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3 hours ago, TheMule said:

Like I wrote, you can have a huge amount of heat in the form of 10000t of 300C rock, but it won't save you from running an AT to concentrate it and get the right temperature in a boiler.

Ummm... Yes it will? You just transfer it via some medium, or physically transfer the rock.

EDIT: In fact, with your own example you can't use an AT, as it's not a liquid.

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18 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Ummm... Yes it will? You just transfer it via some medium, or physically transfer the rock.

Are we still talking about a petroleum boiler? Point is 10000t of 300C rock is a lot of heat, but you can't use it in a petroleum boiler as-is. It's high temperature you need, not heat. 

18 minutes ago, Yunru said:

EDIT: In fact, with your own example you can't use an AT, as it's not a liquid.

What do you mean? People here routinely use ATs to cool down gasses (eg. oxygen), liquids (eg. LOX) and solids (eg, their base). Of course we use a liquid (probably 90% of the times pwater or supercoolant) as coolant, but the cooling target can be anything.

And anyway, we're still talking about a petroleum boiler. If all you have is 300C rock, you need an AT to concentrate the heat and get something at higher temperature, for the boiler to work.

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32 minutes ago, TheMule said:

Of course we use a liquid (probably 90% of the times pwater or supercoolant) as coolant, but the cooling target can be anything.

Except now you're moving that heat, which is something you said couldn't be done without an AT, without an AT. 

 

I don't see much point in continuing this discussion. Either you're choosing to ignore the concepts put forth, or just can't see them, but either is no conductive to discussion. 

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20 hours ago, Yunru said:

Except now you're moving that heat, which is something you said couldn't be done without an AT, without an AT. 

No I never said that. What I've said is you need an AT to concentrate the heat. There's a natural flow of heat: that is from high temp to low temp. Another way of looking at it, is that heat tend to spread around. You need an AT to put it all in a single place, from low temp to high temp.

So what happens in an AT cooling loop is that heat moves (by itself) from the target to the coolant - if the coolant is at a lower temp - then it's moved by the AT from the coolant to itself, usually against the natural flow, that is, the AT is hotter than the coolant, and finally from the AT heat moves (naturally) to the environment, if it's colder. The whole purpose of the AT is to move heat against its natural flow. That's the thing you can't do w/o an AT (or a regulator).
 

That's also why temperature matters differently from heat. You can have all the heat in the world, but if the temperature is below the temperature you need, w/o an AT all that heat is no use to you.

 

20 hours ago, Yunru said:

I don't see much point in continuing this discussion. Either you're choosing to ignore the concepts put forth, or just can't see them, but either is no conductive to discussion. 

I'm sorry I feel the same. Clearly you don't seem to understand the difference among heat, the flow of heat, and temperature, and clearly I'm failing at explaining it. There's no point in continuing this discussion.

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I will attempt one last time, as clearly it is not any one of us at fault, rather both of us appear to be talking past each other. 

If it takes 2X to heat a material from 50 to 100, then you have to invest 2X power. 

If, however, you preheat your material to 75 using excess heat from elsewhere, then yoh only need X power to heat it to 100, so you've made a net gain of X power, with no aquatuner needed. 

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31 minutes ago, Yunru said:

I will attempt one last time, as clearly it is not any one of us at fault, rather both of us appear to be talking past each other. 

If it takes 2X to heat a material from 50 to 100, then you have to invest 2X power. 

If, however, you preheat your material to 75 using excess heat from elsewhere, then yoh only need X power to heat it to 100, so you've made a net gain of X power, with no aquatuner needed. 

I can't really explain it any better than this, sorry: heat, heat flow, temperature are separate concepts. As an analogy, not 100% accurate, think of charge, current, voltage. Current being a flow, voltage being a delta in potential.

You can have an incredible amount of "excessive heat from elsewhere" but if it's in the form of 100000t of pwater at 49C, you can't use that to help in your example.

In order to preheat something you need something hotter than it. Hotter does not mean "with extra heat" it mean "with higher temperature". 

100000t of pwater at 49C contain much more heat than 100kg at 100C. But in your example, 100000t can't be used to preheat your material that is already at 50C. Instead, you can use 100kg at 100C for that purpose, despite it has incredibly less heat that 100000t at 50C.

Hence my statement, it's temperature you need, not heat.

