The PIMP (Precision Insulated Magma Pump) and The Ceramifier v1

[nakomaru]

I recently became inspired to optimize magma delivery and heat exchangers thanks to posts and questions from HeatEngine and Lilscratchy's threads (1, 2). I believe this is novel, but I don't follow sources outside of this forum. The most similar devices I know of are from JohnFrancis and Lifegrow, but they are not quite as precise and one isn't quite insulated (one is more of a traditional door pump).

Basically, you can put a door somewhere within the middle of a sideways lava flow to push out small bits of magma at a time (see around 2:30). The position and direction gives you more or less magma at a time.

I demonstrate a use of this by heating clay into ceramic and efficiently using the heat from both. With certain settings, you can process about 2T of clay, 1T of ceramic and 350kg of magma per cycle. These can be about doubled by increasing the temperature of the hot plate. (Due to the file size I needed to host it on YouTube.)

I forgot to cover that there is also a 1s-on, 4s-off timer hooked to a conveyer shutoff which limits the rate of the ceramic/rock that can be sent through the exchanger. This isn't really needed and may need to be tweaked during construction, but I added it to space out the heat delivery. Also, there are liquid/gas/automation bridges at various locations to shunt heat in the exchanger and boiler.

Of course kilns+hatches are more efficient, but nowhere near as cool.

An alternative, smaller obsidian exchanger gives me between 42-45C output, and simplifies the conveyer system by using element sensors on the hot end to control the vent.

Spoiler

[wachunga]

The Ceramifier is gloriously ridiculous. Well done.

If you really, really wanted to address the double mass deletion you could alternate between two "growth towers". Allow the ceramic tower(s) to grow to some arbitrary height detected by a weight plate. Then shunt the clay over to a secondary location. Knock down the first tower(s), collect the debris, and then wait for the secondary tower(s) to fill. Repeat. Would require multiple miners though. And collecting the debris in batches would subject you to the partial debris removal bug as well. You can break the bug easily enough but doing so is a bit of extra effort and complication.

 

As a side note, it may be worthwhile to do some baseline checks to see if Klei reintroduced any bugs in the DLC. Do the offscreen asteroids behave properly for example? The insulated ceramic tiles heating up seems weird to me also, somewhat like the old debris ignoring insulated property bug. I have no plans to purchase the DLC or I would investigate myself.

[nakomaru]

Another use for the PIMP is for more easily utilizing the mini liquid pump before you have insulation. Without insulation for at least one pipe segment, it is probably impossible to have a fully insulated system while providing cooling for the mini pump.

Without using the PIMP, you can't easily rebuild the mini pump to reset its temperature. If you build it above the lava, the plastic will quickly boil away. If you build it besides the lava, you can actually get magma to move an 11th tile, boiling the pump (or have lava in the tile below it, same problem). With this, you can always keep a safe amount of magma in the 11th tile besides the pump, letting you rebuild the pump at any time. This was actually the reason why I first built it. You can get about 3T of use per 45C rebuild.

[Saturnus]

3 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Without insulation for at least one pipe segment, it is probably impossible to have a fully insulated system while providing cooling for the mini pump.

Not true. Ceramic insulated pipe is fine. You build the mini-pump above the magma. One tile of hydrogen at about 2kg/tile and one tile of chlorine at about 1g/tile, or as close to that as possible as I can't remember the current minimum limit off the cuff. Now you just add a metal tile above the hydrogen for cooling the hydrogen which in turn cools the mini-pump. A single wheeze wort is usually more than enough.

[nakomaru]

Emphasis on fully insulated. Magma will lose heat to the ceramic which will lose heat to the hydrogen. That's the one pipe segment I mentioned. Fine for most cases very likely. (I measured a ~1.8C loss in magma per 20C ceramic segment at 1000g/s flow, though steady-state will lose less at a higher pipe temp.)

[HeatEngine]

That's a neat trick, makes lava "blades" much nicer to deal with!

I've used sideways door to feed magma out of an infinite storage. Worked reasonably well, but definitely not as precise as what you've come up with.

[ragzilla]

On 1/1/2021 at 1:58 AM, HeatEngine said:

That's a neat trick, makes lava "blades" much nicer to deal with!

I've used sideways door to feed magma out of an infinite storage. Worked reasonably well, but definitely not as precise as what you've come up with.

This will have the same issue if used directly off infinite storage, if the tile pressure right before the blade starts exceeds 1840kg due to "upstream pressure", the blade will push more tiles, or increase the volume in the preceding tile when blocked by a door.  To work around this you can regulate in 2 stages, first being a door like you have to drop a less controlled amount of magma into a shaft.  Control that door with a hydro sensor (<1840kg) filtered for 5-30 seconds, then build your blades off that constant pressure secondary magma column.

-edit-

You probably also want to AND that sensor (on its own or filtered) with a 1on/4off timer to "drip" the magma out of the infinite containment.  If you hold it open for too long it drips a little more than is necessary.