Tony Advanced Metal Tamer

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

I've recently was another geyser tamer design on YT, too complicated to my liking (but certainly kudos to people who spend their time thinking and designing these things!). I was trying to find nice design for myself some time ago and was sucessful in very old Tony Advanced video. I've never seen any mention of that design.

I hope that this is okay, but I feel need to present (or kind of "remind") this hidden gem to you. Once again, author of design is Tony Advanced, not me, not my aim to take any credit. I've just tweaked very minor things to my liking (as I tend to fit contraptions in 4 tile high floors but i wanted to stay as much compact as possible).

Here's the link to original YT video: 

 

And here's my version of tamer:

Tony's tamer use two very neat tricks to sucessfuly cool metals, which I really like:

1) As turbine is outputting 2 kg/s of water, these are evenly divided and run trough metal tiles where they exchange temperature with metal. Powerful part of cooling which helps with getting to temperature around 100 Celsius. And because when max 10% of capacity of pipe is used at any given time, there's no breaking of pipes.

2) Timer

Timer is set to let exactly one packet on conveyor to pass:

20 (kg - size of packet) / 0,3477 (kg/s - average output) = 57,5s

Thanks to that, tamer is producing same amount as its geyser, but evenly spread during whole active/dormancy period, providing power to the contraption.

 

I found amazing that this design is perfectly viable even after almost 4 years. I hope this post is ok as kind of nod to this old yet powerful design.

[MinhPham]

May be i'm a noob but the way i see is difference ... in the end of the day all the cooling still done by the aquatuner, the little heat exchange on top-left does almost nothing ...

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

1 hour ago, MinhPham said:

May be i'm a noob but the way i see is difference ... in the end of the day all the cooling still done by the aquatuner, the little heat exchange on top-left does almost nothing ...

Here, take a look:

This is material on rail just before first metal tile. In vacuum, so no temperature transfer is happening in exact moment.

Same material when timer allow one packet to go and aluminium interacts with metal tiles.

Instant decrease of 85 Celsius, i wouldn't agree with "doing almost nothing".

And here you can see packet of water just leaving aluminium tile with temperature over vaporization point, so it will turn steam immediately after entering steam chamber. 

Sure, majority of cooling is done in steam chamber and hydrogen (turbine) chamber, but in my understanding metal tiles help significantly.

But ofc I could be wrong

[MinhPham]

53 minutes ago, Jurij I. Gorkij said:

But ofc I could be wrong

Or maybe i was too drunk .... you can save like 100 kDTU/s of cooling power, that's 1/6 or the aquatuner running on water, or 200W ( but of course the turbine also reclaims 50% of the heat generated by aquatuner, so that's 100W )

But ofc I could be wrong too

[SackMaggie]

I would remove the metal tiles block on the left side and place it on top of turbine, adding one more turbine and maybe more aquatuner and use the same cooling loop from the turbine to also cool the stuff on rail.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

12 minutes ago, SackMaggie said:

I would remove the metal tiles block on the left side and place it on top of turbine, adding one more turbine and maybe more aquatuner and use the same cooling loop from the turbine to also cool the stuff on rail.

Ehm... Why?

EDIT: To be more specific, tamer outputs metal at 20-30 Celsius, no need for additional cooling.

[Jonas S]

One of the most efficient ways to exchange heat is between conveyors and pipes on metal tiles.

At no other point you can both build metal tiles or exchange heat with a coolant on pipes on a volcano tamer with a steam turbine and a steam chamber.

Steam Turbine room. Debri exchanges with atmosphere. Cannot build tiles obviously.
Steam Chamber. Debri exchanges with atmosphere. Although one could build a metal tile in some spaces, I do not know if it will more efficient because the steam cannot coexist in the tile (it is not piped).
 

The 95C water is piped, so we can perfectly use it to exchange heat more efficiently. Without the timer concern, those metal tiles are redundant. The water will cool the steam and the steam cools the debri eventually. With a time constraint it is actually the metal tiles section that changes the most temperature per time in the setup. Since the debri is coming out at almost 95C it is almost perfect for just 4 tiles.