The job of the AT is to increase the temperature not to increase the amount of heat. It's not adding extra heat that saves you from using an AT, it's having something already hot enough. It's not about heat, it's about temperature.

Actually a petroleum boiler is a perfect example of that. The counterflow exchanger does all the preheating. You don't use external heat for that (at least in most designs). You just need something hot enough, and people on this forum went long ways to try and minimize the heat flow it needs.

Heat flow (not heat itself) causes temperature changes, and a temperature change is what makes oil turn into petroleum. We can't make the flow zero, but we try. I decided to use an AT to create an opposite flow. I do use power, but it's not to create heat, it's to create a flow. There are zero heat sources in my boiler (well, excluding a liquid pump).

Some people prefer not to do that. They use something with temperature high enough, and let heat flow out of it. It's the heat flow that makes the  boiler work. Heat moves through it but it's not consumed, or converted into anything.

When you attach a boiler to the magma biome, you're letting heat flow - a very tiny amount - out of it. It doesn't disappear from the map. It's in the petroleum that comes out. As a whole, the asteroid isn't getting any colder.

Compare this with a geothermal plant with turbines. Heat is extracted and converted into power. It's removed from the map, and electrical energy is added. In the process, the asteroid gets a lot colder. With 12 turbines running at 850W each (about 10kW, the same of 5 petroleum generator in a typical 10kg/s boiler scenario), a lot colder. Really a lot.

If the devs fix the 1.5C reset temp in "phase" change bug, which causes unexpected heat deletion in the oil -> petroleum conversion, I think people with the knowledge of @mathmanican may even be able to design a boiler that needs such a small heat flow that it may go below the threshold the game uses to track temperature changes. At that point you just need something hot enough.

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Right, but that's all dependent on range. As long as you have a material colder than the material you want to cool, that you don't want to be colder, you save power even without at AT. 

 

Most obvious example would be using volcanoes for... Well, anything other than just raw resources. 

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1 hour ago, Yunru said:

Most obvious example would be using volcanoes for... Well, anything other than just raw resources. 

If I have followed the conversation correctly, that has been your main point, Yunru. You could dump your volcano into a slush geyser and watch the temperature equalize just for fun, and then separately run an AT in a petrol boiler.

OR

Pipe the crude to the volcano, with higher temperature, extract the heat to create hot petroleum, then pipe that to the slush geyser to cool the petroleum, dump the heat to the slush. No need for the AT.

So while the second scenario doesn’t directly create power, it does help your power budget.

1 hour ago, TheMule said:

a lot colder. Really a lot.

Haha, yeah. I have a simple AT/turbine set up next to my rockets to convert rocket heat to power; the AT is there to cool the turbines and create the LOX/LH2.

So yeah, turbines are a hugely effective way to convert heat to power, and freeze the world (or liquify, in the case of gasses).

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14 hours ago, Yunru said:

Right, but that's all dependent on range. As long as you have a material colder than the material you want to cool, that you don't want to be colder, you save power even without at AT. 

 

Most obvious example would be using volcanoes for... Well, anything other than just raw resources. 

A good example: a volcano provides very hot stuff, but not a lot of heat. You can't run 12 ST on a single volcano. That's the difference between temperature and heat. 

"as long as you have a material colder than..." means that you're looking at the temperature, not heat, literally. 

13 hours ago, yoakenashi said:

the slush geyser

Yes, it's having the right temperatures to create the heat flows you need that saves power. Heat is not involved, excluding the 1.5C phase reset bug. 

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40 minutes ago, TheMule said:

create the heat flows [...] Heat is not involved

Well then, isn't that the paradox. You need to create heat flows, but heat isn't involved?

It's almost like the distinction between heat and temperature of yours is entirely arbitrary :P

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2 hours ago, Yunru said:

Well then, isn't that the paradox. You need to create heat flows, but heat isn't involved?

It's almost like the distinction between heat and temperature of yours is entirely arbitrary :P

That's why I made the electricity analogy.  The physical phenomenons caused by charges and those caused by moving charges, and those cause by differences of potential are completely different. It would be incorrect to say that the PSU in your PC consumes electrons (charges). Electricity is about potentials, or rather, their difference (we call voltage) and the flow of electrons (we call current).

We actually started taking advantages of the physical phenomenons that depend on voltage and those that depend on current long before we learned about electrons.  The difference between charge, current and voltage is not a paradox, it's not an arbitrary distinction I make.

