Cooling the QOL3 Steam Turbine

[Brickius]

Has anyone had any luck doing this?

I created a simple cooler in the ruins of my pre-QOL3 turbine room-

The insulation blocks between the steam and the turbine are proper full insulators, the rest are not

Even with the two thermo-regulators and two wheezeworts it went from 10 degrees to over 100 in about 4 seconds

 

It kinda chugs along at the minute - it manages one power generation cycle for a second but then overheats - as soon as it stops it drops 4 or 5 degrees back down and cycles again

 

Even if this setup worked the airpump and two thermo regulators burn almost all of the power it could produce anyway - how are you guys doing it?

[Olslacken]

The steam turbine will always process the same amout of steam but can only convert a set amount into power so any excess heat is transferd to the steam turbine so if you want to keep it cool you either need to feed in cooler steam or limit the input by blocking some inlet im not sure these number are exactly right but if you let all inlut open you steam need to be less than 200°C, 227°C for 4, 270°C for 3, 358°C for 2. You can't go higer than that with only 1 because it need at least 400g/s of steam to operate and one inlet only give 200g/s.

[f4rtux]

If you consider the case with all the 5 pump and steam temperature of 200 °C the Steam Turbine generate 91.76 kDTU/s.

To keep the temperature of the turbine constant, you must get rid of this heat.

For example you can use 8 Wheezewort (-16 kDTU/s when immersed in hydrogen), 1 Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier (-80 kDTU/s) and 1 Wheezewort or any other creative method to remove that heat

If u want to try different temperature / pump setup, I've created a calculator that can be used. The heat generated change based on the steam input temperature and how many pumps are active.

[Gus Smedstad]

It's often easiest to stick an aquatuner in the steam chamber, a set of radiant pipes behind the turbine, and just let the turbine cool itself.

[Saturnus]

8 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

It's often easiest to stick an aquatuner in the steam chamber, a set of radiant pipes behind the turbine, and just let the turbine cool itself.

Agreed. One aquatuner used this way can cool down 4-6 steam turbines quite comfortably depending on how much you let the steam overheat above 200C.

Note that if you let the steam heat up past 200C heat produced by the steam engine, and thereby the needed cooling as well, rises dramatically.

[Yunru]

I just let the output water run over the turbine.

[Khullag]

21 hours ago, Yunru said:

I just let the output water run over the turbine.

i also do not get why people cant think of cooling steam turbine with the steam it moves around.it deletes almost 10 times more heat than it produces - spend 1/10th of it to cool turbine itself

[Yunru]

10 minutes ago, Khullag said:

i also do not get why people cant think of cooling steam turbine with the steam it moves around.it deletes almost 10 times more heat than it produces - spend 1/10th of it to cool turbine itself

Because it doesn't operate above 100*C, and steam doesn't go lower than that?

[Zakery]

I use ST to cool metal volcanos and have no problem to cool them, even for Iron Volcano.

Just don*t let steam to heat more than 200C and few wheez in hydrogen will be good for cooling.

On my Iron V , ST work non stop  even in dormancy period

[hegemontree]

The steam turbine is not capable of sustained self-cooling with its 95 degree output at steam temperatures of over ~133 degrees even with a perfectly insulating wall and 5 ports open.   Less ports performs worse for self cooling.  This leaves any self cooling system very fragile.

Using 99.35 as max water temp after steam turbine cooling.

[axxionx12]

I've found that a temperature of 144 degrees or less creates a self cooling system with the water leaving the top chamber at a nice 99.8 degrees. If you make multiple self cooling cells in parallel, you can produce energy and create a lot of heat. I introduce heat with heated petroleum in a continuous loop. You can use a thermostat that turns on a liquid pump and adds heated petroleum to the heating  chamber. When the target heat is reached, The liquid pump shuts off and the next steam engine cell is able to use the heated petroleum for power. I'll put together a prototype and post it on the future 

[hegemontree]

1 hour ago, axxionx12 said:

I've found that a temperature of 144 degrees or less creates a self cooling system with the water leaving the top chamber at a nice 99.8 degrees. If you make multiple self cooling cells in parallel, you can produce energy and create a lot of heat. I introduce heat with heated petroleum in a continuous loop. You can use a thermostat that turns on a liquid pump and adds heated petroleum to the heating  chamber. When the target heat is reached, The liquid pump shuts off and the next steam engine cell is able to use the heated petroleum for power. I'll put together a prototype and post it on the future 

Awesome, I'd love to see it.  It's definitely possible, but requires precise stability.