Jump to content

Steam power: salt water geyser within magma channel


Recommended Posts

I am looking for ideas to revitalize an early-mid game geothermal plant. Thank you for inputs in advance.

In this Aridio asteroid (seed number = "7") there is a salt water geyser spawned in the middle of a 1000ºC+ magma/obsidian channel, which vaporizes the salt water. When this geological wonder was discovered, the steam sealed inside was at a pressure of 200+kg/tile and 200ºC. Four steam turbines were setup to channel the steam and harvest its thermal energy. They worked wonders for a few dozen turns.

Then things cool down due to the "cool" water from steam turbine and the geyser itself. Currently the steam pressure inside is 500+kg/tile (debug mode supports 9999 kg/tile of steam) and 150ºC. Even if I sit on reduced electricity output, when the pressure reaches 1000kg, the steam turbine can no longer drop condensed water into the cave.

One way is to dump the condensed steam water into some waste water pool below. But there will be another problem later.

My current plant is to:

(1) Dig a service tunnel and a liquid airlock (with crude oil) to access the chamber (again).
(2) Encase the salt water geyser with insulation tiles. So that it will stop adding more "low temperature" water in this chamber.
(3) Dig vertical tunnel down to the hot rocks so the condensed liquid water will drip into a large mass of 700ºC (limit of atmo suit) rocks.
(4) Clear up the bottleneck in the middle of the chamber to improve convection.

geothermal_phase_2.thumb.jpg.5d22618bc916ef61e7a7a626cb2b9bed.jpg

Any tips would be appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Depending on how you build the liquid lock, the opening can be made next to the aquatuner if you don't mind, or if you're feeling adventurous to the left of the steam turbines. That would save the extra labor of digging an additional tunnel.

 

Also, a door to automate point #2 might come in handy..

3 hours ago, maltz said:

One way is to dump the condensed steam water into some waste water pool below. But there will be another problem later.

Hot water can be directly used in electrolyzers

Spoiler

and later on in oil wells

or hot tubs (if you have lots of bleach stone)

3 hours ago, maltz said:

(limit of atmo suit) rocks.

If you micro manage the dupes you can stretch the health bar a long way... (Some will say I'm evil, I know) I've had them "train" in wheels so much they now can run about 20 tiles of magma, build a couple of insulated tiles and still have over half a health bar left... I have a fully equipped hospital room.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is an update on my plan. The condensed water drips all the way down, near the magma channel. I run out of diamond so called it a day. Before the operation the steam turbine was drawing 145ºC, and now it is drawing 160ºC (might increase further).

geothermal_phase_2b.thumb.jpg.ebea46c629f05393202bc4e9c545eaac.jpg

46 minutes ago, JRup said:

Hot water can be directly used in electrolyzers

  Reveal hidden contents

and later on in oil wells

or hot tubs (if you have lots of bleach stone)

If you micro manage the dupes you can stretch the health bar a long way... (Some will say I'm evil, I know) I've had them "train" in wheels so much they now can run about 20 tiles of magma, build a couple of insulated tiles and still have over half a health bar left... I have a fully equipped hospital room.
 

I have never tried hot tubs. Forgot about electrolyzers. I was thinking about feeding the water to an oil reservoir in the future.

My dupes were complaining about the heat while digging through 1000+ºC rocks, though luckily they were not hurt, probably because "cool" water was dripping down on where they are.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, maltz said:

My dupes were complaining about the heat while digging through 1000+ºC rocks

They'll complain, and get scalded... Yup. I patch mine up all the time.

Nice tunneling, btw. If you add a second liquid lock with a vacuum in between you can have constant access and thermal isolation.

I also know this might be unneeded advice, but do try to keep temps stable so that you don't end up with sourgas in that steam.

47 minutes ago, maltz said:

I have never tried hot tubs.

Whatever you do, don't use gold amalgam for hot tubs.

 

49 minutes ago, maltz said:

I was thinking about feeding the water to an oil reservoir in the future.

