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Steel-free Magma-to-Steam-Power Volcano Tamer


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Nice vid.  You are using a "Solid-Liquid Bypass" rather than a "liquid-gas bypass".  :) 

Here's my only suggestion:

  • If you drop the liquid vent one tile down, so it lies IN the molten lead, then you can avoid overpressure warnings. With this tiny change, you can have an infinite heat battery and have 100000 kg + steam per tile. 

I like how you put the liquid vent for water by the temp sensor that controls the door, as this helps even out the temp throughout the entire room. Nicely done. 

 

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6 hours ago, mathmanican said:

Nice vid.  You are using a "Solid-Liquid Bypass" rather than a "liquid-gas bypass".  :) 

Here's my only suggestion:

  • If you drop the liquid vent one tile down, so it lies IN the molten lead, then you can avoid overpressure warnings. With this tiny change, you can have an infinite heat battery and have 100000 kg + steam per tile. 

I like how you put the liquid vent for water by the temp sensor that controls the door, as this helps even out the temp throughout the entire room. Nicely done. 

 

Of course. Brilliant!

5 hours ago, alexkuzmov said:

I havent seen the video yet, but dont the lumps of Igneous Rock still average out the temperature?
If thats the case, then the power loss from averaging should still be present.

Yes, but averaging out temperature is fine (at least for this setup). The problem is if heat gets deleted, that's just wasteful.

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7 hours ago, badgamer123 said:

it work on all stuff right?

it think some interesting stuff could be made with this solid bypass lol

Hell yeah. I have many many ideas, I'm worried people will "steal" my ideas and I'm also worried they "won't steal" my ideas. I want to see what people do with it.

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4 hours ago, Tonyroid said:

Hell yeah. I have many many ideas, I'm worried people will "steal" my ideas and I'm also worried they "won't steal" my ideas. I want to see what people do with it.

Haha. If anyone ever sees me post something that you created without mentioning you, it's just because I'm a forgetful idiot who forgets who I pillage ideas from. Especially since I see something but can't get around to trying it for a month or two due to job/5yo.

Feel free to tag yourself or remind me that I stole it from you so that I can edit my post. 

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19 hours ago, Tonyroid said:

Yes, but averaging out temperature is fine (at least for this setup). The problem is if heat gets deleted, that's just wasteful.

I`ll have to check this.
I think it still deletes the heat because the lumps are merged together into a more massive lump with a lower temperature.

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 So, watched the video and got to thinking... 

Please note, this isn't even napkin math enabled, and will certainly mess with your overall output wattage efficiency... also important:  I'm approaching part of this from a position of ignorance.  Thanks to what I've read on the forums about mass/heat deletion over the past 2 years, I've avoided using doors as pumps like the plague .  As a result of reading and going "Oh, that's bad" I've never fully explored what conditions closing hatches deletes mass and while I know I've read some of the many posts, I don't remember precisely what was said at the moment. I'm going to just drop warning flags where I figure it might happen and folks are free to confirm or deny my mass-deletion paranoia.  I'm stupid busy otherwise I'd mock it up in sandbox and see if it runs right, so this is primarily "Food for thought or further inspiration."


 So with the presumption people want to recover the trapped materials, the fact that most volcanoes have a fairly long dormant period presents an opportunity if you're willing to put up with either the penalty of a second aquatuner that runs on the off cycle or additional headache in complicating the existing tuner layout to enable an alternate flow pattern alongside the pain of evacuating additional spaces.  Honestly, I figure the second tuner is the better option because we're still pulling heat and the only way to do it quick enough to ensure this works, presuming it works, is to apply as much chill as you can.  That said, I'd like to thank the OP for the tuner bypass.  I hadn't thought of an implementation that simple/direct and while I can't use it for my current coolant steam chamber given it operates off a quad-tuner bank automated to a 4x1->2x2->1x1 temperature regulated operating cycle, it'll be something I'll keep in the back of my head.

Mod 1:
Construction:
1. Replace the floor tiles with double-set 3-tall mechanical airlock, highest conductive material you can for the top ones.  Lowest for the others. Ie. 6 doors total, laid horizontal, 2 per row.  It's probably obvious by the description that this is a double-wide 3-door airlock with the middle layer open with vacuum for thermal isolation.
2. Add second aquatuner to steam chamber.
3. Construct an insulated chamber below (See option list below for discussion on dimensions and contents)
4. Run a radiant pipe loop through the second chamber that runs through the second aquatuner.  Running a reservoir buffer for this coolant is recommended, but not detailed here.

Mod1Option1:
 This depends entirely on how hot you get the steam and how high a pressure it is.  It's possible for the right temp/pressure combinations to cycle the top airlock open to drop the captured materials and a small amount of steam before closing only the top hatch. (Note; Unsure if the closing of the top hatch deletes steam.  I shouldn't because you have space on either side available.  If this step doesn't delete steam, then depending on the volume and temperature of the steam admitted the following setup is safe:
 Lower room: 4x4, sweeper arm, shipping loader, liquid pump. Obviously steel might have to be involved here depending on the temperature/mass of steam present.  Using igneous tempshift plates at the  bottom hatch may or may not be a good idea, but the idea is to slow the heat draw from the chamber above with this option while you force-chill the steam you've captured along with the materials.  Once the steam condenses you'll be left with vacuum and a liquid layer. Close the lower door now that everything is vacuum.  Chill until target temperature is achieved, sweep out the contents having recovered as much heat as you're happy to gather, though I'd imagine the point of this step is not so much gathering the material as it is making the material usable, like say with a metal volcano.  Pump fluid out, preferably internal to the cutoff so it returns immediately to the chamber above.

