Creating ceramic without the Kiln

[Lilscratchy]

Honestly the logistics and pace of creating ceramics have always bugged me. I mean, i could automate supplying clay to kilns but more often than not deodorizers arent conveniently located in one spot. This means expending dupe labour or expending power and materials to get the clay to my kiln(s) . And their output is relatively low compared to how expensive making ceramic insulated tiles is.

Ive been wanting to speed up this process somehow, without needing to have many kilns running constantly since ultimately, they require dupe labour in some form to get the clay to them, in my experience at least. 

Only recently i noticed that clay turns into ceramic when heated naturally, so the kiln wouldnt be exactly necessary for production. I kind of assumed that the only way was with coal, through a kiln. On top of that when using the kiln you lose 20% of the mass put in when creating ceramic (100kg clay+ 25kg coal= 100kg cermanic) 

So, i've been thinking. How feasible is it to create ceramic by heating say... some diamond window tiles through magma, a thermal injector and running the clay through the tiles with conveyor rails, and to then rid yourself of the heat of 900+ degree ceramic by running it through a steamroom, generating power in the process? 

Has anyone tried? Should i try and see if this maybe is a useful contraption to experiment with and potentially implement? 

[babba]

Industrial ceramic production would be superb

[nakomaru]

You lose 20% mass through the kiln, or 33% mass through hatches+kiln, but you lose 50% mass through digging solidified ceramic tiles.

You don't need dupe labor - you can produce clay all in once spot, and tons of it per cycle: Claymator v1, v2, v3

[Lilscratchy]

4 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

You lose 20% mass through the kiln, but you lose 50% mass through digging solidified ceramic tiles.

You don't need dupe labor - you can produce clay all in once spot: Claymator v1, v2, v3

Right i forgot to take into account 50%loss of mass when digging. Does this count for robominers as well? 

I know about the claymator (s) do they still hold up? Havent PH20 ofgassing rates been capped/nerfed as of the spaced out! DLC? On top of that i like hoarding polluted water for some crops or as a back up for my clean water supply. So i never really considered building one of these. 

[babba]

11 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

You lose 20% mass through the kiln, or 33% mass through hatches+kiln, but you lose 50% mass through digging solidified ceramic tiles.

You don't need dupe labor - you can produce clay all in once spot, and tons of it per cycle: Claymator v1, v2, v3

What about a "Ceramicator V1.0" dear nakomaru

[nakomaru]

v1 still works - I'd recommend modifying it to include mesh+airflow tiles and/or bypass pumps to avoid pumps.

In the base game, use v1 or v2. (base game → use one massive tile)

In the DLC, use v1 or v3. (DLC → use 1T per tile and several tiles)

[babba]

...Ceramic production without kiln and without creatures, whats your thinking on that my dear friend

I would love to have an industrial ceramic production process in the game

31 minutes ago, Lilscratchy said:

...

So, i've been thinking. How feasible is it to create ceramic by heating say... some diamond window tiles through magma, a thermal injector and running the clay through the tiles with conveyor rails, and to then rid yourself of the heat of 900+ degree ceramic by running it through a steamroom, generating power in the process? 

Has anyone tried? Should i try and see if this maybe is a useful contraption to experiment with and potentially implement? 

[nakomaru]

@babba The Ceramifier would probably look pretty similar to this build (with a better heat exchanger), but you would need a robominer to dig the ceramic. Maybe you will appreciate the scale.

[Lilscratchy]

The 50% mas loss is a shame Even when saving on the coal put in, losing 50 of the mass in terms of clay when 'cooking' seems even worse, as clay isnt as easily renewable as the coal you'd lose by firing the clay up in a kiln. 

Bummer, i really liked the idea. But its far from feasible. 

[babba]

@nakomaru

Okok...But, a feasable solution for "Normal" players would be great - Hoping for someone doing Ceramicator 1.0 without abusing the editor to the max and/or for Klei to implement a "Normal" Industrial Ceramic Production process

[Lilscratchy]

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

@babba The Ceramifier would probably look pretty similar to this build, but you would need a robominer to dig the ceramic. Maybe you will appreciate the scale.

