Handling Rocket Heat, Petroleum Edition

[biopon]

I'm about to move to hydrogen rockets in my most recent save so I thought I'd share the petroleum setup before I tear it down.

It's super simple. Ignore the fuel lines.

 

Igneous tempshifts at the bay's back catch and buffer heat from the rocket as it takes off. The vent at the top is to let the CO2 out. The 3x8 igneous block at the bottom of the bay catches the rocket's passive heat and buffers it. (Since this passive heat is pushed into this material as raw DTUs, the material doesn't much matter as long as the heat capacity is not very low, to limit the rise of temperature in degrees.)

I have copper pipes all around the bay circulating petroleum. Copper because I have a volcano producing it, gold or iron would be fine too. At the top, through the bunker doors I used insulated obsidian, but I'm not convinced it was needed. It's fine though, the bunker doors are affected by the tempshifts near them and are the same temperature as the rest of the bay.

One steam turbine per bay. I have them sit to the right of the 3x8 heatsink, so only the right one in the picture is relevant. A sizable steam chamber underneath allows plenty of room for the petroleum to heat up the steam. Use aluminium piping in here.

Everything is 125-130 degrees C. The side walls, the middle igneous block, the bunker doors, even the artifacts and the piles of regolith on the floor. Things in the rocket's heating zone get maybe a hundred degrees hotter right after takeoff or landing, but very quickly cool down as the heat spreads into all the buffering material, this is later, slowly, cooled down permanently by the turbine.

All of it could be a lot simpler if you weren't interested in harnessing most of the heat for power generation. Just leave the bay back open (no tempshifts at all), and you can self-cool the turbine with its own output, no need for an aquatuner cooling loop in that case.

All materials (other than the steel in the bunker tiles themselves) are very basic. The conveyor lines are iron ore, the tempshifts are igneous (except under the turbine they're granite). I used 7 tiles of ceramics to separate the turbine's lower tiles from the steam chamber and the rocket heat sink, and the AT cooling line is also in ceramics pipes through the heatsink, but as long as you maintain vacuum below the rest can be plain rock pipe.

For wiring in the bay, I did use steel out of habit, but I'm pretty sure iron would have worked just as well. 

That's all. How do you do it? Simpler? Cooler? More efficient?

[bobe17]

I have a steam room directly below the rockets (2), and two turbines on the right but with some inlets closed (with tile or with door+temp sensor, not fixed yet). aquatuner below the turbines for the supercoolant needed for lh2/lox production. I send 1000g of the turbines output to the surface for cooling robo-miners, then those 1000g get heated through bunker doors and inside the silo, and finally go back into the steam room. turbines cooling with super coolant on demand (temp sensor+shut off, 2 radiant pipes aluminium). if temp into the steam room go above 300°C, turbines work all the time (aquatuner made of steel for now).

[biopon]

1 hour ago, bobe17 said:

then those 1000g

Ah a fellow 1000g abuser (For the record I think it's perfectly fine to take advantage of this mechanic.) I will post my metal volcano tap/tamer a bit later that also relies on this.

So you're using two blocked turbines to keep the temperature in check for h2 rockets? I assume the back of the rocket bay is open, so most of the steam insta-evaporates?

[bobe17]

yes, it is borderline, but so convenient ^^
Now, i have niobium so i could rebuild robo-miners with this and just make a loop between them and bunker doors to stabilize the temperature between 200°C-400°C, thanks to meteors hitting the doors.

Actually, i have one h2 rocket and one petro rocket. The bay has a background and is closed on top with mechanized doors (made of iron ore, doesn't matter). That way, i keep gas inside to cool all stuff, especially wires.

[Z0366]

That is a lot lot lot of shifty plates! I normally just build it right next to the top of the map and let all the heat dissipate into vacuum. By then I often have already made Sour gas boiler and never need extra power.