ONI steam geyser aquatuner cooler/dirty water distiller + tungsten crafting

[Misha_SOS]

Good time of day everyone. I have designed machine that can do next thing:

1.      Cool geyser H2O (clean water);

2.      Evaporate and condense PH2O (polluted water);

So I would like to share it with you all. This machine is scalable and can evaporate from 1,2kg/s of PH2O in 1 aquatuner configuration, up to 10k/s of PH2O in 8 aquatuners configuration (you will need huge power plant).

This example is built in debug mode, but can be done in real game.

Additional bonus I’ll show you how to craft tungsten, that have very high heat conductivity and you can use it to build liquid pipes in your heat exchangers.

So this is the machine, 1 aquatuner configuration:

Now, let’s explain what is what, on picture below:

1.      Geyser chamber and condensed steam collector. It is also have passive precooling by PH2O, using doors and wire bridges made of gold;

2.      PH2O chamber. Here you store your PH2O. It gets preheated by H2O from geyser chamber and also, in this configuration, it is equipped with liquid pipe heat exchanger that used hot H2O from geyser chamber, before it is fed to aquatuner. Also, it has U shape around geyser chamber to maximize contact surface area and heat exchange.

3.      Condenser for condensing stem from geyser and evaporator. It uses liquid pipe heat exchange with water from aquatuner.

4.      Evaporator. This is where PH2O evaporates by aquatuner. PH2O water level controlled by hydro switch. In order to decrease response time of PH2O supply, it should be located close to pump in PH2O chamber.

5.      Collector. Aquatuner reduce H2O temperate by 14oC in 1 run. So in order to reduce H2O temperature by more than this value, it should circulate through aquatuner several times, so to do this we have collector that collects water from aquatuner and feed it back to it until it reaches desired temperature. After reaching desired temperature, collector start to pumps out H2O, at the same time aquatuner start taking water from geyser chamber.

Liquid setup:

PH2O IN - inlet for poluted water;

H2O 20oC OUT – clean water outlet with controled temperature (this case 20oC);

H2O PRIME OUT – it will take some time for this system to start generate water 20oC, before than water for your colony can be taken from this pipe. It takes water from aquatuner outletm, before it goes to condenser. Even in very beginning it have temperature 14oC less than in geyser chamber. Leter it is better to switch to H2O 20oC OUT. Because at some poitn water after aquatuner can be closer to 1oC. Also, it have hydro switch, to make sure collector tank is always have water in it;

Collector 5 equped with two pumps. First pump is for H2O 20oC OUT and it is termal switch controled. Second pump is feed water to aquatuner and it has dedicated thermal switch with T<=15oC, to make sure water doesn’t get frozen by aquatuner.

Geyser chamber (1) have pump that feeds aquatuner as well and activetes by same thermal switch with H2O 20oC OUT.

Water after aquatuner goes to liquid pipe heat exchanger and than goest to collector 5;

Water from PH2O chamber goes to evaporator and flow is controlled by hydro switch located in evaporator, tuned to <=1kg;

Performance:

As it was mentioned before, this machine is scalable to increase performance. In terms of evaporated PH2O, performance looks like next:

Number of aquatuners	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
mass flow rate, m` (kg/s)	1.19	2.39	3.58	4.78	5.98	7.17	8.37	9.57

 

This is calculated values, only 1 and 2 aquatuners had been tested and calculated values works well. Doesn’t try to feed more than calculated, but it seems this is what it actual performance is.

Here is temperature overlay:

How to scale:

 

 

In same manner it can grows up to 8 aquatuner. Be advised in 8 aquatuner case it will take 16KW, so it better to have dedicated power greed.

For scaling up, each aquatuner need to have 2 dedicated water pumps. Aquatuner takes a lot of energy and feeding it less than 10kg/s is waste of energy.

Overheat prevention;

When cooling 10kg/s of H2O by 14K, aquatuner will transport 585.06KW of heat. And this is a lot. Aquatuner is take 4 squares. This heat should dissipate to water through all 4 squares, otherwise it can overheat and even melt. Top 2 squares recommended to have as little water as possible, so it heat up fast. It can evaporate water in top 2 squares and be Ok for some times (at this point bottom 2 squares are close to boiling and evaporate very soon), so top 2 squares should be refiled as soon as possible.

