The Spinal Column - Temperature Controlled Liquid Duplication at 8kg/s

[mathmanican]

I've been playing recently with liquid duplication (see here, and linked posts, all credit to @nneko25 for discovering this phenomenon), and wanted to share my most recent build. My goal was to create fresh cool (5 C) water. I'm willing to bring in minimal power from an outside source, but everything else I would like to be self-contained. 

I present

The Spinal Column

(probably a crappy name, but oh well).

This contraption produces cool (4.8-5.2 C) water at a little above 8200kg/s. The secret sauce is naphtha, which provides the right conditions to make liquid duplication quite simple.

How do I make this?

I purposefully chose a build that is 3 floors tall (using a 4 tile per floor concept). I prefer to start with vacuum, but it doesn't matter as the build will quickly suck out almost all gases. 

1. Start with the exterior structure, using insulated tiles. Nothing fancy required - I used igneous rock. Then place the inner insulated tiles surrounding the liquid duplication region (seen below). I created an entry way from the side, using 10g crude and 10g petro, but you can just as easily access the entire build from the top, using a ladder. 
2. Get the naphtha into place. You'll need 1250g of naphtha in each spot below, so a grand total of 15kg of naphtha. 

      

   A simple way to do this is to setup a closed loop of naphtha using a liquid valve set at 1250g. When you destroy a liquid valve, all liquid stops moving.  Deconstruct the pipes with the naphtha (start with the ones by the exterior walls first, if you did't start with vacuum). Once you have the naphtha in to place, remove any remnants of what you used to get it there. 
3. Add the liquid pipes, gas pipes, automation, and (not shown) power lines. Make sure you use radiant liquid pipes under the thermoregulator, and radiant gas pipes on the left under the bead pump. The rest of the gas pipes should be insulated, to keep the cooling isolated to under the bead pump. Again, feel free to use whatever materials you have handy, as it won't matter. 
4. Add the rest of the tiles, except the mesh tile in the middle. 
5. Now add the liquid for the bead pump (I used 10kg of naphtha) and the liquid that will be behind the thermoregulator (I have 10g of petro on the left, and 70kg of naphtha on the right - held in place by the petro). You could easily use any liquid here, just have something (like 10g petro) on the left, and then a large quantify of something else that will sap up the heat and transfer it from the thermoregulator to the tile below it. 
6. Now add the rest of the buildings (3 liquid vents, 3 liquid valves, 2 liquid pumps, thermoregulator).
7. Fill the bottom of the contraption with liquid. You need enough to fill completely the bottom layer, and still have some in the second layer when the pipes are all full. You can start this process as soon as you want (once the outer structure is built).
8. The liquid valves should be set as follows. 
   • The upper left liquid valve is set to 5000g.  The purpose of this vallve is to balance out the release of liquid with two loads of 5kg being dumped at the top, rather than 1 load of 10kg. 
   • The bottom valve, leading to the middle vent, should be set to 3000g. Duplication requires a kickstart where liquid is inserted into the middle of a trail of beads.  The automation on the middle vent is designed to have the vent open when (1) the pump on the lower left is working (so suppying water to duplicate) and (2) the hydrosensor  on the naphtha is under 2.2kg (meaning duplication is not happening).  When duplication is happening, the sensor on the left will read above 2.2kg, and the vent will close. 
   • The last valve controls the outflow of liquid from the system.  This contraption supplies more than 8200g of liquid a second. I set the sensor at 8000g, but you can play with this sensor.as you want. I have an access tunnel to this sensor, so my dupes can toggle the switch if wanted. 
9. The temp sensors control your water temp.  I have mine set at 5C on the thermo sensor, and 0C on the gas pipe thermo sensor. The NOT gate is just a simple way to replace an AND gate. The goal is that you only want the thermo regulator running if the liquid is too hot, and the gas is too hot. 
10. The mesh tile in the middle is the last thing you'll want to add.  Once you place it, you lose access to the lower region. You can easily remove the mesh tile and build it again later, if you need access. 

You can turn on your system. Getting your liquid down to temp will require some time. The outgoing liquid saps the heat from the system.  Because cool liquid is being duplicated, this results in overall cooling. It will take 20-40 cycles to get things at your exact temp, but once you hit the desired temp, you only use the cooling to remove heat added from the liquid pumps. 

Note that the thermoregulator is much slower at cooling the system than an aquatuner is. I built a similar contraption with a aquatuner, however the cooling happens so quickly that other problems arise (which can be solve).

You can use this on other liquids too. Here we have enough petro to provide 8 kw/s of power for the colony. The polluted water generated is more than enough to supply an army of thimble reeds. 

 

 

 

[mortenbroesby]

Awesome invention and execution! Would it be possible to make the output be the full 10kgs by adding another row? 

[mathmanican]

5 hours ago, mortenbroesby said:

Would it be possible to make the output be the full 10kgs by adding another row

Yep but you will probably need to increase the naphtha amount on the last row.

[presariohg]

On 7/29/2022 at 10:54 AM, mortenbroesby said:

Awesome invention and execution! Would it be possible to make the output be the full 10kgs by adding another row? 

7 rows increases the output to >30kg/s, note that the numbers of rows don't scale linearly with the output