Cooling without slush, cold biome or AETN

[avc15]

On 8/9/2019 at 4:09 PM, Nebbie said:

• You will probably want some kind of gaseous atmosphere to boil crude into petroleum, and ethanol is the best option.

I disagree with this somewhat - if you want to limit heat waste to an absolute minimum, you want a pool of stable liquid (re: high boiling point, thermal conductivity is less of an issue) controlled to a temperature precisely 5C above the boiling point of petroleum. I personally use molten lead pooled with a backdrop of granite headstones & refined aluminum tempshift plates for this purpose.

Make sure the boiler is *at vacuum* or you will waste a fair deal more heat than necessary. And that wasted heat will probably eventually leak into your base.

(I realize this comment is late to the party, I just didn't notice this detail for a fair time)

[Argelle]

Time for servicing @MorsDux the system !

On top of rewiring the electricity, I notice that gold radian pipes do not cool down the steam engine (despite conductivity of 120). Engines overheat (100°C) and water does not (40°C or lower). Steam on the other hand is fine (130°C).

My guesses:

* bad lecture of MorsDux video and I omit something (a layer of crude oil on top chamber to get a better transfer?)

* near vacuum in steam engine chamber = bad heat transfer?

* other radian pipes ? (Gold is the best conductor with copper and tungsten, but may be HSC helps?)

* temperature difference not enough? (water in radian pipe 40°C/steam engine 100°C)

Any help from steam engine specialist will be appreciated

[abud]

18 minutes ago, Argelle said:

I notice that gold radian pipes do not cool down the steam engine

I'm not steam engine specialist, but... Yes, pipes didn't exchange heat with building directly, need liquid/gas as medium. You mention in original design using oil, that is important. Another choice is filling top chamber with hydrogen.

[Argelle]

Thanks @abud the original design does not mention anything for the steam engine room, so I bluntly vaccum it. My mistake.

[Promethien]

Here is a poor mans solution that requires nothing more difficult to get than gold amalgam. Works with any water (not steam) geyser. This isn't even maximizing its potential just showing some things you can do with it. The example is a salt water geyser. The salt water is desalinated then sent to the electrolyzer which is a standard power efficient design with easy automation. You can find explanations for that on this forum.

The key to this is about 3/4ths of the heat in the water is straight up deleted because water has 4x the SHC of oxygen.The desalter, thermo regulator and ice machine all dump their heat into the water at their base, which is sucked into the reservoir underneath with the metal tile and tempshifts. The regulator has a loop of hydrogen (used a storage so no extra pump) which cycles to the oxygen output vent of the electrolyzer cooling the air. This specific set up was experimental. With a single regulator the hydrogen was warmed up to the temp in my base very quickly so more could be used. If you have the spare power an aquatuner could do the trick too. There is a liquid sensor in the reservoir which opens the door when the level gets low. It doesn't need to pour over the machines but it doesn't hurt this build as long as it doesn't overfill the reservoir. The door trick allows this operation to scale up to the full output of the geyser while preventing the geyser from constantly dumping 90c water into the environment when I am not utilizing its full output. 

[ggumdol]

2 hours ago, Argelle said:

Thanks @abud the original design does not mention anything for the steam engine room, so I bluntly vaccum it. My mistake.

Just use several tempshift plates in the steam turbine room. I suspect tempshift plates made of very basic material such as sedimentary rock will deliver. I always use tempshift plates in conjunction with radiant liquid pipes (I never use radiant gas pipes, by the way, due to low heat capacity).

[OxCD]

On 10/08/2019 at 6:05 PM, Argelle said:

Here is @MorsDux setup in action and in game:

 

It took no less than 50 cycles to set up (things like brushing 10 kg of crude oil is fast in debug, but not so in game, it took for ages to get vaccum in there, and my colonie is only big of seven dwa.. dupes). That's a nice experience (second steam set up of all time for me). I abandonned conductive wire all together, too expensive, as heavy wire is cheap, and my dupes are not spending time around it.. let alone inside

Inside the steam chamber, to power the aquatuner, you have an heavy wire. It's useless since the wire bridge which is going into the chamber is a conductive wire, so only 2kw limit.

 

By the way another problem of your setup is when the steam vent isn't erupting, you should not run your AT since turbine won't suck steam/delete heat anymore if the pressure is too low, which will happen very quickly after the vent turns dormant.

Or, it constrain you to use the AT only with turbine output...

Last issue I can see is if you don't want to overpressure the vent (and loose water), you have to set 1 turbine for each 2kg of instant steam output from the vent, so if it's a brutal one, you could need 5, or maybe 6 turbines (I don't remember what's the max instant output). That's a lot of sweat.

You could use this steam chamber to setup many other AT, or cooling liquid from refinery, or else. But then you'll need a shut off to keep the turbine output inside the chamber when the pressure is too low.

[flapee]

 

11 hours ago, avc15 said:

I disagree with this somewhat - if you want to limit heat waste to an absolute minimum, you want a pool of stable liquid (re: high boiling point, thermal conductivity is less of an issue) controlled to a temperature precisely 5C above the boiling point of petroleum. I personally use molten lead pooled with a backdrop of granite headstones & refined aluminum tempshift plates for this purpose.

