Thermo Aquatuner power efficiency

[Saturnus]

23 minutes ago, Cilya said:

I really like the idea of backup systems. It feels much more realistic and add complexity to the design.

Yeah. I like fail safe systems too. I think the best method is bypassing the PW input valve with a liquid filter with no output set. This should be controlled by a hydroswitch. As a fail safe system it should have a fairly large battery bank on it's own but that could be placed under the water tank and even help preheat the water.

[The Plum Gate]

5 hours ago, Cilya said:

So this 1/5 only seems to balance the heat capacity without unbalancing the building cost like you said. Is that what you are saying ? What I don't understand is that I don't see a real urge to balance the heat capacity. It changes the thermal inertia of the system, but that's not a very important thing, is it ?

Balancing entails making sure the other parameters are some what coherent - so yes, this is what I'm saying. What I'm implying is that if there is (and it's being said that there is) a difference that should be expected from the machine's mass and what portion of its mass  is doing the heat exchanging or work then it should be noted in the info window somwhere.

Not sure what you mean in the last part there - I can only imagine that if it were a one to one ratio, and it may have been at some point, that the machine would probably fail to function in the simulation or break too frequently to be of practical continuous use due to overheating. ( such things would lead to resource deletion via repair jobs )

[Sevio]

5 hours ago, Saturnus said:

The system @Sevio built doesn't seem to rely on a specific throughput of polluted water. It relies on minimal throughput, ie. you must have some polluted water running in the system but the minimum can be only a few grams per seconds.

The boiler system I made actually handles zero throughput just fine, everything will fall to idling fairly quickly once the inherent flow in the heat exchanger has stopped and the steam has condensed. The one thing it can't handle is loss of power while there is water input, as this will lead to a buildup of polluted water in the Aquatuner basin and eventually a spill that thermally connects the heat exchanger with the aquatuner basin. Once that happens, if the polluted water and condensed water refuse to settle down it requires manual cleaning out as the aquatuner cannot boil away the liquid tiles connecting the heat exchanger to itself.

This flaw could be mitigated by putting the valve as close to the polluted water input pump as close as possible, and making sure it is hooked to the same power grid as the pump that supplies the Aquatuner with cooling medium. It shouldn't overflow during unexpected power loss, but it may require some intervention with the valve to set the input rate to 0 while the boiler starts back up and clears the backlog.

[Saturnus]

Set the fed pump on a separate transformer with no battery back up so it shuts down immediately on power loss. That gives a bit of stutter in operation but it should be fine. Use the same tactics to size the battery banks so that things shut down in the correct order.

Alternatively use a tiny battery and calculate exactly how much water the pump could pump in the time that the battery lasts. With a tiny battery that would be 458.333(3)kg (if we include the transformer capacity) plus whatever is in the pipe at the time of shut down. That amount of water shouldn't be able to overflow the aquatuner boiler. With just single a large battery however, it's 1708.333(3)kg plus the pipe content. That could be a problem as that's minimum 569.444(4)kg per surface square which brings it very close to overflowing even without any pipe content.

[trukogre]

8 hours ago, Cilya said:

What you say is not in contradiction with what I have said. I'll try to explain simply. Since both are producing heat, they are both comparable to heat water to at least 85°C. Their efficiency in that matter is then interesting to compare. If the tepidizer is more efficient, and it is, then it is useful to use it to pre-heat water before getting it to the aquatuner to effectively boil it. To know whether you can improve power efficiency by pre-heating or not, you need to compare the power efficiency of heating of both buildings.

Including both boiler designs I have posted myself. This is why I am already well aware of this.

What you say is not in contradiction with what I have said.  I'll try to explain simply.  Since renewable water enters the asteroid at a temperature higher than 85 C, real efficiency is comparing the use of the tepidizer to utilizing the heat from the geyser.  Since the geyser takes 0 W, it is interesting to note that it will always win this competition.  To know whether you can improve power effeciency by using the heat of the geyser, you need to compare the power requirements of heating of the geyser and the tepidizer.

 

[Cilya]

The number of water geyser is finite and since OU cannot go beyond two. You have water for free as long as you don't want more water than two geiser provide. For anything else, you still have to compare the tepidizer to the aquatuner. Note that this is why you can have boiler design that use a geyser to improve the efficiency as noted above.

Another problem with the polluted water might be to dispose of it. Of course there are very easy way to do it : fertilizers or dumping it into a farm tile. But those seems like exploit and are very likely to be patched sooner or later. The ONI roadmap states that the key idea in ONI is that any transformation has externalities that need to be handled; there won't probably be ways to dump polluted water so easily, so any way to exploit is to be explored.

[trukogre]

29 minutes ago, Cilya said:

The number of water geyser is finite and since OU cannot go beyond two. You have water for free as long as you don't want more water than two geiser provide. For anything else, you still have to compare the tepidizer to the aquatuner. Note that this is why you can have boiler design that use a geyser to improve the efficiency as noted above.