Let me make another analogy. I would be incorrect to say that a hydroelectric power plant converts water into electricity, despite the name. Water isn't involved in the process, in the sense that it comes out exaclty as it goes in. It's completely unaltered. Changing the position of something is completely different from changing something.

What creates power is water flow, not water.

You can use a pump to push water into a turbine. Create a flow and use it to create electricity. It can't be power positive, of course, but you can do that. You're not changing the water, you're just moving it around, and it's its movement (the flow) that creates electricity.

So what do you need for a power plant? You need a way to create a flow w/o a pump. One way is to use a difference in height (technically gravitational potential). You can have all the water in the world, but you can't get electricity if there's no mean to create a flow.

What creates the opportunity for a gain in energy is the difference in height. That's the thing you need.

You say: wait, water isn't involved in the process? how's that? Well, try and replace water with another liquid with the same properties. The hydroelectric power plant works just the same. It does not depend on water. What matters is potential energy. A better name for it would be gravipower, not hydropower.

Compare to what we do in ONI with a hydrogen power plant. Water is changed in the process. The amount of energy produced is proportional to the amount of water consumed. Now, that's a thing that converts water into power.

Really, water, the flow of water, the (gravitational) potential are three very different concepts.

Charge, the flow of charge, the (electrical) potential are three different concepts.

Heat, the flow of heat, the temperature are three different concepts.

The analogy isn't 100% accurate (temperature is kinetic energy), but there is an analogy.

 

Want another, less accurate, analogy? 

Other than it's a bit poisonous, I have no problem with 5kg of lead. I can hold it, I could use it to exercise.

I'm not concerned about walking around my house holding it. It create a "flow" of lead, 5kg at about what? 1m/s? 0.5m/s? Not a problem.

But, I'd rather stay away from a flow of lead at 500 m/s, even if it's only a few grams of it, if you know what I mean.

It doesn't matter if it's exacltly the same flow as me walking around the room holding a 5kg weight. It's not the flow per se the problem.

It doesn't matter if it's way less lead. The amount of lead is not the problem. It's not the material even, if it were copper I wound't be happy either.

The difference between the speed of the bullet and my speed running away from it is the problem. Or at least the biggest part of it.

The physical phenomenons caused by lead, the flow of lead, and by even a small flow of it when the speed difference is huge, are completely different.

Lead, the flow of lead, the speed of it are three very different concepts. Again it's not a paradox, it's not an arbitrary distinction I make.

 

I don't know what else to say. Maybe that the amount of heat in a warm bathtub is incredibly larger than the amount of heat in the tip of a solder, but when you touch both with your hand you learn the difference between heat and temperature the hard way, enough not to forget about it for the rest of your life? :)

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2 hours ago, Yunru said:

It's almost like the distinction between heat and temperature of yours is entirely arbitrary :P

The distinction isn’t arbitrary. Heat is dependent on an elements specific heat and mass. If every element had the same specific heat and mass, then changes in heat would equal changes in temperature.

But we have all seen how aquatuners can actually cool the O2 in a base by removing the heat and dumping it into a pool of water. That water with its high mass and high specific heat take a long time to increase in temperature, all the while keeping your base (mainly O2 with low mass and low specific heat) cool.

3 hours ago, TheMule said:

Yes, it's having the right temperatures to create the heat flows you need that saves power. Heat is not involved

I do disagree with how this is worded. Essentially all temperature changes involve heat; the two are tied together be specific heat and mass. I think, and correct me if I interpret you incorrectly, you are considering heat transfer into or out of a certain boundary.

For example in a AT petroleum boiler you say the heat transfer and heat moved is zero. That may be the case into and out of the boiler, but within the boiler there is heat transfer. As crude is warmed, heat is transferred from your high temperature area to the oil to turn it into petroleum. The high temp area loses heat and therefore cools. Conversely the new petroleum transfers heat to your low temperature area causing it to warm. Your AT is then needed to move that heat from the low temperature area to the hot temperature area.

Result: Net transfer of heat inside the boiler “lots”, net transfer of heat into/out of the boiler, near zero.

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On 10/17/2020 at 3:45 PM, yoakenashi said:

Essentially all temperature changes involve heat; the two are tied together be specific heat and mass. I think, and correct me if I interpret you incorrectly, you are considering heat transfer into or out of a certain boundary.

