Geothermal Heat Pump Thoughts?

[Carib94]

As you guys know the new DLC is out and my main interest was the new story trait the Geothermal Heat Pump and it is also an major achievement, with its own small cut scene.

I want to here you guys thoughts on it.

Now Im not a math guy and I didnt do any crazy testing, but I just fire it up and tried it, Need 1200kg of steel btw to start the pump. And so far its showing some decent results with just using the pump for Power which looks good in the pic below. Pump needs 12tons of liquid for it to pump out to the vents and thats a lot, once you get it going, you can use 15 turbines to pipe all 3 pipe intakes back into the Pump and basically loop it to get power and even some materials from the vents with little to no resources. Temperature so far looks like it matters when you pipe liquid, the hotter the liquid the hotter it will come out from the vents.

The materials ive gotten from the vents so far has been dirt, igneous rock, granite, obsidian, rust, and salt(salt water intake?) Ive tried other liquids like oil/petroleum and nectar to see if the difference is with temperature on what materials will come out, but dont seem to be the case here. Also the vents will spit out liquids if they havent reached their boiling point.

So far seems like it is working as it is intended to do, with this it can power your entire base.

Thoughts?

 

[GluttonyMain]

Sounds fun enough goal to build a contraption to get specific materials out of it. Using it for power is rather straightforward, not much complexity needed.

[Tigin]

These are some preliminary investigations

• Impurities are based off the content temperature range
• Output liquid is a fixed temperature change (+150C, maximum of 1326.85C). If temperature is above 1326.85C, then it decreases the liquid temperature instead by 150C, to a minimum of 1326.85.
• You lose 8% of the input material, although it seems closer to around 10-11% with liquid deletion. So a full 30kg/s will result in losing about 3kg/s of liquid means only water is really viable long-term.
• Possible impurities and their amounts can be found here

Igneous Rock      50kg    Any
Granite           50kg    Any
Obsidian          50kg    Any
Salt Water        320kg   Any 
Polluted Water    400kg   Any
Rust              125kg   56.85C
Molten Lead       65kg    266.86C
Sulfur Gas        30kg    426.85C
Sour Gas          200kg   526.85C
Iron Ore          50kg    576.85C
Molten Aluminum   100kg   926.85C
Molten Copper     100kg   1026.85C
Molten Gold       100kg   1126.85C
Molten Magma      75kg    1526.85C
Hydrogen          50kg    1526.85C
Molten Iron       250kg   1626.85C
Wolframite        275kg   1726.85C
Fullerene         3kg     2226.85C
Niobium           5kg     2226.85C

Disclaimer that these are scraped from code. It's very interesting that this allows you to get niobium/fullerene without going to space as well as a renewable source of lead. Power-wise, you should get around 13KW using water returned from a steam turbine. Super-coolant would be the best option, but will be hard to sustain as it is very lossy.

[speckle21]

I like it! i made a crude mega scale petroleum boiler... Then i stopped when i realized the heat alone was already generating more power than my colony would need. I'm still having fun with it though. a direct 150c heater that isn't the metal refiner has possibilities! i'll try abbyssalite melting next. 

[GluttonyMain]

So the best you can get without exploits is molten aluminium? Cause the pump would overheat above 975.

[Primalflower]

Its very interesting. I'm not totally done with my calculations, but so far, it seems like it creates a whole awful lot of power for 960kg of a liquid. seems like it has a lot of potential.

[hydragyro]

On 7/19/2024 at 4:05 AM, GluttonyMain said:

So the best you can get without exploits is molten aluminum? Cause the pump would overheat above 975.

There are a few other ways to go about it (metal refineries, liquid metals from space mining, etc), but considering you need to put 12 tons of liquid into the thing to make it work, and then it just spills out of the vents, the only practical option seems to be the tricked pump.

While that may not have been an intended feature originally, I think it's generally accepted as just another game mechanic now, however, it's still surprising that the new story trait would rely on a "hidden mechanic" (as the wiki calls it) for full functionality.

With 2400C input liquid it gives a variety of resources (in small quantities); I anticipate problems due to longstanding mass-deletion bugs that can occur with mixed liquids and gases.

[Tenedas]

you can use heat exchanger to heat up the liquid.

You start pumping 1 kgs of liquid in the pipes to prevent phase changes. Than via radiant section can exchange heat with other liquids/gas to raise it.

Can't check what radiant material can hold up 2400 degrees but for sure regular pipe even if with slower heat exchange should

Edit: Thermium radiant pipes have 2679.9 degrees melting point, so it make sense that you need thermium to renevew end game content

Edit2: Steel has 2426.9 so in theory is even more accessible

[hydragyro]

On 7/18/2024 at 6:10 PM, Tigin said:

• You lose 8% of the input material, although it seems closer to around 10-11% with liquid deletion. So a full 30kg/s will result in losing about 3kg/s of liquid means only water is really viable long-term.