 

Ahh yess the good ole regolith melter. I definitely appreciate the scale of builds like this. I think i made it in one of my worlds as a massive endgame project before retiring the save and starting over. I guess the only way a 'ceramifier' as you named it (love the name) would not be a massive waste if you could reliably get clay from a renewable source of ph20 and quickly turn it into large quantities of ceramic despite the mass loss. 

Idk if its realistically a trade off anyone would want to make, but i'll toy with it for a bit. 

[Fyrel]

Not sure if the deodorizer has an overheat temperature with the DLC changes I have used magma to heat polluted oxygen to high temperatures before feeding it into the deodorizer before to make it output ceramic directly.

[babba]

4 minutes ago, Fyrel said:

Not sure if the deodorizer has an overheat temperature with the DLC changes I have used magma to heat polluted oxygen to high temperatures before feeding it into the deodorizer before to make it output ceramic directly.

That is an interesting concept, thank you for sharing That deodorizer idea would have never come to my mind, playing the game without editor.

[nakomaru]

That directly heated PO2 approach sounds awesome. There's no overheat temperature for the deodorizer still, so it seems perfectly doable.

Sketch of Ceramifier v0.5. No space age tech required.

[babba]

@Ipsquiggle @mathmanican Perhaps consider making the editor directly available from the main menu, calling it "Chemistry Mode" + offering the best 100 user setups as startup choices -> It would cater for Factorio, Tweakers, Children/Parents and Educational players perfectly.

 

@nakomaru Awesome video, thank you. Having lava heat up gas very hot is still somewhat do-able for "beginners " of the game, if they have played thousands of cycles in non-debug...It`s still a hardcore performance, as the players need to get the non melting materials together to withstand heat ( accidents ) and it takes long time building the setup and creating a working situation work environment in non-debug. Most players will use the kiln to produce ceramic, I would welcome Klei implementing an additional way of making ceramic...Or they leave it as it is for people to figure it out watching movies and reading our stuff

The only reason why I`m not playing in the editor is that I would not play the normal game anymore - I know the editor is awesome, it has always been. I want to focus on my nuke-steam-rocket-mass-silo in the normal game, once the rockets are fully back - That`s enough dedication and time sink for me.

[nakomaru]

A user friendly version of debug is already in the game called sandbox mode and it's pretty easy to access. You should play however you enjoy, but using sandbox/debug for testing builds doesn't mean you don't have to play the normal game.

This above contraption is easy to build with steel and ceramic in a normal game, but only after figuring it out first. (Obviously, the magma represents whatever magma source you have, and you will need to vacuum out a room to begin with.)

I tried out several variations of (piped) magma pumps before I figured out this one thanks to debug. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a magma pump quite like this one. It reliably delivers just a small amount of magma each time it's cycled. I'm definitely going to use it in my next boiler.

[babba]

Yes, but the idea is to have it as main menu point, which can be selected - Called something like "Chemistry Mode"

....Marketing, directly addressing and setting up the corresponding audience.

Once a player clicks on the Chemistry mode in the main menu, he could be presented with the best Steam Workshop Builds for that mode ( Editor ). If your builds would be highly Steam rated, they would appear on top in the "Chemistry Mode" Preset screen

Its like a game in a game, the game you are used to play a lot ( the editor game ). It would just be presented in a better way, directly to everyone. When I started playing debug years ago I totally got hooked up on it, its so great. In the beginning of this game I built a super fast computer for ONi debug mode play. Playing debug with 500 dupes was amazing fun !

[Lilscratchy]

12 hours ago, nakomaru said:

That directly heated PO2 approach sounds awesome. There's no overheat temperature for the deodorizer still, so it seems perfectly doable.

Sketch of Ceramifier v0.5. No space age tech required.

 

 

Damn that's a shame, ive been working on something myself, guess i cant name it ceramifier anymore lmao. amazing design, directly heating po2 is something that never wouldve sprung to mind for me. Here's what ive been working on:
 

[Occam Blazer]

Just did a quick-n-dirty. Heating up the pO2 works. Ceramic also comes out as tiles instead of debris.

