School me on liquifying gases - without videos

[SusanMcO]

I don't know if it is because I'm old, ADD, a speed reader, or hard of hearing, but I just can't get behind learning **** through videos.  It's way too slow for me.  It's the same reason I can't do books on tape. I just cannot sit there while it goes on interminably when I could have been finished with the book by the time they get through the first chapter *LOL*  With videos too, there tends to be extra commentary, and I literally want instructions. I'm old and set in my ways   

So, are there written tutorials on it?  Or just some hints?  Thanks!

[GreatGameDota]

Well which gases are you looking to liquify? Chlorine and CO2 are much easier that polluted oxygen.

[Kasuha]

You want to avoid state change (solid<->liquid<->gas) in pipes as that damages them. So you need to let that happen in open, usually in a room enclosed in insulating material - abyssalite.

You put the gas you want to liquefy in an abyssalite -walled room, cool it down with cooling medium, and then pump liquid out. You want to use abyssalite pipes to get the liquid out to retain its temperature and prevent it changing back to gas in the pipe.

The cooling material has to be something that does not itself undergo state change - most often it's hydrogen but it may also be liquid oxygen and recently also crude oil (though we may expect that getting fixed). You cool the medium using wheezeworts (down to -60 C), then with thermo regulator if it's a gas, or with aquatuned if it's a liquid. Note you need to take care of cooling the cooler as it doesn't destroy the heat, it only transfers it on itself.

The ways of meeting the coolant and the cooling medium involve:

- direct mixing (gaseous coolant released to cooled gas)

- direct contact (liquid coolant in cooled gas)

- radiator pipe

- granite wall and electric/pipe bridges used to transfer heat from one room to the other without mixing the two elements

Cooling the cooler: there are two ways to destroy heat in the game:

- (wheeze)worts, most efficient in hydrogen atmosphere.

- many machines accept liquids at any temperature, then produce output at 40 C. For instance carbon skimmer can accept water at any temperature (even almost boiling), produces polluted water at 40 C, that can be used for cooling something (simply by dripping it on the floor on which the machine stands), scooped and used to irrigate plants which will again not complain about temperature of the water they get.

[Tobruk]

@Kasuha as always with his Major on ONI thermal dynamics xD Jokes aside, thanks for the guide.

[SusanMcO]

@GreatGameDota Chlorine, O2 and Hydrogen, I mean, polluted O2 would be great eventually, but I need to get the basics first 

 

@Kasuha Ok - I think I get most of that - do you usually cool the cooler with wheezeworts too? (as those seem to be the best way to destroy heat in game)

[Tobruk]

2 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

@Kasuha Ok - I think I get most of that - do you usually cool the cooler with wheezeworts too? (as those seem to be the best way to destroy heat in game)

1

Wheezeworts only cool gases, and although such wheeze-cooled gases can cool liquids, it's a very slow process due to the mass difference between gas/liquid (2-3 kg/tile with gases and 1000 kg or more/tile with liquids)

[Kasuha]

Just now, SusanMcO said:

Ok - I think I get most of that - do you usually cool the cooler with wheezeworts too? (as those seem to be the best way to destroy heat in game)

For Thermo Regulator, two wheezeworts in hydrogen atmosphere are usually enough to keep it going full time cooling hydrogen.

Aquatuner with its nearly ten times greater heat transfer is not easy to cool using wheezeworts so I think liquid cooling is good choice.

[SusanMcO]

Just now, Kasuha said:

For Thermo Regulator, two wheezeworts in hydrogen atmosphere are usually enough to keep it going full time cooling hydrogen.

Aquatuner with its nearly ten times greater heat transfer is not easy to cool using wheezeworts so I think liquid cooling is good choice.

That seems to be rather circular logic though, use aquatuner to cool water, then use cooled liquid to cool aquatuner?  In that description, it seems like the hydrogen should come first, then used the cooled hydrogen to cool the aquatuner for other liquids? 

Granite = best thermal transfer
abyssalite = Best insulating

Is that correct? 

