Steel-less Volcano Tamers using only common refined metal (like Iron) for Sweepers etc.

[blakemw]

Making builds that don't use Steel (or Thermium) is something I've been playing around with for about a year, but it took a while to come up with a design that replaced the Shipping components with steel-less substitutes that I was really happy with. 

The basic issues is that Iron machines have an overheat temperature of 125 C, but a Steam Turbine doesn't even start up until temperatures reach 125 C, hence a temperature differential "exploit" is required.

The heart of this build is an Autosweeper in a Liquid Lock to the bottom-left of the Volcano.



From this very particular position the Autosweeper can reach the tiles under the Volcano where the refined metal debris fall. The liquid lock also makes it possible to have a vacuum to the left hand side, and by positioning and orientating the Conveyor Loader correctly the refined metal is being stored in vacuum while the Loader is still being cooled. There are also a number of places where you could build Storages if you want to expand the vacuum storage of hot metal for slow release during the dormant period.

Now I'm sure some players are already getting ready to type: "just have the sweeper grab through a diagonal", but good luck coming up with a diagonal sweep build as miserly in terms of components and as compact as this one.

Now for how this design stays cool. The exhaust water from the Steam Turbines should be dripped directly onto the Autosweeper, this means the Autosweeper will be directly cooled by the exhaust water. We are exploiting the fact that there is a 625x multiplier for liquid:liquid heat transfer, but only a 1x multiplier for liquid:gas heat transfer. Even though the exhaust water only briefly exists as liquid, during that brief existence it is exchanging heat at 625x speed into the liquid lock, but the liquid lock itself only exchanges heat very slowly with the steam.

The liquid lock should ideally be filled with Naphtha which has a very low thermal conductivity, but in practice Crude Oil or Petroleum work just fine too because heat transfer between Steam and Liquid is just that slow. But Naphtha does work better if you care to make some (but you can use Crude Oil for the bottom tile). You could also use Liquid Phosphorus if you feel like being different, it works well.

Most Basic Build

Now I'll move onto what is probably the most basic working build, a modified self-cooled Steam Turbine Volcano Tamer:


This build can certainly benefit from improvements, but I show it as about the simplest possible implementation. As previously noted, the Autosweeper and Conveyor Loader can be made of Iron as they are cooled directly by the exhaust water. Meanwhile, we want to eliminate the need for a Steel Conveyor Shutoff - the 100 kg of Steel for a Shutoff is truly trifling but it's the principle of the matter, dammit! The solution here is to only trickle the refined Iron out. An Iron Volcano only produces Iron at a rate of about 0.5 kg/s during its active period so there is no good reason to release Iron from the build at a rate faster than that. A Timer Sensor set to 1/40 means that a 20 kg lump of iron will be released every 40 s, meaning Iron exits the system at a rate of 0.5 kg/s. This forces the Iron in the system to dwell for long enough to equalize temperature with the steam room.

Generally, iron will exit this design at 125-160 C, which we can certainly improve upon!

A note about Tempshift Plates:
I would advise placing a single Tempshift Plate behind the volcano. It should be made of a terrible material, preferably Mafic Rock or Obsidian, this is adequate to instantly condense the molten Iron, but it ensures as much heat as possible is retained in the refined Iron debris and that limits the steam temperature surge during an eruption, using a high conductivity material will make the tamer work worse. It is also critical that the Tempshift Plate not transfer heat into the liquid lock or the tile above the liquid lock (where the exhaust water momentarily exists). So basically don't place Tempshift Plates on the left side of the Volcano. Also make sure no other building (like liquid bridge) can conduct heat from the steam into the liquid lock.

A Bigger and Better Build

This is a more realistic design which is definitely stable long term and lowers the Iron exit temperature to about 105 C.

I move from 2 Steam Turbines to 3 Steam Turbines. It so happens that the most puny Iron Volcanoes actually can be tamed by 2 self-cooled Steam Turbines, but the more violent ones definitely require 3, so if you don't want to sit down and run the numbers, it's always safest to just use 3 Steam Turbines.

