Steam Generator - How much water is too much?

[Bromster]

Hi all,

 

New player here and as the title states I was wondering if anyone knows how much water is too much when filling up your aquatuner "tub"? I put hundreds of kg in there and I rarely get any steam so I think it is too much, but I might just not be creating enough heat/cooling for steam.

 

Thanks!

[Nightinggale]

The answer is simple and complex at the same time. The higher the steam pressure, the better it is at transferring heat. Too little steam and the aquatuner might overheat. Too much steam and more heat goes through the insulation.

How much water is perfect? It depends on which metal you have in your aquatuner and your steam temperature. An aquatuner out of gold amalgam overheats at 175 C and it has low thermal conductivity, meaning it requires a high steam pressure to maintain say 160 C steam. 140 C steam is easier, but then you might need two steam turbines because each delivers less.

Steel aquatuners can be a lot hotter and they have high thermal conductivity, meaning they have a much easier time surviving in low steam pressure.

The real answer to the question is: it depends. There is no single correct number.

[Prince Mandor]

Doesn't matter, really.

More water you put - means longer period before first steam, but lesser chances to overheat tuner.

Tuner cool down water by 140 kg°/s if it works constantly. And heats it's chamber by same amount. Turbine cools down steam from 60 kg°/s to 210 kg°/s, depends on resulting temperature of steam. So, if you tuner will works non-stop, you will have little more than half powered turbine. Amount of water changes only how stable this system, and how hot aquatuner became. So, I just put couple of tons, to be sure

 

Edit: Oh! Thermal loss through walls! I didn't think about it. Thanks, Nightinggale!

[mathmanican]

Spoiler

8 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Too much steam and more heat goes through the insulation.

8 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Oh! Thermal loss through walls!

 

If you make the insulation walls two tiles thick, then you won't bleed any heat outside of your turbine room. Yes, the inside walls will rise in temperature, but after sufficient time they will stabilize. 

[Craigjw]

I aim for about 2-3kg of steam per tile while it's at full capacity for the steam engine.   If I were to do some better maths, the turbine produces 2kg/s water and there are 5 ports, so about 400g per tile should be sufficient, however, I have noticed that the turbine sometimes throws out <2kg packets when it's at that pressure, suggesting that it's not processing all the steam that it can.

As for the Aquatuner, I make them out of steel or thermium if I'm feeling particularly benevolent, and use either gold or diamond tempshift plates directly behind the AT, plus maybe 2 additional plates 1 tile away, so that they are not directly in contact with the diamond plates ( 6 tiles used in total)  These additional 2 maybe just spread the heat around the steam a bit.  I also drip the liquid directly back onto the AT.  This seems to work quite well, it heats up to 195c max output easily with an acceptably minimum time producing low turbine power at <195c.

You have to consider mass and thermal capacity, ie x=Mass * thermal capacity, the higher that this is, the more heat you need to produce to reach the golden 195c, but at the same time, you need something to absorb what heat you do produce and distribute it to the steam.

So, the goals is, to have just enough mass capable of absorbing the same amount of heat being produced by the AT.

The walls are all ceramic, the heat loss is minimal.

I've also ran some AT's with 1500kg of water and they work fine.

To conclude, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this is the correct strategy at all.  I hope that I'm wrong and thus find a way to make my turbines more efficient

[Nightinggale]

6 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

reach the golden 195c

While that's the max output temperature, it might not be the temperature you want to use. 10% of the consumed heat will convert into heat in the steam turbine, meaning maxing it out will require more cooling. Running at 140 C with twice as many steam turbines is likely to produce the same amount of power, but with less of a cooling issue because the heat production in each building is lower.

8 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

I have noticed that the turbine sometimes throws out <2kg packets when it's at that pressure, suggesting that it's not processing all the steam that it can.

That's an indication of too low pressure. Because the steam is produced in one location and used in another location, you will have a difference in pressure, which will make the steam flow. The average pressure isn't interesting, it's the lowest pressure and that one is apparently too low in your case.

10 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

The walls are all ceramic, the heat loss is minimal.

Insulated walls work a lot better if they are double thickness. The inside tiles will heat up, but the heat transfer between two insulated tiles is so low that hardly any heat passes through a double layer.

[Rainbowdesign]

I think the best insulation is a double layer of wall with vacuum in the middle also it might be the cheapest

 

[Craigjw]

Good point about the heat management, I'm suffering from this with my rocket cone heat sink turbine; I have 2 turbines in separate rooms, each with 5 weezes and the 1st turbine, which consumes the most heat has still overheated!

I've gone for vacuum seals for my turbines, but still use ceramic for the steam chamber, as I want any wall tile to absorb as little heat as possible.

[0xFADE]

If you’ve got a really strong geyser it can put out enough steam to over pressure the room leading to less output. I’m not sure that happens anymore after they changed the rates but it could still happen in extreme cases.