I differentiate between heat and the flow of heat. Temperature changes do not necessarily involve heat. Most of then time, it's just heat moving.

In general, to me an object and its position are two different things. You can change an object w/o changing its position. You can chance its position w/o changing the object. 

Question: when you put a hot body and a cold body in contact, what changes? There's a heat transfer, their temperatures change. Does heat change? No. It just moves. In that sense, heat (= the amount of thermal energy) is not involved in the process. Heat is not "converted" into anything.

I'm making this point because a turbine operates differently. If you compare before and after, heat does change. Heat is converted into energy.
 

 

On 10/17/2020 at 3:45 PM, yoakenashi said:

For example in a AT petroleum boiler you say the heat transfer and heat moved is zero.

No. I said the opposite, literally.

On 10/15/2020 at 4:15 PM, TheMule said:

 A petroleum boiler does not consume heat. It just moves it.

On 10/16/2020 at 9:27 PM, TheMule said:

Heat flow (not heat itself) causes temperature changes, and a temperature change is what makes oil turn into petroleum. We can't make the flow zero, but we try. I decided to use an AT to create an opposite flow. I do use power, but it's not to create heat, it's to create a flow. There are zero heat sources in my boiler (well, excluding a liquid pump).

I wrote that zero heat is created, I never wrote that zero heat is moved. Just by the fact that there's an AT, heat is moved. I use the AT to create a loop, essentially. Yes, it's a closed loop, meaning the external flow is zero.

Other than the 1.5C reset thing, the liquid pump that adds 2kDTU/s, and the SHC difference between oil and petroleum, no heat is created/destroyed.

Other people who use a thermium AT usually include a tepidizer as heat source. They let (a bit of) heat out of the system via the petroleum, and they need to add back some now and then. I use a second heat exchanger between the supercoolant and the outgoing petroleum, instead of the tepidizer. BTW I make no claims about my system being better in any way. Nor that it was clever thinking. I just had no space for a tepidizer and decided to use outgoing petroleum instead. I doubt it makes much difference, the energy spent by the tepidizer in those designs is minimal. Actually the tepidizer versions are much easier to start up. In my case, the secondary exchanger had little thermal buffer and the AT created temperatures way below petroleum freezing point... I had to add a valve on the outgoing pipe to reduce the flow to 1kg/s to avoid breaking the pipe, and had to store -200C petroleum in a reservoir. Later I mixed it with 100C petroleum once an equilibrium in the boiler was reached.

But the whole point is that a petroleum boiler does not need a heat source.

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3 hours ago, TheMule said:
On 10/17/2020 at 8:45 AM, yoakenashi said:

For example in a AT petroleum boiler you say the heat transfer and heat moved is zero.

No. I said the opposite, literally.

No, you have said a few times that heat does not change and heat is not involved.

On 10/15/2020 at 9:15 AM, TheMule said:

A boiler doesn't change the amount of heat.

...

the amount of heat stays the same.

 

On 10/17/2020 at 5:24 AM, TheMule said:

Heat is not involved

But heat is involved and heat does change because you have heat flow. The temperature around an AT increases along with the temperature because the mass and elements remain constant.

Heat is not “somehow” related to temperature, is directly related per specific heat and mass.

Your view of heat is global (which is why I made the comment about a closed system), but when you transfer heat from area A to area B heat decreases in area A and increases in area A.

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4 minutes ago, yoakenashi said:

No, you have said a few times that heat does not change and heat is not involved.

Correct. That's what I said. Instead you wrote:

On 10/17/2020 at 3:45 PM, yoakenashi said:

For example in a AT petroleum boiler you say the heat transfer and heat moved is zero.

Heat and heat flow (transfer) are two different concepts to me. A process may involve heat flow w/o involving heat. If something is untouched by a process, then it's not involved in it. Heat is an amount of energy (thermal). In heat transfers the amount of energy doesn't change. Only its distribution (position).

OTOH, in a heat deletion process, heat is involved, by definition.

The fact that heat moves doesn't imply that heat changes. The fact that heat changes doesn't mean that heat moves. They are two different concepts.

If you move your car 10 meters down the road you still have a car (movement isn't change). If something destroys your car that's different. It's possible without moving it but you no longer have a car (change isn't movement).