Mod1Option2:
If temperature ranges are not conducive to immediately introducing heat flux to the the sweeper/pump assembly the chamber described in the previous step can be smaller because no equipment is present.  The only thing present in the room proper is the chill loop, so reasonably speaking, this *could* be 2 tiles tall, though a 4x4 space, again with temp isolation as above might be preferable.  Again, not sure how well this will work.  It's largely dependent on your cooling solution being able to outpace the heat leaking from above.  Once you get condensation, this ceases to be a problem.  Close lower door on the upper hatch... and open the previously unmentioned single-depth set of hatches to drop the liquid and the material to the lower level where they can be swept/pumped away.  Slightly more space than option 1, but you get your material back.

Mod1Option3:
Perhaps option 2 isn't quite to your liking due to additional height.constraints, but you're willing to sacrifice some width.  The reach of sweeper arms is problematic but can be overcome.  Same 4x4 chamber as outlined in option 1 except you have hatches on either side.  Once target temperature achieved, open the set of doors with the sweeper and pump present.  Once reachable liquid is removed, open the other set of doors to get the other half of your material.  One could put pumps on both sides, I suppose.  I mean, if you're building this, wattage efficiency is clearly not a priority..

Projected Operation of mod1:
 This will obviously require a smidge of automation.  It's reasonably feasible given the length of dormant periods that building a timer to keep this on schedule will be far more material/space intensive... so a switch is probably the easiest method to start the material processing phase.  If the temperature removal process works fast enough to ensure vacuum conditions are reached in the chill sections, no additional automation is necessary to offset-toggle the middle doors.  They can remain open the entire time. If the chill loop is unable to remove energy from the captured steam fast enough, risking heat deletion is really your only option if you're dead set on recovering the material,  Closing the middle door before the lower door might reduce that risk.or at least minimize loss of steam mass and allow you to isolate the lower chamber successfully.

 That said, you'll need a short-acting positive toggle for the top doors to open them long enough to drop the materials.  How short would depend on the density and temperature of the steam above.  You'll want to ensure you do get enough steam you can use it as a thermal exchange medium with the solids.  This will clearly involve some trial and error.  As such it might be necessary to toggle the lower doors at the same time instead of just dropping the solids to the top of the third door to gather more steam.

After that, temperature sensors could easily be used to set your target output temperature and a pressure sensor set to trip on vacuum might be useful as a safety to ensure unwise toggling.   Similarly element sensors on the pumps would be helpful to sense when their pumping is done and the cycle is complete.

 The folks paying attention might be wondering what we do about all that lead we just solidified.  Well, depending on how much lead you put in there, it should solidify as debris.  It shouldn't overwrite the debris we're trying to recover, but... I haven't actually tested this, so given it's a game simulation, there's a non-zero chance it might.  Assuming this isn't self-defeating, sweep the lead into its own loader and feed it back up into the chamber above.  It'll absorb heat and eventually melt again on its own.  Depending on viscosity, you'll need to ensure you have enough that it spreads evenly over the surface.

Similarly it should go without saying that the chill loop itself will be problematic if the steam starts off 900 degrees.  As such, the only "easy" implementation involves super coolant as the working fluid, however... with great effort one could use petroleum.  Doing so would be an exercise in frustration given it will phase-change to sour gas if heated beyond 578C.  However, were one to pre-chill the petroleum to near freezing, have sufficient chilled coolant in reserve, while also ensuring that the pipe-length is sufficient to prevent overheat conditions, then on a kg-to-kg basis, one packet of near-freezing petrol will eat approximately 267.9 degrees of heat from an equivalently sized packet of steam.  Since pressure present is up to the user, it's similarly up to the user to calculate how much petrol they'd need... provided they aren't looking at me cross-eyed for suggesting this and already decided to skip to super coolant... but I'd warn those people that super coolant's boiling point is actually lower than petrol's so you'll still be doing the "How many pipes can I use" dance.  It's chief advantage in this use case is that it can be pre-chilled *much* further and both the temperature delta you can create and it's heat capacity both smoke petrol's.  On a kg-kg basis, one packet of maximum pre-chilled super-coolant will be able to experience a 708C temperature shift and will actually force condense 1.5 packets of equivalent steam.


I'd originally contemplated commenting on a second mod option to allow for higher temperature operation on the steam chamber side but it's largely redundant for the implementation here.  I suppose if you're trying to tame multiple volcanoes at one go it'd be more useful but this post is long enough already.

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@Tonyroid  After giving it some thought, the second mod option is potentially valid under a set of use cases but in investigating this, I discovered a complicating factor in the original design.  When the aquatuner loop is active, you're effectively deleting steam.  Check 4:36 in the video.  The steam immediately under the middle and right generators in the vicinity of the tuner is above 200C.  Given output is capped at 850W, you're losing 60.7W of potential output per tile of 207.5C steam processed every second, that's functionally identical to deleting 190ish g/s per tile processed of 200C steam, though it differentiates from deletion by the fact you don't have to replace it.  I'm not sure how effective using additional tempshift tiles will be, but I'd say you need to add them and you might want some sort of automation circuit to bump down the temperature on your door operation while the tuner is running for any length of time.  Nothing huge, maybe a few degrees.

 Oddly enough, rigging to run a dynamic n-input operation would also be an option if you didn't want to complicate the door automation... though that's more work in itself, too.

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Quote

 

[in the video] You could just use gold-amalgam aquatuner

 

Not really, at least not from my experience. The gold amalgam has ****ty properties and it makes the temp of the aquatuner fluctuate very wildly between OFF and ON states. The fluctuations with steel are minimal and almost always follow the temp of the chamber.

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