So, what to do about heat now?

[bobucles]

34 minutes ago, Moonshade said:

in case of electrolyzers you destroy heat energy since. the thermal capacity of water is way higher then oxygen and hydrogen.

That's not quite the right word for it. The electrolyzer outputs have less specific heat than the inputs. it is very difficult to shift the water temperature, while shifting the gas temperature is very easy. It would make sense to pump hot water into the electrolyzer before cooling it down, but this is true no matter what output mechanics are involved.

For the most part the fixed electrolyzer heat punishes early game and rewards late game. Early game water supplies are cool, so bumping up to 70C represents a very large heat output (roughly 60kDTUs from 20C water to 70C gas). In the late game, 70C output ends up deleting heat because the input is usually 90C+ water fresh out of a hot geyser. Part of the success of a SPOM is due to the temperature being so predictable.

There's nothing implicitly wrong with matching temperature in to temperature out. However, the heat produced by the machine should be represented by the heat presented on the tooltip. Fixed temperature sources can both produce or remove heat, sometimes in extreme quantities. Fixed temperature is difficult for balance, it's confusing for players and overall doesn't seem like the right direction for heat management.

[Moonshade]

I'm just saying that

water: 4.179    1
oxygen: 1.005  0 888
hydrogen 2.4   0.112

in a world where no heat energy gets deleted:
assume input water is 0C -> 272K

0.888*1.005x+0.112*2.4x= 4.179*272*1
x = 4.179*272/1.161
x= 978.8K > output temp should be 706C

[Trego]

23 minutes ago, Moonshade said:

I'm just saying that

water: 4.179    1
oxygen: 1.005  0 888
hydrogen 2.4   0.112

in a world where no heat energy gets deleted:
assume input water is 0C -> 272K

0.888*1.005x+0.112*2.4x= 4.179*272*1
x = 4.179*272/1.161
x= 978.8K > output temp should be 706C

Perhaps as part of moving to a world where no heat energy gets deleted we could add in ice's much lower specific heat. In reality, heat energy in real world electrolysis helps to lower the electric energy required to split the water molecule,  people's fetish for 'zero heat deletion' makes no sense.

[pacovf]

35 minutes ago, Moonshade said:

I'm just saying that

water: 4.179    1
oxygen: 1.005  0 888
hydrogen 2.4   0.112

in a world where no heat energy gets deleted:
assume input water is 0C -> 272K

0.888*1.005x+0.112*2.4x= 4.179*272*1
x = 4.179*272/1.161
x= 978.8K > output temp should be 706C

I am actually curious about this. I spent a long time looking through the internet for information on the temperatures involved in electrolysis. The only thing I could find is that steam is used, but if the output oxygen and hydrogen was in the hundreds of degrees, I feel I would have found info on that. So energy must go elsewhere than just into the temperature of outputs?

Of course, hydrogen’s heat capacity is much larger in real life than in ONI (14.3 at room temperature, instead of 2.4) but that can’t be the only reason for the discrepancy.

7 minutes ago, Trego said:

Perhaps as part of moving to a world where no heat energy gets deleted we could add in ice's much lower specific heat. In reality, heat energy in real world electrolysis helps to lower the electric energy required to split the water molecule,  people's fetish for 'zero heat deletion' makes no sense.

Do you know how much energy it takes to break one atom of water, and how much of that energy is taken up by heat and how much by electricity? I would appreciate a source, if possible

(Note that ice already has a lower heat capacity than water in the game!)

[Moonshade]

1 minute ago, Trego said:

Perhaps as part of moving to a world where no heat energy gets deleted we could add in ice's much lower specific heat. In reality, heat energy in real world electrolysis helps to lower the electric energy required to split the water molecule,  people's fetish for 'zero heat deletion' makes no sense.

well that's true and that's why i'm fine with the way things are now.
i just gave an example how it should be if we put said argument of no heat energy deletion into motion
as for reality dunno much about that.

[Trego]

28 minutes ago, pacovf said:

I am actually curious about this. I spent a long time looking through the internet for information on the temperatures involved in electrolysis. The only thing I could find is that steam is used, but if the output oxygen and hydrogen was in the hundreds of degrees, I feel I would have found info on that. So energy must go elsewhere than just into the temperature of outputs?