I also add a secondary debris heat exchanger under the Iron Volcano. The exhaust water provides a great deal of surplus cooling above and beyond what the shipping machines require, and so I use a fairly typical "Door sandwich" to transfer heat from the secondary heat exchanger into the liquid lock, with a mostly precautionary temperature sensor which opens the door if the lock is too hot (which is unlikely).

I also use a pair of Liquid Vents. One of them drips directly into the liquid lock, but the other drips onto the insulated tiles: that one is used for cooling the steam down if it exceeds 137 C. It will normally be disabled but I find this a useful measure to avoid "hot spots" forming in the steam chamber.

The other overlays aren't doing anything fancy.

You can also use an Iron Ore Aquatuner

If you are a member of the cult of Aquatuners and firmly believe that a build without an Aquatuner is an unholy abomination, then an Aquatuner is easily integrated.



As shown, you can simply make the Liquid Lock deeper and build an Iron Ore Aquatuner inside it where it will be cooled by the exhaust water allowing it to operate at a temperature well below 125 C. You need to take the automation signal which activates the Aquatuner and AND it with a Thermo Sensor set to say < 123 C as a failsafe against overheating the Liquid Lock.

As long as there is a primary heat source to heat the steam to over 125 C and trigger the Steam Turbine(s) to activate you can run the Aquatuner, not nearly at full uptime but enough to do the basics like cooling the Steam Turbine and cooling the refined metal a bit extra. I personally would not recommend an Aquatuner though.

Rejected "Oxygen Layer" Design

Finally I want to share one of the inventions I rejected along the way, not because it didn't work, but because it wasn't as elegant as I would like:

It's not very obvious, but the Autosweeper and the Conveyor Loader are actually sitting in a layer of oxygen gas trapped against the ceiling. If you've ever experienced a layer of low pressure oxygen gas blocking the Steam Turbine inlets in a not properly vacuumed out steam chamber you'll know exactly what I mean, but in this case a special place is provided for the oxygen layer to accumulate where it will not bother the Steam Turbines but provides very useful insulation for the Sweeper and Loader.

In ONI gas:gas heat transfer is very slow (as it only has a 1x multiplier) but convection results in much higher practical heat transfer in gas, by convection, I mean tiles swapping places and carrying their heat with them, so even though the tiles aren't exchanging heat with each other very fast, they are rapidly swapping places so the heat is still moving around rapidly. But gases of different types are not allowed to swap places vertically except on the basis of density, so the Steam:Oxygen transition acts as an absolute barrier against convective heat transfer, heat in the steam only gets into the oxygen very slowly. The machines are cooled by the exhaust water from the Steam Turbines, which is Valved to 1000 g/s and runs through Radiant Pipes behind the oxygen layer. Furthermore, heat transfer between debris and oxygen gas is not very fast because it uses the lowest thermal conductivity and Oxygen is not very conductive, so storing 1000 C+ iron debris in oxygen is surprisingly manageable with the exhaust water cooling.

This design actually does accomplish the purpose of allowing the use of common metal conveyor machines and it does so perfectly well. But I don't love it because it requires valving and the oxygen layer is arguably fickle, it actually does form very reliably but it can also be destroyed by construction mishaps. Basically compared with dripping the exhaust water into a liquid lock I find it too "busy".

Naturally I also experimented with heavy gas insulation, like putting the Sweeper in a layer of chlorine gas in a put on the floor, which also can be made to work but suffers badly from disruption by stray liquids.

However I feel that the gas layer approach, whether a light gas or heavy gas, has potential for using machines (including Steel or even Thermium) in an environment much too hot for them to exist, like an environment with rock gas or something, because it can easily allow for extremely high temperature deltas.

[thegroundbelow]

This is a fantastic little project, and I'm sad there aren't more people replying to this thread. Good work!

[Yunru]

I had limited success with a downwards door pump letting liquid metal flow into a hydrogen cooling chamber.
The hard part is ensuring the doors receive enough cooling. (Tested with just the cool the hydrogen offered, and it was insufficient, didn't test with a cooling loop in addition.)