When Aquatuner is active, it doesn't actually work.

[CluNsMYc]

When Aquatuner is active, it doesn't actually work.

When activated, that liquid is never cooled by the Aquatuner.

How to get it to work properly even if don't fill the pipe completely with liquid and have some empty pipes.

[psusi]

Fill the pipe with liquid.  It takes a second or two for it to fire up and in your case, by the time it gets going, the liquid has already passed it by and the pipe has gone back to being empty.

[Bzhydack]

Yup, most buildings in game, and also sensors, have a little bit of lag. You need to keep this in kind.

[blakemw]

Aquatuners work horribly with "gappy pipes". Don't try to make it work with gappy pipes, just ensure the pipe is full when it enters. The odd gap doesn't really hurt if it's like 20 liquid packets and a gap, but you definitely don't want mostly gaps.

[Gurgel]

Yep, the Aquatuner seems a bit slower to react. Only use (mostly) full pipes to make it work well. 

[Orzelek]

I did a bug report some time ago I think. Aquatuner will not cool first packet it gets when it starts up. So pipe with alternating packet and empty will not cool anything.

[wachunga]

If you must have packet gaps in your pipe, you need to plumb the AT a bit differently. Use a shutoff to feed the AT only with packets that need cooling and dead end the pipe at the AT.

[CluNsMYc]

7 hours ago, wachunga said:

Use a shutoff

Yes. Aquatuner and shutoff are different for liquid transfer. That's weird.

When I play the game later I found this in sandbox mode and I'm already using it.

The shutoff takes up more building space and consumes a bit more power though, which is kind of bad, I've had to either expand the building layout or move the shutoff and sensors to the outside.

[CluNsMYc]

12 hours ago, CluNsMYc said:

Yes. Aquatuner and shutoff are different for liquid transfer. That's weird.

When I play the game later I found this in sandbox mode and I'm already using it.

The shutoff takes up more building space and consumes a bit more power though, which is kind of bad, I've had to either expand the building layout or move the shutoff and sensors to the outside.

Attention! The shutoff is the opposite behavior of the Aquatuner.

When the pipe is full, gas/liquid will pass through the shutoff even if the shutoff is closed.

It doesn't matter to me, I just need the Aquatuner to cool properly when I have empty pipes.

 

[psusi]

23 hours ago, wachunga said:

If you must have packet gaps in your pipe, you need to plumb the AT a bit differently. Use a shutoff to feed the AT only with packets that need cooling and dead end the pipe at the AT.

That won't work either.  The shutoff very well could decide to send the AT a packet, empty, packet, empty.  You can use several segments of pipe as a buffer before a shutoff with an element sensor and a filter ( or buffer, I always mix those up ) gate to ensure that the shutoff only opens once there is constant liquid in the pipe for several seconds and not just one second of liquid followed by gap.

3 hours ago, CluNsMYc said:

Attention! The shutoff is the opposite behavior of the Aquatuner.

When the pipe is full, gas/liquid will pass through the shutoff even if the shutoff is closed.

It doesn't matter to me, I just need the Aquatuner to cool properly when I have empty pipes.

 

No, the shutoff never lets liquid through unless it is on.  Unless maybe you are using a not gate or something?

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, CluNsMYc said:

It doesn't matter to me, I just need the Aquatuner to cool properly when I have empty pipes.

Just put a tank before with a hysteresis (distance between upper and lower levels) and a shutoff driven by the tank level. That way you get longer stretches of on and off for the aquatuner. 

[wachunga]

3 hours ago, CluNsMYc said:

When the pipe is full, gas/liquid will pass through the shutoff even if the shutoff is closed.

You may have accidentally connected the pipes behind the shutoff. A shutoff will not pass packets when closed.

Or you may be misinterpreting the problem. A sensor and shutoff combo requires continuous flow to filter correctly. If the pipe extending past the shutoff backs up, the shutoff may output the wrong packet. You can fix this by putting your shutoff on a loop to guarantee continuous flow. Add a second sensor and shutoff to extract packets that don't need cooling. Packets will filter correctly regardless of backups before or after the AT.

 

 

[CluNsMYc]

11 hours ago, CluNsMYc said:

Attention! The shutoff is the opposite behavior of the Aquatuner.

When the pipe is full, gas/liquid will pass through the shutoff even if the shutoff is closed.

It doesn't matter to me, I just need the Aquatuner to cool properly when I have empty pipes.

Oh, I was wrong. I used vent.

It was overpressurized and the gas/liquid had nowhere to go, so the sensor detecting the other turned the shutoff on.

[gigamoi]

I just put a tank shortly before the aquathuner to act as a thermal mass and make sure the packets coming to the aquathuner have similar temperatures so the delay doesn't matter.

I also put a tank after the aquathuner tho make sure the the packets going through the cooling loop also have similar temperatures. I put a temp sensor just after this tank set to the intended loop temperature and an other just before the aquathuner set to (liquid freezing point + 14C + margin) with the aquathuner only running when both are good. Pipes are set to bypass the aquathuner when inactive. Add a heating element if necessary, and that's how I generally achieve precise temperature control.

[6Havok9]

2 hours ago, gigamoi said:

I just put a tank shortly before the aquathuner to act as a thermal mass and make sure the packets coming to the aquathuner have similar temperatures so the delay doesn't matter.

I also put a tank after the aquathuner tho make sure the the packets going through the cooling loop also have similar temperatures. I put a temp sensor just after this tank set to the intended loop temperature and an other just before the aquathuner set to (liquid freezing point + 14C + margin) with the aquathuner only running when both are good. Pipes are set to bypass the aquathuner when inactive. Add a heating element if necessary, and that's how I generally achieve precise temperature control.

I thought I was the only one doing such a thing with two thermo sensors. It might be overkill, but at least my loops stopped breaking when I'm not looking at them. So it's not overkill I guess.

[gigamoi]

1 hour ago, 6Havok9 said:

I thought I was the only one doing such a thing with two thermo sensors. It might be overkill, but at least my loops stopped breaking when I'm not looking at them. So it's not overkill I guess.

Emergent design I guess. I also add a temperature sensor next to the aquathuner in the steam chamber to make sure it never overheats for when I will inevitably switch the liquid to super-coolant for better efficiency in late game and don't want to bother with more than one steam turbine per cooling setup. You could perhaps call that overkill, but the automation wiring only consist of a single not gate and each sensor sending green when the aquathuner aught to not run, so it's actually really cheap, simple and easy, for a very robust and efficient result. You just need to get the idea.

[psusi]

Another idea I often go with is rather than cool the liquid ( or gas ) that you are really trying to cool, use a closed loop through the AT with the best coolant you can ( nectar if you have it, otherwise pwater until you can get supercoolant ), and build a small chamber filled with metal or granite tiles and surrounded by insulated blocks and fish the pipes of other things you really want to cool through the heat exchanger.  The secondary pipe doesn't care if it goes empty or not a full packet.