Heat Energy Doubling - Molten Lead for the Win

[lunazone]

mathematician is pretty much the god of this community.

[metallichydra]

15 minutes ago, Squeegee said:

mathematician is pretty much the god of this community.

we must sacrifice dupes to appease him!

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 9/12/2019 at 10:09 PM, mathmanican said:

We've been abusing, and using SHC, and phase change shenanigans, for quite some time. The properties of molten lead (new element that didn't exist previously) are uniquely fitted to this build. Almost any other solidify/melt mechanic would generate heat as well (known and used in the crude->NG chain), but you need something that can use the turbine to solidify and then reheat easily, and then repeat rapidly.  Molten lead stood out, when I glanced through the list, as basically the only really useful option. So I gave it a try. BOOM!. 

Oh, and since it's a new universe with completely different properties, I'm sure we'll be finding new fun mechanics for another year, at least. 

Yep. That's why I tossed that option.  It needs to melt and solidify above 125C, and below a 2 vent open steam turbine.  Molten lead shines here. 

I was thinking about doing something similar with lead because of all the phase change stuff I've tried in the past AND that its melting point is in a very sweet spot.  I hadn't acquired enough lead yet in my survival build to actually TRY this, but I'm glad to see that my hunch was correct and it will work beautifully... once I get enough lead.  .. that has an unfortunately high density per square... ... 

 

[mathmanican]

58 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

that has an unfortunately high density per square

Yeah. Quite prohibitive. Though you could get by with much less with door pumps. I'm currently working on a 10t version that is much easier in survival and very compact. I have a little more tinkering before it's power positive.

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

stuff I've tried

I went looking for your polluted water phase change build but failed to find it. If you have a link, please share

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, mathmanican said:

Yeah. Quite prohibitive. Though you could get by with much less with door pumps. I'm currently working on a 10t version that is much easier in survival and very compact. I have a little more tinkering before it's power positive.

I was thinking about trying a single-room "oven" type build.  Aquatuner in a layer of crude with enough lead to cover the top of the crude, but not so much that it solidifies into a tile.  Above that some high-density steam for thermal stability, and a convection door system to transfer heat up into a turbine steam chamber.  Set the aquatuner to kick on and off at appropriate temperature thresholds.   I'm still working on getting the plastic I need in my survival build.  

 

[mathmanican]

4 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

a single-room "oven" type build.

I'll be excited to see it if you can get it power positive.  Here's several of my attempts.  The key, as far as I have observed, in getting lots of power out of this, is to instantly cuttoff heating, once liquid melts (this happens really nicely when you melt stuff over 1 mesh tile (two and it's not as good), and also to make sure that you stop cooling the instant it solidifies (which beaded liquid does a good job of with tempshift plates).  Here's several approaches.

The first, with esher falls - plenty of surplus power.  It does a great job, and has never ran out of power for 100 cycles of playing with other builds. Free power from phase changes.   @Saturnus, I did play with your suggestion of adding an aquatuner to split the flow. I opted for using 10g of petro as a way to throttle the heat transfer (so I don't have to pay the tiny cost of an aquatuner).  Looks like 10g is too small (i'll up it to 100, and see if that gets the liquid back to 102C steam). Even the right side is all water, the thing still chuggs along perfectly, as only 2 ports are pulling in >300C steam (not continuously - as the phase change doesn't produce that much heat, yet). This build definitely requires way too much lead.  

My next approach, trying to melt and then force the refreezing to happen on the same tile.  I've played with lots of different ways to see if I can get this to work, but haven't succeeded yet.  I've got another ideas (doors on both sides which melt, then open, forcing the liquid to appear on the opposite side, but I'm still working on logistics. This has not yet yielded fruit, despite tons of shenanigans. It is very close to neutral.

