The Steamateur - a sand-free self-powered self-contained water sieve replacement for bathroom loops

[Saturnus]

As the title suggest the Steamateur boils up to 2020g/s polluted water and outputs 2000g/s water and 20g/s dirt without using an external power source except for start up.

The build uses the fact that a tepidizer when pulsed works up to 125c in high efficiency mode even after a save/reload. And AT heats the steam the last few degrees so that it can be captured by a steam turbine. This is very slightly power positive due to a steam turbine calculating it's power output from the temperature of the incoming steam temperature to 95C. And most of that range is heated by the tepidizer which far exceeds 100% power efficiency.

It's important to note that it's only just about power positive. When used in a bathroom loop the tepidizer runs 12% of the time for an average power consumption of 115W. The AT runs 6% of the time for an average of 72W. The ST produces 254W on average, so there's only 67W surplus under ideal conditions. Enough that it can comfortably power the time gates sweeper, conveyor loader, and make up for the power loss in the small battery. And have a some tolerance to temperature fluctuations in the input but not enough that you would use it to power anything else.

The system uses the ST room for temperature stabilisation. The ST output is 95c. This is cooled slightly by the AT loop and the input pwater which is ideally 65C to output water for the lavatories, sinks, and showers at 85c.

The return from lavatories, sinks and showers is lower temperature than the output because while sinks and showers input and output temperatures are the same, the lavatory output temperature is the sum of the input temperature part and the dupe temperature part.

Is 2kg/s enough? If sinks and showers are used it's enough for a 30 dupe bathroom loop. If only sinks are used it's enough for a 120 dupe bathroom loop. So yes, in the vast majority of cases it's plenty.

One important detail. The small battery is in a crude bath 1kg will do. The petroleum on top that links the temp sensor to the AT must be poured in on top of the small battery and spill into the tepidizer bath with the airflow tile not being built yet. This is to avoid the petroleum being pushed aside by condensed water during the start up process.

Obviously, the build must be externally powered during the first couple of cycles.

It is highly recommended that you use steel and ceramics throughout the build. Also, do not use more than the two temp shift plates shown.

EDIT: After a lot of stress testing the design is amended sligthly using a conveyor meter valve instead of a liquid valve on the input. This is due to a small chance that pwater could boil in the pipe before the vent if a partial packet was more than 1000g but less than 1120g. 1000g and under not being a problem because that's 10% or less than full pipe flow which can't phase change. This change simply detects if there's pwater incoming and only then allow 2020g packet to be output from the meter valve.

It is also possible to loop the rail with dirt through the ST room if you for some reason object to having dirt output above 100c.

Amended section

Original design

 

Edited May 10, 2025 by Saturnus

[Gurgel]

I have built something like this in the past. These days, I just use a tepidizer-aquatuner loop with super-coolant to heat the water up, a steam-turbine to get it recondensed and a regular aquatuner/steam-turbine cooler (with super coolant and a heat-exchanger for the water) to cool it down to the target 25C or so I want. 

The whole thing takes an estimated average of 100W per regular breathing dupe (80kg water/cycle or so) and that is too low for me to bother with tricks. 

[psusi]

It looks like only the pwater in the tile with the vent must boil, but how do you prevent another tile from doing so?

 

[Saturnus]

16 hours ago, psusi said:

It looks like only the pwater in the tile with the vent must boil, but how do you prevent another tile from doing so?

 

That's the only tile with pwater. The tepidizer is in a petroleum bath.