brain exploding, please send help (aquatuner things)

[ohnoezitsjojo]

I'm having a huge problem with heat around my base because I opened up the area around a copper volcano not too far away from my base (I thought I was an absolute genius too because it killed all the slimelung in the air when I dug out the nearby swamp biome BOY WAS I WRONG), so I've been rushing to get some cooling done.

To all the smarter people in this subreddit, please give me solutions to my problems T_T so I can sleep :

1. I messed up a steel aquatuner set up and I have no idea how it happened.

Notes that might help:

- I did do a radiant pipe loop from the steam output back into the room.

- I have no access to crude oil T_T, this build I saw (that used a gold aquatuner) used one layer of crude oil at the bottom (but I don't know what difference it makes) so I thought using a steel one would remove the need for it.

- The area around the steam turbine is about 104degC. (Does looping cold water through it make this build work?

 

 

2. Not to be outdone, the base was still burning up so I placed my aquatuner in the pool of water collected from a cool steam vent. Then... As I saw the temperature of the water increasing to 80degC.. 90.. I panicked and put a steam turbine on top really quickly. And then...

Sure enough, about 30 tiles of water all turned into steam and the steam isn't hot enough for the steam turbine to work/ cool it down and the aquatuner is overheating and I depend on this water to feed my 4 electrolyzers for oxygen and I don't dare to unpause my game please send help

Notes that might (but probably won't) help:

- The aquatuner is used to cool water that I'm looping around my base/ around the area that got crazy hot around the copper volcano. The water is currently at about 20+degC.

- But I've also sealed off the copper volcano itself and am managing to get copper from it safely (for now, at least........)

- The cool steam vent is going to be dormant for the next 30 cycles.

- This aquatuner is made out of gold.

[beowulf2010]

29 minutes ago, ohnoezitsjojo said:

- This aquatuner is made out of gold.

This is the problem. You need at least steel for an aquatuner be able to heat up steam to the point where a steam turbine can run without damaging itself.

[Glassyfo]

1 hour ago, ohnoezitsjojo said:

1. I messed up a steel aquatuner set up and I have no idea how it happened.

- The area around the steam turbine is about 104degC. (Does looping cold water through it make this build work?

This is the problem with the first one. Steam turbine is too hot so it stops working, which is why the temp in the chamber is above 125C.

[sheaker]

1. On the first picture You are placing temshift plates next to the insulated tiles. This makes insulation not working.

2. Put a little of crude oil inside aquatuner chamber.

3. As mentioned before Gold is not enough for this purpose. You need to use steel.

[Zarquan]

8 hours ago, beowulf2010 said:

This is the problem. You need at least steel for an aquatuner be able to heat up steam to the point where a steam turbine can run without damaging itself.

You can actually use gold amalgam as well with its overheat of 175 C.  But you have to be more careful, as gold amalgam has a lower thermal conductivity.  You would want a thermal sensor to shut off the aquatuner if the steam got above about 165 C.

 

[suxkar]

2 hours ago, sheaker said:

1. On the first picture You are placing temshift plates next to the insulated tiles. This makes insulation not working.

2. Put a little of crude oil inside aquatuner chamber.

3. As mentioned before Gold is not enough for this purpose. You need to use steel.

You should put the output vent inside the oil, otherwise the oil layer has no purpose. @ohnoezitsjojo such purpose is to avoid a heat deletion bug. You want the exhaust water to not "materialize" inside steam, so you make it materialize inside any liquid that stays liquid at the steam room temperature (petroleum is good as well). Also, of course in most cases, enclose the steam room in insulated tiles, otherwise the heat will leak.

Additionally, to sum up what others said:
1) you need to cool the steam turbine, otherwise it will stop working and the temperature inside the steam room will increase to the point of making even a steel aquatuner overheat. Of course, you can cool it with the same aquatuner you are using.
2) aquatuners that are not made of steel (or thermium) are useless in steam rooms.
3) tempshift tiles adjacent to insulated tiles forces them to exchange heat, ruining their purpose as insulation.

5 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

You can actually use gold amalgam as well with its overheat of 175 C.

I believe gold amalgam transfers heat too slowly for it to work in most cases. Might be wrong though.

[sheaker]

5 minutes ago, suxkar said:

You should put the output vent inside the oil, otherwise the oil layer has no purpose

That's good to know. I was using oil just to lift the water level and decrease amount of space filled with steam. (On different setup I have another layer of petroleum for the same purpose.) However I had no troubles with this setup for last 800 cycles. It is producing steam 260*C in steady state operation and it heats up to 220 pretty fast.

[Zarquan]

41 minutes ago, suxkar said:

I believe gold amalgam transfers heat too slowly for it to work in most cases. Might be wrong though.

If you have crude oil or petroleum in thermal contact, it should be fine.  But you have to shut off the aquatuner at a temperature significantly lower than the overheat of the aquatuner.  But it can be made to work.  The build is much easier with steel aquatuners.

41 minutes ago, suxkar said:

You should put the output vent inside the oil, otherwise the oil layer has no purpose. @ohnoezitsjojo such purpose is to avoid a heat deletion bug. You want the exhaust water to not "materialize" inside steam, so you make it materialize inside any liquid that stays liquid at the steam room temperature (petroleum is good as well). Also, of course in most cases, enclose the steam room in insulated tiles, otherwise the heat will leak.

This is actually related to the gold amalgam aquatuner.  The crude oil serves a dual purpose.  Its higher thermal conductivity of 2 (as opposed to steam's 0.184) allows the gold amalgam to transfer the heat fast enough.  I was putting crude oil at the bottom of my steam rooms long before I knew about the heat deletion bug for this reason.

Also, for the OP, this post discusses the heat deletion bug.  I think we know more about it now, but the video gives you functional details.

