Thermo Aquatuner overheating

[tulkaz]

I tried this patch's new building, Thermo Aquatuner. I put 40`c of water and the structure's heat hits 190`c only a few second later.

Is this intended or just a bug?

[Kasuha]

Aquatuner does not destroy heat, it removes it from the water and puts it on itself. So it's like thermo regulator, except water has even greater specific heat capacity than hydrogen, and it can process 10 times more of it per second. So yes, it's like regulator on steroids and requires some serious cooling. Or reducing the flow with valve (but I would consider that waste of power).

[tulkaz]

41 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

Aquatuner does not destroy heat, it removes it from the water and puts it on itself. So it's like thermo regulator, except water has even greater specific heat capacity than hydrogen, and it can process 10 times more of it per second. So yes, it's like regulator on steroids and requires some serious cooling. Or reducing the flow with valve (but I would consider that waste of power).

What about overheating? Aquatuner's maximum overheat temperature could only be 125+50`c. I put 1kg of reduced water flow, the structure keep hitting over 180`c. It takes some time but still go over 180`c within a cycle. At 500g of flow of water, It barely keeps its temperature around 130`c but like you said that is a waste of power.

[brummbar7]

You need to put it underwater to dissipate the heat effectively.

[CantBreathe]

What do you mean 125+50C? Is there a way to increase the overheat range past gold's 125C?

[Risu]

4 minutes ago, CantBreathe said:

What do you mean 125+50C? Is there a way to increase the overheat range past gold's 125C?

125C base overheat temperature plus 50C from gold.
 

[F3rR1z]

Could you use this building to boil PW water into steam then cool the clean water that condenses to heat up the building whilst sending temperate water to your base?

[Risu]

7 hours ago, F3rR1z said:

Could you use this building to boil PW water into steam then cool the clean water that condenses to heat up the building whilst sending temperate water to your base?

That is the purpose of the building yes.
 

[Sevio]

It also works really, really well as an oxygen liquefier but to kickstart it you need a good amount of liquid oxygen in a storage tank somewhere first. You'll have to make that initial supply with a Thermo Regulator and hydrogen.

[FloomRide]

14 hours ago, F3rR1z said:

Could you use this building to boil PW water into steam then cool the clean water that condenses to heat up the building whilst sending temperate water to your base?

Yeah. I get the idea that this is supposed to be used for endgame renewable water recycling (and germ killing) to supplement the now much lower geyser water.

[Reaniel]

3 hours ago, Sevio said:

It also works really, really well as an oxygen liquefier but to kickstart it you need a good amount of liquid oxygen in a storage tank somewhere first. You'll have to make that initial supply with a Thermo Regulator and hydrogen.

Lol you beat me to mentioning it.

I just got my oxygen liquidifyer setup today, and still collecting enough liquid oxygen to fill the aquatuner loops while hydrogen gas loop slowly works its magic.  I should have enough liquid oxygen by cycle 200 to never worry about oxygen production again... 

[CantBreathe]

Hi, why are you guys making liquid oxygen, how are you using it?

[Grimgaw]

21 minutes ago, CantBreathe said:

Hi, why are you guys making liquid oxygen, how are you using it?

To condense polluted oxygen. With liquid you can use much more efficient metal pipes plus liquid has more mass.

[Sevio]

16 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

To condense polluted oxygen. With liquid you can use much more efficient metal pipes plus liquid has more mass.

Metal liquid pipes aren't really a good reason for liquid oxygen as a cooling medium over hydrogen. The big reason is the higher specific heat capacity of liquid oxygen and processing 10 kg packets at a time. This means a much faster and much more energy efficient transfer of heat from cold to hot than a Thermo Regulator can achieve.

Radiator style heat exchange between liquid oxygen in pipes and polluted oxygen is not practical since you would need a significant portion of the map for it if you want to process 10 kg packets. And the inertia of such a system would make pipe breakage due to overcooling hard to avoid. It's much more effective to just dump the cooled liquid oxygen in the same room with the polluted oxygen and let them equalize. Your oxygen liquefier can be relatively small like this:

(Built during the last stages of closed testing but should work just fine in live, overlay pictures in the spoiler)

Spoiler

Didn't bother taking a gas overlay screenshot because it was just a simple pipe in to the vent from the left, pipe out to the right from the pump for vacuuming the room.

 

[Grimgaw]

4 minutes ago, Sevio said:

Metal liquid pipes aren't really a good reason for liquid oxygen as a cooling medium over hydrogen.

3.39 TC vs 15 TC not a good reason? Seriously? 

[brummbar7]

@Sevio what's the purpose of that water level switch in the upper chamber?  I thought maybe as a 'magical' switch, but I saw you used a manual one on the left for the gas pump so wasn't sure...

[Sevio]

38 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

3.39 TC vs 15 TC not a good reason? Seriously? 

The problem is that the amount of heat transfered each simulation tick is as if there was only 1 gram of mass in the pipe and possibly only using the lower of the two thermal conductivity stats. (the liquid oxygen in this case) This was figured out by @Risu if I'm not mistaken. That's already a small amount for 1 kg hydrogen packets which is why hydrogen radiators have to be so large. (80 tiles was not enough for my regulator based oxygen liquefier) But it's even more insignificant when you consider 10 kg packets of liquid oxygen.

On top of that, the temperature difference between the liquid oxygen and the polluted oxygen is smaller than with hydrogen (you can't cool it down as much as hydrogen before it solidifies), further reducing the amount of energy transfered per tile. I've tried a radiator style design with clean water at ~5 C, cooling a large pool of warmer water with a zigzagging radiator in it, also the thermoregulator area of my oxygen liquefier and running through a large part of my base. It had barely any effect, the water in the pipes had only heated up by maybe a degree or so. Certainly not ready for another run through the Aquatuner which cools 14 C at a time.

37 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

@Sevio what's the purpose of that water level switch in the upper chamber?  I thought maybe as a 'magical' switch, but I saw you used a manual one on the left for the gas pump so wasn't sure...

The idea behind that is that this polluted water tank is a temporary reservoir for water on its way to a larger boiling setup. It gets heated first by any excess heat from the oxygen liquefier, then if the tank is almost at capacity the hydro switch makes sure it gets moved on to the boiler. I never got around to building a boiler, though.

[Cilya]

According to this page the specific heat of oxygen is only 1.0, which, compared to the hydrogen 2.4 is not enough to give the superiority to liquid oxygen over hydrogen. (If I am not mistaken, the power efficiency of the thermo aquatuner is only the double of the one of the thermo regulator) Did I miss something ?

However, there are some liquids with much higher specific heat described on the same page. Water (4.17) and polluted water (6) which  could be used to condensate steam for example. I'm not sure which is the liquid natural gas on this page ; is this LiquidMethane ? If this is the case, a specific heat of 2.2 could be useful not to condensate polluted oxygen but to pre-cool it.

edit: the LiquidMethane have a VERY small thermal conductivity.

[Sevio]

2 hours ago, Cilya said:

According to this page the specific heat of oxygen is only 1.0, which, compared to the hydrogen 2.4 is not enough to give the superiority to liquid oxygen over hydrogen. (If I am not mistaken, the power efficiency of the thermo aquatuner is only the double of the one of the thermo regulator) Did I miss something ?

A good question. Both Aquatuner and Regulator cool down the packet by 14 degrees, however the thermal energy that is transferred depends not only on the heat capacity but also on the mass of the packet, which gives the Aquatuner a boost because it works on 10 kg packets rather than 1 kg. I reviewed my notes about this and it turns out I hadn't worked out the numbers for liquid oxygen yet. Here are the energy transfer rates for Thermo Regulator vs Thermo Aquatuner:

• Thermo Regulator (Hydrogen): 2.4 (heat capacity) * 1000 (mass of packet) * 14 (temperature delta) = 33600 J/s
• Thermo Aquatuner (Liquid Oxygen): 1.01 * 10000 * 14 = 141400 J/s

The Thermo Aquatuner transfers 4.2 times as much heat, at 5 times the power cost. It turns out the Thermo Regulator is still more power efficient for an oxygen liquefier! To maximize this power advantage you would use a large gas pipe radiator, so you also avoid the cost of having to pump the cooling medium (hydrogen), as the Aquatuner method requires. There are still possible reasons to opt for the Aquatuner though:

• Much more compact due to cooling medium and output product being the same, not requiring a radiator or separation if comparing to a hydrogen bubbler.
• High throughput capacity for a single unit

For completeness, here are the rates when using clean and polluted water in the Aquatuner:

• Thermo Aquatuner (Water): 4.179 * 10000 * 14 = 585060 J/s
• Thermo Aquatuner (Polluted Water): 6 * 10000 * 14 = 840000 J/s

This makes it the most efficient for cooling things down at temperatures where water is still liquid. And of course that same energy can be used for heating up polluted water or even boil it.

[Risu]

The aquatuner also has 1000 kg more mass than the thermal regulator, giving it far more heat capacity for transferring heat.
 

[Saturnus]

The aquatuners heat output can effectively be used as well. For both heating P-H2O to kill germs and using the hot water as part of a water boiler. The thermoregulators heat output is not as useful, if at all.

[Guest]

Anyone some good tips on cooling those buggers and actually keeping them cool in a viable way? The way it currently overheats that quickly, costs that much power and that much metal, I just don't find it worth it to cool water.

I tried cooling it with hydrogen, shutting it down when the hydrogen gets too hot, pumping out the hot hydrogen and pumping in cooler hydrogen, but it means way too much downtime. I could use thermoregulators to decrease the downtime, but that's more heat production, more power and the thermo aquatuners will heat up much faster than the thermo regulators could remove heat.

[Reaniel]

The 4th post in the thread already answered your question.

[trukogre]

On 8/29/2017 at 0:30 PM, Sevio said:

A good question. Both Aquatuner and Regulator cool down the packet by 14 degrees, however the thermal energy that is transferred depends not only on the heat capacity but also on the mass of the packet, which gives the Aquatuner a boost because it works on 10 kg packets rather than 1 kg. I reviewed my notes about this and it turns out I hadn't worked out the numbers for liquid oxygen yet. Here are the energy transfer rates for Thermo Regulator vs Thermo Aquatuner:

• Thermo Regulator (Hydrogen): 2.4 (heat capacity) * 1000 (mass of packet) * 14 (temperature delta) = 33600 J/s
• Thermo Aquatuner (Liquid Oxygen): 1.01 * 10000 * 14 = 141400 J/s

The Thermo Aquatuner transfers 4.2 times as much heat, at 5 times the power cost. It turns out the Thermo Regulator is still more power efficient for an oxygen liquefier! To maximize this power advantage you would use a large gas pipe radiator, so you also avoid the cost of having to pump the cooling medium (hydrogen), as the Aquatuner method requires. There are still possible reasons to opt for the Aquatuner though:

• Much more compact due to cooling medium and output product being the same, not requiring a radiator or separation if comparing to a hydrogen bubbler.
• High throughput capacity for a single unit

For completeness, here are the rates when using clean and polluted water in the Aquatuner:

• Thermo Aquatuner (Water): 4.179 * 10000 * 14 = 585060 J/s
• Thermo Aquatuner (Polluted Water): 6 * 10000 * 14 = 840000 J/s

This makes it the most efficient for cooling things down at temperatures where water is still liquid. And of course that same energy can be used for heating up polluted water or even boil it.

That's all correct, and yet the aquatuner will often be more efficient in practice.  The comparison between the aquatuner and the TR, when it comes to purifying polluted oxygen, needs to include how each actually uses the cooled product of the machines to cool the PO2.  Easiest way to use LOX to cool down polluted oxygen is just to drip the LOX through it, and as we well know, dripping a cold thing through a warmer thing often results in accidental extra efficiency.  If you wanted to really be efficient, you'd drop the cold lox in warmer lox first, and then drop even more cold lox into warmer po2, which could possibly improve your efficiency by an order of magnitude.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Reaniel said:

The 4th post in the thread already answered your question.

Yeah actually that worked! I somehow got it in my head that the aquatuner would not work when submerged as it would be flooded. That was a wrong approach.