Make sure the boiler is *at vacuum* or you will waste a fair deal more heat than necessary. And that wasted heat will probably eventually leak into your base.

(I realize this comment is late to the party, I just didn't notice this detail for a fair time)

 

you're on the right path, but as we are talking about heat deletion, there is one better way how to skin(cook) this cat:

in short, heat source stays always at least 3*C above petroleum boiling point; minimize heat transfer (lower HC, where possible, remove TS plates and granite headstones ), which results in needing ~4% more heat, you might even want to consider pre-chilling  the crude oil

[Argelle]

19 hours ago, OxCD said:

Inside the steam chamber, to power the aquatuner, you have an heavy wire. It's useless since the wire bridge which is going into the chamber is a conductive wire, so only 2kw limit.

I did not have a lot of refined metal at the time, it's corrected now (but in non walking space, isn't it cheper to use gold amalgam - heavy watt wire - than gold - conductive wire - ?). It does indeed look less like a mess with conductive wire

Quote

By the way another problem of your setup is when the steam vent isn't erupting, you should not run your AT since turbine won't suck steam/delete heat anymore if the pressure is too low, which will happen very quickly after the vent turns dormant.

Or, it constrain you to use the AT only with turbine output...

I see the problem, so I'm trying to set it up for cooling (steam vent erupting) and for power production (steam vent dormant).

Quote

Last issue I can see is if you don't want to overpressure the vent (and loose water), you have to set 1 turbine for each 2kg of instant steam output from the vent, so if it's a brutal one, you could need 5, or maybe 6 turbines (I don't remember what's the max instant output). That's a lot of sweat.

On the other hand, the steam vent is only 3.7 kg/s (during eruption) so 3 steam engines is 1.8 too much

Quote

You could use this steam chamber to setup many other AT, or cooling liquid from refinery, or else. But then you'll need a shut off to keep the turbine output inside the chamber when the pressure is too low.

Now that I have an insertion of water in the chamber (for dormant periods or to top up the steam from the vent) I notice that I have no more steam engine down or overheat. The more water injected, the more power I get (vent dormant) but the more the AT is eating ! My guess is that then I got nice fresh water out of it, but the differencial is getting bigger and bigger:

Flow (blue line) is water injected (100 is 1000 g/s) it clearly help to get more steam pressure (red line, pressure in g).

As for cooling the steam engine are now at 20 °C, steam stay in the 130 °C, all well.

But, Aqua tuner (yellow line) consumes more and more while the increase power generation (green line) is no match (kJ).

1. 2. 3. 4 = mesures at each cycle.

My question is : is steam pressure 250 g still too low ? Will the system one day become positive in energy ? Or it's just a cooling system ?

[Nebbie]

4 minutes ago, Argelle said:

I did not have a lot of refined metal at the time, it's corrected now (but in non walking space, isn't it cheper to use gold amalgam - heavy watt wire - than gold - conductive wire - ?). It does indeed look less like a mess with conductive wire

I see the problem, so I'm trying to set it up for cooling (steam vent erupting) and for power production (steam vent dormant).

On the other hand, the steam vent is only 3.7 kg/s (during eruption) so 3 steam engines is 1.8 too much

Now that I have an insertion of water in the chamber (for dormant periods or to top up the steam from the vent) I notice that I have no more steam engine down or overheat. The more water injected, the more power I get (vent dormant) but the more the AT is eating ! My guess is that then I got nice fresh water out of it, but the differencial is getting bigger and bigger:

Flow (blue line) is water injected (100 is 1000 g/s) it clearly help to get more steam pressure (red line, pressure in g).

As for cooling the steam engine are now at 20 °C, steam stay in the 130 °C, all well.

But, Aqua tuner (yellow line) consumes more and more while the increase power generation (green line) is no match (kJ).

1. 2. 3. 4 = mesures at each cycle.

My question is : is steam pressure 250 g still too low ? Will the system one day become positive in energy ? Or it's just a cooling system ?

Cool steam vents are just cheap ways to get water (the net energy consumption to cool the water decently is about on par with a few pumps). It will only be power-positive if you use supercoolant in your aquatuner, at which point you can do absolutely ridiculous things like liquify hydrogen while producing power.

[OxCD]

3 hours ago, Argelle said:

 Will the system one day become positive in energy ?

No. You don't even product energy from the steam vent because its output is lower than the minimum for the turbine to work. It's even worse, your using the heat from the AT to condense the steam into water, so you're trading more power than needed by cooling process of the AT for the condensation of the steam.

3 hours ago, Argelle said:

it's just a cooling system ?

Yes ^^

 

3 hours ago, Argelle said:

the steam vent is only 3.7 kg/s

So 2 turbines would be enough, in your case.

 

[Arq44]

6 hours ago, OxCD said:

No. You don't even product energy from the steam vent because its output is lower than the minimum for the turbine to work. It's even worse, your using the heat from the AT to condense the steam into water, so you're trading more power than needed by cooling process of the AT for the condensation of the steam.

It is accurate to say that condensing the steam with the cool side of the aquatuner is a loss, but that's not the way to do it.  You have to run the steam on the hot side of the aquatuner.  Heating 110C steam for the turbine is cheaper than heating 95C exhaust water.

Feed the 110C steam to the turbine chamber and use an aquatuner or metal refinery or other heat source to add the extra heat to reach >125C.  Because the vent steam is 15C hotter than the 95C water produced by the turbine, you gain that energy compared to looping the turbine output.  The extra 15C of temperature in the turbine results in about 125W of bonus power.

It's not enough to go out of your way for, but it is better than nothing.  In addition to the bonus power, instead of vent producing 110C water you have a turbine producing 95C water.  That's an extra 63kDTU/kg of cooling (125kDTU/s at 2kg/s).  A domestic wheezewort in hydrogen is only 12kDTU/s.

[Argelle]

15 cycles until steam vent is out of dormant phase.

I forgot to mention that the data are during dormant phase, so the steam vent is off. I wanted to see is feeding water (and convert it to steam) can make the steam engines working during dormant phase. Yes it does. Can it be positive in energy ? Seems the answer is no. It confirms the steam engines as cooler and not energy producer.

I'll see what happens when the steam vent will go on. As @Arq44 suggest it may be beneficial.

Conclusion: no intererst in running the system during dormant phase, unless I get heat from another source (refinery?).

[OxCD]

2 hours ago, Arq44 said:

Because the vent steam is 15C hotter than the 95C water produced by the turbine, you gain that energy compared to looping the turbine output.  The extra 15C of temperature in the turbine results in about 125W of bonus power.

Totally correct. Thanks for this recalibration

[melquiades]

On 9/8/2019 at 5:22 PM, Rebrait said:

and you can do it very easy with the ability to construct in the corner!

tile            tile

bridge       tile      bridge

tile            tile      tile

-----------------------------------------

tile            tile                      tile

bridge       vacuum/wire      bridge

tile            tile                      tile

Unless it was patched back to the way it was before... You can no longer build tiles next to the connecting ends of bridges.

You can either build the same contraption normally but completely surrounded by vacuum, or build a minipump inside of it and forget about it.

[Argelle]

On 13/08/2019 at 6:30 AM, Arq44 said:

Feed the 110C steam to the turbine chamber and use an aquatuner or metal refinery or other heat source to add the extra heat to reach >125C.  Because the vent steam is 15C hotter than the 95C water produced by the turbine, you gain that energy compared to looping the turbine output.  The extra 15C of temperature in the turbine results in about 125W of bonus power.

I'll follow up on your idea

Right now, I'll have petroleum from a refinery at 75 °C. But to get the steam from 110 °C to 125 °C, I may only use something that is hotter than 125°C, correct? Overwise I may cool the steam instead

I'm looking for such a candidate, or a way to suck heat from petroleum until it reach 125 °C....

[Arq44]

9 hours ago, Argelle said:

Right now, I'll have petroleum from a refinery at 75 °C. But to get the steam from 110 °C to 125 °C, I may only use something that is hotter than 125°C, correct? Overwise I may cool the steam instead .

That's correct, two materials brought into contact will move closer in temperature to each other.  Running 75C petroleum through the steam will just give you cooler steam/water and hotter petrol.  That said, oil/petroleum make good materials for transferring hot temperatures because of their high boiling point.

For moving heat into the steam, my preferred good methods are to use a metal refinery or aquatuner.  Use oil/petrol as coolant in a metal refinery (just be careful not to feed them into the refinery too hot because if the refinery heats them past boiling, they will convert from oil/petrol to petrol/sour gas and in either case will break your pipes) and pipe the hot coolant through the steam to heat it (and cool the coolant).  Another excellent method is to use a gold or steel aquatuner with the hot side in the steam.  For best power efficiency, pipe water or polluted water (or preferably supercoolant, but that's a very late-game material) through the aquatuner.  Polluted water is better because it has a wider temperature range.  You can then use the cold output from the aquatuner to cool whatever else you want (farms, machinery, the steam turbine, etc).

All this said, I would not recommend running a cool steam vent into a turbine on principle.  It's better than the alternative, but only by a little bit so don't go out of your way.  If you're using an aquatuner to run one, it's a net-drain of power even with a cool steam vent (although the vent offsets most of the drain and it does delete a lot of heat along the way).  For all the hassle of setting them up, turbines don't generate much power.  The only times one should use turbines with the intent to generate power is when you have a hot vent (eg, one of the 500C ones or a volcano), for which they provide free energy *and* cooling.  In other cases, use them for their cooling value and consider the power a bonus.

[Argelle]

Thanks for your complete answer. That put a nail on the coffin (or the steam engine on a vent ). I have but one refinery, and it's cooled at 25 °C (with crude oil pipes from an AETN). It stays cool because of intermitant use. Next step: build another refinery (with steel I guess), run it full time and warm it up to 125°C !