Thermo Aquatuner overheats WAY too much

[Daikataro]

Title pretty much sums it up, the amount of heat it puts out is just plain insane. A Wolframite aquatuner, on open air -35°C oxygen filled ice biome overheats in 4 seconds flat. I just find it completely illogical, that it can go that hot, from taking away 10 degrees off piped water.

[Sevio]

There's already a thread about this:

You should find some helpful tips in there.

[Daikataro]

1 hour ago, Sevio said:

There's already a thread about this:

You should find some helpful tips in there.

Thanks, giving it a read right now, tho it is mostly for usage as a boiler rather than... well, its intended purpose? Won't you happen to know of any less Rube-Goldbergish methods of cooling geyser water?

[Sevio]

1 hour ago, Daikataro said:

Thanks, giving it a read right now, tho it is mostly for usage as a boiler rather than... well, its intended purpose? Won't you happen to know of any less Rube-Goldbergish methods of cooling geyser water?

It's a machine intended to operate on liquids and it doesn't destroy heat, it only transfers it. So the fact it needs to be submerged to avoid overheating is not very rube-goldbergish. Water and polluted water have the highest specific heat capacity in the game, as a result this machine transfers an extreme amount of heat, and air is simply not sufficient as a heat sink.

As for geyser water, you don't have to cool it. Plants, showers, carbon scrubbers (forgot the official name), lavatories and electrolyzers are quite happy with 99 C water, so you only have to store the water in an abyssalite tank and use abyssalite pipes to move the water to consumers. Some of these buildings always output a fixed temperature polluted water which destroys heat for free, others might output polluted water at the same temperature as the input. For those, you'll also need abyssalite pipes for the output.

If you really want to cool geyser water, that's a huge amount of heat you want to nullify. The only thing that destroys heat as its primary purpose is the Wheezewort, and you would need quite a lot of them if you're using your geyser heavily. Bottling the heat up in the water and taking advantage of free heat destruction by sending it directly to consumers is the path of lowest resistance here.

[Coolthulhu]

7 hours ago, Daikataro said:

Title pretty much sums it up, the amount of heat it puts out is just plain insane. A Wolframite aquatuner, on open air -35°C oxygen filled ice biome overheats in 4 seconds flat. I just find it completely illogical, that it can go that hot, from taking away 10 degrees off piped water.

Wolframite heat conductivity misconception claims another victim.

When heat conductivity is involved, the LOWER conductivity of two objects in contacts is used. At the same time heat capacity always matters. In the game, wolframite is actually a rather poor heat conductor.

 

[Sevio]

13 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

When heat conductivity is involved, the LOWER conductivity of two objects in contacts is used.

IIRC this is specifically the case with pipes and their contents, normally the product of the two conductivities is used. Wolframite Wire Bridges for example are very good at conducting heat between all the tiles they are occupying. Wolframite's very low heat capacity is what makes it very bad for Thermo Regulators and Thermo Aquatuners because they will get much higher temperature spikes before conductivity gets a chance to do its job.

The ideal materials for Regulators and Aquatuners are Gold Amalgam for high heat applications (+50 C overheat temp) or Iron because it has the highest heat capacity and therefore the lowest temperature spikes.

[Coolthulhu]

2 hours ago, Sevio said:

Wolframite Wire Bridges for example are very good at conducting heat between all the tiles they are occupying.

Wolframite wire bridges are only better at conducting heat between two water tiles than gold amalgam ones, but copper and iron both outperform it by a significant margin. Again, read the results in:

Even if the product of conductivities was used (this could be possible, because gold amalgam performs worse than wolframite at the task above), copper and iron still outperform wolframite when used with water, showing clearly that wolframite's tiny heat capacity makes it a poor heat conductor overall. Note that wolframite has a better conductivity*capacity product than iron ore (wolf: 15*0.134=2.01, iron: 4*0.449=1.796).

Wolframite might be better at something, but that something doesn't involve water or hydrogen, meaning it isn't well suited to optimized colonies at the moment.

[Sevio]

8 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Wolframite wire bridges are only better at conducting heat between two water tiles than gold amalgam ones, but copper and iron both outperform it by a significant margin.

Just saw your decompiled function about heat conduction in that thread again, I stand corrected!

I think that leaves Wolframite useful only in insulated cooling chambers where it keeps the heat capacity of the room as low as possible.