 

[beowulf2010]

6 hours ago, Zarquan said:

You can actually use gold amalgam as well with its overheat of 175 C.  But you have to be more careful, as gold amalgam has a lower thermal conductivity.  You would want a thermal sensor to shut off the aquatuner if the steam got above about 165 C.

Which is the entire reason I consider gold useless for an aquatuner. Enough steel for an aquatuner or 2 isn't significantly harder to obtain and reduces the need for automation that most casual players wouldn't even think to use. 

[Zarquan]

3 hours ago, beowulf2010 said:

Which is the entire reason I consider gold useless for an aquatuner. Enough steel for an aquatuner or 2 isn't significantly harder to obtain and reduces the need for automation that most casual players wouldn't even think to use. 

I often set up an early gold amalgam setup because it's cheap.  I personally don't like using a metal refinery without having a concrete way to deal with the heat, meaning I need a steam turbine and a way to keep it cool.  This leads to a circular problem where I want an aquatuner built before the steel production can start.  If set up correctly, it is perfectly safe and a lot cheaper.

Adding a thermosensor to an aquatuner is not hard.  If a new player is setting it up for the first time, they might not think about it.  But when they see their aquatuner burn out, I believe most new players would think "What if I turned it off if it got too hot?"

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

Adding a thermosensor to an aquatuner is not hard.  If a new player is setting it up for the first time, they might not think about it.  But when they see their aquatuner burn out, I believe most new players would think "What if I turned it off if it got too hot?"

Ironic considering the thread we're chatting in... 

Just a difference in playstyle. You use automation to use "earlier" materials and I just sacrifice a cold biome (Ice or frozen core preferred but a rust biome is cold enough to absorb a few tons worth of refined metal coolant heat) for all the "proper" refined metal I need for my basic infrastructure (O2 cooling plant, coal power plant, 5-10 transformer/battery pairs, and the "real" metal refinery).

[Zarquan]

28 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Ironic considering the thread we're chatting in... 

The issue the OP is having isn't that the aquatuners overheated.  It is that the steam turbines overheated.   If the turbines stop working, any aquatuner will overheat without automation, even thermium.

Also, in the second picture, the aquatuner isn't submerged in crude oil, but we already discussed that.

[psusi]

On 5/30/2020 at 6:49 PM, ohnoezitsjojo said:

 

What are you doing?  You have to keep the top of the turbine < 100 C for it to work.  You've left it wide open to the hot steam from both the side and below.  You need to build it on insulated tiles and keep the steam only on the bottom side.

On 5/30/2020 at 6:49 PM, ohnoezitsjojo said:

- I did do a radiant pipe loop from the steam output back into the room.

That only works if you also wall the top of the turbine in with insulation and a little oil on the floor.  Then the returning 95 C water provides just enough cooling to keep the turbine < 100 C when its input steam temperature is only 125 C.  If it is open to the environment then either you are going to be dumping heat from the water into the environment, or if it is already 100 C, the turbine will stop.

On 5/30/2020 at 7:17 PM, beowulf2010 said:

This is the problem. You need at least steel for an aquatuner be able to heat up steam to the point where a steam turbine can run without damaging itself.

A gold AT works just fine as long as it is sitting in 10kg of petrol. You can also use a timer to pulse the AT on and off every other second to keep it from overheating without the petrol.

On 5/31/2020 at 2:01 AM, sheaker said:

1. On the first picture You are placing temshift plates next to the insulated tiles. This makes insulation not working.

Not entirely.  It is still insulated when it exchanges heat with the outside, so the tempshift plate will heat up the insulated tile, but the insulated tile won't heat the outside much ( unless there's a tempshift plate there too ).

 

[sheaker]

On 5/31/2020 at 10:00 AM, suxkar said:

You should put the output vent inside the oil, otherwise the oil layer has no purpose.

Hello. I have tested Your suggestion. With liquid vents inside crude oil water/steam is disappearing every time I am loading the game. Is this a known bug? I have to constantly refill tank with hot steam (I am working in debug mode now). Here is my design. It was refilled (while working) with 2000g of hot steam (I checked if output liquid pipes are draining 2000g of water). After two save/load there is around 700-800g now.

 

With this bug I need to lift liquid vents above crude oil level since design needs to be bug-free.

 

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

[mathmanican]

3 hours ago, sheaker said:

crude oil water/steam is disappearing every time I am loading the game

Thank you. This part is news to me. It could be a save load issue.

[suxkar]

4 hours ago, sheaker said:

Hello. I have tested Your suggestion. With liquid vents inside crude oil water/steam is disappearing every time I am loading the game. Is this a known bug? I have to constantly refill tank with hot steam (I am working in debug mode now). Here is my design. It was refilled (while working) with 2000g of hot steam (I checked if output liquid pipes are draining 2000g of water). After two save/load there is around 700-800g now.

 

With this bug I need to lift liquid vents above crude oil level since design needs to be bug-free.

 

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Since you are working with little steam to begin with, isn't it possible that the "missing" steam is in the output pipes of the steam turbines? If not, try to fill the missing angular tiles in the steam room, there might be some weird bug about those, may be packets being teleported (unlikely but who knows). I've made dozens of these setups, they don't have problems usually

[sheaker]

19 minutes ago, suxkar said:

Since you are working with little steam to begin with, isn't it possible that the "missing" steam is in the output pipes of the steam turbines?

No, I mention that I filled steam tank while turbine was working and output liquid pipe was full of water (2kg pockets per steam turbine). This isn't the problem.

I filled corners with insulation and at the very beginning I thought it solved the problem but after 3rd save/load I started loosing steam again.

And it is not happening exactly while game is loaded. It works sometimes for first 5-15 sec. The water from liquid vents is disappearing. I captured it on video. Here it is: