Creating ceramic without the Kiln

[KittenIsAGeek]

If you're wanting to make a lot of clay very simply, then the stuff from the DLC makes it easier.  Of course, any time you use a building instead of a process, you're going to end up with material losses.  For example, you can get a lot more petroleum by boiling the oil yourself than by using the refinery.  However, the refinery is a much simpler process and still gets the job done. 

So really it boils down to what your goals are.  Do you want to make a lot of clay easily, or do you want to make a lot of clay without losses?

[babba]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

If you're wanting to make a lot of clay very simply, then the stuff from the DLC makes it easier.  Of course, any time you use a building instead of a process, you're going to end up with material losses.  For example, you can get a lot more petroleum by boiling the oil yourself than by using the refinery.  However, the refinery is a much simpler process and still gets the job done. 

So really it boils down to what your goals are.  Do you want to make a lot of clay easily, or do you want to make a lot of clay without losses?

I like both of the methods. In my old base game survival mode colony I used to have 20 refineries operated by dupes, which gave it the Factorio feeling I like so much. I always wanted to build an petroleum boiler, but then the dlc came along which lacks my beloved play content ( all rockets, big maps, the promised radiation/reactor and such ).

So once the dlc and base game are merged sometime in 2021 I am looking forward to play the game again, starting a new savegame and to build an petroleum boiler in to a fresh survival colony Can`t wait !

[nakomaru]

11 hours ago, Lilscratchy said:

I figured since ceramic is a good material for insulating it wont really shed its heat

It's not just about returning the materials to a nice temperature - it is more important to use the magma's heat efficiently, and if possible recover 100% of the mass of it without digging it, and return it to us as usable igneous rock (all of these are done). By using a turbine, you are deleting an enormous amount of the magma's potential. And eventually you're gonna be left with a bunch of messy 1000 C solid igneous rock tiles that you have to delete half of and clean up.

11 hours ago, Lilscratchy said:

how much ceramic are you getting out of your build

About 0.76T ceramic produced, and 0.35T magma consumed per cycle. By the way, I'm using 2000K (1727C) magma and 300K (27C) clay. (below is 3 cycle total)

You can trade off efficiency for production very simply with this build by changing the hot plate temperature. Changing it from >950C to >1100C increases the production to 1.65T ceramic & 0.86T magma per cycle at 100C. (below is 3 cycle total)

However, the problem of double deletion of mass becomes worse at high speed. When a ceramic debris is buried within a ceramic tile, it adds to the tile's mass. Whenever you see a line like "Picked up: 15kg ceramic" you've deleted twice. I added multiple sweepers to minimize this problem.

11 hours ago, Lilscratchy said:

What outputs does a claymator (the 918kg of oxygen per cycle variant) reach in terms of clay?

1316 kg clay/cycle.

I was hoping that deodorizers output ceramic as debris too, but because they output as tiles, there is no advantage to using them. Hot gasses are hard to work with and don't give us an advantage - stick with solids and liquids here.

10 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

any time you use a building instead of a process, you're going to end up with material losses.

In this case, kiln+hatches loses less mass (33%) than the mechanical process due to 50% digging loss.

But it's nowhere near as cool.

[Lilscratchy]

3 hours ago, nakomaru said:

It's not just about returning the materials to a nice temperature - it is more important to use the magma's heat efficiently, and if possible recover 100% of the mass of it without digging it, and return it to us as usable igneous rock (all of these are done). By using a turbine, you are deleting an enormous amount of the magma's potential. And eventually you're gonna be left with a bunch of messy 1000 C solid igneous rock tiles that you have to delete half of and clean up.

Ahh i see. I might be better off integrating it with a magma dropper turning the stuff into debris then. Im going to make some adjustments and see what kind of outputs i can get out of it in terms of igenous and ceramic. 

Im working with two sweepers so far. Seems like ceramic is incredibly easily dug up by the sweepers. With the way some tiles sometimes form in bursts, one after another very rapidly, it seems like deleting mass twice is almost impossible to get around. Ill see if anything changes for the better if i just throw 4 sweepers at it or something. 

Ill work on recovering the igneous and see what numbers i get in terms of ceramic produced and magma used. 

[JRup]

5 hours ago, nakomaru said:

I was hoping that deodorizers output ceramic as debris too, but because they output as tiles

Did some fiddling around with heating different amounts of clay to find out if it could spawn as debris. The setup was trivial in debug/sandbox:

• Make a 1x1 magma pool with a "lid" tile on top, can be diamond window or steel bunker or whatever stands the heat. (so it's a magma filled donut.)
• Brush 0.1 of clay into a natural tile 2 places above then dig. Digging loses 50% of mass so we're left with 50g of clay dropping onto the hot plate as debris.

Even if you only cook 50 grams of the stuff it will become a tile. So that means any amount will forcibly spawn a tile, a natural one out of ceramic in this case. Coal also has this same effect... Although refined carbon is not as useful as ceramic (only practical use is the steel recipe so far...)

So, going a little bit OT here, but this can have some minor importance in natural tile spawning and using them with pips (and so on and so forth...)

[Lilscratchy]

okay so as things stand now,im using a magma dropper to turn the igneous into usable debris. i have my heating plate/area set to around 1000 degrees celsius. I've let this setup run for a full cycle, here are the results:

im using 1726,9 C magma, the clay coming into the system hovers at around 30.6 C to 31 C before its introduced to hot igneous rock.

I've let the thing run for its first full cycle after tweeks and such. So far ive gotten 780kg's of ceramic out of it, and used up 580kg's of Igneous Rock which came out of the heat exchanger at 68.2 C. 

Im going to see if i cant make it use a little less igneous rock for the same (or higher) output, i think there will be more gains to be made of efficiency, and im also looking to test out what numbers i get when i set the heating area to different temperatures. Like Nokomaru said it will probably be a tradeoff between production speed and efficiency.

when im done testing ill post some more pics or video's to show what ive got running now, along with some more results.

[nakomaru]

You are probably still not at steady state if you have such a cold output but high magma consumption. Might need to wait another 10 cycles to see if the exchanger temps are drifting.

The best I did after stopping was 1T ceramic, 350kg magma and output at 46-47C (scalable to higher outputs). You can see a full explanation of The Ceramifier v1 here. Thanks again for the inspiration.

[Lilscratchy]

13 hours ago, nakomaru said:

About 0.76T ceramic produced, and 0.35T magma consumed per cycle. By the way, I'm using 2000K (1727C) magma and 300K (27C) clay. (below is 3 cycle total)

You can trade off efficiency for production very simply with this build by changing the hot plate temperature. Changing it from >950C to >1100C increases the production to 1.65T ceramic & 0.86T magma per cycle at 100C. (below is 3 cycle total)

 

I think i'm doing something right. as far as i can tell im getting almost no double mass deletion, ive literally watched the conveyor rail while its been running, have only spotted one 15 kg packet of ceramic come by. Like you i've let my build run for 3 cycles after doing some major tweaking. Ceramics are still coming out kind of hot. but my 3 cycle total is 2.155T ceramic, while having used 0.66T of magma, with the igneous coming out at 75.9 C. Although not quite as high an output as yours after three cycles, i feel like im using relatively low amounts of magma. feel like i might need to work out something to get heat from the magma/ igneous into the clay quicker.

23 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

You are probably still not at steady state if you have such a cold output but high magma consumption. Might need to wait another 10 cycles to see if the exchanger temps are drifting.

The best I did after stopping was 1T ceramic, 350kg magma and output at 46-47C (scalable to higher outputs). You can see a full explanation of The Ceramifier v1 here. Thanks again for the inspiration.

youre right, over time my output has slowly drifted up, however it seems to have stabilized now after a couple dozen cycles.

[nakomaru]

That's looking great. Smaller heat exchanger than mine and great ratio of rock to ceramic.

You can get your rock/ceramic to spend more time in the heat exchanger by having it stay on the top side, and zigzagging in the vacuum like this, because debris transfers heat with the tile below it.

