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Cool Steam Vents


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1 hour ago, ATM Reaper said:

make use of these things?

To use for what purpose?

If you need steam for steam rocket -- this is one task. If you need water for research station -- that's another. If you need water to grow Sleet Wheat or need some electricity out of it -- we cannot guess how you plan to use it.

So far you can put some Steam Turbines above it and, by using split turbine technique, generate minor amount of electricity and get 95C water in pipes.

Split turbine can be done by using any other heat source. Most notable examples is Power Transformer or hot liquid basins, abusing temperature clamping.

I cannot found quickly many design examples, but mathmanican's "clownhat" design is well known

 

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21 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

To use for what purpose?

If you need steam for steam rocket -- this is one task. If you need water for research station -- that's another. If you need water to grow Sleet Wheat or need some electricity out of it -- we cannot guess how you plan to use it.

So far you can put some Steam Turbines above it and, by using split turbine technique, generate minor amount of electricity and get 95C water in pipes.

Split turbine can be done by using any other heat source. Most notable examples is Power Transformer or hot liquid basins, abusing temperature clamping.

I cannot found quickly many design examples, but mathmanican's "clownhat" design is well known

 

The response to this is I have no desired outcome, just a need to see options so anything is on the table for purposes.

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My favored design is very simple: I make a "condensation plate" above the Cool Steam Vent consisting of a few ordinary tiles and then cool the plate with a cooling loop (eventually, initially I just let the condensation plate lose heat to the environment).
1807103002_Screenshotfrom2022-04-1308-57-12.thumb.png.19ac801bad946a1ef73c8a0e8f69b2fa.png

This causes the steam to condense without the cooling plate ever exchanging heat with the water, depending on material and temperature of the plate you can get around 96 C water, meaning very little cooling is wasted over-cooling the water (this hot water is just fine being fed into an oil well or electrolyzer). The cooling requirement is only about a third of a ST/AQ and the neat thing about this kind of "ceiling condensation plate" is the condensation plate can be maintained at a low temperature, say 20 or 30 C. Typically I have an underutilized ST/AQ providing cooling for my base, so I often just use the base cooling loop which is also cooling my bristle blossoms and stuff (but in the above screenshot, I'm using water from a Polluted Water Vent to providing the condensation cooling, it leaves at about 40 C which is still cool enough to do what I need to with it, in fact it ensures the pwater is warm enough for Pincha Peppernuts).

I started using this build when I had a CSV pretty much in my base on a Spaced Out map leaving me with very little space to work with, because no dedicated ST/AQ is required it can be an extremely compact build (I normally build a large water storage cistern, but you can certainly just pump the water out immediately). Since then it's the only build I use, in the spirit of "the best part is no part", I'd rather just build a few tiles and radiant pipes and leverage existing infrastructure than making a dedicated build.

A few tons of water or other mass should be thrown on top of the condensation plate, it's not essential but otherwise the cooling loop will heat up significantly during an eruption and might stifle your bristle blossoms.

Here's another example, this one is leveraging the ST/AQ setup used for my Metal Refinery:
1244627946_Screenshotfrom2022-03-1915-13-04.thumb.png.c188a698a036137383c15693743fd632.png

It has a far more reasonable amount of water (brine) on top: you only need about a ton.

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3 hours ago, blakemw said:

My favored design is very simple: I make a "condensation plate" above the Cool Steam Vent consisting of a few ordinary tiles and then cool the plate with a cooling loop (eventually, initially I just let the condensation plate lose heat to the environment).
1807103002_Screenshotfrom2022-04-1308-57-12.thumb.png.19ac801bad946a1ef73c8a0e8f69b2fa.png

This causes the steam to condense without the cooling plate ever exchanging heat with the water, depending on material and temperature of the plate you can get around 96 C water, meaning very little cooling is wasted over-cooling the water (this hot water is just fine being fed into an oil well or electrolyzer). The cooling requirement is only about a third of a ST/AQ and the neat thing about this kind of "ceiling condensation plate" is the condensation plate can be maintained at a low temperature, say 20 or 30 C. Typically I have an underutilized ST/AQ providing cooling for my base, so I often just use the base cooling loop which is also cooling my bristle blossoms and stuff (but in the above screenshot, I'm using water from a Polluted Water Vent to providing the condensation cooling, it leaves at about 40 C which is still cool enough to do what I need to with it, in fact it ensures the pwater is warm enough for Pincha Peppernuts).

I started using this build when I had a CSV pretty much in my base on a Spaced Out map leaving me with very little space to work with, because no dedicated ST/AQ is required it can be an extremely compact build (I normally build a large water storage cistern, but you can certainly just pump the water out immediately). Since then it's the only build I use, in the spirit of "the best part is no part", I'd rather just build a few tiles and radiant pipes and leverage existing infrastructure than making a dedicated build.

A few tons of water or other mass should be thrown on top of the condensation plate, it's not essential but otherwise the cooling loop will heat up significantly during an eruption and might stifle your bristle blossoms.

Here's another example, this one is leveraging the ST/AQ setup used for my Metal Refinery:
1244627946_Screenshotfrom2022-03-1915-13-04.thumb.png.c188a698a036137383c15693743fd632.png

It has a far more reasonable amount of water (brine) on top: you only need about a ton.

This isnt a bad shout actually as you could use passive cooling from other vents to maintain the cooling loop.

