Geo Thermal Without AquaTuner? [SOLVED]

[SpocksEars]

Is it possible to make a geo-thermal energy plant without an AquaTuner?

I can't seem to keep this thing cool enough to keep from getting into a runaway state. It sits there at 130C running poorly, anything above that it doesn't stop until something melts. I've tried several things, that's why there's unused pipe everywhere. At the moment, I'm trying to cool it with an AETN, but those turbines are eating it for lunch. I tried blocking some vents to have it run cooler, but no dice. Hydrogen, wheesewarts, tempshift, nothing works. An AquaTuner would use up most of the power I'm trying to generate. 
Should I try a thermo regulator? 
Should I add another steam turbine?
How much water should I be using for the steam chamber (not sure what's in there now)?

In the pic, ignore the thermostat above the left wheeze, it's no longer used.
The thermostat on the lower left controls the temp somewhat by opening and closing all the doors.
As for the doors themselves, the bottom 4 are Wolframite, the rest are Gold Amalgam. I've also just added a couple of turbine on/off switches for testing.

Thanks for taking a look!

P.S. These pics are of the system in a non-running state.

[JRup]

Hi!

I'll try to help a bit with this, hope it sheds some light on your build. I'll go ahead and say in advance that there are too many doors being used to transmit heat from the magma to the steam chamber. Not only that, you're already leaching a risky amount of heat into the environment.

So recommendation #1 (as in ASAP): Vacuum this area or risk cooking the rest of the surroundings.

 

I'll add more soon, but this part is what I'd say is urgent.

 

[Yunru]

Yeah, doors only work as a heat separator if they create a vacuum, otherwise the gas or liquid will just transfer the heat anyway. 

[Pyrex042]

Quickest fix is two more insulated tiles to close off your door tiles.  Close them all once to crush the air out of existence and you'll be much more stable.  

What you really should do though is replace the bottom four rows of doors with steel tiles (leaving one pair of doors remaining), then cordon it off with insulated tiles and let the doors crush to vacuum.  Only having one pair of doors will give you much more predictable heat transfer

Ideally, you should also move the temp sensor to directly above the doors, having it in the corner creates a buffering effect keeping the doors closed longer than you want.

[SpocksEars]

Great easy suggestions all. Thanks. I can't wait to get "off from work" to try them (I'm at home like everybody else - hard to focus!)

Oh, and since those Wheezeworts appear to do both Jack and Squat, I can take the advice of Pyrex042 and close the turbine room since I'll no longe need dupes in there delivering fertilizer.

JRup, just so I understand, for my heat spike rows you suggest Magma > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steeldoor > insulated tile > steamroom ?

Thanks again

[JRup]

1 hour ago, SpocksEars said:

Should I add another steam turbine?

So, to make a quick temporary vacuum of the door area:

1. I'd wall it in by building the missing 2 insulation tiles on the left.

2. close the doors for a bit - this will crush the gases .

3. open the doors to create the vacuum.

4. deal with the gases outside the affected area.

5. build a liquid lock nearby to protect the vacuum to be able to do future work on the door area.

@Pyrex042 posted this idea before me but you'll see how we agree in fixing that hot gas risk goes first.

 

17 minutes ago, SpocksEars said:

At the moment, I'm trying to cool it with an AETN, but those turbines are eating it for lunch.

I believe there are a couple of problems to think about when we want to use AETNs for cooling: location and cooling capacity.

 

I'm guessing that the AETN is not close by so you're using the pipe with crude as coolant. If you're really wanting to use fossil based liquids as coolant, then to the very least it would be better to use either naptha or petroleum in that order instead of crude oil.

A better alternative that is basically what's generally recommended before super-coolant is polluted water.

Are we afraid of freezing the polluted water? No. That's what a heat exchanger build is for.

Quick note: most buildings will stop working if entombed or flooded. Sensors are an exception and will do wonders when strategically placed. The spoiler up ahead has my take on a heat exchanger with an AETN... I don't stop it from "cooling" I just let it get to where it stops chilling because it's "too cold" the lower side is actually regulated by the sensor and doesn't let my coolant freeze.

 

Spoiler

 

As for cooling capacity:

The AETN does have a cooling capacity of 80 kDTU, but this is somewhat troublesome.... It has to be in hydrogen gas to actually do something worthwhile and transmitting that chill from the hydrogen to what we need to cool down as fast as possible is the ultimate goal. This is why we'd use polluted water as coolant.

Steam turbines are a little tricky when it comes to heat generation. (I think you already know this - but for completion's sake here goes) :

Long story short is that the more power you generate, the more cooling you need. At about 200ºC steam (giving 850w power generation) you'd have to remove about 91.76 kDTU for each turbine. So just 1 AETN will simply not do (The full enchilada is here: https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Steam_Turbine)

Wheezeworts, bless 'em, will only give you 12kDTU worth of cooling per head, in hydrogen. (https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Wheezewort)

ATM: These critters are best used when provided with automated delivery... Or let them depend on dupes feeding them, your choice.

BTW: If you did check the heat exchanger in the picture above you'll see that only 2 doors will be needed at most.

1 hour ago, SpocksEars said:

An AquaTuner would use up most of the power I'm trying to generate. 

Sort of, that lump of metal would not run all the time. Only to cool the steam turbines.

Optimally: it would be placed inside the steam chamber to recover the power that goes into "heating" the aquatuner so you don't lose out that much, relatively speaking.

1 hour ago, SpocksEars said:

Should I try a thermo regulator?