Another problem with the polluted water might be to dispose of it. Of course there are very easy way to do it : fertilizers or dumping it into a farm tile. But those seems like exploit and are very likely to be patched sooner or later. The ONI roadmap states that the key idea in ONI is that any transformation has externalities that need to be handled; there won't probably be ways to dump polluted water so easily, so any way to exploit is to be explored.

What are you on about?  Reread my post and try again.  Geyser water provides heat for free.  You don't need to use a tepidizer in the polluted water  boiler, because you can supply the required heat, to run the polluted water boiler, with geyser water heat.  Hint: you heat up your incoming polluted water via a heat exchanger with a pool of hot geyser water.  heat exchangers require 0 watts, liquid tepidizers require 960 W, so my solution is more efficient.  That's because I'm comparing apples to apples, and you're comparing apples to oranges. If you really love tepidizers, put one in your boiler, by all means.  But don't try to claim that it's more efficient than an aquatuner.  They're not performing the same job, in a boiler.

[Cilya]

A geyser doesn't provide an infinite power. Just an infinite energy.

[trukogre]

15 minutes ago, Cilya said:

A geyser doesn't provide an infinite power. Just an infinite energy.

A goat doesn't provide cow's milk.  But he will bite you.

 

There is nothing in ONI which provides infinite power...this leaves your post there without a point.  The steam geysers in ONI provide >8kg/s of boiling water, which is *enough* heat energy per second for any colony I've ever made.  This is why people often use tepidizers only for limited, short term applications like farming--or as part of a system in debug mode.  When it comes time to put that system in an actual colony, then you realize that you can just use the heat energy from your geysers, if you're trying to be efficient. It's true that there's enough power and flexibility in OU that you don't always have to try to be ultra-efficient.  If there were a need for additional heat energy beyond what geysers provide, then sure, tepidizers would be the best source, there's no debate about that.  I'm just waiting for you to give a reason why your colony needs more heat energy than that provided by 2 steam geysers.  If you're using a tepidizer because you just love tepidizers, ok, great.  If you're using a tepidizer because it's more efficient than an aquatuner, and trying to convince others that this is mathematically justified, then you're making the wrong comparison.

[Saturnus]

33 minutes ago, trukogre said:

There is nothing in ONI which provides infinite power...

Technically true but you can have as much power as you could possibly ever use. Dupes living off raw meal lice and doing nothing but run on hamster wheels will provide (much) more power than clean the polluted water they produce takes to clean and since oxygen generation can easily be made more than 100% power efficient that means that you for all practical purposes can be considered to have infinite power available... if you really want.

[trukogre]

14 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Technically true but you can have as much power as you could possibly ever use. Dupes living off raw meal lice and doing nothing but run on hamster wheels will provide (much) more power than clean the polluted water they produce takes to clean and since oxygen generation can easily be made more than 100% power efficient that means that you for all practical purposes can be considered to have infinite power available... if you really want.

You're saying the same thing I am, if you follow the entire discussion.

[Cilya]

1 hour ago, trukogre said:

The steam geysers in ONI provide >8kg/s of boiling water, which is *enough* heat energy per second for any colony I've ever made.

Not for mine. My colony already produces 8k/s of polluted water and not near 80°C.

But this has nothing to do with the reason to pre-heat to 85°C the polluted water: you can always heat to 85°C with a tepidizer and use the geyser to heat it from 85°C to whatever you can with the geyser (depends on the amount of polluted water). If the heating you gain by using a tepidizer and a geyser is greater than sixth of the temperature difference from the input polluted water and the temperature the tepidizer can heat it to, then it's more power efficient to use the tepidizer. Why a sixth ? Because the tepidizer is six time more efficient than the aquatuner to heat polluted water. Thus the need to have calculated this number.

[trukogre]

1 minute ago, Cilya said:

Not for mine. My colony already produces 8k/s of polluted water and not near 80°C.

But this has nothing to do with the reason to pre-heat to 85°C the polluted water: you can always heat to 85°C with a tepidizer and use the geyser to heat it from 85°C to whatever you can with the geyser (depends on the amount of polluted water). If the heating you gain by using a tepidizer and a geyser is greater than sixth of the temperature difference from the input polluted water and the temperature the tepidizer can heat it to, then it's more power efficient to use the tepidizer. Why a sixth ? Because the tepidizer is six time more efficient than the aquatuner to heat polluted water. Thus the need to have calculated this number.

It's like we're speaking different languages.  Good luck with your colony!

[akkid2000]

so i have a question and this was the best fourm i could find

so when a device says it outputs 100 watts of heat, in one full cycle how many degrees K/C/F dose this equal, and could you give me the mathematical equation you would use.