What to do with a cool steam geyser that's right next to a gold volcano?

[Soylent]

I have a cool steam geyser one block away from a gold volcano. I've been making use of them independently, but I'm wondering how I can utilize them together. 

I tried putting a steam generator on top, and letting the volcano heat up the steam using temp shift plates. But when one or the other go dormant, that doesn't really work anymore, and it just fills up with water. Also I'm having trouble sealing it and pumping out non-steam gasses, because then I'm unable to collect the gold from the volcano. And it's still too hot for pumps or sweepers. 

What's a neat way to harness these two together? 

 

 

[Xuhybrid]

My first thought would be to run a Steam Turbine from it to get water and a little power.

Screenshot?

[Nightinggale]

5 hours ago, Soylent said:

But when one or the other go dormant, that doesn't really work anymore, and it just fills up with water.

Dig a big hole underneath where all the liquid can end up. Insulate it very well (3 layers or something), and then I would think they would be able to store water and hot gold until the next one activates.

I never tried it, but if they are close enough to each other to do that with just gravity, then why not try it?

[Soylent]

20 hours ago, Xuhybrid said:

My first thought would be to run a Steam Turbine from it to get water and a little power.

Screenshot?

Sure, here it is. Not much to look at, since both are currently dormant. Although the temperature in the volcano box is high enough, the vent isn't pushing any steam. I put the tempshift plates to disperse heat from the molten gold up. But one major issue I keep running into is gasses getting inside and blocking the steam engine. I have to keep opening one tile and pumping it out. I have no idea where the gasses are coming from, it should be completely sealed.

[Nightinggale]

That design needs a major redesign.

First of all, block access between the geysers and the steam turbine. The ladder access will become steam access and you can't build up steam pressure without also heating up the steam turbine past max temperature.

Secondly lose the wall between the geysers. In fact make the room much bigger. Make a big pool of water at the floor, which is then below both geysers. When the gold geyser erupts, it will send hot gold into the water and you will get steam.

Make sure you insulate better. Double insulation walls insulate way better than single layer. You want to keep the heat in the steam/geyser room as high as possible and not leak out to the rest of your base.

[Xuhybrid]

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, absolutely need to seal up the steam turbine away from the geysers. If you want access to the gold that gets created, i recommend a steel sweeper and conveyor line. You want to remove the insulation separating the two geysers also. From there all i can recommend is allowing steam or water to pile up and even if they're dormant, you'll still get equal value whenever they are active. Not only will you get cooling and power from the steam turbine, but you'll also get gold from the process.

I'm curious, how did you end up handling the situation?

[Z0366]

6 minutes ago, Xuhybrid said:

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, absolutely need to seal up the steam turbine away from the geysers. If you want access to the gold that gets created, i recommend a steel sweeper and conveyor line. You want to remove the insulation separating the two geysers also. From there all i can recommend is allowing steam or water to pile up and even if they're dormant, you'll still get equal value whenever they are active. Not only will you get cooling and power from the steam turbine, but you'll also get gold from the process.

I'm curious, how did you end up handling the situation?

Actually, if we use the "glitch that the sweeper can sweep through a cornered wall, then not even conveyor is necessary

[Soylent]

On 6/17/2019 at 6:03 PM, Z0366 said:

Actually, if we use the "glitch that the sweeper can sweep through a cornered wall, then not even conveyor is necessary

Even then, how do you cool the gold?

On 6/17/2019 at 5:03 PM, Xuhybrid said:

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, absolutely need to seal up the steam turbine away from the geysers. If you want access to the gold that gets created, i recommend a steel sweeper and conveyor line. You want to remove the insulation separating the two geysers also. From there all i can recommend is allowing steam or water to pile up and even if they're dormant, you'll still get equal value whenever they are active. Not only will you get cooling and power from the steam turbine, but you'll also get gold from the process.

I'm curious, how did you end up handling the situation?

I’m going to do it over completely. I didn’t have a practical method of cooling and retrieving the gold, especially when a single block was like 7 tons. I’m less interested in the unreliable and sporadic power generation, and more interested in just collecting the gold. One thing I was thinking is maybe use the steam geyser’s water to cool the gold, since it instantly boils on contact, then delete the heat with the turbine. However, any other gasses that get inside immediately float to the top and block the turbine inlets! I can’t even stick a steel air pump in there without it overheating .

[Z0366]

A simple (but not perfect method) is to only activate the sweeper if the temperature in the room is below a certain value. If the gold is cooled by the surrounding steam or water, only activate if the temperature is below 120. Since the heat capacity of gold is small, even a 150+ degree gold can't heat up the surrounding  much.

Anotherway is to activate the sweeper once per 3,4 days, so that the gold would have always had enough to cool in the steam chamber. Even the new ones that just came out, would have joined with previously-cooled gold. To do that, a not gate, filter gate, buffer gate loop is needed. You can find it in this forum by maybe searching automation?

[Nightinggale]

22 minutes ago, Soylent said:

Even then, how do you cool the gold?

An easier way to detect when the gold is cold enough is to use Sensory Overload and place an item temperature sensor at the cooling cell. Make that sensor trigger at below 200 or whatever you want and then use the sensor to activate a transfer arm or door. That way the gold is removed once it's cold enough. It's still hot, but you could use the transfer arm to dump the medium hot gold into water to cool it further. You just won't get power out of the last cooling step.

[Xuhybrid]

7 hours ago, Soylent said:

Even then, how do you cool the gold?

I’m going to do it over completely. I didn’t have a practical method of cooling and retrieving the gold, especially when a single block was like 7 tons. I’m less interested in the unreliable and sporadic power generation, and more interested in just collecting the gold. One thing I was thinking is maybe use the steam geyser’s water to cool the gold, since it instantly boils on contact, then delete the heat with the turbine. However, any other gasses that get inside immediately float to the top and block the turbine inlets! I can’t even stick a steel air pump in there without it overheating .

The core idea is that the steam geyser cools the molten gold. And the molten gold heats the steam up so it can be used in the steam turbine. I would recommend some tempshift plates behind each geyser at the very least. If you're having trouble with it already being too hot, what i would suggest is putting up some tempshift plates using a high thermal capacity material. This should absorb some of the heat into the material rapidly, and lower the temperature in the room for you to Gas pump out non-Steam gases. I hope this helps.