[Kasuha]

Just now, SusanMcO said:

That seems to be rather circular logic though, use aquatuner to cool water, then use cooled liquid to cool aquatuner? 

The logic is, you use aquatuner to cool liquid oxygen or crude oil from -185 to -200 while warming up water or polluted water from 40 to 55 C. 

[SusanMcO]

Just now, Kasuha said:

The logic is, you use aquatuner to cool liquid oxygen or crude oil from -185 to -200 while warming up water or polluted water from 40 to 55 C. 

Ok, that makes sense I think *L*  I'll play around with it.  I'm dealing with a breakup by basically playing nonstop.  Healthy I'm sure. 

[Kasuha]

6 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

Granite = best thermal transfer
abyssalite = Best insulating

Yes, it's the Thermal Conductivity material stat that counts here. For pipes, wolframite is better than granite. Although when thermal transfer occurs, the lower of the two materials' conductivity value is used so it's often capped by the conductivity of the cooling or cooled medium.

[Kasuha]

Also the reason why wire and pipe bridges are used to transfer heat through walls or between liquid and gas above it is that they have just single temperature value and are in contact with material in all three tiles they occupy. There's no heat transfer along their length, just between them and the element in the three tiles.

[Whispershade]

11 hours ago, Kasuha said:

- many machines accept liquids at any temperature, then produce output at 40 C. For instance carbon skimmer can accept water at any temperature (even almost boiling), produces polluted water at 40 C, that can be used for cooling something (simply by dripping it on the floor on which the machine stands), scooped and used to irrigate plants which will again not complain about temperature of the water they get.

As an addendum, some machines will output at the temperature of the machine. And it can be cost effective to cool the machine to low temperatures and use the output as a coolant.

[manu_x32]

If you are ok using debug mode to be able to directly check my different prototypes, I added a save file in this thread:

 

[SusanMcO]

I am trying to not do debug mode at all - it's too much of a cheat temptation for me and takes all the fun out of it!! 

One last question, so if I have my liquid hydrogen, I can use that to cool other gases, right? 

Then how best do I use that to cool my base? Because abyssalite pipes will prevent the transfer of heat into the liquid, and granite pipes will mean that the liquid will change into a gas, which will then damage the pipes.  Do you just drip it around?

[Kasuha]

28 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

I am trying to not do debug mode at all - it's too much of a cheat temptation for me and takes all the fun out of it!! 

Debug mode is useful to save time on exploring dead ends - spending a lot of game time building and starting up something that does not work due to a design flaw stops being fun after a few attempts. But once I discover a working design, figuring out how to build it and start up without debug mode is matter of prestige for me.

34 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

if I have my liquid hydrogen, I can use that to cool other gases, right? 

Liquid hydrogen is not very safe as its liquid phase range is very narrow, narrower than amount of cooling the aquatuner applies on it. If you manage using it, good job. Apart of that, hydrogen is usually used as gas in gas pipes since it stays being gas over the temperature where oxygen liquefies.

37 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

Then how best do I use that to cool my base? Because abyssalite pipes will prevent the transfer of heat into the liquid, and granite pipes will mean that the liquid will change into a gas, which will then damage the pipes.  Do you just drip it around?

Well you need the cooling medium to accept heat from the base, so you need to use something that will not undergo state change. Probably best medium is crude oil at the moment. Other good options include polluted water, clean water, or gaseous hydrogen. Or installing a few worts at heat sources, or venting cooled oxygen directly into the base.

[SusanMcO]

I'm not using the oil update right now because mine started crashing too much and so I decided to go back to the more stable build. 

So if I have cooled hydrogen, I could use that to cool the base too, or just cold oxygen

Thank you for being so patient and helpful.  Talking it out like this helps me process it. 

I can definitely understand the debug mode quandry - I tend to just start a new world, or go back in time to retry 

[Kasuha]

3 hours ago, SusanMcO said:

I'm not using the oil update right now because mine started crashing too much and so I decided to go back to the more stable build. 