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So, I put some thoughts on a simple exploitation of cool steam vents and here is what I came up with

20220427213236_1.thumb.jpg.0fea875b61415148ae6aa4630ab03021.jpg

(made in sandbox so you'll probably want a gas pump or gas destroyer in the steam room to make vacuum beforehand)

Steam comes in contact with the 4 granite tiles at the top (can be metal tiles, a liquid or any form of non-gaseous cooling plate) and condenses in the red airflow tiles then falls into reservoir with pump.

A benefit of this system is once steam liquifies it's not in contact anymore with the cooling plate, the water stays at a warm 90-95°C no matter the temperature of the cooling plate.

The cooling plate can be at any temperature below 90°C (you can use your 20°C colony liquid cooling in there); if the cooling doesn't meet the needs of the erupting steam vent, it's not a big deal, the vent will just overpressure and prevent the system from overheating, simply reducing water output.

Water storage is infinite as it condensates into a pressure immune reservoir.

pros

 - very simple, doesn't need plastic nor steel

 - infinite water storage

 - minimal vent overpressure

 - cooling can be done with any temperature below 90°C, system doesn't "overcool"

 - loss of cooling or not enough cooling doesn't break the storage, just slows it down

 - no temperature clamping exploit (I don't like it)

 

cons

 - does need active cooling

 - power negative (if cooling uses power)

 - vent does overpressure from time to time (way less than 10% of an eruption, depending on the vents properties)

 

So yeah this simple approach has so many benefits IMO that I'll use it on every cool steam vent from now on.

It probably can be improved, more notably with size, tempshift plate placement or global placement of elements, if you have any improvement suggestion I'd love to hear it.

note just to be clear, please ignore the supercoolant heatsink above the cooling plate, it's just my sandbox simulation of cooling

Temperature overlay

Spoiler

20220427213330_1.thumb.jpg.0b9e9d0a2986a6692b84242c6cd3027a.jpg

 

A more compact system, vent goes into overpressure way more here : 

Spoiler

20220427210053_1.thumb.jpg.ce58c2d6b41339351b14b3c7a68e74a7.jpg

 

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11 hours ago, DonDegow said:

Steam comes in contact with the 4 granite tiles at the top (can be metal tiles, a liquid or any form of non-gaseous cooling plate) and condenses in the red airflow tiles then falls into reservoir with pump.
 

Does it really works? As far as I can remember, liquid condensed in Airflow Tile teleports up, not down

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16 hours ago, mukca said:

On the top valve 10 grams, on the bottom 0.01 grams.

vent.thumb.png.05a4d0092696dcdf981253d761b6e865.png

Why you use two Steam Turbines? Do Cool Steam Vent ever produce more steam than 2kg/s ?

Also, do you know we can extremely efficiently cool Steam Turbine by metal tile in its basement? Or this snaking pipe is used more for water storage than real cooling?

And once charged and then disconnected Power Transformer provides same amount of heat, but cannot discharge if vent is dormant for too long

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I'm probably very late to the party but I just realized cooling down 888g of Oxygen from 95°C to 20°C requires pretty much the same amount of DTU than heating up 1kg of steam from 110 °C to 125°C. 

Meaning that coupling a cool steam vent to an electrolyzer through an AT/ST gets you a sweet 20°C Oxygen at ~90% of steam vent output and a bit of power.

It could have some start-up issues but nothing that can't be worked around. You can expect a screenshot or two coming... 

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If you want to turn a cool steam vent output into cool (<20°C) Oxygen, here is what I quickly put together

20220429191409_1.thumb.jpg.a6883dc03f0a9652d869532a0692ee24.jpg

Steam comes out 110°C, gets heated by AT, then turned into 95°C water to feed the electrolyzers.

95°C Oxygen comes out and gets cooled in the radiator over the turbine; this radiator is the AT coolant loop.

Tepidizer is here to kick-start the system if you happen to build it with cool materials or if something goes wrong (loss of power during a full vent cycle for instance).

Water reservoirs are here to handle vent dormancy; number of reservoirs needed = dormancy in cycles * number of dupes (max 10 because gas pipe) / 74 (74 because 5t of water can turn into enough Oxygen for 74 cycles / dupe).

In my case : 29.4 * 10 / 74 = 4

I need only 4 water reservoirs for this particular vent.

 

Plumbing overlay

Spoiler

20220429191326_1.thumb.jpg.7c0689e6e52b9150fc38220ea7e17c03.jpg

 

Ventilation Overlay

Spoiler

20220429191332_1.thumb.jpg.d2366894e92754e32fa68a47796f7f98.jpg

 

Automation overlay

Spoiler

Turbine turns on only if pressure above 400g and temperature above 125°C

AT turns on only when steam room colder than 200°C and piped coolant hotter than 20°C

Tepedizer only turns on when the AT is off and temperature in steam room is too low. (There is a mistake in the screenshot, I miss a NOT gate before my OR)

20220429191351_1.thumb.jpg.d60960d3a4223451556673f4f9b4c9dd.jpg

 

It's supposed to be power positive as each kg of steam turns into something like 150W (would be even better with supercoolant of course) if my math is right.

Main issue I run into is this particular vent has monster eruptions at 7.7 kg/s and goes into overpressure a lot; a staged steam room with gas bypass pump or door pump would fix that.

An easy optimisation is putting the hydrogen generators in the steam room but you'd need more steel.

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oni urge rising...

great convo. thnx 4 the tips!

On 4/13/2022 at 12:55 AM, blakemw said:

My favored design is very simple: I

i felt like I was fixing to flip it on and start playing, i really did the super simple design.

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