 

For desert I want to share with you how to craft tungsten. As it was mentioned before aquatuner can generate a lot of heat. If it placed in vacuum/ close to vacuum environment it can melt itself.

Gold amalgam will melt to gold, but there is no use for it.

Copper ore will melt to copper, but there is no use for it.

Iron ore will melt to iron, no use for it. In theory it can be combined with carbon (coal) which result in steel that can be used for crafting some machines, have overheat bonus and very good heat conductivity. Unfortunately, I didn’t get stable way how to get it. In some occasion I get some by mixing liquid iron and carbon in debug mode in some occasions, but there is no legit way how to do it in real game, because carbon liquefies at 4000+K temperature.

 

P.S. 1 Brothar, if you read this, can you test it.

 

P.S. 2 Thanks to game makers. I work as heat analysis engineer and my work is to simulate on computer different cooling system using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). It is basically super accurate simulation, similar to ONI, but with more realistic physic, 3D and all the boringness of reality. And in real life those simulations take huge amount of computational power. The way how much ONI simulates and how big is asteroid (even in 2D) and it can run on laptops and game computers, I can say ONI is very beautiful piece of software. I love this game!!!

 

[Coolthulhu]

Few improvements:

• Iron ore instead of gold for wire bridges. Wire bridges don't overheat and iron ore is the best heat conductor for water (out of metals, minerals sandstone and granite may be better when available, but liquid/gas bridges do overheat).
• Airflow tiles are a bit risky, they only work flawlessly with "dry" steam - condensing steam can clog them and can be hard to get out of them. You don't need airflow tiles over the preheating chamber (it shouldn't collect fresh water) nor over the boiler (some premature condensation is preferable to clogged airflow tiles)
• Polluted oxygen from polluted water may eventually start to clog the geyser, when it reaches pressure of 5kg. The system may require an additional air pump to get rid of polluted oxygen. This pump should be placed and configured in such a way that steam doesn't overheat it.

[Michi01]

By the way if you want it to be easier for others to try out your setup, the Outbreak Upgrade added the ability to copy areas in debug mode and upload them to allow others to download them and add them into their worlds. It's explained in this thread:

 

[The Plum Gate]

And how exactly did you make tungsten? 

[Cilya]

Nice design ! I'll try to build mine, but I have a few questions.

- Why do you want colder water ? In my colony, they can shower at 90°C without complaining and all other equipments works fine at this temperature, is there still a practical reason to decrease the water temperature further or is this for the challenge ? I was just thinking of cooling water to condensate steam, but this doesn't require to cool it further than 12°C does it ?

- Why do you go through the clean water bassin ?  I think I have the answer to this one: the water output temperature is the same but the water in the basin is colder thus helping with steam condensation.

- Why do you use airflow tiles ? (related to Cooltjulju remark) it seems your design would work as well without them, especially if the coold water doesn't circulate above the polluted basin but only above the geyser.

2 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

And how exactly did you make tungsten? 

He wrote it in the original post. Search "tungsten" in the page.

 

edit:

I'm a bit disappointed by how things work. The wiki says that the shower output water at the same temperature it gets it. But actually my showers and lavatories outputs polluted water at ~30°C, which is the temperature of the building, while the input temperature is much higher. Those building are not particularly hot, so it seems heat is just being destructed. This annoy me because it's then much harder to boil the polluted water then.

Another thing. I wanted to pre-heat my water with a tepidizer. I thought it has a very high efficiency since it could output 20,32kW of heat for only 960W input, that is a 21.16 efficiency. However, if I don't make mistakes in my calculation... the thermo regulator can have a even higher efficiency. With hydrogen (2.4 Heat capacity) it was able to produce

2.4x1,000x14 = 33.6kW

of heat at maximum efficiency, thus a much better 33.6 / 0.240 = 140 efficiency. The aquatuner is overall even more efficient than the tepidizer. When can expect an additional increase. With water (4.18 Heat capacity) we get

4.18x10,000x14 = 585.2kW

which gives us a 585.2 / 1.2 = 487 power efficiency. Did I made a mistake in my calculations ? If not, with a Thermo Aquatuner more than 20 times more power efficient and the only drawback is requiring a liquid output to cool... why would anyone still use the tepidizer ?