However I tried a similar exchanger (the above) and I'm getting much worse results - like 200C-300C output. I wonder what the difference is.

I added element/filter/timer sensors to automate the vent, to keep things in the system to greatly improve upon that, which puts out around 45-50 C materials.

With 2x4 obsidian blocks and the same output scheme I can get 40-45C.

Spoiler

[Lilscratchy]

11 hours ago, nakomaru said:

You can get your rock/ceramic to spend more time in the heat exchanger by having it stay on the top side, and zigzagging in the vacuum like this, because debris transfers heat with the tile below it.

I added element/filter/timer sensors to automate the vent, to keep things in the system to greatly improve upon that, which puts out around 45-50 C materials.

  Reveal hidden contents

Aahh i didnt know debris exchanged heat with tiles below it. That'll definitely be helpful in dumping more heat into incoming clay. That'll likely also mean less loss in terms of efficiency when you force higher ceramic output by letting the heating brick reach a higher temperature right? 

Would it be of any benefit to add a third rail for ceramics alone? Or should i just dump it on the same rail as the outgoing igneous and separate them after they leave the heat exchanger? 

Anyhow, i'll fiddle around with it and get some numbers soon. 

[nakomaru]

You should use the same rail for both output materials, mostly because they have about the same starting temperature and are exchanging heat in the same direction.

[Lilscratchy]

1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

You should use the same rail for both output materials, mostly because they have about the same starting temperature and are exchanging heat in the same direction.

I see, ill also get rid of the steam room and make sure to dump as much heat from the ceramic as possible back into the clay

[Lilscratchy]

On 12/30/2020 at 11:55 AM, nakomaru said:

You should use the same rail for both output materials, mostly because they have about the same starting temperature and are exchanging heat in the same direction.

alright, i did it. im zigzagging the rails increasing the time clay, ceramic and igneous have to exchange heat, i got rid of the steam room and did some other minor tweaks. results are pretty good.

after letting it run for a bit i did another 3 cycle test. Here are the totals:

3.3313T of ceramic at 60.6 degrees

1.240 T of igenous Rock at 51.2 degrees

The ratio of igneous to ceramic is a little worse than last time i posted results, but i'm using slightly higher temperatures this time around. Also im now dealing with instances of maybe triple or quadruple mass deletion judging from the fact that the ceramics are not a nice rounded number. Looks like ill have to re-arrange my miners, sweepers and loaders a little

 

[Lilscratchy]

On 12/29/2020 at 9:52 AM, nakomaru said:

However, the problem of double deletion of mass becomes worse at high speed. When a ceramic debris is buried within a ceramic tile, it adds to the tile's mass. Whenever you see a line like "Picked up: 15kg ceramic" you've deleted twice. I added multiple sweepers to minimize this problem.

I think i found a way to negate double mass deletion. Put pneumatic doors down where the tiles spawn. The doors will get entombed but can be dug out, debris can be picked up. More importantly, debris that would normally be buried if a tile forms over it, now ends up on top of the newly formed tile. Check it out. The only instances of mass deletion now seem to be when a tile forms before the debris hits the ground after being dug up though. Ive also observed single tiles of 20 kg, turning into 5 kg of debris after being dug up. No instances of other tiles forming around it. I dont know the mechanics behind that *sigh*. But at least some of the mass loss can be negated further. 

[nakomaru]

@Lilscratchy AWESOME. Great find!

[Lilscratchy]

Here we go again. New tweaks, new tests.

After finding out how to prevent some of the mass deletion with pneumatic doors i let it all run for some time. And i did another test over 3 cycles. Results are as follows:

Clay goes in at around 28 degrees Celsius.

Magma used is still at a temperature of 1726.9 degrees Celsius

Ceramic output: 3.53T at 59.6 degrees Celsius.

magma/ igneous rock usage: 1.18T coming out at 49.5 degrees Celsius

The ratio of igneous rock to clay is around 0,3343 to 1

This is about the lowest ratio i've been able to get, normally characterized by low Ceramic output but now its produced the highest ceramic output i've ever gotten.

In short: Best results so far.