I read @SackMaggie suggestion on using metal tiles on the atmosphere room, as an alternative setup where the coolant will exchange heat directly with the metal, and hope the metal tiles can keep the atmosphere cool enough for the turbine as a modification that requires 5 tiles more of space.

[SackMaggie]

22 hours ago, Jurij I. Gorkij said:

Ehm... Why?

EDIT: To be more specific, tamer outputs metal at 20-30 Celsius, no need for additional cooling.

For more simplicity no?

19 hours ago, Jonas S said:

I read @SackMaggie suggestion on using metal tiles on the atmosphere room, as an alternative setup where the coolant will exchange heat directly with the metal, and hope the metal tiles can keep the atmosphere cool enough for the turbine as a modification that requires 5 tiles more of space.

The turbine is 3 tiles tall and one row of metal tiles that's 4, the turbine room itself can be vacuum with some drop of liquid is enough.

I'm saying something like this

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

3 hours ago, SackMaggie said:

For more simplicity no?

The turbine is 3 tiles tall and one row of metal tiles that's 4, the turbine room itself can be vacuum with some drop of liquid is enough.

I'm saying something like this

Now I see what you meant, i thought at first you were suggesting how to cool output.

Truth is there's mistake on my part where I haven't realized tamer could work without outside power connection. I am testing this for now:

Spoiler

So far it looks good with temperature of output aluminium (just beyond 30 Celsius = same as setting on sensor before aquatuner). Certainly nice suggestion from you for even more compactness!

 

On the other side, what i always liked about Tony's design is versatility - it can be used for each metal geyser except Niobium. Some geysers even provide power (aluminium, for example, I've estimated about 600W average during cycle, ofc only in peak times - when turbine is creating 850W), but some are lacking (gold volcano struggles a lot). That's why I value external power connection, so I'll stick with previous design

However I salute you how quickly you were able to formulate increase in performance (or in this case compactness)!

 

 

[SackMaggie]

5 hours ago, Jurij I. Gorkij said:

On the other side, what i always liked about Tony's design is versatility - it can be used for each metal geyser except Niobium. Some geysers even provide power (aluminium, for example, I've estimated about 600W average during cycle, ofc only in peak times - when turbine is creating 850W), but some are lacking (gold volcano struggles a lot). That's why I value external power connection, so I'll stick with previous design

If you want external power that's mean you don't actually need a battery.
 

Spoiler

Actually I would remove liquid valve and replace with tile So I don't have to worry about keeping the room vacuum and extend the same cooling loop.

 

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

4 hours ago, SackMaggie said:

If you want external power that's mean you don't actually need a battery.

Or you can go even minimalist way with outside transformer:

 

Spoiler

 or

 

(Testing geyser went dormant after 15 cycles, but so far it seems viable. I'm planning to let it go longer when I'll have time.)

 

To my surprise, I went with your suggestion to not use turbine output for cooling and uptime of aqua tuner went only by 5% from 20% to 25%.

[LadenSwallow]

How does the performance change if you replace the end temp sensor with a source conveyor meter to restrict metal flow to a (potentially decimal) factor of 20kg (due to packets not merging, unless you are prepared to drop and recirculate at expense of power)?

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

On 8/6/2023 at 1:25 PM, LadenSwallow said:

How does the performance change if you replace the end temp sensor with a source conveyor meter to restrict metal flow to a (potentially decimal) factor of 20kg (due to packets not merging, unless you are prepared to drop and recirculate at expense of power)?

Sorry, my english is not enough to wrap my head around your question, could you please explain more?

