Drywalls are built in Mafic Rock, which is Thermally Reactive.

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What if you don't cool robominers at all and just let then slowly overheat?

Let's take a look for a moment at steel robominer specifics:

200kg of mass, 275C overheat temperature.

98kDTU needed to increase its temperature by 1C (200kg * 0.49 SHC)

During one second of work robominer creates 2kDTU of heat so it takes 49 seconds to increase temperature by 1C.

Robominers clearing regolith are supposed to work for some time after meteor shower is over. Depending how many robominers are there the time can be longer or shorter.

Let's see how many meteor showers should robominer survive if each time its temperature will rise by 1C(so we assume it's working time is close to 50s) - if robominer is built at temperature of 40C then there is 235C still to go until overheat. This means 235 meteors showers untill robominer needs to be repaired or deconstructed and reconstructed. During meteor season there should be 9 meteor showers by avarage. Can be less(min 3), can be more(max 15), but let's just now use the avarage value.

Meteor season lasts 10 cycles and then there is 4 cycleas break - total 14 cycles.

235/9 = ~26 (number of meteor seasons a steel robominer should last)

26*14 = 364 cycles (this is how long it will take to overheat a steel robominer, if it doesn't get in contact with hot regolith and just heat itself from own generated heat. It is easy to build such setup that is not heated up by regolith)

During 364 cycles you should be able to get nobium or even thermium and if you rebuild robominers with it, then you don't have to worry about the robominers for a very long time. Probably you will start a new colony sooner then thermium robominers overheat ;) 

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13 hours ago, Neotuck said:

this is a re-post but I'll share my solution 

In the screenshots I use wheezeworts but you can use other cooling methods

I allow the miners to get burred and the regolith becomes a bridge between the cold glass tiles and miners cooling them

20181102085928_1.thumb.jpg.9b0a7ae9f8e2b354b65a1a452dcb255e.jpg20181020131303_1.thumb.jpg.264633945feb9e9a53dd632b9bc5f7fa.jpg20181020131327_1.thumb.jpg.1e589d5b575c25e1fad885f14e401ade.jpg20181020131333_1.thumb.jpg.af1f96cb1f802592a2efaca7cff8d1d3.jpg20181020131354_1.thumb.jpg.18e917bec6866fc773725020fb4a1065.jpg

 

8 hours ago, Dracian said:

I have understood you didn't have that much gas to vent into space, but seriously, this has proven to be the best solution for me. The trick is to control the flow so that gas is used only when the Robo Miner are working after a meteor shower. Here are pics (the design is quite messy but it works very well)

F6E1CE1BB2F5BF0FEBDE785E73633315227303DC

This is the general design. As I said, it's a little bit messy and it was built too close from the no-go zone on top of the map.

6E6056E1DF3D94071D36CE8CA71E080F1494E91E

These pics were taken right after a meteor shower, knowing the robo-miners have been built something like 200 cycles before. The were all built in Gold for maximum heat transfer and have never left the 20-70°C zone (depends on the intensity of the shower)

B4EB66C4C6CD8305D30AFB1F36866CA6F3960558

This is the amount of gaz left after cooling the robo miners. The flow is controled by gaz shutoffes and there are 6 of them.

916AF7F20A81789A2909ECA7D8727CCE836C83B1

The opening of the Shutoffes is directly link to meteor detection, and more precisely to the end of the meteor shower. The trick is to use a XOR gate in order to close the shutoffes after a delay.

DCBFCDDD68004E47BA54C1D9392FB268CE6056B3

How is it done ?

Simplified, Space Scanners detects the end of a meteor shower, its signal turns from FALSE to TRUE (in reality it is more complicated, because I have tried to make a design that saves power during meteor showers)

Signal is sent to two filters, one with a 60s delay, the other one with a 105s delay.

As you know, the output signal of a XOR gate is TRUE only when one of is input is TRUE. It is FALSE when both inputs are TRUE or FALSE. Which means that :

- Both Filters are FALSE : XOR output is FALSE, Shutoffs are closed. This happens during a meteor shower and when the bunker doors are opening.

- The 60s Filter is TRUE, the 105s Filter is FALSE : XOR output is TRUE, Shutoffs are opened. Robo-MIners are destroying the Regolith and the Oxygen is cooling them

- Both Filters are TRUE : XOR output is FALSE, Shutoffs are closed again. Skies are peaceful, no meteor Shower is happening.

 

As for the amount of Oxygen it consumes, it's minimal.

DC34D35906953768A595C11ABBB7C90DE1BC3503

This is the Electrolyzer setup I'm using and it's the only one I'm using right now, knowing I have 12 Dupes. I still have enough oxygen to sustain 30 Atmo Suit Docks (12 in the Hot Biome, 12 in Space, 2 for the Drecko Farm, 2 for the Morb-Puft Farm and 2 for my Chlorine Chamber) and to produce Oxylite very frequently. Other sources of Oxygen include two Algae Terrarium, a Contaminated PO² geyser, a small Morb farm and the evaporation of various PH²O puddles in the Swamp Biomes. Currently I only use Petroleum and Oxylite for my rockets. I plan to but an other Electrolyzer setup when I'll switch to LOX and Liquid H².

Hoping it'll help :)

 

EDIT : just a small edit, but Tiles and Drywalls are built in Mafic Rock, which is Thermally Reactive.

hi there . can have your saves ? i really wanna learn from your endgame bases

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