Question on Setting up Power Plant

[crbd115]

So with the new version I started a new colony on Rime but in my old power plant I set it up so that all of my generators were made with steel and had a cooling set up with a steam generator and aquatuner to make sure that the output water from my petroleum generators and natural gas generators would be cold but with the launch update the petroleum generator was changed to have a minimum temp output. So the question is, is it better to cool the petroleum generators to the minimum output temp only or is it better to let them run hot and use a steam gen to get a little power and maintain the heat? Alternatively I could cool the nat gas generators and keep the petroleum generators separate and hot/warm?

[TheEvilMango]

I would build them out of steel and run them hot so that they all produced steam and use the turbine to cool the steam. Instead of wasting power and resources to clean the water u r gain power and getting clean water.

[nakomaru]

Which is better is a hard question to answer. I already have powerful liquid cooling on my whole map so I just cool/heat everything to 25C and use the pwater to make clay. If you want to run the generator directly into steam that seems neat too!

[crbd115]

Yea it's hard to say. I doubt it will generate much power but hopefully it would keep the generators from overheating entirely. Having cool water/polluted water was nice but ultimately not that big a deal since most things that need polluted water for growing don't care about the temp that much.

[Nebbie]

The steam generated from running the petroleum generator full-time at 200 C will power a steam turbine with 3 ports blocked at just below 340W. 340 W is significant, and better than a solar panel when you take into account the time they spend not at full power, and so it's very likely that it's better to use this to generate power than to bother cooling the generator below 200 C (you'll just need some cooling from something else, as the steam turbine can't self-cool at that temperature).

As a bonus, it cleans the water directly without the nuisance of sieving it. Then send the 95 C water to a SPOM to destroy almost all its heat, exchange the heat from the oxygen into the hydrogen, burn the hydrogen, and your colony will have effectively turned lumber into a huge amount of power, a bunch of dirt, and cold oxygen (Brothgar did a video about this system minus the whole "run it hot continuously with a steam turbine" step, he was demonstrating mainly turning lumber into cold oxygen with power as a byproduct). The cooling loop that cools that oxygen can of course also run by the steam turbine as well as doing its job of keeping the generator from exceeding 200 C and keeping the rest of the equipment cool.

Just make sure to add 4 carbon skimmers and a water sieve for them to delete hot carbon dioxide and turn a bit of filtration medium into yet more dirt. The polluted dirt from the ethanol distillers can be fed to pokeshells to get lime and filtration medium back.

Add in some mealwood to turn the remaining dirt into food, a water sieve looping a bathroom that sends excess water to the SPOM, and I dare say you've got permanent sustainability off lumber alone that could support about...7 dupes?