@KittenIsAGeek, I did try several oven type builds.  FYI, you can solidify around 1600kg of lead in one tile before it freezes.  Go up to 2000kg, and it solidifies. I didn't take the time to figure out exactly where it was, as I figured I'd first try to get something power positive, then maximize it. To be honest, it doesn't matter if it solidifies, if you can keep the heating and cooling separate, but that's really hard as automation is not instant (take up to a second to respond sometimes). 

 

And for @Zarquan, I did a sweeper type build. I need both sweepers running full time to keep up, so I have to subtract 480W.  I haven't connected this on up to the aquatuner for testing power output yet, as I ran out of play time. It's also tricky to make sure you don't get too much lead, or you get lead sticking up by the melting doors (which means you loose power to the aquatuner).  

Bead vs Waterfall?

I did learn that the bead pump and waterfall both have the same flow rate of 500kg/s (basically viscosity * 5 for any liquid).  The waterfall just has 100kg/tick, while the bead pump alternates whether the liquid goes right, or diagonally down to the right. When I move onto deciphering multilayer liquid flow, this observation will be crucial.  Sometimes liquid, when pushed right, stays at the same height.  Sometimes, it falls down to the right (and two blobs of 100kg combine). 

Key takeaway for heat transfer:  USE A BEAD formation.  That way, you don't get heat transfer creeping up your waterfall. Let the beads keep perfect isolation from other liquid, so you can maximize your heat exchange.   

[mathmanican]

@Saturnus, at about 100g petro as the throttle (igneous tile separating the chambers), the room is staying pretty steady around 129-130C (so @Zarquan it is above the required 125C). When the turbine runs, I get about 811W, so almost full power, and the thing is self cooling. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll be building all my turbines this way from now.  

[KittenIsAGeek]

2 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

at about 100g petro as the throttle 

So.. we're dividing the room under the generator in half.  The left side gets heated, the right side gets throttled by the petrol so its heating, but not as much?

Couple of questions:

1. How do you split the water so that both sides maintain pressure.
2. If the right side cools down enough to lose steam pressure, do you throttle the liquid going in? 

Your pictures both show liquid vents, but one shows a room full of water and the other shows both with steam.  Are you simply using enough water that the rooms would both be full of water if the system dropped below the condensation point?  

... maybe I should stop my survival build and load up a sandbox world.

7 hours ago, mathmanican said:

I went looking for your polluted water phase change build but failed to find it. If you have a link, please share

I just went looking too and I can't find it either.  I know I posted because some of the images from it are in my 'link existing attachment' choices.  I'll have to redo from start.  

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, Saturnus said:

Relatively easy with a valve.

Since I just finished using a couple of valves to portion water flows, it feels like I should have known this.  

[mathmanican]

I'm gonna scrap playing with lead, as I will never be able to keep a turbine running full speed.  However, both aluminum and magma have SHC near 1 (about 8 times more SHC). Both can keep the hot plate warm with in world things, and the turbine can keep the cool plate anywhere I set it.  So I'm going to focus on building a heat exchanger between the turbine and the cool plate, and then see if I can keep 4 or more turbines running full time on just abusing SHC.  Since aluminum has the higher viscosity (that caps the flow rate for natural pumps), I'll start there.  I should have listened to you sooner @Zarquan.  Aluminum is perhaps the key here. I think magma will work too, so you can build it in any world. 

[badgamer123]

is that possible to make a cooling loop without steam turbine ...i got too much turbine already....

[KittenIsAGeek]

51 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

is that possible to make a cooling loop without steam turbine ...i got too much turbine already....

The Crying Crab cooler is the only one I'm currently aware of.

[Mathgeekburch]

On 9/12/2019 at 9:31 PM, mathmanican said:

I wouldn't call this anymore an exploit than regolith melting (which is far more power positive),

I'd call it a larger exploit than regolith melting, since the latter is an abuse of specific heat difference (something the game actively encourages exploiting) as well as requires a decent amount of infrastructure; verses using the fact that freezing occurs at 3c below the temp and the frozen product is 1.5c below the freezing temp.  This is something that can literally be done to any liquid which feels a little wrong; where as the SHC mechanics require specific combinations.


