Metal refinery adding 110 degrees to coolant, pipes burst

[x4550]

I have a temperature-normalized coolant source (mixed waters in a reservoir) coming out at a solid 75F, going into my metal refinery, and coming out at 186F, and instantly bursting the outflow pipe.  Is it normal for the refinery to heat up coolant by 110F?

[sakura_sk]

54 minutes ago, x4550 said:

coming out at 186F

85° C (186 F) wouldn't burst pipes. It would need at least 100° C (212 F) for water. Check what temperature liquids inside the refinery are.

54 minutes ago, x4550 said:

Is it normal for the refinery to heat up coolant by 110F?

Yes. When making steel, water will heat by ~56° C (~132 F)

[psusi]

As a fellow American, let me give you some advice.  Just set the game to use Celsius and get used to using it at least in the game.  It makes things easier, and the relative familiarity of F doesn't really help in the game.  You can look up how much a batch of metal heats different coolants on the wiki and yea, if water gets to 100 C, it boils and breaks the pipe.  Polluted water can handle a bit more heat.  Naptha is a great coolant and not so hard to get any more.  If you build a small puddle of water in a vacuum ( space ) and chuck a metal battery in it, then finish sealing it in with insulated tiles, after a bit the battery will blow up and turn the water into super heated steam.  Build a plastic tempshift plate in the diagonal corner and it will absorb the heat from the steam and melt into naptha, then you can mop it up and use it as refinery coolant.  You can do that twice with one battery and 10kg or so of water easily for a total of 1600kg of naptha.  It can take a LOT of heat and then dump that heat directly into the steam room with radiant pipes under a steam turbine to generate power and cool down the naptha for reuse.  Just build a liquid reservoir on top of a mesh or airflow tile inside a small insulated room with all of the gas vacuumed out of it and the hot naptha in the tank won't exchange heat and overheat the tank.  Use a shutoff valve and a liquid temperature sensor to recycle the naptha through the steam until it is cooled down enough to send back to the refinery.

 

[gigamoi]

Yeah, you better drop that foot loving attitude. I personally have nothing against people who are into feet but this is a metric friendly neighborhood. Your kind ain't safe around here.

Edited August 7, 2025 by gigamoi

[asurendra]

Its common to use petrolium as coolant for refinery. Water isnt the best, its boil too easy

[x4550]

Yeah my coolant wasn't quite as temperature-normalized as I believed it to be.  I thought the liquid reservoir averaged out all temp values put into it, at least it used to... I think.  Switched to more chilled water until I can get an aquatuner setup.  I've been away from the game for a couple years, still getting used to the changes made.  Thanks for all the replies.  Freedom units forever!

[cyberwarlord]

16 hours ago, x4550 said:

Yeah my coolant wasn't quite as temperature-normalized as I believed it to be.  I thought the liquid reservoir averaged out all temp values put into it, at least it used to... I think.  Switched to more chilled water until I can get an aquatuner setup.  I've been away from the game for a couple years, still getting used to the changes made.  Thanks for all the replies.  Freedom units forever!

Using multiple liquids might cause an issue. 

If I use water it's usually water that's going straight into a spom.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 8/6/2025 at 5:32 AM, x4550 said:

I have a temperature-normalized coolant source (mixed waters in a reservoir) coming out at a solid 75F, going into my metal refinery, and coming out at 186F, and instantly bursting the outflow pipe.  Is it normal for the refinery to heat up coolant by 110F?

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but.. the amount of heat added to the liquid is based on the metal that is refined.  This heat is then applied to the total storage reservoir of a given element.  So if you have mixed elements inside the refinery the heat is going to get applied ... oddly.  I'm guessing that what is happening is that all of the heat for a given tick is being applied to only the next fluid getting ready to exit the pipe.  If you have exactly 50% clean/polluted then instead of applying the heat to the total liquid in the reservoir, the full heat energy is getting applied to only half of the total reservoir capacity.  In other words, its going to seem like the temperature getting applied is doubling.

I could be wrong, but I bet if you send only a single liquid (i.e. clean water OR polluted water, but not both), you'll solve your problem.

On 8/7/2025 at 2:50 AM, gigamoi said:

Yeah, you better drop that foot loving attitude. I personally have nothing against people who are into feet but this is a metric friendly neighborhood. Your kind ain't safe around here.

I love my freedom units!  .. but it does make things a bit more difficult.  

[gigamoi]

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I love my freedom units!  .. but it does make things a bit more difficult.

If you are interested, I know a place where they offer conversion therapy dimensional analysis.