pH2O as coolant transitioning to other coolant like Petroleum

[GoHereDoThis]

Is it just me or is pH2O just so much better at removing heat?  I initially had 2x aquatuners to cool down a big vat of petroleum using pH2O as coolant in the pipes.  I got it down to about 2C, then drained the pipes and put in some petroleum so that I can go to -40C or so.  The temperature in the vat and the petroleum in the pipes just kept getting warmer and warmer, and the steam room where the 2x aquatuners are was getting cooler to the point that the steam turbine no longer ran.

Did I make a mistake somewhere?  Or is pH2O really great at taking away heat?  How do I best transition from pH2O to other coolant options?  I want the vat to be really, really cold to have a buffer for heat-generating activities.  I don't have access to ethanol yet.

I'm playing vanilla game; I have Spaced Out but not active.  Thanks!

[LadenSwallow]

The key factor for aquatuners and cooling is the SHC of the coolant. From memory, H2O and pH2O have 4.2ish SHC, whereas petroleum has a SHC of 1.8ish.

In the base game, the only liquid with a better SHC is supercoolant. So for cooling pH2O will be your coolant of choice in most cases.

The next key factor is if the coolant has a suitable temperature range. So H2O becomes inappropriate below about 5C ish due to the freezing point and how aquatuners cool. Polluted H2O can continue working to about -14C ish for the same reason, so if you NEED a temperature less than that, then you need to consider a better coolant. Supercoolant will be, by and large the best coolant in terms of SHC and temperature range, the concern of gas boiling range can be solved with heat injectors (automation controlled mechanical airlocks) and keeping the coolant away from the heat.

[DolphinWing]

You can use Ethanol if you want to drop below -40C. Its SHC is 2.46, better than petroleum(1.76) or crude oil(1.69). And its also has better freezing point is -114C.

But I don't know if you have Arbor Tree in your map because they can only be found in Forest Biome. Ethanol sometimes can be found naturally in Rust biome.

[myxal]

On 5/9/2023 at 7:05 PM, GoHereDoThis said:

The temperature in the vat and the petroleum in the pipes just kept getting warmer and warmer, and the steam room where the 2x aquatuners are was getting cooler to the point that the steam turbine no longer ran.

I'd like to see that setup because steam room cooling down doesn't make sense to me. Have you used regular, or heaven forbid, radiant pipes inside the steam room? PH2O makes the AT more efficient in watts per DTUs moved - with petroleum AT will be utilised more to remove the same amount of heat which also caps its cooling capacity. Unless you were adding more heat to the vat of petroleum than the AT could take out at 100% utilisation, the vat should still cool down.