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Hacking a Volcano


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Strange, so many views and not a single comment. Maybe the scheme was taken as a joke? But it wasn't:

"The idea is to melt less heat-consuming Mafic rock (SHC, heat capacity of 0.2 DTU/g/°C) in magma. After it melts (in a 1:1 ratio), it becomes magma, with a SHC of 1 DTU/g/°C. Technically, its thermal energy, will increase 5 times by leaps and bounds".

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I can't understand what the meaning of it. How about just make large cavern around volcano, drop there 20 tons of water, put gun on top, which will destroy solid igneous rocks, and 5 or 6 steam turbines? It give a lot of free energy during eruption period and work pretty fine for me think for 500 or even more cycles?

Spoiler

It die from overheat because I build sour gas boiler and turbines idle.

 

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10 hours ago, DimaB77 said:

We're boosting a volcano. No bugs, no mods.

ROBO-DOG.thumb.gif.affc6883c7769cc0dc5d331f395090b5.gif

In spite of its non-serious appearance, it is a useful scheme, though not a simple one.

I like your brownish/copper art style so much, it looks like gold washing in the Rio Grande - Niiiiiceeee :excitement:

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How long it takes to melt a chunk of regolith/mafic rocks ? How about conveyor loop inside magma room instead ?

And by the way a single volcano can almost run 2 turbines 24/7. We're talking about 10 turbines in case of x5 heat ....

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The buffer is set to 5 seconds. During this time, about 80 kg x 5 (conveurohr chute) = 400 kg of regolith falls into the magma. It takes about 10 ... 20 seconds to melt it. The next batch of regolith will fall in 100 seconds. Such timings I applied to stretch the time of operation of the circuit to the next volcanic eruption.

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I'm not sure that the efficiency of the circuit can be improved by introducing additional refrigerant pipes (salt in your case) - the three turbines are at most powered by one volcano (even while it is sleeping).

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1 hour ago, DimaB77 said:

I'm not sure that the efficiency of the circuit can be improved by introducing additional refrigerant pipes (salt in your case) - the three turbines are at most powered by one volcano (even while it is sleeping).

Salt has a higher SHC in gas state, then it has in liquid state. So it would :)

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1 hour ago, SkunkMaster said:

Salt has a higher SHC in gas state, then it has in liquid state. So it would :)

Quote from wikipedia: Specific Heat Capacity (SHC) Salt 0.700, Molten Salt 0.700, Salt Gas 0.880

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5 minutes ago, DimaB77 said:

Quote from wikipedia: Specific Heat Capacity (SHC) Salt 0.700, Molten Salt 0.700, Salt Gas 0.880

Jup. So you heat it up while it's in liquid state, and then you "cool" it when it's in gas state. You gain 20.45% in the process.

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I watched Tony Advanced's video for the first time. Both schemes (his and mine) are based on the same principle - melting regolith on the magma.
Further schemes are built differently: I clamp the regolith with a door, he spins it on the conveyor rails. At this point, the heat transfer from the pile of material is inefficient. As far as I understand, this feature (effective heat transfer from material moving on rails) was fixed in one of the releases.

In any case, there is an initial magma energy + regolith energy. After its melting there is an increase in this energy (it is the same in both schemes). Further this energy must be given to the turbines, one way or another.

It is impossible to power 20...30...100 turbines from one volcano. There is no such energy in the volcano or in the regolith. My scheme (and his respectively) increases the thermal energy by 1.5...2 times. But not 1000 times. This is confirmed by the calculations.

I don't understand spoken English very well. Please understand me: at school and at university I studied German (and I have forgotten it). If anyone has replicated his scheme and is willing to share layer-by-layer screenshots, that would be great.

I have a lot of questions about his scheme:
how does he keep the magma from supercooling below 1400C
Why does he stop the turbines from thermosensors
why does he cool the manipulators with chlorine
at the output of his circuit regolith with a temperature of 94C, as a result there is not a complete removal of energy.
Why 1 aquatuner for 3 turbines and not more
...and many others.
This is what I was able to understand from the still frames.