Regardless, do have any versions that works particularly well around or above 3430c?


I was actually looking for a heat multiplier to get more heat out a metal refinery to melt things.  If it works, it works; I won't complain.

My alternative plan was already a pretty infamous exploit (the lack of phase change of liquids below 1kg in a pipe) to abuse shc change of inputs verse outputs.  

 

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, Mathgeekburch said:

Regardless, do have any versions that works particularly well around or above 3430c?

That's hotter than tungsten. If you are happy with 3421C then yes. We can double heat energy at that temp using liquid steel as the heat source and whatever else you want to heat as the coolant. Take the 3400c material somewhere else to be bumped above 3430 c afterwards.

With a liquid gas bypass and a few mg of gas cycling in a forever loop, the downward flow rate can be brought up to any rate, far surpassing the 500kg/s limit. Upflow rates are absurd under high pressure. I'm currently trying to use beading liquid as an alternative to an escher waterfall. This is all 1 element per tile physics, so hopefully not going anywhere even if phase change mechanics get fixed. I'd love a pump that can deal with 10000kg/s flow, even if it has no application.

[Mathgeekburch]

5 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

That's hotter than tungsten.

3421 c is what I kind of want.  I presume you can't get hotter than that since carbon doesn't melt and freeze at the same temperature.

I want to preheat natural abyssalite tiles as much as possible, before I attempt melting them.  If I can get them within a few degrees of melting, that would be golden. 


Also a slight question with the set up shown?  Can you use the heat output of one HEDD (Heat Energy Duplication Device) as the input into another HEDD?  Should be able to get 4 times the heat, or 8 times if you continue again; so on and so forth.

Or is there something I am missing?

 

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, Mathgeekburch said:

Should be able to get 4 times the heat, or 8 times if you continue again; so on and so forth.

Yep. You just have to descend down the element list each step as the cooling plate will be too cold to reheat without tons of power. But the cooling plate can act as the heat plate on the next element.

[Mathgeekburch]

11 hours ago, mathmanican said:

You just have to descend down the element list each step as the cooling plate will be too cold to reheat without tons of power. But the cooling plate can act as the heat plate on the next element.

I guess that is fairly useful for power generation.  Although doesn't help me much for the pre-heating abyssalite; since the next element is in the mid 2400's.  Guess 2:1 is the best I can get for 3000+.

[BLACKBERREST3]

 

On 9/13/2019 at 4:43 PM, mathmanican said:

It's probably not possible.... But this is ONI.

I bet it's possible. Heat exchanging without an aquatuner is very much possible, but the heat exchange chamber might be gigantic, unless you do a chain of heat manipulation techniques; shc, matter creation, rocket exhast power, or just recycling the heat gained and lost which is what we're trying to optimize now. The cooling can come from the steam generators output if you use it as your pump or instead of an aquatuner, maybe try a loop of sc and "charge" it with heat/cool temps, then unleash it towards the target with a shutoff/temp sensor combo. The trick is to have a large delta of temperature without adding any external heat right? I believe it can be done.

Does this exploit work on all liquids-to-solids or just liquids-to-debris? What about other phase changes like Sublimation, Deposition, Vaporization, or Condensation? And are there differences between what type of material you use?

[mathmanican]

47 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Does this exploit work on all liquids-to-solids or just liquids-to-debris? What about other phase changes like Sublimation, Deposition, Vaporization, or Condensation? And are there differences between what type of material you use?

Only played with 3 liquid solid transfers. Tons more to explore here.

[cpy]

How do you people can have sweeper arms in vacuum without any cooling? Or how the hell is this one cooled?

Spoiler

 

 

[mathmanican]

6 hours ago, cpy said:

how the hell is this one cooled?

The one on the left is cooled by beading liquid. The one on the right is not cooled yet. Once I get a nice compact setup I will cool it. Probably going to use a very small amount of gas. Haven't gotten that far.