I agree, and while this new thing is cool and all, we already had a thing that could turn water into power and byproducts. If it wasn't for the losses, it would be a way to turn large amounts of heat energy directly into small amounts of various resources (and a good use case for mercury). The no-space niobium is interesting, but it seems like you only get the "impurities" once during the initial eruption, so it's not a good source of anything else.

The win condition seems to work, but has anyone been able to...

On 6/26/2024 at 10:20 AM, imazined said:

This seems like it needs a spoiler warning: 

  Reveal hidden contents

There is code in the state machine of the geothermal unfinished gizo that says:

DoVictoryFanfare() or DestroyPlanetoidAndDisplayColonyFailed()

 

[imazined]

4 hours ago, hydragyro said:

I agree, and while this new thing is cool and all, we already had a thing that could turn water into power and byproducts. If it wasn't for the losses, it would be a way to turn large amounts of heat energy directly into small amounts of various resources (and a good use case for mercury). The no-space niobium is interesting, but it seems like you only get the "impurities" once during the initial eruption, so it's not a good source of anything else.

The win condition seems to work, but has anyone been able to...

 

It's not in the code anymore

[NewWorldDan]

On 7/19/2024 at 3:05 AM, GluttonyMain said:

So the best you can get without exploits is molten aluminium? Cause the pump would overheat above 975.

I wouldn't call my approach an exploit - liquid uranium as coolant for the metal refinery. Recirculated until it reaches target temperature. Takes a long time to heat it up that much.  You could also run radiant tungsten pipes through a hot liquid. Like an iron or tungsten volcano to hit the target temperature. But, simply getting the obstruction cleared to get the achievement certainly doesn't take anything particularly special. Anyway, off to enjoy the 300 kg of supercoolant that I've earned. I've got some ideas for other approaches to get those rare resources, but it might be less effort to go get them from space instead.

[koukiMonster91]

i have been doing some testing using 20c water and i seen to be getting almost double the water back. you can see the results in the tanks in the top left, each row is for its own vent and i cut off the last 2 tanks in the row after each test(so every 2 tanks from the left is a test. the first 2 tests i used 2 input pipes into the heat pump, the third i used 1 input pipe and got about 6k kg less and the 4th test i used all 3 input pipes and got about the same as the first 2. the tanks are all filled by the outputs of the steam turbines.

 

 

[GluttonyMain]

15 hours ago, NewWorldDan said:

I wouldn't call my approach an exploit - liquid uranium as coolant for the metal refinery. Recirculated until it reaches target temperature. Takes a long time to heat it up that much.  You could also run radiant tungsten pipes through a hot liquid. Like an iron or tungsten volcano to hit the target temperature. But, simply getting the obstruction cleared to get the achievement certainly doesn't take anything particularly special. Anyway, off to enjoy the 300 kg of supercoolant that I've earned. I've got some ideas for other approaches to get those rare resources, but it might be less effort to go get them from space instead.

Fair enough, that is a exploit-free way to reach it, but doesnt it take a ridiculous amount of uranium?

[NewWorldDan]

5 hours ago, GluttonyMain said:

Fair enough, that is a exploit-free way to reach it, but doesnt it take a ridiculous amount of uranium?

Yes. 15 tons of uranium ore. I had to mine out over half of my radioactive biomes. Cycled through the oil refinery over and over again. I had 5 refineries in sequence followed by a temp sensor and it looped back to the first if it sill wasn't hot enough. If I was doing it again, I'd probably use the uranium to make a rust melter, then pipe mercury through it at 1kg/s in radiant pipes down to the heat pump. The reason being that mercury has a really low specific heat capacity. 0.14 for mercury vs 1.69 for liquid uranium. With 3 pipes in parallel, you could get 3kg of fullerene every 6.7 cycles. Is that really worth the effort? Maybe. It's probably still easier and faster to send an expedition to the water planet or a drillcone to a gilded POI. But sometimes we do these things simply because we can.

[Gurgel]

On 7/19/2024 at 12:10 AM, Tigin said:

You lose 8% of the input material, although it seems closer to around 10-11% with liquid deletion. So a full 30kg/s will result in losing about 3kg/s of liquid means only water is really viable long-term.

My numbers look significantly different. (Setup: 1 vent, 5 steam turbines, water at 95C). 

I have to add about 250KG for one pump cycle, which is about 2.5% of mass. Since a pump cycle is about 1.6 cycles (you can only get 10kg in per second, hence a continuous operation will take that much out, giving you 5 steam turbines), that amounts to about 155kg water per game-cycle and a loss of 1.55% per game-cycle.

That is a lot less than 8%. Does the relative loss go up with 2 or 3 vents in operation?

