Steam turbine with Flaking Boiler

[Zarquan]

From what I understand about flaking (aka partial boiling), it actually saves heat on boiling in a predictable way.  It does this by skipping the temperature drop experienced upon phase change.  So, I was thinking that if I wanted to get the absolute most energy out of each DTU via steam turbines, I should use a flaking boiler to boil the water from the steam turbines while remaining reasonably compact.  And here it is: 

Spoiler

Overly complicated overlays:

NOTE:  This was built in survival, so it is not optimal and has extraneous components.  Also, while this build was made in Spaced Out!, there is nothing from the DLC in this build.

The heat source here is a volcano.  I decided I wanted the tank to be slightly larger, so I built an escher waterfall system to allow it to force lava up to fill the chamber.  In this playthrough, I am not using infinite liquid storage, so the volcano is "shut off" to prevent overpressure if the magma hits the hydrosensor.

The lava is run through a waterfall setup (using 5 kg gold as the second liquid) to solidify and sit in the stack of hot material, which will be cooled later to about 125 C via conveyor rails.

Now the main boiler is the small chamber below the larger steam chamber.  When the pressure in the main boiler goes below 20000 g/tile, the two liquid vents open, fed in from two liquid tanks (which should be filled evenly, but aren't due to an earlier error).  Here, liquid water gathers up to 1000 kg.  I put 2 liquid vents with one on each side of the liquid gathering chamber.  This is because the insulated tiles above will eventually partially boil the water, so the hydro sensor needs to be underwater. 

This large buffer mass is necessary because the tolerances on the water temperature are extremely tight.  If the water is only two degrees higher, it will fail to flake, so it needs to start the process with a large thermal mass behind it.

Once enough mass of water has accumulated on the vents, the door opens and feeds the water in to the boiler.

This causes partial evaporation.  The boiler will boil the water at 25 kg/s and push the steam on to the airflow tile.  This is then fed in to the upper chamber using a bypass pump, flooding the above chamber with steam so that it reaches approximately 136 kg/tile (as the water from the liquid vents keeps being added at 20 kg/s for 200 seconds after the flaking begins).  The boiling plate is a tile of igneous rock and all insulated tiles above are made of ceramic to reduce thermal transfer.

The steam is then consumed by the steam turbines and evenly put in to the liquid reservoirs (using a full packet sensor attached to a shutoff valve, then a 5000 g/s valve), where it waits until the pressure in the main steam chamber goes too low.

The steam turbines run if the temperature is too high (above 175), the battery is too low, or the steam pressure is above 20000 g/tile.  There is an override shutoff that disables the steam turbines if the steam pressure in the upper chamber is too low, as this would effect the boiler.

This setup doubles as my main water purification plant, hence the crude counterflow heat exchanger above and some of the excess infrastructure.

The thermosensor on the right-hand side controls the flow of lava.  Set at 175 C, the steam in the main room appears to settle at ~185 C.  Since there is a limit on how much magma is stored in the magma chamber, I prioritize solidifying the magma over handling the hot igneous rock.

@mathmanican As I understand it, there is an outstanding bug that exists that causes steam turbines to lose a lot of energy.  I don't understand the nature of this bug, but I am under the impression it is related to flowing liquids, so I was wondering if this build could prevent that issue.

[mathmanican]

11 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I was wondering if this build could prevent that issue

The bug occurs when liquids leave vents, and this build should prevent that issue. This build also prevents needing to set a flow valve at 5010g and prevents the loss of 10g of liquid at each flake.  Nice concept!  I love it. 

For those interested in learning more about said bug, here is the report. 

 

[JRup]

Very, very nice, this helps in my own attempts at incorporating flashing water by a lot. Here's a screenshot of the water chiller project I've got going atm. Top right was my take on flashing water with a block of "natural" salt (stopped):

The contraptions on the left are water chillers. The one on the bottom is a prototype that doesn't do that much & the one on top does 5 kg/s on programmed bursts. I have to add a second steam turbine to the mix and see how the cooling logistics play out because this is a partially self cooled ST (ST is using steam at ~200ºC) The only place direct cooling is done is at the ice block level.

[Zarquan]

21 hours ago, JRup said:

Very, very nice, this helps in my own attempts at incorporating flashing water by a lot.

You want to be careful.  You want a large amount of water before you let it enter the boiler.  If you don't, it will sometimes get too hot and not flake.

[JRup]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

You want to be careful.  You want a large amount of water before you let it enter the boiler.  If you don't, it will sometimes get too hot and not flake.