Of course, hydrogen’s heat capacity is much larger in real life than in ONI (14.3 at room temperature, instead of 2.4) but that can’t be the only reason for the discrepancy.

There are a bunch of types of real world electrolysis.  Two of the most common do actually operate with inputs and outputs around 70 C (PEM electrolysis and alkaline electrolysis), then high-temperature electrolysis operates much higher and uses the thermal energy to reduce the electricity consumption of splitting the water molecule.  Wikipedia's article lists all nine common types:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water   One of the interesting facts in that article is that electrolysis of salt water produces a ton of chlorine gas, as you're electrolyzing the salt as well.  Another interesting fact relative to someone's complaint about hydrogen gas i saw on this forum, is that 95% of hydrogen gas in the real world is produced not by electrolysis of water but by splitting natural gas into hydrogen and carbon, using the steam reforming process.  Perhaps Klei could consider adding that as an option.

 

"Do you know how much energy it takes to break one atom of water, and how much of that energy is taken up by heat and how much by electricity? I would appreciate a source, if possible 

(Note that ice already has a lower heat capacity than water in the game!)" 

 Thanks for pointing out that ice is already lower ingame.  The wikipedia article I linked above contains the energetic analysis.  The question 'how much is supplied by heat and how much electricity' is "it depends on the setup of the reaction", basically, as well as some of the newer techniques using quantum effects to lower the energy required.  The thermodynamics become quite complicated, but for PEM electrolysis, the article claims that the energy requirements are 285.8 kJ/mol of water inputted, of which at most 48.6 kJ/mol can be supplied by thermal energy, leaving 237.2 kJ/mol as the minimum electrical input needed.

 

[Moonshade]

well as for a way to solve problems around heat.

there are:

aquatuners and steam turbine setups
water sieves
tossing heated elements into space
weeze with the cost phosphorite
AETN

enough options i think

[pacovf]

Thanks for the answer, Trego. I haven’t done any chemistry since my first year at University, so my understanding of enthalpy and how chemical reactions affect it is basically non-existent. I have trouble wrapping my head around the expected temperature of the products of a chemical reaction.

Anyway, Wikipedia doesn’t give any numbers on the amount of “heat” consumed by electrolysis (aside from mentioning it could theoretically increase the efficiency of the production of hydrogen above 100%, if it weren’t for other factors that reduce that efficiency), so that’s a bummer.

 

[Trego]

The subarticle on PEM electrolysis is where the more specific numbers on heat vs electricity consumption are, actually.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_electrolyte_membrane_electrolysis       Like I said above, the number to take out and use is "the article claims that the energy requirements are 285.8 kJ/mol of water inputted, of which at most 48.6 kJ/mol can be supplied by thermal energy, leaving 237.2 kJ/mol as the minimum electrical input needed."   since PEM electrolysis takes place at 70-80 C, this is kinda what I imagine the ONI electrolyzers working like.  As to how high-temperature electrolysis in the real world reduces the electrical energy needed by more than the above, I'm a little too rusty on thermodynamics to try to explain that one any further, other than to say that I believe seeing somewhere at some point that at some temperature, around 3k kelvin or so, water breaks apart into hydrogen and oxygen without any electrical input at all.  This is too hot to be an industrially efficient process, apparently.

 

[bobucles]

55 minutes ago, Trego said:

The subarticle on PEM electrolysis is where the more specific numbers on heat vs electricity consumption are, actually.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_electrolyte_membrane_electrolysis       Like I said above, the number to take out and use is "the article claims that the energy requirements are 285.8 kJ/mol of water inputted, of which at most 48.6 kJ/mol can be supplied by thermal energy, leaving 237.2 kJ/mol as the minimum electrical input needed."   since PEM electrolysis takes place at 70-80 C, this is kinda what I imagine the ONI electrolyzers working like. 

It sounds like the high temperature is a matter of industrial convenience, not an absolute requirement for electrolysis. In fact there is no difficulty with electolyzing room temperature water, you can find many videos of room temperature water getting zapped on youtube. The real world difficulties come with obtaining pure separation of gases, in huge quantities, while doing so at the lowest industrial cost possible. I don't think duplicants really care about min/maxing that level of efficiency as long as they get to breathe.