 

[hydragyro]

30 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

My numbers look significantly different. (Setup: 1 vent, 5 steam turbines, water at 95C). 

I have to add about 250KG for one pump cycle, which is about 2.5% of mass. Since a pump cycle is about 1.6 cycles (you can only get 10kg in per second, hence a continuous operation will take that much out, giving you 5 steam turbines), that amounts to about 155kg water per game-cycle and a loss of 1.55% per game-cycle.

That is a lot less than 8%. Does the relative loss go up with 2 or 3 vents in operation?

I did some tests by charging the heat pump with liquid uranium just until it was full, and then letting it vent and measuring the outputs, which consistently resulted in a 8% loss of the uranium. I got numbers similar to yours when using water, because (per the list above) you always get extra water-based liquids as "impurities" no matter what liquid you put in, which seems to offset most of the 8% loss when using water. As far as I could tell, the number of vents doesn't affect the losses.

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, hydragyro said:

I did some tests by charging the heat pump with liquid uranium just until it was full, and then letting it vent and measuring the outputs, which consistently resulted in a 8% loss of the uranium. I got numbers similar to yours when using water, because (per the list above) you always get extra water-based liquids as "impurities" no matter what liquid you put in, which seems to offset most of the 8% loss when using water. As far as I could tell, the number of vents doesn't affect the losses.

That does make sense. 

Then we have 250kg [what I need to put in] + 320Kg * 0.93 [saltwater] + 400kg [pwater] ~ 950kg. That is about 9.5% loss. Given a bit of additional deletion loss, these numbers match a loss of 8%

Hence for water, the net loss is about 1.55% per cycle, and hence about 155kg per cycle, per vent.

Not too bad for about 3.8kW of energy. But not too excessive. Doing electrolysis using an anti-SPOM and Hydrogen Generators on the same water would give you around 1.5kW.

[Prince Mandor]

On 7/29/2024 at 3:46 PM, Gurgel said:

Not too bad for about 3.8kW of energy. But not too excessive. Doing electrolysis using an anti-SPOM and Hydrogen Generators on the same water would give you around 1.5kW.

BTW, what is "anti-SPOM" ?

[GluttonyMain]

I think its when you vent the oxygen into vacuum and only use the hydrogen

[Gurgel]

6 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

BTW, what is "anti-SPOM" ?

It is an old design of mine to get hydrogen from water. Still works well. 

 

[Galvanize2]

I hope this does not count as stealing the topic, but I have different experience...

My geothermal pump is actually water positive.

First, I filled the pump until it was 100% pressure.

I have two steam turbines, connecting it's output back to the pump. No other inputs are connected.

Everything was fine, free power, yay!

But after maybe 50 cycles or so, right now the pump is filled (100% pressure), the vent is overpressurized, and my pipes are full, so no more free power. :(

I don't have access to the space biome yet, so I can't vent out the excess water, or electrolize it and vent out the excess oxygen.

Any idea what to do with the excess water? :)

[Pedro_L]

On 8/5/2024 at 4:38 AM, Galvanize2 said:

I hope this does not count as stealing the topic, but I have different experience...

My geothermal pump is actually water positive.

First, I filled the pump until it was 100% pressure.

I have two steam turbines, connecting it's output back to the pump. No other inputs are connected.

Everything was fine, free power, yay!

But after maybe 50 cycles or so, right now the pump is filled (100% pressure), the vent is overpressurized, and my pipes are full, so no more free power. :(

I don't have access to the space biome yet, so I can't vent out the excess water, or electrolize it and vent out the excess oxygen.

Any idea what to do with the excess water? :)

Build an ocean I guess

On 7/19/2024 at 5:05 AM, GluttonyMain said:

So the best you can get without exploits is molten aluminium? Cause the pump would overheat above 975.

Liquid steel or gold if you have enough volcanos I'd guess

[GluttonyMain]

7 hours ago, Pedro_L said:

Liquid steel or gold if you have enough volcanos I'd guess

You cannot pump liquid steel or gold without exploits. the pump would keep overheating.

[Pedro_L]

7 hours ago, GluttonyMain said:

You cannot pump liquid steel or gold without exploits. the pump would keep overheating.

You can pump a little bit before the pump break

[Bomaz]

The most non exploity solution I can think of would be to run tungsten radiant pipes containing liquid uranium through a geotuned volcano magma.

 

The liquid uranium can be pumped while cold with at 125ish and is liquid until 4131. 4x geotuned magma is 2300 ish. Could even geotune it 5x and get rock gas and cool it down with the uranium.

 

The hard part is really to dump the old magma somewhere to replace it with fresh hot magma when colder than desired, but that should be doable with a door crusher or just letting the "cold" magma out somewhere.

If you don't have spaced out maybe liquid aluminum could be used inside the pipes instead of uranium