Magma shenanigans

[ShaTiK]

Somewhere on the forums (sorry "insert_username_here") I read a nice idea of a sand-less purification process for contaminated water. Idea is simple - when you heat up that water to the boiling point it turns into steam. But when steam cools down - it became pure water. Reason for this - steam have no parameter which will tell what kind of water it used to be and could only revert into pure water. Two kinds of water will turn into steam, but then steam could only turn into one kind - pure one. You could argue that it's cheating, and - yeah, a bit. If this process would've left some byproduct - say, contaminated dirt - then it would be a perfect game mechanic.

Long story short - I decided to try to make one myself. Build a nice purification tunnel:

The idea was - I will pump some magma from the bottom of the map, pour it into abyssalite pocket (so it will not loose heat on innecessary stuff), close it off with obsidian tiles (so they don't melt). The latter will be a heater, a frying pan. Then I will pour contaminated water down there, it will turn into steam, go up trough gas-permeable tiles on top, cool off, turn into water. And at last I will collect water from these tiles. Alternatively I could cool it down with thermo-regulators and, again, send it to my water tank.

As you could tell by screenshot - it was nice only on paper. When I started pouring magma, it just turned into rock, almost in no time. So magma had no time to heat up CO2 (yea, pocket was filled with CO2, but I tested with O2 and effect was the same), instead it kept cooling off to the point of freezing. I collected some absurd amount of rock, but haven't managed to heat up the chamber to required point.

It still would've been a win - if only solid rock was emitting its heat. But nope - rock have a temp of 1352C, but CO2 is only 76.3C.

So far I'm having a lot of fun poking around materials in this game - and it's fun, I really enjoy it. Alpha, yeah, but still fun. Having flammables actually work will be a great next step. Burning all that chlorine gas, ah..

[Czeraphine]

5 minutes ago, ShaTiK said:

Having flammables actually work will be a great next step. Burning all that chlorine gas, ah..

 

I've advocated the theory of conversion of contaminated water into pure water through a makeshift distillery, though I've also recieved that idea from "insert_username_here" somewhere on the forums. With that out of the way,

If flammables were to actually work.. Imagine what would happen to your base with all that oxygen (and quite possibly hydrogen) lying around in max pressure output. Spontaneous combustion of your dupes would ensue. Since, they're almost the only source of fuel other than coal. 

[Radje]

13 minutes ago, ShaTiK said:

As you could tell by screenshot - it was nice only on paper. When I started pouring magma, it just turned into rock, almost in no time. So magma had no time to heat up CO2 (yea, pocket was filled with CO2, but I tested with O2 and effect was the same), instead it kept cooling off to the point of freezing. I collected some absurd amount of rock, but haven't managed to heat up the chamber to required point.

 Could it work if you have the heating chamber all the way where magma is by itself? Instead of pumping the magma up, you get the water further down.

[Czeraphine]

2 minutes ago, Radje said:

 Could it work if you have the heating chamber all the way where magma is by itself? Instead of pumping the magma up, you get the water further down.

 

It would work if we had some material with a very high melting point with a very low heat capacity. As of now, that's not feasible as the materials build on top would just melt (or at least I think they would). If gases were allowed inside of pipes, and if pipes worked when water is simply dripped on them, and wouldn't rise once it reaches the bottom of the pipe, it would also work. Assuming that the pipe would not melt.

Everything i stated is just theory though

[ShaTiK]

The only way I managed to make this work is a barbaric way: just dug into magma and poured contaminated water directly into it. I got my steam, yea. At 250-500C, and some magma cooled down to rock. Still made some water out of it, but cooling down more then 200C in current state of energy generation and heat devices - not cool (pun intended)