When I say 'nobody destroyed you car' that doesn't mean it's still in the same place.

When I say 'zero heat changes' that doesn't mean 'no heat transfer'.

 

4 minutes ago, yoakenashi said:

But heat is involved and heat does change because you have heat flow. The temperature around an AT increases along with the temperature because the mass and elements remain constant.

Heat is not “somehow” related to temperature, is directly related per specific heat and mass.

I said that heat, heat flow and temperature are three very different concepts. I've never said there're are completely unrelated.

When an AT runs, heat doesn't change. It's just moved around. From the coolant to the AT itself. It's not a process that creates or destroys heat. Heat changes for you only because you're looking at the AT only. If you look at the coolant too, heat doesn't change.

Please define 'specific heat'. I know of SHC. SHC is defined in terms of deltas, not absolute quantities.

4 minutes ago, yoakenashi said:

Your view of heat is global (which is why I made the comment about a closed system), but when you transfer heat from area A to area B heat decreases in area A and increases in area A.

Correct (assuming that the second A is B). But do we agree that heat in A + heat in B = constant? I just look at both sides of the equation. It's not necessarily a "global" view, it's a complete view. Of course heat in A changes, but you can't ignore what happens in B.

Say that A is hotter than B. If A is left alone (perfect insulation) heat doesn't change. You put B in contact with A. You can say that heat in A decreases, but your system is no longer just A, it's both A and B, and if you say "heat in the system has decreased", you're just ignoring part of it. If you consider the A+B system, heat hasn't changed. This is an example of a situation in which what happens is a heat flow but zero changes in the heat.

Of course you can choose what "the system" is at your convenience. You can say that heat flows out of A and that causes a decrease in heat. But we both know there's a B out there, we can use to balance the equation of heat. And we know that because, w/o B, no change happens.
That's what you did above with the AT. Yes if you look only at the AT, its temperature increases, there's an increase in heat. But we both know there's a B out there, the coolant, that balances the heat equation to zero. The change in heat exists only in a partial view of what's happening. In a complete view, heat doesn't change, its only moves from B to A. It's flow w/o change.

Compare to what a steam turbine does. Say A is a steam chamber (at 200C) and a steam turbine. It's completely insulated. As the turbine runs, the heat in A decreases. I can say  "the heat in the system decreases" and there's no B. I'm not ignoring anything. You can't balance the heat equation. Heat doesn't flow out at all. Heat in A decreases because it is deleted. It's change w/o flow.

Take a insulated pool of water with a tepidizer in it. Heat doesn't flow in yet heat in A increases. You can have both a positive and a negative change in heat with heat flow being zero (maybe if you consider A's components there's an internal flow, but we're looking at A as a whole).

 

Both the turbine and the tepidizer are conversion processes. One converts heat into electrical energy (causes a negative change in heat and a positive change in energy), the other converts energy into heat (a positive change in heat and a negative change in electrical energy). Processes that just move heat around (or use its natural flow thanks to temperature) are not conversion processes.

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On 10/4/2020 at 3:22 PM, cupcakex said:

How can I cool the Polymer Press in the Oil Biome?  I'm making Plastic in the Oil Biome, but darn thing keeps overheating. How can I keep it below 125 C?

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If you have the luxury access of steel, that`s really good with a high temperature limit.

In the beginning of a colony I use Gold Amalgam

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+ Tempshift plates. In my current colony the Presses are soaked in Natural Gas, which takes their heat. The Natural Gas is sucked up and burnt, so that heat goes "away" by getting rid of the gas. So soaking them in gas is good :D Especially if you then get rid of that gas. My gas generators are powering steam engines, that`s where the press heat finally ends in my colony:

Plastic Press > Natural Gas > Gas Generator > Steam Engine

As alternative or additionally you can also attach a simple timer or temperature sensor to the Press, so that it switches off after time or if the temp gets too hot. Gas is often a great solution to soak up heat.

Other colonists have other great ideas and solutions. Its also possible to have fluids dripping down on to the Press ( or any other machinery ) to cool it down. The trick is to not have too much fluid on the floor, to avoid the machine switching off due to water flooding. Remember that dripping fluid on the floor will also get hotter and hotter, this game is always about making the best out of temperature. Happy ONi :x:angel::x

image.thumb.png.f9b5acc947cdeafe0504a074ea0e2e7d.png

 

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