The specific heat capacities of all the materials are pretty close together so I don't think there's any advantage to doing it or the other. Directly heating pO2 might spin up faster because the heat transfer calculations use but I think the heat efficiency should be very similar in both cases.

[nakomaru]

A big difference between our designs is that The Ceramifier v0.5 outputs around 40-70C igneous rock/ceramic, so almost all of the heat from the lava is used efficiently to cook ceramic.

[babba]

34 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

A big difference between our designs is that The Ceramifier v0.5 outputs around 40-70C igneous rock/ceramic, so almost all of the heat from the lava is used efficiently to cook ceramic.

I like your concept of transporting material on the belt through aqua-tuned water ( with steam engines above ), I will use that concept for my future non-debug play.

It is temp efficient, clever and I find it a very helpful general method tip

In my case that would be riding all hot material through my big steam-engine-aquatuner-rocket-silo, I started doing that in the old base game but did not really focus much on the method - Mainly because I did not have super-hot fabricated materials at the time in that colony.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, occamrazor said:

Just did a quick-n-dirty. Heating up the pO2 works. Ceramic also comes out as tiles instead of debris.

Ahh, I was going to say if it doesn't turn into a solid tile inside the deoderizer then what if you just stick 20t of it into a storage compactor and cover it with magma?

[Lilscratchy]

5 hours ago, nakomaru said:

A big difference between our designs is that The Ceramifier v0.5 outputs around 40-70C igneous rock/ceramic, so almost all of the heat from the lava is used efficiently to cook ceramic.

Thats true, i kind of left that out of consideration. I figured since ceramic is a good material for insulating it wont really shed its heat into the surroundings at a rate that isnt manageable. Of course in insulated tiles it wont, but on itself its different. Probably a lapse in judgement. 

Do you happen to have numbers on the polluted water requirement for a single claymator like the one i used? Im trying to see if a single petroleum boiler of 10kg/s could, through petroleum generators provide the PH20 required to feed a ceramifier. Maybe i can use the output ceramic to preheat the incoming crude oil a bit. I might be able to drag the temperature down to something below at least 80C. 

Of course it wouldnt be as elegant of a solution to the output temperature. 

Also how much ceramic are you getting out of your build per... Cycle or so? What outputs does a claymator (the 918kg of oxygen per cycle variant) reach in terms of clay? 

Im okay with estimating approximates, but not very good with exact calculations of numbers. 

Honestly i'm legitimately having so much fun toying with a concept like this, depite chucking away 50% of the produced mass of ceramic due to digging. 

5 hours ago, babba said:

I like your concept of transporting material on the belt through aqua-tuned water ( with steam engines above ), I will use that concept for my future non-debug play.

It is temp efficient, clever and I find it a very helpful general method tip

In my case that would be riding all hot material through my big steam-engine-aquatuner-rocket-silo, I started doing that in the old base game but did not really focus much on the method - Mainly because I did not have super-hot fabricated materials at the time in that colony.

Like Nomomaru pointed out its not as efficient as putting out 40 to 70 degree ceramic. 

I can draw some power out of it, but i cant get it below 125 degrees. I might have to get creative and say integrate it with preheating crude, which would coincide nicely with me trying to see if i can feed the entire thing with just the ph20 output of a 10kg/s  petroleum boiler - - > petroleum generator. 

Nevertheless steam turbines are always a nice way of leeching out some excessive amounts of heat out of anything. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 12/27/2020 at 3:09 PM, Lilscratchy said:

I know about the claymator (s) do they still hold up? Havent PH20 ofgassing rates been capped/nerfed as of the spaced out! DLC? On top of that i like hoarding polluted water for some crops or as a back up for my clean water supply. So i never really considered building one of these. 

In the DLC, the claymator is even better, because

Spoiler

you can create a building that dramatically increases the off-gas effect from polluted dirt.   Also, the deoderizers have been altered to include an automation port, allowing you to turn them on and off easily.  

You don't need to have doors opening and closing anymore, and you also don't need to figure out a way to get a lot of sublimating mass into a small tight area.

[psusi]

32 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

In the DLC, the claymator is even better, because

Yes, but you lose, what was it?  25% of the mass?

Also the discussion so far has been all about pwater, not pdirt.