Definitely, Ironically I found out there is a need to not flash all the water as soon as possible. This allows time for the bypass pump to "process" the steam and minimize heat bleed into the steam turbine's waste water. The boiler uses a tile made of ceramic instead of igneous rock.

I have managed to put together a working version at the moment and it's purring like a kitten in sandbox.

Here's a screenshot of the water amount present at the moment the airlock closes. It appears I only "need" approximately 1000 kg of water which is what is actually allowed in the boiler before the liquid element sensor trips. 839 kg is seen in the tile with the liquid sensor, some has already flashed.

This setup is a water chiller and current throughput would mostly round up to 5kg/s. The water that comes from the turbines is compressed up to around 2400 kg/tile around the time the atmo sensor detects a pressure below 20 kg.

Let me know if you need more screenshots or anything on this design. I'm currently adoring the way this came out!

[babba]

As City Planner and Cold War Rocket Silo Bunker Builder, this is way over my head

[JRup]

@babba: I was just planning to cool water down... I just didn't want to directly use the aquatuner with water for that. The AT loop is actually filled with supercoolant... It just so happened that @Zarquan put together the missing pieces to make a boiler that didn't have the "defect" that whatever was produced was 1.5º C lower because of game mechanics. Right now I can happily report that power consumption is rather low.

I believe we're still missing a special meme for this...

Spoiler

Right now I'm making sure water doesn't go missing in an exaggerated fashion from this build... Embrace the flaking mechanic!

[babba]

37 minutes ago, JRup said:

@babba: ...

I believe we're still missing a special meme for this...

  Hide contents

Right now I'm making sure water doesn't go missing in an exaggerated fashion from this build... Embrace the flaking mechanic!

 

[JRup]

Minor update:

Again, @Zarquan thank you doesn't seem enough. This build has now become the central cooling station for an absurd amount of batteries, sweepers and miners in my space setup.

Also, right now I've decided to hijack the cooler element to freeze some ethanol, I will need "some debris" to build a slowpoke LOX cooler to make a "booze cooled" condenser to resuscitate the single rocket silo that was lying there, gathering regolith.

 

Spoiler

Dirt is being used in the conveyor loop to freeze the ethanol, eventually.

 

[SackMaggie]

I thought steam vanishing bug can be solve by just submerge liquid vent in oil? That's no longer the case ?

[JRup]

@SackMaggie This build focuses on "rescuing" the 1.5ºC that are lost in state change due to game mechanics. The liquid not vanishing is a welcome side effect for me.

I'd have to test if submerging a liquid vent as you suggest has that effect. I have a nagging suspicion my save file will beg to differ. It's old, it's clunky, it's home to some speedy dupes, but most of all it has its quirks.

[Zarquan]

A bit of a post necro, but I made an improvement to the design not worthy of a version 2.  I found the multiple vents and liquid reservoirs for water to be redundant.  All that was needed was to make sure of a few things:

1. There is enough mass of water before it is sent to the boiler.
2. The boiler is hot enough to boil the water
3. The steam room does not overheat
4. The steam room maintains a certain level of pressure.
5. The system starts and stops properly if there is not enough heat.

To that end, I made the following using a metal refinery at the primary heat source (but it can work with any heat source):

Spoiler

There is approximately 150-160 kg/tile of water in the steam room, which is more than enough.

There are a few automation signals that are of importance. 

The hydro sensor in the liquid vent chamber is set to above 950 kg, ensuring there is enough water entering the boiler.

The hydro sensor in the boiler is set to below 20 kg.  It makes sure the doors are not open if there is water in the boiler.  This prevents the steam room from having too little heat to boil the water already in the boiler.

The lower thermosensor in the steam room is set to above 150 C.  It makes sure the steam room is hot enough to boil the water.

The atmosensor is redundant with enough steam pressure, but it makes sure that there is steam in the room and orders the water released if there is not.

The upper thermosensor is set to above 180 C, ensuring that the steam turbines run if the steam gets too hot.  Note that the only way for the steam to cool down is by the door opening.

If this system does not get enough heat, the steam turbines will jam due to nowhere for the water to go.  The steam room maintains a reasonable pressure (assuming there is enough water in the system) until heat can be provided.  If heat is added, the water in the vent chamber will be released, the water in the pipes will flow, and the turbines will spin up again.  In this system, adding heat requires power for the metal refinery, so I added a coal generator to kick start the system again if the power runs out.