[The Plum Gate]

10 hours ago, Misha_SOS said:

Iron ore will melt to iron, no use for it. In theory it can be combined with carbon (coal) which result in steel that can be used for crafting some machines, have overheat bonus and very good heat conductivity. Unfortunately, I didn’t get stable way how to get it. In some occasion I get some by mixing liquid iron and carbon in debug mode in some occasions, but there is no legit way how to do it in real game, because carbon liquefies at 4000+K temperature.

Ah,

46 minutes ago, Cilya said:

He wrote it in the original post. Search "tungsten" in the page.

ah.. so craft tungsten, but not really? I guess we could drop some coal in front of a melting iron aquatuner then?

In any event I'm confused a bit - it's ingredients are carbon and iron? @Cilya, I did originally search for it - it's the explanation that's got me confused. It sounds more like the ingredients for steel from iron than it does anything.

[Risu]

2 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

ah.. so craft tungsten, but not really? I guess we could drop some coal in front of a melting iron aquatuner then?

The guide assumes you built the aquatuner out of wolframite. Which is strange as it was never mentioned in the guide.
 

[Cilya]

3 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

 @Cilya, I did originally search for it - it's the explanation that's got me confused. It sounds more like the ingredients for steel from iron than it does anything.

Oh, yeah, you are right. There is something missing in his paragraph.

[chemie]

I just did one stand-alone.  Pump PW in and get clean water out.  It uses a closed loop water cycle.

The tepidizer is there to prevent freezing; mostly for start-up but it does sometimes run.  Set at 45C

The right clean water pump is on switch and forwards clean water out.  Pump on left is the closed loop cycle.

Gas pump was there to purge at start-up to a vacuum.  I do get a bit of PO2 every now and then and just pump it out.

A valve limits PW to 3500 g/s incoming.  It is like a geyser as sometimes the temp has to build back to 120C.  Generally it is  Fire and forget.

(Playing around with the weeze for more cooling but not sure they do much)

[Saturnus]

@chemie I don't think you really need 2 aquatuners in your set up. You could probably get the same through put using one with feedback loop.

I've included an illustration of the feedback loop principle. It's needlessly spread out for clarity. The important thing is that the input valve must limit the incoming water to less than half the process capability of the aquatuner, 4999g/s works fine. That means that the throughput is equal to twice that.

[Cilya]

The problem with feedback loop on aquatuner is that water may eventually freeze. I think he can still use his idea with a closed loop : have a basin where the closed loop goes through (with a radiator) and heat the basin when he goes below, say 20°C. This will help the closed loop to stay above 20°C.

edit: additionally, a closed loop through 2 aquatuners is still more powerful as the heat exchanged is doubled thus the throughput of the boiler as well.

 

[Saturnus]

Well, he did say that he had a tepidizer to keep the water above 45C so there's really no danger of the water freezing due to the feedback loop. But true the heat output is halved but ability to distil water will not be halved. There's several ways to optimize the design. The key point is to keep only the bottom of the aquatuner fully submerged and the top half semi-submerged. There should not be more than 100-200kg of PW in the top 2 tiles of the aquatuner. And the aquatuner should sit in a 2-4 tile wide "dip". Try to feed it incoming PW evenly from both sides as well.

[Suinatra]

Major improvement: one should pipe polluted water through aqatuner, not clean water.

PW has higher heat capacity, it will save 30% of power.

[Cilya]

13 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Well, he did say that he had a tepidizer to keep the water above 45C so there's really no danger of the water freezing due to the feedback loop.

The liquid of the closed loop in your example never goes through a tepidizer so nothing prevents it from freezing.

 

13 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

There should not be more than 100-200kg of PW in the top 2 tiles of the aquatuner. And the aquatuner should sit in a 2-4 tile wide "dip".

This should not change the quantity of water boiling. It's directly related to the Heat exchanged. Or there is a problem of energy conservation.

[chemie]

11 minutes ago, Cilya said:

The liquid of the closed loop in your example never goes through a tepidizer so nothing prevents it from freezing.

