Cleaning water without sieves

[Majestix]

On my planet I have an abundance of polluted water (3 nat gas geysers;  does anybody else think that Geoactive is overpowered?) but scattered oil, so I need to get into oil drilling fairly early. I am a bit concerned that if I sift all that PH2O, I will run out of sand before I am ready to cool regolith. Moreover, if I understand correctly how oil wells work, I am generating more heat than I need to if I am using water that is less than 90C for the oil well (have not worked with oil wells yet). I have been thinking about the following build, but I don't know whether I am missing a subtlety that will prevent it from working properly (especially because I have not seen it on the web yet):

I build two metal refineries, let's say one gets an infinite queue of iron, the other of steel. I tap into the oil with some saved up clean water, use the crude oil as coolant for one of the refineries, and use PH2O as coolant for the other (I guess PH2O for iron). After that, the heated up PH2O is dripped into a sealed chamber with a steam engine sitting on top, and the heated up crude oil is piped through that chamber in a radiant loop until it cools below 125C, at which point it is kicked out of the loop and into a petroleum generator. In the meantime, the PH2O hopefully turns into hot steam and dirt, starts the steam engine, and the 95C water from the engine is piped into the oil well.

Since the throughput of water in this way is limited by various factors, such as the throughput of the metal refineries, and also by how quickly the petroleum can heat up the PH2O, I guess the sieve will have to start up occasionally, controlled by some automation, to supplement the stream of clean water into the oil well. Any other problems that I am missing? I am hoping that this system will save sand, produce some extra power as a bonus, and that it comes close to optimally utilising the heat from the refineries. What do you think?

[Mutineer]

Unnecessary complex.

Simply drip polluted water on termo aqatuner in one room creating steam and in connected on top room run radiant liquid pipes from aqaturner to condense steam. You probably will need auto miner and sweeper to remove dirt created. you will need to vacuum both rooms before starting. Small amount of polluted oxygen created should not be a problem.

[ONIfreak]

Sand can be make in rock granulator from most materials.

[Majestix]

1 hour ago, ONIfreak said:

Sand can be make in rock granulator from most materials.

Right. But that requires additional dupe labour, energy, and creates heat, whereas my hope is that the setup described above will effectively delete heat (by using 95C water for the oil well rather than sifted 40C water).

[ONIfreak]

5 minutes ago, Majestix said:

Right. But that requires additional dupe labour, energy, and creates heat, whereas my hope is that the setup described above will effectively delete heat (by using 95C water for the oil well rather than sifted 40C water).

Water sieve will give out 95C water. Heat clamp has been removed. Water after sieve stay at the same temp as came in.

[Promethien]

Are you on a map that doesn't have tide pool biome? You are not at risk of running out of sand if that biome exists.

[Majestix]

18 minutes ago, Promethien said:

Are you on a map that doesn't have tide pool biome? You are not at risk of running out of sand if that biome exists.

Point taken. I do have lots of tidepool biomes around me.

[ONIfreak]

Just to be clear. The idea of building neat design that use hot geyser and change it to something manageable is quite awesome and at some point in game is really fun. The design you put might work ( maybe will need some trimming depend of distance materials etc) so if you want and have enough time i would love to see output. If you however just looking for fast way to get some resources - there are faster way ( does not mean better or more permanent).

[Majestix]

8 minutes ago, ONIfreak said:

Just to be clear. The idea of building neat design that use hot geyser and change it to something manageable is quite awesome and at some point in game is really fun. The design you put might work ( maybe will need some trimming depend of distance materials etc) so if you want and have enough time i would love to see output. If you however just looking for fast way to get some resources - there are faster way ( does not mean better or more permanent).

I think you must have misunderstood what I am trying to do. There are no geysers involved in the setup I was describing. But I might give it a go anyway.
 

 

58 minutes ago, ONIfreak said:

Water sieve will give out 95C water. Heat clamp has been removed. Water after sieve stay at the same temp as came in.

Nor was I going to send 95C water into the sieve. It was going to come out of the steam turbine at 95C, and would therefore already be clean.

 

[ONIfreak]

Just now, Majestix said:

I think you must have misunderstood what I am trying to do. There are no geysers involved in the setup I was describing. But I might give it a go anyway.
 

 

Nor was I going to send 95C water into the sieve. It was going to come out of the steam turbine at 95C, and would therefore already be clean.

 

I see. Yeah pic would be easier. 

[Majestix]

2 hours ago, Mutineer said:

Unnecessary complex.

Simply drip polluted water on termo aqatuner in one room creating steam and in connected on top room run radiant liquid pipes from aqaturner to condense steam. You probably will need auto miner and sweeper to remove dirt created. you will need to vacuum both rooms before starting. Small amount of polluted oxygen created should not be a problem.

That is indeed simpler to build, but it seems to me like it has some functional disadvantages compared to the setup I was thinking of: firstly you need another pump to use the clean water, while if it comes out of the steam turbine, you can direct it immediately to its next destination; secondly your system is heat neutral, while mine would be deleting heat via the steam turbine.

But your comment does make me think that I might have been missing a detail: does the dirt from evaporating PH2O sometimes form tiles that need to be dug out? I have no experience with evaporating PH2O, and would not have thought of the robominer.

[Mutineer]

50 minutes ago, Majestix said:

That is indeed simpler to build, but it seems to me like it has some functional disadvantages compared to the setup I was thinking of: firstly you need another pump to use the clean water, while if it comes out of the steam turbine, you can direct it immediately to its next destination; secondly your system is heat neutral, while mine would be deleting heat via the steam turbine.

