DIY: Frozen Ethanol on rails.

[JRup]

Hi!

Ever thought of using debris to condense oxygen?

If we skip thermium Is there any element with a SHC/TC combination better than ... dirt? What about solid ethanol, will that work?

Um, no.

Spoiler

It so happens that solid ethanol cannot be stored, hence it cannot be loaded. Because it doesn't have a category. Was it Dev oversight, bug ticket scheduling, "game balance constraints"?

A bug for this was filed last may (2021).

Unless, you know... You take things into your own hands. I wouldn't even count this as providing a mod for the game, though.

Do bear in mind that the following is not for the risk averse, or game breaking shy people. Some may call this cheating, go figure: A configuration file will need editing.

No file location will be provided, if you're going that far as intending to freeze ethanol and editing config files you know where this one is and that a backup is good practice before even opening configuration files. This is the least I can do to "deter" anyone from doing this and then siccing the hellhounds on me because of my bad advice.

A relevant screenshot is in the following spoiler; I did not place it in a spoiler in the bug report, though. What's highlighted in boxes was added/changed into the file. This will enable tracking of the element in the resource filter once you have some solid ethanol debris. I apologize in advance for including line numbers in the boxes (that's a part of the text editor itself so disregard it.).

Spoiler

The tags segment is something that defines uses for the element itself.  I can already hear the mafic rock crew that desires mafic rock for liquid piping smacking their lips.

That's it. Just don't break the game.

[Fradow]

20 hours ago, JRup said:

Ever thought of using debris to condense oxygen?

Perhaps. Though it was Ice debris provided by a Debris Freezer. And it also was meant to condense hydrogen. The experiment didn't go well, and I wouldn't expect a solid ethanol based liquefier to work without investing a bit of time in a good design.

But props for the outside of the box thinking on that one.

[JRup]

4 minutes ago, Fradow said:

Perhaps. Though it was Ice debris provided by a Debris Freezer. And it also was meant to condense hydrogen. The experiment didn't go well, and I wouldn't expect a solid ethanol based liquefier to work without investing a bit of time in a good design.

But props for the outside of the box thinking on that one.

Thanks, although I did compromise in the end with just using the frozen ethanol on rails only to provide cooling to a regular condenser box...

Using any kind of regular ice or dirt was just too slow for what I liked/needed.  Not having solid ethanol as a "liquifiable" is somewhat of a miss in my opinion.

The cooler is in a "warm-up" or rather a reaching operating temperature kind of phase aka: the airflow tiles still need some chilling to do... In the meantime: Oxygen for this is provided by a mini pump in the main part of the map and three morbs that have kindly volunteered for the task.

There is no liquid oxygen flashing, lol...

I still have to build some other bells and whistles into the whole thing, or rather on a separate structure to further pre-chill the oxygen before sending it to the condenser box (which means finding out a good temperature for 1 kg/s). This build is also providing cooling for the whole space miner and battery array so distributing workloads will be better in the long run.

I still have to build something similar for the hydrogen part of the mix, so I'll probably piggyback that part there...

[ghkbrew]

23 hours ago, JRup said:

If we skip thermium Is there any element with a SHC/TC combination better than ... dirt? What about solid ethanol, will that work?

So, if you're asking what solid to use a thermal transfer medium on a rail, there are a couple things to consider:

First is TC.  Here your best option is aluminum with a TC of 205, plus it has a respectable SHC of 0.91, higher than any other metal.  But, because of debris heat conduction uses the minimum TC of the two materials, unless you're transferring heat to/from an aluminum metal tile you'll be limited by the other materials TC.  So really what you want to look for is a material with a TC higher than you're target, but with the highest SHC.  If you're target has a TC less than 0.6 the best option is then Genetic Ooze (i.e. lumber). Diamond (TC 80, SHC 0.516) and Steel (TC 54, SHC 0.49) are good options for high temperature operation.  Brine ice (TC 2.18, SHC 3.4) and solid ethanol (TC 20, SHC 2.46) if you're working with something cold.

But, SHC isn't really what we care about here.  It's the total thermal mass of each packet on the rail.  You might say: "But the maximum packet size is always 20kg, so we can just ignore it and compare SHCs".  Which is true, except for when it isn't.  Items that have a mass greater than 20kg will still only take one packet to on a rail.  Namely, atmosuits which are made out of 300kg of refined metal are a single rail packet.  An aluminum atmosuit has both the highest TC and the highest thermal mass of anything you can put on a rail.

 

[Jann5s]

2 minutes ago, ghkbrew said:

Namely, atmosuits which are made out of 300kg of refined metal are a single rail packet.  An aluminum atmosuit has both the highest TC and the highest thermal mass of anything you can put on a rail.

This I want to see, a rail full of chilly suits, amazing stuff. (I tend to use refined carbon, don't even know if it is any god)

[JRup]

2 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

Namely, atmosuits which are made out of 300kg of refined metal are a single rail packet. 

You had me at 300 kg.

Good thing you can't load them with dupes inside... Someone we know would use some recently deceased ones for show.