(I did put the oil well in a spoiler tag, oops.) I have been fiddling around with extra compact non-flooded oil well rooms (no infinite storage) but I still have to test with 95c water. If it works well (as in no steam generated) I might post the design further down the line.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You could also stick an aquatuner in there connected to an insulated loop that is topped off with excess from the turbine output via a bridge. Pull water out of the loop when cold, only turn on the aquatuner when the pressure exceeds a certain amount. The heat of the aquatuner (probably background noise for this setup) is mostly reclaimed via the turbines, and you won't have a hot water storage problem.  It's not particularly complicated or imaginative, but it's tidy. 

Assuming of course you even want cold water.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, JRup said:

If you add a second liquid lock with a vacuum in between you can have constant access and thermal isolation.

Whatever you do, don't use gold amalgam for hot tubs.

I still have to test with 95c water. If it works well (as in no steam generated) I might post the design further down the line.

Vacuum airlock sounds easy and awesome esp. there is no (non-space-biome) evaporation. I am sure there will be a phase 3 some time down the road.

Indeed I was thinking about cooling the 95ºC water just enough before feeding it into the oil reservoir in order to avoid venting repairs.

I suppose the dupes will be cooked in a gold amalgam hot tub as it does not overheat?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, maltz said:

I suppose the dupes will be cooked in a gold amalgam hot tub as it does not overheat?

Won't happen. Dupes will happily enjoy any hot water you pump into the tub.

What does happen is that the hot tub has a low operating temp and you will have a bad time trying to cool one made out of gold amalgam. (been there, done that)

I skipped to the chase and make them out of steel now.

3 minutes ago, maltz said:

Indeed I was thinking about cooling the 95ºC water just enough before feeding it into the oil reservoir in order to avoid venting repairs.

93c-ish will do just fine in a flooded chamber, although the dupe's operating speed will have much to do with any venting risks.

I haven't played in a while and will need to test hot water in a non-flooded environment (mainly natgas 20kg per tile pressure)


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, simonchvz said:

You could also stick an aquatuner in there connected to an insulated loop that is topped off with excess from the turbine output via a bridge. Pull water out of the loop when cold, only turn on the aquatuner when the pressure exceeds a certain amount. The heat of the aquatuner (probably background noise for this setup) is mostly reclaimed via the turbines, and you won't have a hot water storage problem.  It's not particularly complicated or imaginative, but it's tidy. 

Assuming of course you even want cold water.

Indeed there may be multiple aquatuners in there carrying different liquids. Too bad it is not close to the surface or my liquid H2 and O2 chambers will be ride beside it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well it turned out that I over corrected - the chamber heated up to 280ºC. Turbines started to overheat and power generation was reduced again.

A second quad of steam turbines were installed sharing the same cooling loop. Also, an automated door is installed to block condensed water from dripping into the deep tunnel until the chamber sensor returns < 200ºC. Then it opens up to allow more hot steams to rise - probably won't happen for a few dozen turns again.

Now I have too much electricity. :lol:20200910190044_1.thumb.jpg.b8effd22cc7d66640b96d7cca60c3b9c.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Tsabo said:

Doesn't that break the heat-conducting chain?

Not at all, there seems to be no interaction between "background buildings" and other "background buildings" and tempshift plates happen to fall in that category along with drywall... The only way it interacts is background - foreground material (and the other way around)
So this is an "incomplete" chain, to complete it you'd need some kind of material between plates... just note the spaces in between are not empty, there's steam filling the gaps in this room instead of solid tiles. You could also use window tiles or liquids...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Tsabo said:

I don't understand tempshift plates so this is a literal question not a rhetorical one: why do you only build them every other tile? Doesn't that break the heat-conducting chain?

While I was short on diamond I did have a diagnoally connected hell triangle at the very bottom. I was hoping for a tempshift plate to heat up the surrounding steams, which will then heat up the next tile or travel up. In the game the entire opened chamber heated up pretty much uniformally so maybe convection was the main player here.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...