But your comment does make me think that I might have been missing a detail: does the dirt from evaporating PH2O sometimes form tiles that need to be dug out? I have no experience with evaporating PH2O, and would not have thought of the robominer.

As far as I know, it could form ties.

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, Promethien said:

Are you on a map that doesn't have tide pool biome? You are not at risk of running out of sand if that biome exists.

Meteors will keep supplying regolith, which can be used if you lack sand. You don't have to worry about the filtration medium.

I once did make a pool of polluted water, which was heated by aquatuners. I kept the water at 105-115 C, let in new water in one end and pumped it out in the other. It killed all germs and then the water sieve reduced the temperature to 40 C, making it a heat killer too. This was prior to the introduction of the steam turbine. It works very well when it is up and running correctly, but it's surprisingly complex to get working. I don't think I will ever use it again, particularly not since the heat killing part is lost. It did kill germs without using chlorine though, which was the idea behind the first attempt because I didn't have a chlorine geyser.

[bobucles]

10 hours ago, Majestix said:

I will run out of sand before I am ready to cool regolith.

Just use the regolith? Even though the temperature looks scary, the actual heat content inside regolith is very very low. It shouldn't be worth more than 2C, 5C tops.

[cblack]

I agree with others that even hot regolith is fine to use, as it has a relatively low specific heat, if memory serves.

However, if you're hell bent on not using any filtration medium, you have two options that I know of:

• Boil the PH2O until it's steam + dirt, then condense the steam (Steam Turbines are your friend) and enjoy the free dirt.
• Off-gas the PH2O into PO2, then condense the PO2 into LOX.  Combine the LOX with LH2 in a Hydrogen Engine, launch the rocket, and condense the exhausted steam.  This takes considerably more effort than the former method.

In any case, your evaporator will work, but it's almost as Rube Goldberg as the hydrogen rocket option.

[Lilalaunekuh]

5 hours ago, cblack said:

However, if you're hell bent on not using any filtration medium, you have two  three options that I know of:

Does nobody like gulp fish ?

[I have build a water sieve replacement in an old colony (ab)using gulp fish.]

PS: Overcrowded or confined gulp fish clean still the same amount of water

[cblack]

10 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Does nobody like gulp fish ?

Argh, I had totally forgotten about those guys.  Probably because they invariably mess up a tank that I'm trying to maintain as 100% PW.

At least they give you food when you take care of them.

[DemainaNyx]

I think the question is why not use a sieve?  You can just use that hot regolith in your sieve no problem.  I'm sure your setup is different than mine but I have dupes drop some regolith from space to a tile that an autosweeper puts on a rail that goes to my 2 water sieves.  Sweeper puts it in and takes away the polluted dirt automatically so no dupe interaction is needed outside of gathering the regolith.  Once I build my space setup I can automate cleaning that too so sieving water becomes completely automated.  The two sieves are outside of my main base so I really don't care how hot they get, just so long as they don't melt down which has never been an issue before.

 

Alternatively, depending on what asteroid you are on, pokeshells.  They eat polluted dirt and output half as sand, so stationing a few at your sieve means it will take you forever to run out of sand cause you'll get half back each time.  I'd recommending feeding the sieve with a sweeper though just so you don't randomly injure you dupes when the pokeshell is guarding it's egg.

 

If you have a Volcano on your map, that's infinite sand via the Rock Crusher.  Requires a dupe to do it but it works.

 

Alternatively, use your heat to clean it.  Boil the polluted water into steam and then use a steam turbine to cool it down slightly.  You'll probably needing cooling somewhere in your base so set up an aquatuner and steam turbine setup.  Drip the polluted water into the setup and it will become steam in no problem.  You will probably want a sweeper in there to remove the dirt that will remain.  I'd recommend leaving a 1 tile bump at the top where polluted oxygen can gather so it doesn't clog your turbine.

Don't know if this will work but you could also try putting a deodorizer on top of that bump.  Deodorizers can reach 2 tiles so it might be able to grab that packet of polluted O2 and pull it from the room just in case.  Alternatively, a row of mesh tiles above airflow tiles with a layer of petrol or oil behind the mesh tiles works nicely as a barrier that the deodorizers can grab through while preventing the steam from escaping the room.  Since the liquid will be in contact with the steam you could possibly use it to pre-heat your liquid before turning it into something else (petrol boiler perhap?).

 

Alternatively, if you don't want to use the aquatuner, most metal refineries are power positive when combined with a steam turbine.  Run the coolant through some radiant pipes in a steam room to heat up the steam and generate power and keep the coolant circling until it's below 125C before sending it back to refineries.  Surely that would work to heat your polluted water as well and sieve it for free so long as you limit the amount of liquid dumped into the room at a time.  Might require a lot of uptime for those metal refineries though, but it would work.  I recommend having a liquid reservoir in the coolant loop as well so you have extra coolant to run recipes with while some is being chilled.

 

Or, take your hot regolith and drop it into your polluted water.  That was my preferred method of setting up a steam rocket.  That way you end up with cooler regolith and clean water, so you can even use this in addition to your sieve setup without much cost or concern for lack of sand.

 

Or, a low effort one, gulp fish.  Takes a bit to get going but they will clean water no problem.  Would probably need to set up a cooling loop to help maintain their population as my cool slush geyser is only able to keep a few gulps alive per lifecycle, but they work nicely.  Add a mechanical filter setup into the pump line to dump polluted water back into their tank while carting off the clean for use elsewhere.

[M.C.]

On 8/27/2019 at 2:05 AM, Majestix said:

I am a bit concerned that if I sift all that PH2O, I will run out of sand before I am ready to cool regolith.

Grind sandstone or sedimentary rock or any other raw mineral into sand. I seriously doubt you'll run out before you breach the surface.