[Trego]

32 minutes ago, bobucles said:

It sounds like the high temperature is a matter of industrial convenience, not an absolute requirement for electrolysis. In fact there is no difficulty with electolyzing room temperature water, you can find many videos of room temperature water getting zapped on youtube. The real world difficulties come with obtaining pure separation of gases, in huge quantities, while doing so at the lowest industrial cost possible. I don't think duplicants really care about min/maxing that level of efficiency as long as they get to breathe.

I don't know what 'the high temperature' means.  I talked about multiple kinds of electrolysis which occur at different temperatures, and emphasized the two which are considered 'low-temperature electrolysis', i.e., 70-80 C.  Now, if you do the math, 237.2 kJ/mol works out to around 12,000,000 watts for an electrolyzer which processes 1 kg/sec of water, so the dupes have apparently min-maxed themselves a machine which works 100,000 times more efficiently than is even theoretically possible.  (a kilogram of water is about 55.5 moles)

[Troxism]

Keep in mind dupes breathe FAR more oxygen then an IRL human (humans breathe out a lot of the oxygen they breathe in), so the values have to be adjusted for balance. So the electrolysis being very efficient is kind of required. Also ONI power generation is generally very weak which is anothe reason for the skewed values. In general all the power vs heat values are really off, since almost every machine (esp the tepidizer) produce FAR more heat energy then it uses electrical energy, which is pretty off (where is the energy coming from?). Comparing such values 1 to 1 is never really going to work out since the game fundamentally starts from different base values and conservation of energy is thrown out the window constantly in basically every single machine.

My point is, these conversations are a  huge rabbit hole, because then you realise you would have to change basically every single tuning value in the game to make it 'realistic'. Never really going to happen.

[Trego]

"Keep in mind dupes breathe FAR more oxygen then an IRL human (humans breathe out a lot of the oxygen they breathe in), so the values have to be adjusted for balanceSo the electrolysis being very efficient is kind of required."

That's a strange take on it lol.  First off, dupes consume something like 10,000 times more oxygen than humans, compared to that massive discrepancy humans' imperfect absorption of oxygen is a rounding error.  Second , saying electrolysis's efficiency in ONI is 'required' is not true, they could have simply had dupes breathe a reasonable amount of oxygen in the first place, quite easily.

"My point is, these conversations are a  huge rabbit hole, because then you realise you would have to change basically every single tuning value in the game to make it 'realistic'. Never really going to happen."

They're definitely a huge rabbit hole, but other games are much more realistic.  changing every tuning value in the game is not unreasonable, it's just that Klei made the game the way they want and that's the way it is.  However, remember that this particular conversation is not really mostly about making ONI more realistic, this particular subthread is mainly just some guys asking some questions about real things that also occur in ONI, and then some related jokes about unrealistic things in ONI.  Exchanges of jokes are almost by definition journeys down a rabbit hole

[Troxism]

Yes I am aware it is both the fact that dupes use more oxygen to begin with, and that they don't breathe any out, I just worded it very akwardly. It's both, not just one. My point was to show why electrolysis is impossibly efficient in the game. And saying they could just change the values, while true, most people would find it annoying/confusing to be working in milli/micrograms for oxygen, but then kg for other things (conversion on the fly is confusing to many people even in round 1000x values). Also changing electrolysis values would mean water usage/generation would be totally rebalanced, and while crops ingame also generally consume way too much water it's not by as much as oxygen production. Which would either force unrealistic values for crops, or electrolysis water consumption to basically become a rounding error compared to things like farming.

Plus what about oxylite/LOX for rockets? If electrolysis produces a 'realistic' value for oxygen, then you would never be able to get enough for that since frankly the rocket fuel values aren't that far off (although I guess it really depends on the gravity in the asteroid).

There are lots of knock-on effects to changing some values, and it's not that simple to just make every value realistic as it would massively alter game balance in every way, and affect a lot of ratios between things.

[Trego]

6 minutes ago, Troxism said:

 

There are lots of knock-on effects to changing some values, and it's not that simple to just make every value realistic as it would massively alter game balance in every way, and affect a lot of ratios between things.