[LadenSwallow]

Conveyor meters which were added some time after these designs became common, the meters act like valves and shutoffs (I send a continuous green signal from a wire -> Not gate -> reset port) combined. As such you can limit the metal flow to the average output of the metal volcano at the source (loader end), rather than relying on the mass to sit in 20kg packets on rails. The further consequence of this is that due to the smaller packet sizes each individual packet can exchange heat (each former 20kg pack could occupy (for example) 20 slots at 1kg on the rail, each doing its own temperature exchange). This is how I typically build my metal tamers, as it avoids a potential issue where at the end of supply, there may end up being a microgram packet which doesn't exchange heat and a temperature sensor won't let it pass - such packets have minimal heat so it would be safe to pass once it merges with other packets at a vent.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

8 hours ago, LadenSwallow said:

Conveyor meters which were added some time after these designs became common, the meters act like valves and shutoffs (I send a continuous green signal from a wire -> Not gate -> reset port) combined. As such you can limit the metal flow to the average output of the metal volcano at the source (loader end), rather than relying on the mass to sit in 20kg packets on rails. The further consequence of this is that due to the smaller packet sizes each individual packet can exchange heat (each former 20kg pack could occupy (for example) 20 slots at 1kg on the rail, each doing its own temperature exchange). This is how I typically build my metal tamers, as it avoids a potential issue where at the end of supply, there may end up being a microgram packet which doesn't exchange heat and a temperature sensor won't let it pass - such packets have minimal heat so it would be safe to pass once it merges with other packets at a vent.

I see, thanks for your explanation. I don't use temp sensor normally (I've just 'threw' it in my post since lot of people prefers them), my preferred method is timer (1s green, 20kg/[geyser output] = Xs red). Because of that i haven't met mentioned problem with micropacket.

Doing projections and calculations in my head I think both timer and conveyor meter methods are almost equally effective. Aluminium volcano (350 g/s average output) needs 44,590.00 DTU/s to cool of its output from 175 to 30 Celsius (Celsius difference * Alumuminium Heat Capacity * Mass in grams).

With conveyor method, you need exactly 44,590.00 DTU/s.

With timer method, since packet is much bigger, you need 2,548,000 DTU, but this amount is spread to 58s (Time I would set my red timer duration too, since I would calculate packet 20kg / 0.350 Kg/s average output), so I would get 43,931.03 DTU. Since there's lot of rounding, you can say it's 44,590.00 DTU/s too.

Both methods do not have problems with these micropackets

[Jonas S]

@Jurij I. Gorkij @SackMaggie Real heat exchangers are normally more efficient if they have separate isolated rooms to change temperature with. ONI heat exchangers normally are so as well, that is why it is hard for me to believe that completely substituting 3 isolated room of 120C>, 120C- 95C, and 95C and below with a only two isolated rooms could be more efficient.

To give an intuition just assume you want to exchange temperature with two identical streams of water one at 90C and one at 10C, if you put all the water together you can expect a 50C water container, but if you divide the containers one can in principle move 10C water to almost 90C and 90C water to almost 10C at the end of the process. 

Efficiency in this setup can only be measured after a full complete cycle of the volcano: How much watts did the contraption required and how much heat is deleted. I think it i possible to have both original and metal exchange in atmosphere variation produce the same temperature metal out; and in such case I would be surprised that one would do it with less watts than the original design.

That said, I reckon the difference is not worth a huge discussion. I am just trying to explain why Tony's design feels almost optimal.

 

[SackMaggie]

10 hours ago, Jonas S said:

@Jurij I. Gorkij @SackMaggie Real heat exchangers are normally more efficient if they have separate isolated rooms to change temperature with. ONI heat exchangers normally are so as well, that is why it is hard for me to believe that completely substituting 3 isolated room of 120C>, 120C- 95C, and 95C and below with a only two isolated rooms could be more efficient.

Not sure what are you trying to convey, but did you see my builds? the vacuum is like an invisible wall if you want to count it that way.

10 hours ago, Jonas S said:

Efficiency in this setup can only be measured after a full complete cycle of the volcano: How much watts did the contraption required and how much heat is deleted. I think it i possible to have both original and metal exchange in atmosphere variation produce the same temperature metal out; and in such case I would be surprised that one would do it with less watts than the original design.

That said, I reckon the difference is not worth a huge discussion. I am just trying to explain why Tony's design feels almost optimal.

TBH I'm not sure about exact math but it just work and also in a very compact form. The wattage you gain from the turbine is just a bonus you wont rely on it as your main power source anyway. BTW if you can do better build go ahead I want to see the result as well.

And since the post is exist in the forum my first assumption is 'its need a discussion'. It may sound hostile but I do actually seek an improvement of the existing builds.