tips for getting better at temperature control?

[meepmoop]

I recently warped my head around heat deletion and and started making cooling loops.

tried to go nosh sprout in one game (which proved to be really annoying food source) and this lead me to try and understand better how to cool stuff.

here is the set up: nosh farm in the top half. 40 grams of oxygen per tile in air locked area. ethanol fertlizer for plants comes from ethanol tank in the bottom comes at -17C. ethanol coolnet comes from aquatuner, goes through fertlizer tank first, then goes thrugh granit tiles below the farm tiles.

currently farm works but i believe that without suppervision on my behalf it will cool too much / heat up. tempertures are all around from -8C to -17C and inconsistency kills me.

1. first off. I didnt thought it would be so bad but ethanol as a coolnet is so much worse then water. Its probably because of the SHC of ethanol. tried using pwater but its temp range was not good enough (in aquatuner temp was <-5C and anything below that would make pwater possible freeze).

I guess using patro or oil would be worse since their SHC is even worse? what coolnet can I use without space matirial?

2. heat spread for plants: I have problem understanding what factors the most when trying to cool. I know gas cooling is the least effective since low mass. then there is the irrigation and the farm tile itself. which one is more impotent? I once killed my plants because I fed them hot water this is why I cool the irregation ethanol. however.

3. The temperature in the irrigation ethanol tank is inconsistent with tempertures at -23C where the coolnet enters and -15C where it exits. is there a way to spread it better? make is square? templates?

4. are the granite tiles a good idea? I thought cool would transfer better through them then through the gas. also - here too heat is not spread well, like with the tank I mentioned last point.

5. I saw people use metal doors open/close with thermometer to cool water tanks to exect temp.is there a way to do the same with just rooms? like if instead of passing coolent through the granite tiles I fill a tank in the bottom and use doors? would you think it work better?

6. reason I made so little gas pressure is because before I planted the nosh, air was getting warm even though it started -15C (got to +15C after some cycles). i guess heat went from insulating tiles which made me want to make it less of a factor -> pumped air out.

 

[crypticorb]

1. Correct. Coolant effectiveness going through an aquatuner or being used to radiate/absorb thermal energy is highly dependent on its SHC, and far less on its conductivity. An aquatuner will pull 14^oC of thermal energy from the coolant, even if that coolant has a tiny SHC like ethanol or an insanely high SHC like water or supercoolant.
   
   Petroleum or crude oil are not great for coolant, but have wide temperature range. For farms, use polluted water as coolant. It can handle down to -20^oC. Target temperature of -5^oC and you'll be fine.
    
2. What you need to use is a buffer. This is a critically important concept for farms, because cooling the plants or their environment directly is very difficult, as an aquatuner can swing the temperature wildly. Create a pool of liquid, preferably something like petroleum or pH2O, and route the aquatuner radiant pipes through the pool, cooling it as a buffer. This pool should be directly underneath the hydroponic tiles, no airgap. This way the buffer pool will absorb any drastic changes made by the aquatuner, and have the aquatuner controlled by a thermo sensor in the buffer pool.
    
3. Simple, route the irrigation ethanol through the coolant buffer pool, two birds with one stone.
    
4. Swap those granite tiles with the coolant buffer pool, at least 2 tiles deep. It was a good idea, but solid tiles have FAR less mass than a full liquid tile, and less conductivity.
    
5. The idea with the doors is to allow a coolant buffer pool to be separate from the target to be cooled, such as a steam vent or drawing heat from a volcano magma. Typically this is only needed for targets that wildly swing in temperature, not for farms. You could use temperature controlled doors, but it isn't really needed if you use a buffer pool and use the aquatuner to cool the buffer.
    
6. Starting out with hot materials in the insulated walls shouldn't make a difference in the long run. Draining it to low pressure probably made it worse, as the insulated walls will have less mass to heat up. In the long run, it shouldn't make any difference at all, as the insulated walls will eventually lose their heat. 

 

 

EDIT:

Here's a simple mockup of what I described. The liquid below the hydroponic tiles is the buffer pool, and is polluted water. The liquid being used as a stabilizing coolant run through an aquatuner is also polluted water, though both the buffer pool and coolant can be petroleum or crude oil if you are afraid of freezing.

I routed the fertilizer ethanol through the buffer pool so it will be also stabilized by the same buffer, so the temperature of the farm and the liquid input will always be buffered by that one pool.

[meepmoop]

18 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

1. Correct. Coolant effectiveness going through an aquatuner or being used to radiate/absorb thermal energy is highly dependent on its SHC, and far less on its conductivity. An aquatuner will pull 14^oC of thermal energy from the coolant, even if that coolant has a tiny SHC like ethanol or an insanely high SHC like water or supercoolant.
   
   Petroleum or crude oil are not great for coolant, but have wide temperature range. For farms, use polluted water as coolant. It can handle down to -20^oC. Target temperature of -5^oC and you'll be fine.
    
2. What you need to use is a buffer. This is a critically important concept for farms, because cooling the plants or their environment directly is very difficult, as an aquatuner can swing the temperature wildly. Create a pool of liquid, preferably something like petroleum or pH2O, and route the aquatuner radiant pipes through the pool, cooling it as a buffer. This pool should be directly underneath the hydroponic tiles, no airgap. This way the buffer pool will absorb any drastic changes made by the aquatuner, and have the aquatuner controlled by a thermo sensor in the buffer pool.
    
3. Simple, route the irrigation ethanol through the coolant buffer pool, two birds with one stone.
    
4. Swap those granite tiles with the coolant buffer pool, at least 2 tiles deep. It was a good idea, but solid tiles have FAR less mass than a full liquid tile, and less conductivity.
    
5. The idea with the doors is to allow a coolant buffer pool to be separate from the target to be cooled, such as a steam vent or drawing heat from a volcano magma. Typically this is only needed for targets that wildly swing in temperature, not for farms. You could use temperature controlled doors, but it isn't really needed if you use a buffer pool and use the aquatuner to cool the buffer.
    
6. Starting out with hot materials in the insulated walls shouldn't make a difference in the long run. Draining it to low pressure probably made it worse, as the insulated walls will have less mass to heat up. In the long run, it shouldn't make any difference at all, as the insulated walls will eventually lose their heat. 

1. Got you, thanks for explaining

2/3/4. great advice! really smart ideas actually.

5. I see. the thing is I want to have a bit more control. like right now im doing the cooling by trail and error (send coolnet at -10C, its not enough - I manually change it to send it at -20C, too much - send it lower). When I saw people use the doors they are very precise. Like they have 2 Thermometers: close door if >4C, close door if <6C. boom you got a cooing for exectly 5C.

6.I see. happy to hear that it will cool off in the long run

[caffeinated21]

Other option is to put a fluid tank in your cooling loop after the aquatuner; it will keep your coolant temps stable

[Gurgel]

1. Water is king, just as in reality. 

4. Granite tiles are not very useful, but granite pipes can be used as radiators when you have low cooling loads, such as cooling your base. 

[ONIfreak]

what happen when you put liquid reservoir before aguatuner and fill it first? Temperature in reservoir should even itself out so when you pump it out to aquatuner it will receive similar temperature of input water so it will output similar temperature. it should prevent coolant to vary that much (although this is not surgical precise solution it should do the trick of getting some more control over temp). Also to even out temperature for it you can put pipes vertically not horizontally and have output from the same pipe. so coolant will spread in insulated tiles across every plant evenly so coolant will give out the same amount of heat to every plant instead of giving the most to first and least to last (as coolant get hotter every tile is in radiant pipe).