Yes, that's why I said Klei made their game the way they did and that's fine.  As far as rockets go, a small group of ten dupes on an asteroid regularly throwing off giant rockets to other planets is already unrealistic.  Realistic space games which involve massive group efforts like that generally are more of a simcity type of simulation, ONI went with the cartoonish approach.  Same thing with plants, farmers don't actually only plant a few plants per person and expect to sustain life, you're arguing these minor points when there are major points lying fallow, because we aren't actually talking about realism in a serious way here.  Again, we aren't actually suggesting Klei make changes to the game to make it more realistic here, so you're arguing against a ghost viewpoint here.

[Troxism]

Fair enough. To some extent it is a reaction to common comments on this forum of that type.

[Trego]

yes, those types of comments are regrettably common here, usually after something game unbalancing gets nerfed.

 

[bobucles]

Dupe oxygen consumption doesn't have much to do with heat balance. A small consumption value can be matched with more difficult production and vice versa. Dupes need O2, and a certain amount of effort is needed to provide it. It's all the same in the end.

Playing around with heat balance is part of testing, of course. But placing high maintenance on a weak option doesn't seem good. For example a water sieve filtering 95C polluted water has the heat removing power of nearly a hundred wheezeworts. It's also disingenuous that colonies suffer from overheating not because their machines have high kDTU values, but rather because machines with very low kDTU values are in fact generating huge amounts of heat. The kDTU system doesn't have much meaning when the biggest heat generators (and absorbers!) aren't even a part of it.

[Xuhybrid]

7 hours ago, Troxism said:

Keep in mind dupes breathe FAR more oxygen then an IRL human (humans breathe out a lot of the oxygen they breathe in), so the values have to be adjusted for balance. So the electrolysis being very efficient is kind of required. Also ONI power generation is generally very weak which is anothe reason for the skewed values. In general all the power vs heat values are really off, since almost every machine (esp the tepidizer) produce FAR more heat energy then it uses electrical energy, which is pretty off (where is the energy coming from?). Comparing such values 1 to 1 is never really going to work out since the game fundamentally starts from different base values and conservation of energy is thrown out the window constantly in basically every single machine.

My point is, these conversations are a  huge rabbit hole, because then you realise you would have to change basically every single tuning value in the game to make it 'realistic'. Never really going to happen.

Ignoring realistic for a moment then, even if i'd like it nudged more in that direction. What about consistent? Why do some machines operate on different rules compared to others? If nothing else, i'd like some consistency.

[Trego]

I'd like some variety.

[EnderCN]

On 6/30/2019 at 6:50 AM, Xuhybrid said:

I would be all for making electrolyzers output at the temperature of the water. That way you don't get heat death early and you can't abuse steam geysers without cooling your water first. Water sieve shouldn't change the temperature either, logically speaking. It's another one of those early heat death mechanics, just like the electrolyzer. The devs intentionally ignore realism and physics just to make early game more difficult.

It would also make a cool slush geyser make the entire game easy mode.  It would make polluted ice way overpowered etc.  These devices are made like this to stop people from abusing cold things as much or more than they are there to delete heat.  

[Lurve]

49 minutes ago, EnderCN said:

It would also make a cool slush geyser make the entire game easy mode.  It would make polluted ice way overpowered etc.  These devices are made like this to stop people from abusing cold things as much or more than they are there to delete heat.  

Cool slush geysers are already easy mode.  When you find one, you might as well stop whatever other strategy you're doing because whatever it is it's not going to be as effective as surfing the sewage slushie.

[Junksteel]

So... what to do about heat now?

[metallichydra]

5 minutes ago, Lurve said:

Cool slush geysers are already easy mode.  When you find one, you might as well stop whatever other strategy you're doing because whatever it is it's not going to be as effective as surfing the sewage slushie.

i wish the cool slush geyser (or just all water geysers) where worse / not as good as they are right now.

and buff the other geysers

and make them dangerous to use!

[Nightinggale]

8 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

So... what to do about heat now?

You spread sand, add salt water next to it, put on sunglasses and then you can be on a pretend tropic beach vacation.