Starting a Steam Turbine setup

[GoHereDoThis]

Can anyone please help me do this?  I tried looking for YouTube or wiki help but it seems that people already assume the player knows how to start up a steam generator setup.  Most videos or articles only talk about ideal or refined layouts but I have yet to get my steam turbine up and running.

My current layout has two steam turbines and three aquatuners but I cannot get steam hot enough to start up my steam turbines.  My aquatuners just get damaged and every time a dupe comes in to fix it, the room obviously loses steam and heat.  My aquatuners are made out of gold, I know people keep talking about steel but I don't have access to that yet.  Thanks!

[beowulf2010]

The keys are to get the heat into the water and have enough water. Build a tempshift plate (refined aluminum or diamind are best) behind the aquatuner to spread the heat into the water and have enough water to have at least 100kg in each of the 2 tiles the aquatuner is sitting in. (I usually shoot for 20 to 50kg of steam pressure in the entire room so my typical aquatuner/turbine room has around 200kg on each of the 5 floor tiles)

The problem with gold is that it only has +50C temp and also changes temperature fairly easily. 

To be honest, I just flat out don't build aquatuners until I have steel. 

[GoHereDoThis]

Yeah, I've got enough steel now for one aquatuner; I never built steel before so I just learned how a few minutes ago!

How much steam per tile is needed for the steam generator to run?  My aquatuner room is 12x4.  I need to know how much water to pump in (per floor tile) before starting up the aquatuner.  I'm afraid I might be over/under priming the room with water.

 

[Steve Raptor]

5 minutes ago, GoHereDoThis said:

Yeah, I've got enough steel now for one aquatuner; I never built steel before so I just learned how a few minutes ago!

How much steam per tile is needed for the steam generator to run?  My aquatuner room is 12x4.  I need to know how much water to pump in (per floor tile) before starting up the aquatuner.  I'm afraid I might be over/under priming the room with water.

 

You should have less then 1000kg of steam per tile so the liquid vent won't be over-pressurized.

I like to run my turbines with around ~200kg of steam per tile.

Make sure that the steam chamber have no other gasses in it as those gasses, like oxygen, can block the inlet ports of the turbine, the steam chamber must have only steam/water in it.

[GoHereDoThis]

So just keep the vent running until it gets over-pressurized then shut it off?

What do you mean "no other gases"?  Do I have to vacuum it out?  My areas have the usual oxygen/CO2 gases due to it previously being part of the base and dupes working in/out of it.

[Mastermindx]

200kg of steam per tile?  Man, I usually run with less than 5 kg!

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, GoHereDoThis said:

So just keep the vent running until it gets over-pressurized then shut it off?

What do you mean "no other gases"?  Do I have to vacuum it out?  My areas have the usual oxygen/CO2 gases due to it previously being part of the base and dupes working in/out of it.

Yes. Vacuum it out. You only want steam in there once the water is hot enough. 

 

36 minutes ago, Mastermindx said:

200kg of steam per tile?  Man, I usually run with less than 5 kg!

Yeah, that's a bit light on the steam pressure. The more steam you have, the less the temperature will fluctuate, leading to a more consistent output from the turbine. 

[GoHereDoThis]

Thanks!  It works now!

Most videos I watch shows 3 aquatuners for 2 turbines, but each turbine only makes 850W while the aquatuner each takes 1200W, so really this only gives 150W of power.  What's the point in something like this?  Is it just heat deletion?  I guess some sort of magma setup is needed for a proper power-generating setup?

[Mastermindx]

The only point of aquatuner/turbine combo is heat deletion.  Even using super coolant, you won't get a positive return on power. (as should be). There are setup where you can get a net return though...  For example, I added an aquatuner to a cool steam vent.  while the cool steam vent itself can't drive the turbine, adding an aquatuner allow you to push it's steam hot enough so it run through the turbine. (I believe that net some extra kWh.)

I also added a steam turbine to a hydrogen geyser.  While it doesn't generate enough power to power the gas pump extracting the hydrogen (it average less than 80 Wh over time), the passive cooling is kindda nice.

[Mojo Filter]

1 hour ago, GoHereDoThis said:

What's the point in something like this?  Is it just heat deletion? 

Mostly, yes. But don't discount that - it is very good at getting rid of heat, which you will never stop needing to do in this game.

There are ways to make it power positive, but they all involve external heat sources like volcanos, hot material from space, big complex builds like sour gas boilers, or as you deduced - magma.

[Xaekai]

Yeah, the 3AT + 2Turb setup is a power negative system that deletes incredible amounts of heat. To the tune of 1.7 Million DTU/s.

There are two very similar designs for them on YT, one by Borge, the other by GearheadGaming. Both use a hydrogen gas loop to cool the turbines, and in my experience this is insufficient unless you make the radiant sections two tiles high. In my survival game where I just built it as they presented the turbines overheat before the machine gets up to maximum efficiency. Next one I build will have turbine cooling like this, which works without that issue for me in my sandbox.

