transformers heating?

[meepmoop]

Hey, had several times my trensformers heated REALLY fast. like 1 degree per second.

in the first game it happened in an air-dense place a bit more far then my industrial area. where I tried to deconstruct and build it again several times in the same space (later on I moved it several blocks up, or to the right). The problem fixed itself somehow. I think I might have built a big transformer instead and it didnt heat. it was funny since the industrial area never went over 40C degree while the sole transformer was geting to much over 120C

 

Second time I put it in almost vaccum 1-100 gram per sqaure area. sometimes it heats, sometimes it doesn't. if it starts heating it overheats after less then cycle. ill send image once I can.

[KittenIsAGeek]

If your transformer is built in a chlorine atmosphere (or, to a lesser extent, carbon dioxide), then it can't dissipate the heat into the environment.  This can also occur in a vacuum or low-pressure atmosphere.  

That said.. there does seem to be the occasional condition where it appears to generate far more heat than it should.  This tends to happen with metals that have a very low specific heat capacity, such as Gold Amalgam.  If you replace your transformer with, say, Iron, then it shouldn't heat nearly as quickly.  Iron has 4 times the SHC of Gold Amalgam, which gives the transformer more time to transfer the thermal energy into the environment.

[crypticorb]

It depends on the surrounding atmosphere.

If you immerse the transformer in hydrogen, which has a fairly high specific heat capacity and conductivity, it will keep that transformer cool for far longer than anything else. Chlorine is the exact opposite, it's a very poor conductor of heat. Carbon dioxide and oxygen are mid-range for conductivity and specific heat capacity. Vacuum is a perfect insulator, never put a transformer in extreme low pressure or vacuum, it'll break fast.

The other consideration is atmosphere density. The denser the atmosphere, the longer it can keep from overheating. My power core has about 80kg/m3 of pressure, and all the steel buildings in it have yet to heat it above 100^oC after 500 cycles. Keeping it low pressure would be bad, as the buildings would heat up the relatively tiny mass very quickly and not be able to dissipate it.

Lastly, you can use liquid cooling with a single tempshift plate. Drip a small amount of any liquid like water or petroleum over the building, and the liquid will absorb all the heat from the building, with the tempshift plate pushing it to the surroundings. No need for anything complicated, just a small amount of liquid dripped over it with a bottle emptier, clean up any spillover, and it's good to go.

[psusi]

25 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

My power core has about 80kg/m3 of pressure, and all the steel buildings in it have yet to heat it above 100^oC after 500 cycles

What the heck for?  Did you seal it up with insulated tile just to see how long it would take to overheat?  Just keep it in a normal pressure oxygen environment and it will stay cool just fine.

 

[crypticorb]

16 minutes ago, psusi said:

What the heck for?  Did you seal it up with insulated tile just to see how long it would take to overheat?  Just keep it in a normal pressure oxygen environment and it will stay cool just fine.

 

I don't bother dealing with the CO2 output of coal, petroleum, or wood generators. Why go to all that extra effort of keeping it in oxygen or cooling it when dupes will be in atmosuits?

The CO2 pressure just builds up, and feeds my molten slickster farm, so it only increases in pressure by about 1kg/m3 per 10 cycles.

Eventually, once I get enough supercoolant, I plan to just freeze everything in the power core. Solids are a lot easier to deal with than liquids or gasses, so if I aquatuner/steam turbine everything to -200, all I'll need is a few shipping rails to get rid of everything.

[psusi]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

The CO2 pressure just builds up, and feeds my molten slickster farm, so it only increases in pressure by about 1kg/m3 per 10 cycles.

Why not ranch more slicksters then?

2 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Eventually, once I get enough supercoolant, I plan to just freeze everything in the power core. Solids are a lot easier to deal with than liquids or gasses, so if I aquatuner/steam turbine everything to -200, all I'll need is a few shipping rails to get rid of everything.

Solids can't be vented to space.  And why go to such extremes instead of just using a few carbon skimmers?  Or opening a tunnel to space?

[crypticorb]

7 minutes ago, psusi said:

Why not ranch more slicksters then?

Yup, that's what I do when the pressure gets too high, though there's no real limit to the generators that vent to surroundings, so I don't worry about it.

18 minutes ago, psusi said:

Solids can't be vented to space.  And why go to such extremes instead of just using a few carbon skimmers?  Or opening a tunnel to space?

Solids can be dumped into a box and ignored, whereas gas/liquids need vent overpressurization exploits with liquids to accomplish the same effect.

Carbon skimmers are more work than just not doing anything about it. My slickster ranch could die off and it wouldn't matter in the long run. Space is waaaaay to far away to do that, and the high pressure is beneficial for keeping the buildings cool.

The power generators create CO2 so fast that they almost cool themselves. The amount of CO2 mass they add to their surroundings nearly balances with the heat they also dump into it. 1000 cycles from now, I might need to cool things down, but it works quite well to ignore it.

[meepmoop]

3 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

If your transformer is built in a chlorine atmosphere (or, to a lesser extent, carbon dioxide), then it can't dissipate the heat into the environment.  This can also occur in a vacuum or low-pressure atmosphere.  

That said.. there does seem to be the occasional condition where it appears to generate far more heat than it should.  This tends to happen with metals that have a very low specific heat capacity, such as Gold Amalgam.  If you replace your transformer with, say, Iron, then it shouldn't heat nearly as quickly.  Iron has 4 times the SHC of Gold Amalgam, which gives the transformer more time to transfer the thermal energy into the environment.

I thought about the enviroment not being 'dense' enough thats why I brought out both the examples (one was in not dense, the other one was in a very dense place - over 3kg of pressure, in carbon dex and netural gas) but I dont think its the problem as I had trensformers 20 blocks away who stayed at nice <40C degrees while the problematic ones skyrocketed to over 120C (not exeturating as the heat map showed them as hot as the aqua-tuner).

I think I might have build them with gold. I'll try to keep it iron see if it happens again.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, meepmoop said:

I thought about the enviroment not being 'dense' enough thats why I brought out both the examples (one was in not dense, the other one was in a very dense place - over 3kg of pressure, in carbon dex and netural gas) but I dont think its the problem as I had trensformers 20 blocks away who stayed at nice <40C degrees while the problematic ones skyrocketed to over 120C (not exeturating as the heat map showed them as hot as the aqua-tuner).

I think I might have build them with gold. I'll try to keep it iron see if it happens again.

Can you take a screenshot of the area, maybe with the heat map? It would tell us more about your situation if we could see it.