Okay, I think you don't use liquid hydrogen, just hydrogen gas in that case. That's okay.

3 hours ago, SusanMcO said:

So if I have cooled hydrogen, I could use that to cool the base too, or just cold oxygen

If you don't mind tiling your base with gas pipe radiator, then build a meandering pipe on the back wall and make it into a closed loop over a thermo regulator. Then you can use thermo switch to switch the regulator on and off based on temperature. The hydrogen shouldn't be super cooled, just perhaps somewhat colder than the intended temperature of the base.

For most even heat distribution, you should always pull both outgoing and incoming pipe together one along the other so that you have cold hydrogen from the regulator right beside warmer hydrogen going back.

You can keep the hydrogen circulating in the pipe even when the regulator is switched off by installing a gas bridge or valve in parallel with the regulator. It will not cool the base when the regulator is off, but it will help make the temperature more even. Here's an example of such closed loop, though for normal use the bridges swapping pipes as they turn are probably overkill - this was for a farm in previous release.

[SusanMcO]

That's what I was thinking, and had tried to do at one point, but was unschooled on the heat transfer of everything and so used wrong materials   

[Sevio]

I would have liked to link my MiniLOX thread here which was meant to be a step by step tutorial for a compact, not so intimidating-looking liquefier for newer players, unfortunately somehow it suffers from a gas destruction bug that gradually destroyed the hydrogen in the system until it could no longer run.

I think you're best off going with a radiator design which Kasuha just posted an example of. Simple in mechanics, highest possible efficiency but quite large to build because pipes are slow to exchange heat with their contents.

[manu_x32]

15 hours ago, SusanMcO said:

Then how best do I use that to cool my base?

Is your base too hot because you are using electrolyzers in the open without cooling their oxygen output?  There is other ways to solve this at the source to prevent the base from heating up...

[SusanMcO]

I've been working on this, but not finding much success in trying to liquefy oxygen - when i looked at my temperature overlay, my abyssalite pipes/walls are all over 100 degrees.  Is that the problem? If so, how do I cool the abyssalite, or do I try to only use abyssalite from ice biomes?

Am I overthinking this?  Really, I can now get the hydrogen cool enough to cool the base I think, so I don't need to go further, but liquid oxygen seems so handy with stupid disease ridden stuff and cooling the geyser.

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, SusanMcO said:

when i looked at my temperature overlay, my abyssalite pipes/walls are all over 100 degrees

That's fine, they're hot but they keep the heat to themselves and don't share it with anything. The only way I have found to change temperature of abyssalite is to pull a granite pipe through abyssalite tile. But most of the time that's actually unwanted effect.

Liquid oxygen production is rather power hungry - using thermo regulators, you can get about 100 g of liquid oxygen per second per regulator. On average once the machine has already cooled down which often takes tens of cycles.

[SusanMcO]

14 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

That's fine, they're hot but they keep the heat to themselves and don't share it with anything. The only way I have found to change temperature of abyssalite is to pull a granite pipe through abyssalite tile. But most of the time that's actually unwanted effect.

Liquid oxygen production is rather power hungry - using thermo regulators, you can get about 100 g of liquid oxygen per second per regulator. On average once the machine has already cooled down which often takes tens of cycles.

Ok, I think I was expecting too much and may not have cooled my regulator enough.  I'll keep playing   

[SusanMcO]

I got serious about trying it yesterday, and was very frustrated.  I did a room of hydrogen, with hydrogen in mazing pipes around, then a total of three gas regulators, and in an abutting room (both abyssalyte walls) with then the cooled hydrogen mazing through a room of oxygen (that had a liquid pump set up ahead of time for any liquid O2), with wolframite plug bridges - and I could not get the O2 cold enough.  I finally added in some hydrogen which helped, but I still ended up liquifying my hydrogen in the gas regulator pipes before I made any LOX.  My O2 actually got to -300+ without liquifying in the setup.

What does it sound like I'm doing wrong?!