Large scale steam production, Scalable and Continues

[Automatonnn]

This steam production setup is made to be easy to expand and not require actions from the player after it is build. It has been achieved by making seperate rows that each turn 100g/s of contaminated water into steam. Besides the top and the bottom row every row of batteries can be set up in exact same way. The picture shows a ten high column refining 1kg/s in total. This can support an electrolyzer.

 

The rows of batteries are 20 batteries in length. The batteries are made of iron ore for its availibility in large quantities compared to copper and its higher heat conductivity to heat up the water faster compared to gold amalgam. All other components are made of gold amalgam and ignious rock or sedimentary rock for their low thermal conductivity to avoid cooling down the steam.

The current limitation to this steam production is only that large circuit networks can strain the CPU usage very hard forcing me to play in normal speed to prevent freezing the game. I will try to improve this by segmenting my power network further, the tower currently consists of 4 power network segments. This shows it might also be a good tip in other areas. To segment the power network in your base to reduce the lag when you get further into the game. I also learned to not connect large circuit networks together as it freezes the game aswell.

[Eternalguard]

 

I used the structure that only the steam was poured down without the pump.

[Nativel]

Yes, the main problem is lags of memory usage.

[Automatonnn]

Eternalguard, I really like your addition. It allows it to consume zero power. I will include that when I build a new one.

I have been trying to continue seperating the power networks. To keep the batteries running without consuming power I used mechanized airlocks. I will try some more solutions to give each battery its own network and then rebuilt it. I will put your idea of an output most likely on the left side because the structure grows in height.

[Mijae]

@Eternalguard How does that setup condensate the steam back to water?  Isn't the room and all the tiles heated from the batteries?  Even if you manage to start with cooled materials they'll eventually heat up.  That's why the steam is normally pumped to another chamber.

[Saturnus]

10 minutes ago, Mijae said:

@Eternalguard How does that setup condensate the steam back to water?  Isn't the room and all the tiles heated from the batteries?  Even if you manage to start with cooled materials they'll eventually heat up.  That's why the steam is normally pumped to another chamber.

No. Tiles don't change temperature once built. Technically they do in the background as a hidden stat but as soon as you reload the game all tiles are set back to the temperature they were when built. 

[Mijae]

5 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

No. Tiles don't change temperature once built. Technically they do in the background as a hidden stat but as soon as you reload the game all tiles are set back to the temperature they were when built. 

Right, but I wouldn't consider requiring a reload a stable system.  It's also quite a pain to use specific heated materials on this large a scale imo (outside debug anyway).  Maybe I just don't have the technique down.

[Saturnus]

It's a pain in the rear, sure, but I refuse to use debug for something like this. You should be able to do it in the game, or it's not a valid strategy or build.

[SpoonsOnMyElbows]

Just 2 things, where does the steam go?
And does the water actually spread over those batteries, 20 across?
I can only get the water to spread over 3 batteries, while remaining low quantity enough to not build up faster than it can be turned into steam.
Could you perhaps share the save file with us?
Thanks!

[Automatonnn]

In this post I will give an update, and answer to @SpoonsOnMyElbows questions.

First, the update. I have made a new version that includes an open output to turn the steam into water and it has every battery on its own power network to increase performance.

The open output is a long pipe of tiles filled with stairs to cool down the steam. It has been working quite well keeping the pressure in my test build stable, but it still needs testing to see how it responds to different sizes. In order to give every battery a seperate power network I used disabled ceiling lamps to not drain power from the batteries. The batteries were first charged up in 2 or 3 rows at a time and then all the wires were deleted and replaced with ones that connected every battery to one ceiling lamp. The performance increase has been noticable, allowing the game to run on medium speed for a couple of cycles without to many issues. This was impossible with the other setup were the game would freeze within 1 cycle. 

 

Second, the questions. To cool the steam of the first version I use a big tower. The tiles and stairs help with cooling.

To answer the second question, the contaminated water does spread over all 20 batteries, but it has to build up first. Over time the contaminated water will reach 2-3 kg below the liquid valve and up to 500 grams at the last battery while constantly turning into steam at that last battery. With a smaller amount of batteries the water levels will keep increasing until it stops the system.

I will not include the save file at this time becauce the current game is fairly unstable being at 300+ cycles on a big base. Instead I will make new save file this weekend.

[Mijae]

Did you play around with the height between the tiles on the left side?  The levels don't necessarily need to be at the same levels as the tiles for the batteries.  Would making them 2 tiles high condense faster or restrict gas flow too much?  Maybe what you already have is good enough?

[Automatonnn]

I have created a new save file to share the designs. Here are the save files inlcuding the machine version 1 and 2. Both with output pipes to condense the steam.  When you run the game the machines should start producing steam after a minute or so.

The save file can be used by placing it into the location Documents -> Klei -> OxygenNotIncluded -> save_files. This is the save file: https://www.mediafire.com/?50nqoh2xetyqklb

 

Mijea I have thought about the cooling pipe height now. I left a 2 high gap between the cooling pipes this time and this seems to work aswell and should provide more cooling compared to 3 high gaps because of the increased surface area between the tiles and the steam. Allowing the pipes to be shorter  Building them with a 1 high cap cannot be done because the water would block it.

[SpoonsOnMyElbows]

2 hours ago, Automatonnn said:

I have created a new save file to share the designs. Here are the save files inlcuding the machine version 1 and 2. Both with output pipes to condense the steam.  When you run the game the machines should start producing steam after a minute or so.

The save file can be used by placing it into the location Documents -> Klei -> OxygenNotIncluded -> save_files. This is the save file: https://www.mediafire.com/?50nqoh2xetyqklb

 

Mijea I have thought about the cooling pipe height now. I left a 2 high gap between the cooling pipes this time and this seems to work aswell and should provide more cooling compared to 3 high gaps because of the increased surface area between the tiles and the steam. Allowing the pipes to be shorter  Building them with a 1 high cap cannot be done because the water would block it.

Thanks for the save, however i am not seeing what you are describing.
The water is spreading over all (or mostly all) 20 batteries, but as i suspected, it's not turning into steam fast enough.
After 9 mins of running your save file (full speed), the contaminated water went from around 1kg to almost 320kg.
This means it's not converting the water into steam fast enough, and eventually your batteries will get flooded.
This is what i was talking about when i was saying i couldn't get the cont water to spread over more than 3 batteries across, while remaining low quantity enough to not build up faster than it can be turned into steam.
The batteries at the left most end have no chance of dealing with the water that's piling on top of them.

It does produce a lot of steam, but that's not really what the issue is.
I think what people are looking for is a way to produce larger amounts of steam, while at the same time, requiring no micro-managing, and being able to just leave fully automated.

If your original post was producing 1kg clean water per second, (100g/s each row), then it should not be building up any water at all.
Could you perhaps share that save with us?
The save you shared is not what is pictured, and produced roughly 18kg of water in 9 mins at full speed, which is 18kg water in 1,620 sec. Or 11 grams of water per sec.

EDIT : also, i was only testing the top block of rows, not the bottom.
But even with double the production, its still around 50x less than what your original design was producing.