Nope. I've already tried something like that when I was getting started with steam turbines. (At that point you've given up on using AETNs and wheezeworts so you might as well use the AT - see above)

Summary:

The cooling factor of the TR is just not enough with hydrogen to be a practical coolant for steam turbines. To make matters worse, gas pipes will only carry 1kg packets. Further, the specific heat capacity + thermal conductivity of hydrogen is just "not good enough" for fast applications... so...

But if you ever do use radiant gas piping, then before space materials the best you can do is steel, then either aluminum ore, wolframite or copper ore... (in that order)

 

1 hour ago, SpocksEars said:

Should I add another steam turbine?

Solving your problems with this build should come first, IMO. It will be a learning experience that you could not make the most of if you start adding too much into it.

 

1 hour ago, SpocksEars said:

How much water should I be using for the steam chamber (not sure what's in there now)?

I'd say you should make sure to have about 1kg of steam per tile at least. If you're sending the water back into the chamber do note that liquid vents will stop working at a pressure of 1000kg per tile (if I recall correctly).

So here's the deal with the amount of steam, your choice:

• Low steam pressure means temperature changes quick.
• High steam pressure means temperature changes slowly.

I use about 2kg in small setups and 4kg in a setup with 4 steam turbines. Anyways: YMMV, but remember steam turbines process 2kg of steam per second.

 

 

In the end what we'd need to know is how much power do you want to generate with this setup...

Hope this helps.

 

[Pyrex042]

15 minutes ago, SpocksEars said:

Oh, and since those Wheezeworts appear to do both Jack and Squat, I can take the advice of Pyrex042 and close the turbine room since I'll no longe need dupes in there delivering fertilizer.

I wasn't saying you need to permanently seal the Turbine room.  You have two open tiles to the left of the second and third row of airlocks in your heat-injector.  You need to place insulated tiles there to seal off the airlock column to allow the airlocks to crush to vacuum and not leak heat to the surroundings

Edit: pic > 1k words

You only want one row of airlocks.

Here:

[JRup]

6 minutes ago, SpocksEars said:

JRup, just so I understand, for my heat spike rows you suggest Magma > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steeldoor > insulated tile > steamroom ?

Almost there:

Magma > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steelplate > steeldoor > insulated tile  steelplate> steamroom

Or if you're feeling fancy use diamond window tiles instead of steel plates (floor tiles, but we get the drift...)

Magma flow is worse than that of molasses. So here's a future No-Fun deal that could happen at some point.

If your build compressed the magma it will stay that way until the game engine decides it wont play nice: When enough heat has been extracted it will turn into igneous rock and if there is enough igneous rock per tile (>1840kg) then it will shoot upwards on game load.

Funny thing, ONI.

[JRup]

46 minutes ago, SpocksEars said:

Oh, and since those Wheezeworts appear to do both Jack and Squat, I can take the advice of Pyrex042 and close the turbine room since I'll no longe need dupes in there delivering fertilizer.

You'd need far more wheezeworts than just 2 to cool just a single 100% uptime steam turbine that runs on 200ºC steam

It may not seem so, but they're unionized. So be careful with the slander.

[degr]

At strart I build 3 doors, idea was to control temperature with vacuum between 1st and 3rd, but it was not efficient enough. I'm using 1 door, if temperature >160 it close door (in fact it reach ~200 and 5 turbines work with 90% efficiency all the time). And I don't know what is your problem with aquatuner. So, my advices:

1. Build insulated piles as Pyrex042 said

2. close all doors to remove sour gas

3. use only one door 

4. build aquatuner (I personally advice this setup -

5. destroy your weezeworts

6. add 3 more steam turbines

7. be happy

 

[Yunru]

Oh and don't forget to ship raw egg through your turbine chamber for free cooking to omelettes :P

[ghkbrew]

On 2/24/2021 at 10:51 AM, SpocksEars said:

Is it possible to make a geo-thermal energy plant without an AquaTuner?

You haven't really gotten straight answer to this, since people have been pointing out other issues, but Yes it is possible. It's just not ideal.  No cooling source other than an aquatuner can really handle the heat a turbine gives off while running on 200C steam. BUT you don't have to use steam that hot.

In fact if you use cool enough steam you can use the 95C exhaust water a turbine ejects to cool the turbine itself in an "self-cooling" turbine setup.

Theoretically 95C water can cool a turbine running on 145C steam, but because of imperfect heat transfer you really need to keep the steam below 130-135C. 

To make this work you need to extract as much heat as possible with the exhaust water by running it though radiant pipes behind the steam turbines (I think you're already doing this). 

Then you need to precisely control the temperature of the steam room.  Follow @Pyrex042's advice to fix the thermal injector, and you probably want to add mass to the steam room to keep it from changing fast.

The big downside is that you only get 300-350W from each turbine instead of the full 850W.

[SpocksEars]

I finally did it!

You guys are awesome I implemented bits and pieces from everybody's advice and now have an ultra-stable geo thermal power source. It only puts out 2x300 watts or so since it's self-cooled, but those are 600 FREE watts, which was my goal.

It looks like I've wrung the most power from this as possible whist keeping it stable, cool (99.4 max on the turbines) and maintenance-free. Looks like the sweet spot I found steam pressure-wise was about 65kg per tile. The temperature response-time is much much better now, I used to have over 200kg of steam per tile in there. Completely vacuuming everything out to have only hydrogen and steam in the two chambers really helped as well. 

I might make a few more along the bottom for more free power.

Thanks again!

[Yunru]

I wasn't kidding, you can help cool the turbines by shipping raw egg through it until it becomes omelette!