Can a steam turbine cool itself if it is cooling a aquatuner?

[Xenologist]

Is it possible?

[MorsDux]

If the steam turbine is running with steam above 150C or so I think the output water cannot completely cool it down, I think normally you need to sacrifice some of the aquatuner output on cooling it.

[Saturnus]

Yes. Well, more or less. Uptime on the aquatuner will depend on the material the turbine is made from, and especially the insulated tiles the steam turbine sits on. They should be ceramic or insulation (the material) but just the 5 tiles it sits on. You'll want the turbine to be made of the least heat conductive metal you can find. Lead is the best, followed by niobium/steel, iron, and then copper/gold. You shouldn't even consider other materials.

With ceramic insulation and gold you can have an aquatuner up time of about 98% with the self-cooling set up illustrated in this post:

 

[Miravlix]

It can, but the trick is using the liquid input for the aquatuner to cool the steam turbine top room. (Assuming a sub 100C input liquid)

 

Just run the input liquid through a radiant pipe before it heads into the aquatuner, the steam turbine take so little cooling that you can't tell the difference.

[Xenologist]

A lead-son learned is that lead is great for turbines

[Nebbie]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

Yes. Well, more or less. Uptime on the aquatuner will depend on the material the turbine is made from, and especially the insulated tiles the steam turbine sits on. They should be ceramic or insulation (the material) but just the 5 tiles it sits on. You'll want the turbine to be made of the least heat conductive metal you can find. Lead is the best, followed by niobium/steel, iron, and then copper/gold. You shouldn't even consider other materials.

With ceramic insulation and gold you can have an aquatuner up time of about 98% with the self-cooling set up illustrated in this post:

 

Oooh, I was about to consider making an aluminum turbine in my game where I haven't found lead yet... Looks like I'm going to dig harder for those oil biomes.

For those curious, aluminum's thermal conductivity must've been copied from it's real-world value, and consequently it's nearly as good as king thermium (205 vs. 220), and much better than diamond (80), and you start with piles and piles of its ore instead of copper ore on Verdante and Arboria. It seems like a major oversight that Klei didn't at least adjust diamond (should be king), copper (should be between aluminum and diamond), and thermium (should at least beat what you find in your starting biome by more than a hair).

[nakomaru]

Aluminum also has the highest SHC for a metal. It fills a great spot in the gameplay. Plenty of uses for diamond still, especially for its high melting point.

[avc15]

3 hours ago, Nebbie said:

It seems like a major oversight that Klei didn't at least adjust diamond (should be king)

I don't know, diamond has the advantage of being able to handle actual high temperatures. Aluminum melts around 600C in-game.

Diamond as a heat transfer surface at high temperatures is also unrealistic (diamonds oxidize at high temperature i.e. catch fire). But in terms of game balance, I think aluminum being plentiful and very high SHC/conductivity is fine, given the temperature drawback. You'll still seek out diamond for builds that use space materials.

[Nebbie]

21 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Aluminum also has the highest SHC for a metal. It fills a great spot in the gameplay. Plenty of uses for diamond still, especially for its high melting point.

Oh boy, that means aluminum on rails (inside thermium metal tiles, although aluminum metal tiles would be almost is good) is probably the best way to convey heat in the game. Now if only there was an aquatuner for solids, cooling that steam turbine would be extremely power-positive.

6 minutes ago, avc15 said:

I don't know, diamond has the advantage of being able to handle actual high temperatures. Aluminum melts around 600C in-game.

Diamond as a heat transfer surface at high temperatures is also unrealistic (diamonds oxidize at high temperature i.e. catch fire). But in terms of game balance, I think aluminum being plentiful and very high SHC/conductivity is fine, given the temperature drawback. You'll still seek out diamond for builds that use space-age materials.

Right...but are state changes respected on rails? Cause at least for gas/liquid pipes, 1kg or less packets are intentionally not allowed to change state.

[nakomaru]

Hmm it might depend. Aluminum is beat in SHC by supercoolant by a factor of about 8 (can't view numbers atm). As a solid tile it's probably the best if you want capacity and conductivity.

We should be able to put anything we want in the ice machine! Solid Tuner!

[avc15]

40 minutes ago, Nebbie said:

Right...but are state changes respected on rails? Cause at least for gas/liquid pipes, 1kg or less packets are intentionally not allowed to change state.

Yes, they are. (also, rails hold 20kg, this is part of what makes them so good for heat transfer)

Also it's very hard to keep materials on rails from changing state, thanks to the "surface area" multipliers present on rails passing through tiles. Rail contents rapidly accept heat even from a ceramic insulated tile. (edit: from my experiments trying to make conveyors move ice around - seems like more trouble than it's worth based on my results)

[Dosephshih]

I use copper, lead, aluminium for the turbine and don't feel much differences.

The point is the temperature of the Steam you use. Because the steam is cooled to 95C fixed, hence the heat transfer to the turbine is depends on the steam temp. You will need extra cooling by the liquid going to the aquatuner (actuall the heat gen is not much, any fluid below 100C is ok for cooling the turbine.

The heat gen by a aquatuner is 588 kDtu/s (using water), while the heat removed by the turbine is 8XX kDtu/s based on 200C steam. So heat removed by Turbine > heat gen by 1 aquatuner.

[Lilalaunekuh]

8 hours ago, Xenologist said:

A lead-son learned is that lead is great for turbines

A bit offtopic, but is there any other situation where you want to use lead as building material. [I like molten lead, but that´s something else^^]

=> The only thing I ever build out of lead was the first turbine I build this year xD

[Saturnus]

4 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

A bit offtopic, but is there any other situation where you want to use lead as building material. [I like molten lead, but that´s something else^^]

=> The only thing I ever build out of lead was the first turbine I build this year xD

Temp shift plates where you want thermal buffering... such as in a steam turbine steam chamber comes to mind.

[nakomaru]

I use igneous rock for most buffering. It should have nearly 8 times the capacity of lead.

[Lilalaunekuh]

I only considered 3(/4) materials for my tempshift plates under my steam turbine:

• Gold
• Dirt
• Igneous Rock
• (Plastic, but not sure if the high capacity is worth living with the low conductivity.)

[Gold if I got a big room and want my heat to spread faster; Dirt for it´s high capacity and if I work without "high" temperatures; Igneous rock in every other case^^]

=> I used igneous rock under my turbine, but I never considering lead to be the optimal choice here.

[Saturnus]

29 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

I=> I used igneous rock under my turbine, but I never considering lead to be the optimal choice here.

I don't think it the "optimal" choice either. Just having 200kg/tile steam pressure eliminates the need for any temp shift plates, and that is much easier to achieve.

When you think about it, temp shift plates really just adds 88.89kg/tile mass. And sure it equalizes temps over the area quite fast but so does high pressure steam.

[Lilalaunekuh]

3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I don't think it the "optimal" choice either. Just having 200kg/tile steam pressure eliminates the need for any temp shift plates, and that is much easier to achieve.

I use high pressure steam aswell

But igneous rock is so abundant, that I just filled the room with additional tempshift plates.

=> I didn´t want explore how do optimize my heat storage, but find an other use for lead.^^

 

So is there really no situation except beeing short on an other resource, that would make building something except a steam turbine out of lead optimal ?

[nakomaru]

High pressure steam is a great and easy solution, but metal volcanoes cannot handle much more than 120kg/tile. So the 90kg/tile of tempshifts are still a good portion for that usage.

I don't think turbine material matters if you are cooling the turbine room externally. Is that wrong?