Info on mined resource heat transfer?

[PSVPerky]

I was trying to figure out a good way to turn regolith into steam energy, so I figured I'd throw a tile of regolith on a metal tile next to a steam chamber, and that worked fine for sandbox mode where I'd manually spawn regolith.  But then I figured I'd probably be stockpiling all the regolith on the map into this location, so it would come as the mined resource, so to test how well that would work, I added a robominer and things got a little weird.  For some reason, the tile transfer heat perfectly well, but the resource, once mined, doesn't transfer heat at all unless completely enclosed in metal. When enclosed in metal, the heat transfer is ridiculously slow.

 

I tried a few things, the latest of which is a door made of steel above a pool of crude oil with a diamond tempshift plate to try to facilitate the transfer, but it's barely touching the metal tiles as far as temp changes go.  I'm attaching a screenshot of my latest sandbox attempt that I did just to see if it was feasible to get some power out of the regolith.

 

 

 

Anyone have any idea why a tile transfers heat really well, but a mined resource, even when laying on a metal tile, barely moves at all?

[BLACKBERREST3]

Try trapping the debris in a mech door. Temperature transfers faster this way.

[mathmanican]

8 hours ago, PSVPerky said:

Anyone have any idea why a tile transfers heat really well, but a mined resource, even when laying on a metal tile, barely moves at all?

Yep. It's ONI physis. This thread will get you started. 

 

Note the difference between debris ON a tile, and debris IN a tile, and compare both with tile-to-tile transfer.  That should help you out. 

I'm not saying this is intuitive, but it is how the game works. 

[PSVPerky]

Thanks guys, I'll try that, was also debating trying out a conveyor system and moving the regolith through the metal tiles to see if that helped at all.  Would that just be a more expensive version of trapping it in a door, with the door touching metal tiles?

[nakomaru]

Basically yes, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it. It depends on your throughput and what you want to do.

One thing you will notice from the equations for debris is that there is no term for mass - the heat transfer is the same regardless of the debris size.

This means that 25kg chunks on rails will reach equilibrium extremely quickly. Likewise a 25 ton chunk stuck in doors will be much faster than sitting in the open, but quite a bit slower than the potential of rails. Still, it might be plenty enough for what you want, and if you have a very large amount of matter to cool, such as 2000 tons of regolith, you might not want to wait the 133 cycles needed to process it through your rails.

[PSVPerky]

10 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Basically yes, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it. It depends on your throughput and what you want to do.

One thing you will notice from the equations for debris is that there is no term for mass - the heat transfer is the same regardless of the debris size.

This means that 25kg chunks on rails will reach equilibrium extremely quickly. Likewise a 25 ton chunk stuck in doors will be much faster than sitting in the open, but quite a bit slower than the potential of rails. Still, it might be plenty enough for what you want, and if you have a very large amount of matter to cool, such as 2000 tons of regolith, you might not want to wait the 133 cycles needed to process it through your rails.

Yeah, I imagine 2000 tons of regolith wouldn't be impossible as time progresses.  Rails might just take too long - I forgot how little each rail can carry.  All I was trying to do was effectively turn regolith's "free" heat into some energy (since it's multiple hundred degrees C), and cool off the regolith for potential use later. Though maybe I shouldn't use it at all since it probably wouldn't get below 125 without an additional cooling loop.

 

I was hoping to start off by doing a massive dig task for all the current regolith on the surface and dump it into this pit, and use conveyor rails/robo miners to dump it into the pit later when the bunker doors drop some down onto my equipment.  The goal being to turn this heat into something useful, like steam power.

 

Is there a better use for regolith on the surface?  Seems like it'd be too hot to use in the asteroid

[nakomaru]

You can melt it or turn it into clay. I usually do the latter. I recently chucked a 2000t payload into my gold volcano steam room because it just spits out everything at 15C eventually. Uses rails. The heat capacity of regolith is low so you can't really run a colony off of it by itself - I just did it for adjusting the temperature.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Regolith is really useful as a coolant for extreme temperatures. Their energy/thermal capacity will increase by 5x if you allow them to melt however. Some people use this for energy/material production.

[PSVPerky]

Anyone know how to capture the regolith in a door?  Every time I try to do it, it bumps up on top of a tile or gets deleted

[PSVPerky]

On 10/7/2019 at 6:08 PM, PSVPerky said:

Anyone know how to capture the regolith in a door?  Every time I try to do it, it bumps up on top of a tile or gets deleted

Bump - having a similar concern about glass

[biopon]

2 doors on top of each other, open both, then close top one first. Whatever you're trying to trap will get ejected when the bottom door closes if you don't cover that side with a solid tile. Lots of creative ways to use this to your advantage by the way, like to push the regolith out once you're done cooling it.

[PSVPerky]

39 minutes ago, biopon said:

2 doors on top of each other, open both, then close top one first. Whatever you're trying to trap will get ejected when the bottom door closes if you don't cover that side with a solid tile. Lots of creative ways to use this to your advantage by the way, like to push the regolith out once you're done cooling it.

Hmmmm, but how does that capture the debris within a tile so the debris will transfer heat?  Isn't that just a door pusher?  I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for, they had mentioned earlier I could capture the regolith within a door so it transfers heat at the same rate a tile of regolith transfers heat, since debris transfers much slower.  I was experimenting with running a steam turbine off regolith, and the debris transfers heat at a ridiculously slow rate

[biopon]

1 hour ago, PSVPerky said:

Hmmmm

 

[Samson.ONI]

If this is an option for you, loading the regolith onto a shipping rail that runs through diamond window tiles will serve as a time-efficient mechanism for radiating its thermal energy. The only problem is making sure the auto-sweeper does not become entombed in hot regolith, depending on what materials are available to you. You can accelerate the heat exchange between the diamond radiator and steam chamber with radiant gas and liquid loops running in opposite directions through the radiator and steam chamber.

In general however, I have not found regolith to be an energy resource worth investing the infrastructure in capitalizing on; unless you are running a regolith melter which is one of the most infrastructure intensive builds I have ever seen.