Question abut game mechanics (seems like bug to me but i might just not understend game)

[PatrykC159753]

I Whanted to build a cooling area for iron from my volcano. So i made whater reservoir neer. i never finished becose i noticed small pises off clear water showing in my poluted water so i decided to look at it. In screan shoots i menaged to capture the photo of 5 kg of steam appering(i also have save if someone would like to look at it). The Isulated Tilels tuching water are very hot about 130C. they poluted whater is cooled and its 10C. Insted of giving alll 1100kg of poluted whater the hit and making it 11C the wall gave 5kg of water 110c and turned it into steam and moved 1095kg of whater to other tiles. Should it work like this or is it a bug.?

[Ceos]

This is actually a real and intentional mechanic. It is known as flaking and is one of the more complex mechanics to use and abuse. General information can be found on the wiki https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Flaking . A deep dive on the mechanic and fun things to do with flaking is discussed in the below.

-Ceos

 

[blakemw]

And the general solution to flaking (and its subtypes of partial melting, partial evaporation), is double-walling.

In the screenshot, the hot steam has a much higher rate of heat transfer into the insulated tiles, this is because gas-solid heat transfer has a 25x multiplier, so the insulated tile is getting heated by the steam about 25x more than it is getting cooled by the polluted water, as liquid-solid only has a 1x multiplier. So the insulated tiles can accumulate enough heat to get hot enough to cause partial evaporation.

Double-walling means using a double layer of solid tiles, it is not necessary that both layers be insulated tiles. if the steam-facing layer were un-insulated, then that layer would quickly reach steam temperature, but solid:solid heat transfer only has a 1x multiplier, so now heat transfer into the insulated tile from the hot normal tile is only 1x instead of 25x, were the steam hot enough it may be possible for the insulated tile to eventually get hot enough to cause partial evaporation but it'd be much less of a problem.

If the inner layer is normal tiles, then steam:insulated tile heat transfer still has the 25x multiplier and the insulated tile will still get very hot, but the inner normal tile layer will equalize in temperature with the pwater, and heat transfer between the insulated tile and normal tile is only 1x, an inner layer of normal tiles absolutely guarantees no partial evaporation.

In some cases it is ideal to use very "lightweight" inner tiles, like say liquid oxygen chamber, insulated tiles will cause partial evaporation in the liquid oxygen and because insulated tiles have a large thermal mass it'll take them a long time to cool down and stop causing partial evaporation. Instead an inner layer of gold or lead metal tiles could be used, insulated tile heat transfer is based on the lowest thermal conductivity so the thermal conductivity of the inner tiles literally doesn't matter at all, but like a Lead Metal Tile has only 3.8% as much heat capacity as a Ceramic Insulated Tile, so the inner layer will cool down much more quickly.

So a double-wall of insulated tile will generally work well, but in some cases it's probably more optimal to use a double-wall of insulated tile and normal/metal tile.