I am by no means saying that his scheme is bad. It's quite possible I misunderstood it or the mechanics of the game have changed since then. But I must admit that it is unnecessarily complicated, so it is unlikely to be repeated by anyone.

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The principle at work to increase the efficiency by ~10000% is to use a counterflow heat exchanger.

  • In the exchanger I linked, it takes in igneous rock at 1682K and preheats the regolith to 1681.7K with it.
    • 0% of this energy comes from the volcano
    • Only the remaining 3.8K comes from the volcano (~0.4% of total energy)
  • In your design, you are directly heating up the regolith by about 1000K (typically)
    • about 50% of that energy comes from the volcano.
    • about 50% comes from the regolith you just melted
  • 500K/4K is very roughly ~100 = 10000%
    • or 50% inefficiency / 0.4% inefficiency = ~100
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The circuit is closed. No thermal energy (except for regolith) comes in from the outside, no thermal energy is removed from the circuit. All magma energy stays inside. We just exchange magma energy for regolith energy, in a 1:5 ratio (the most ideal case, except for the fact that magma itself cools down in this process). In reality, the thermal energy increases by a factor of 1.7, which I showed in the test.

So, we have the thermal energy of magma + energy of regolith. We just "change" the low heat capacity of regolith to the high heat capacity of magma.

The principle of countercurrent heat exchanger is well known to me, and I described its work in my articles. But it doesn't generate energy. It only exchanges energy (if it were in this scheme - between regolith and magma). It is not needed here, because the regolith is fed directly into the magma.

I quite admit that my circuits could be improved. If you see omissions and/or errors, please attach screenshots, and I will make corrections.

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Sorry, you are very mistaken about the basic thermodynamics involved.

When you would like to have a look again, ask yourself what we are doing differently with the heat in the igneous rock.

Or: imagine if we used your design to build a petroleum boiler.

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Let me try to explain in another way.
Suppose we have 585gr (14 carats) of molten gold in a vessel. We throw into this vessel 415 g of other metals (copper, zinc, etc., as it is common in jewelry). Has the thermal energy of the alloy changed? NO! It is simply redistributed between the gold and the additives.

This is not the case in the game. The gold cooled down only slightly, and the additives, by a "jump", began to have the heat capacity of the gold. Due to this "jump" I increase the efficiency of the volcano. And no heat exchangers can increase this energy even more.

It is very possible that I am wrong or I am not translating you correctly. If you don't mind, draw right on the screenshot, how you see the correct implementation of the scheme.

I will be happy to test it and post the results.

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You are focusing on the specific heat capacity (SHC) change of the phase from regolith to magma and igneous rock. Your understanding of the gains from that are correct. That is not what I am talking about.

Besides that, an additional factor of 100 can be gained by efficiently using the heat from the rock to pre-heat the regolith 99.6% of the way there.

I will demonstrate a build when I have time if you still don't see what I am talking about.

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2 rails, 10 or more separate metal blocks that connect said rails, now you ship the hot stone one way, and counter ship the mafic rock/regolith the other way. once regolith is close to melting point, you use volcano heat to push it over the limit. 

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That's what I thought... The same suggestion came up on reddit. I'll quote him (I hope the author of the screenshot won't mind):

8aNxWE.thumb.jpg.efd1deb94c92dba0995165a2db7dff8f.jpg

 

...and my response:

"The counter heat exchange of hot and cold regolith can indeed increase the efficiency of the circuit, but ONLY if it is taken out of the circuit. In my circuit it is NOT withdrawn! And this is a fundamental condition. Staying in the door, it ensures operation of turbines in intervals of volcano activity, i.e. when it is asleep (about 15 cycles). If you remove it, after a few cycles the turbines will stop working."

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