 

This should not change the quantity of water boiling. It's directly related to the Heat exchanged. Or there is a problem of energy conservation.

Yes, it does.  The water drips down to the right and flow over the tepidizer to the left where it is pumped back out again.  It works quite well.

 

I did try PW in the closed loop but you still need to heat it back up.  Seems better to run with water and use the heat from the steam to water the water from the aqua tuners.

[Saturnus]

17 minutes ago, Cilya said:

The liquid of the closed loop in your example never goes through a tepidizer so nothing prevents it from freezing.

A feedback loop work exactly like 2 aquatuners in series. There is no difference. You're probably thinking it just goes round and round in circles freezing up. It doesn't. The thing you're not seeing is that the water from the feedback loop is merged with the input water which is the whole point of the input limiting valve. So the total temperature drop from input to output is 28C just like 2 aquatuners in series.

The change to how the PW flows around the aquatuner results in much faster system reaction time, so it will run much more fluently.  

[chemie]

2 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

A feedback loop work exactly like 2 aquatuners in series. There is no difference. You're probably thinking it just goes round and round in circles freezing up. It doesn't. The thing you're not seeing is that the water from the feedback loop is merged with the input water which is the whole point of the input limiting valve. So the total temperature drop from input to output is 28C just like 2 aquatuners in series.

The change to how the PW flows around the aquatuner results in much faster reaction time, so it will run much more fluently.  

I want them in series because I want the water cold to condense the steam....

[Cilya]

9 minutes ago, chemie said:

Yes, it does.  The water drips down to the right and flow over the tepidizer to the left where it is pumped back out again.  It works quite well.

I was not talking about your desing but Saturnus's.

 

6 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

A feedback loop work exactly like 2 aquatuners in series. There is no difference.

In a feedback loop through two aquatuners, there is. You don't use twice the power for nothing. With two aquatuners you are cooling 20kg of water instead of 10kg, thus doubling as well the heat exchange.

 

6 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

The thing you're not seeing is that the water from the feedback loop is merged with the input water.

I do see there is an input. But the temperature of the water inside depends on the quantity of water which enters (and leaves the loop). If there is less than 10kg water entering the pipe, the water in the loop will more or less slowly cool to freezing.

[Saturnus]

Just now, chemie said:

I want them in series because I want the water cold to condense the steam....

And that's what a feedback loop does. It works the same way, and has the same temperature drop while using half the power.

[chemie]

Just now, Saturnus said:

And that's what a feedback loop does. It works the same way, and has the same temperature drop while using half the power.

But I also want the aquatuners to produce heat.  Double the heat means more boiling water

[Saturnus]

3 minutes ago, Cilya said:

I do see there is an input. But the temperature of the water inside depends on the quantity of water which enter (and leave the loop). If there is less than 10kg water entering the pipe, the water in the loop will more or less slowly cool to freezing.

Try it out. It works. It's been tested to run over 2000 cycles after which I got bored.

[Cilya]

I've also tested it already, thus my complaints with this model.

[chemie]

1 minute ago, Saturnus said:

Try it out. It works. It's been tested to run over 2000 cycles.

Perhaps I do not understand the new aquatuner, but as far as I know, if you put less flow into it, you will generate less heat.  By by-passing some flow, you do not generate as much heat (which was the goal)

[Cilya]

Ah, I see. You have to choose the valve input value so that the mix of water doesn't go below ~14°C. This means

Input water / 10,000 * Input Temperature > 14°

I still have a problem with that : you need a constant supply of input water, and the ability to constantly output water, which is not very practical.

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, chemie said:

Perhaps I do not understand the new aquatuner, but as far as I know, if you put less flow into it, you will generate less heat.  By by-passing some flow, you do not generate as much heat (which was the goal)

Your complaint about it generating less heat is quite valid, however, a lot can be regained by optimization as described above.

The thing you don't understand is feedback loops. The flow through the aquatuner is not less, it's the same. You see, you limit the input but half the output is fed back to the input. Let that run for a cycle and the flow is exactly double the input limit. So if we set the input limit to 4999.9g/s that means the throughput in the aquatuner is 9999.8g/s... pretty darn close to the maximum of 10000g/s.