[Tonyroid]

7 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

Can anyone please help me do this?  I tried looking for YouTube or wiki help but it seems that people already assume the player knows how to start up a steam generator setup.  Most videos or articles only talk about ideal or refined layouts but I have yet to get my steam turbine up and running.

My current layout has two steam turbines and three aquatuners but I cannot get steam hot enough to start up my steam turbines.  My aquatuners just get damaged and every time a dupe comes in to fix it, the room obviously loses steam and heat.  My aquatuners are made out of gold, I know people keep talking about steel but I don't have access to that yet.  Thanks!

I have the perfect thing for you. A YouTube video that will show you how to setup a turbine/aquatuner without steel, step by step.

 

[Argelle]

5 hours ago, Xaekai said:

Yeah, the 3AT + 2Turb setup is a power negative system that deletes incredible amounts of heat. To the tune of 1.7 Million DTU/s.

There are two very similar designs for them on YT, one by Borge, the other by GearheadGaming. Both use a hydrogen gas loop to cool the turbines, and in my experience this is insufficient unless you make the radiant sections two tiles high. In my survival game where I just built it as they presented the turbines overheat before the machine gets up to maximum efficiency. Next one I build will have turbine cooling like this, which works without that issue for me in my sandbox.

 

@Xaekai  what is the hydrogen dipping into to get cold? Wheez? A cold liquid?

My question is: what is cooling the coolant

(I use the same, but hydrogen is just passing through the steam turbine, and on its way to be burn into hydrogen generators, deleting heat).

[Xaekai]

The Hydrogen passes through a coolpool in radiant pipes that the cold output of the ATs also passes through in radiant pipes.

[wd_]

11 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

Thanks!  It works now!

Most videos I watch shows 3 aquatuners for 2 turbines, but each turbine only makes 850W while the aquatuner each takes 1200W, so really this only gives 150W of power.  What's the point in something like this?  Is it just heat deletion?  I guess some sort of magma setup is needed for a proper power-generating setup?

I usually pair it with a steel refinery, because producing steel creates a lot of heat. Here is a basic setup that I've started my steel production with:

Spoiler

 

Crude oil/petroleum on the floor transfers heat really quick from the aquatuner to steam and is also used as a coolant in a refinery. You can do it with gold aquatuner/pump if you manage the temperature with some automation, but using steel for both makes it a lot easier.

You can use it without aquatuner even, and then it becomes power positive, I believe, but I use it to cool other places in my base.

Also, notice that I was going for 2 turbines + 3 tuners setup, but in the end, 1 aquatuner ended up being enough for my whole base.

[GoHereDoThis]

Lots of info to process but my steam turbine setup is finally up and running!  Kind of disappointed with the power issue as I thought this would be a power generation setup as well as heat deletion setup, so I guess my search for a good power source setup continues.

@Xaekai I have that hydrogen loop too as I've seen it in one of their videos but the hydrogen gas inside the pipes doesn't really circulate.  Am I doing something wrong?

@Tonyroid Thanks for that video!  I've since learned how to make steel so I guess I can spring for enough steel for three aquatuners without really harming my base too much.

[SamLogan]

To use correctly your Steam Turbine, you need to have all the informations :

1. How much DTU/sec the turbine convert?

See this : https://oni-db.com/details/steamturbine2

Steam Heat Removed - 877.59 kDTU/s

Net Heat Removed - 789.83 kDTU/s

 

2. How much DTU/sec the AT produce?

In fact, that depend the coolant you use :

With polluted water (the best before super coolant), it produces only : 585.060  DTU / sec

So it's not enough to sustain a turbine. As well, you will always need to sustain it with other generator, the point is not to produce electricity but "destroy" a lot of heat.

 

3. Metal Refinery cool by a turbine

Metal refinery produce a lot of DTU/sec depend on which metal you choose, here's a tab :

https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Metal_Refinery

[bobucles]

In addition to +4kDTUs, the steam turbine absorbs 10% of the heat energy while deleting the other 90%. Going over 850W should still process the extra kDTUs worth of steam, the only penalty is you don't get energy for it.

[Xaekai]

3 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

 

@Xaekai I have that hydrogen loop too as I've seen it in one of their videos but the hydrogen gas inside the pipes doesn't really circulate.  Am I doing something wrong?

Once you get the loop completely filled with hydrogen and have deconstructed the last segment of the filling pipe that attaches to the loop, you drain exactly 1 canister of gas from the loop so it will start moving. Use the pipe drain tool (INSERT key by default) on one segment of the loop. and watch it carefully on slow speed once the dupe gets near. The moment you see the first gas canister fall cancel the order. Also it's best to do this from the right side of the building because the canister will appear one tile to the right, so if you do it on the left side of the machine it could end up inside the machine. Which doesn't really harm anything except my OCD. Also, you need a bridge in the loop to act as an input and output, as seen in the pic I posted earlier. 

[GoHereDoThis]

@Xaekai That's insane!  Working now, thank you!

 

[Xaekai]

Thanks is in the little heart on the bottom right corner of the post