Heat exchanger

[Eboku]

I am unsure if this has been proposed before. Have a heat exchanger made out of refined metal. We could have 3 types liquid to liquid, gas to liquid and gas to gas(or maybe just 1.) The basic operation would be to transfer heat or equalise the temperature between the two materials. So the hotter material would cool and the cooler material would warm with good to great efficiency. It would be an expensive late game item.

There Could possibly just be the one building with a gas in/out and a liquid in/out. No power would be required. And if we wanted to move temperature between 2 liquids we could just build 2 buildings and make a gas loop between the 2 and opposite would apply for 2 gases.

Thanks for reading. Eboku.

[Siundio]

That dont have to be expensive I worked with heat exchanger like that in real life is simple metal connection between two seperate loop of pipe in one we had water that go to radiators located all over office building in the second water loop thru cooling tower on the roof. Heat exchange between both of them was really good.

[Eboku]

I just thought it should be expensive in the game for "game experience" reasons having something like this easily accessible in mid game would make the game to easy and should be a late game item when you really start to have heat problems that can't be solved easily. 

I also work with things like this irl.

[Neotix]

There is no need for another machine. Passive heat exchanger can be build and if you want active ones then use thermo aquatuner or thermo regulator.

[trukogre]

1 hour ago, Neotix said:

There is no need for another machine. Passive heat exchanger can be build and if you want active ones then use thermo aquatuner or thermo regulator.

Heat exchangers IRL are extremely efficient , fairly low tech, and you can't currently replicate their exact design in game.  put another way, Heat Exchangers are low tech, simple, and there's more need for them than there is a need for futurama tubes, which are not simple or low tech.  The reason I bring up complexity and tech level is the same reason that you start with outhouses but then research lavatories--realism, immersion and consistency of the game world. How efficient is your best ingame passive heat exchanger Neotix?  

[Neotix]

It's quite efficient and it only require metal tiles (doors included). Heat exchanger was commonly used in hydrogen bubblers before automation upgrade and refined metal tiles.

Example:

Doors on bottom exchange heat between liquid oxygen and polluted oxygen (precooling)

Higher doors and wire bridges exchange heat between cold hydrogen and polluted oxygen to make liquid oxygen.

 

Here is automatic heat exhanger.

On forum is even movie with practical implementation (using lava to heat gas).

[trukogre]

I didn't ask for a picture, I asked how efficient it was.  "quite efficient" doesn't tell me anything, I'm looking for numbers.  In the real world, it's possible to take two streams of liquid, let's say water coming in at 80 C on one side and 20 C at the other, and exchange heat in a countercurrent flow system so that nearly all the heat is exchanged, cooling the hot water from 80 C to 21C and warming the cool water from 20 C to 79C.  This is what it means to truly 'exchange' heat, nearly 100% of the heat energy is transferred.  When the temperature of the cooler input reaches a higher output temperature than that of hot input's output, that's called temperature cross.  When you're exchanging nearly all of the heat, that's a very extreme temperature cross.  There are certain real world heat exchangers, like the common shell and tube designs, where the common practice seems to be to avoid temperature cross.  If you need extreme temperature cross for your application, there are other designs, plate and frame or plate fin, which seem to work much better.  Simply putting a door between two chambers doesn't give the high throughput of the shell and tube designs, nor does it allow for extreme temperature cross, or any temp cross at all really.  It's a very primitive and ineffective heat exchanger...as one would expect because it's just a metal door.  I understand if you're happy with a metal door, but if you looked up the elegance of these other designs, perhaps you'd want more.  Or not.  I'm not an expert on heat exchangers myself, but from what I've learned simply from reading a few articles about them I think they'd be a good addition to this game.

[Neotix]

1 hour ago, trukogre said:

I'm looking for numbers

Then calculate it by yourself.

 

About real world heat exchangers. This is a game, not real world. This game have it's own heat exchange mechanic and don't expect that it's like in real. Even if you get heat exchanger as machine, it will skill work inside game mechanic and won't work with efficiency from real world.

You want to add new machines that will work outside game mechanic because that mechanic didn't reach your's expectations.

[trukogre]

5 hours ago, Neotix said:

Then calculate it by yourself.

 

About real world heat exchangers. This is a game, not real world. This game have it's own heat exchange mechanic and don't expect that it's like in real. Even if you get heat exchanger as machine, it will skill work inside game mechanic and won't work with efficiency from real world.

You want to add new machines that will work outside game mechanic because that mechanic didn't reach your's expectations.

No, I don't want to calculate, I want to observe; I'm not looking for theoretical numbers, I 'm trying to compare practical results.   If you won't share your results, then don't try to tell me that heat exchangers already exist and they are efficient enough , because you aren't willing to back up your claim so it's worthless

 

Yes, this is a game, not the real world...this is true but is a pointless observation to make unless you have an actual point which follows it.  If all you have to follow it is a psychological attempt to read my mind, which is doomed to fail because you're not a mindreader, then don't bother, because it's worthless.

"You want to add new machines that will work outside game mechanic because that mechanic didn't reach your's expectations."

I would find heat exchangers more fun than tubes, because tubes just aren't that useful or interesting, but machines like heat exchangers would both add gameplay and realism.  The #1 problem with tubes is that they solve a problem which is created by overshortening of the time crunch: more specifically, travel time takes too long because the length of the day has been shortened more than the running/carrying speed of dupes has been increased, in the simulation transformation from real time to game time, and the time to perform tasks has been set too short relative to running time as well.  This just isn't a fun problem to solve, no matter what the solution is, because they are macro scale problems that the developer should solve by changing values, not a problem we should be expected to solve. #2 problem with tubes is that the other ways of solving the problem are fairly interesting already, and there's not enough incentive to explore to far reaches of the asteroid.  The problem with the nonexistence of heat exchangers is that it aggravates the problem with the lack of realism of the thermodynamic system, and reduces gameplay and realism. If you look up the design in real life cryogenic gas liquifaction machines, for example, you see that they use multiple heat exchangers in different parts of their design, the heat exchange we tend to see in ONI liquifaction is the least interesting one, taking up 10% of the description relative to the others. The #1 problem with adding them in is that gameplay is already pretty easy, and the unrealism and lack of efficiency of these kludges such as using doors to make poor heat exchangers is one of the more difficult things that remain; such that the addition of heat exchangers should accompany some increase in difficulty otherwards.  The whole "it's a game, not real life" argument is a crude attempt to touch upon the necessity of balancing gameplay and realism.  However, you never get around to discussing balance, because you get sidetracked by failed mindreading attempts, so it's a red herring.  I threw in the tubes example above so you could see an example of what both pro and con arguments look like with regard to gameplay balance vs realism.

[Eboku]

Just a couple of thoughts:

I do enjoy making them in game but i feel like they are just a small part of a chilling/heating system, we would still need to make large areas to chill the coolant. Also now with the addition of the metal makers and plastic makers i need to add more cooling potential in a base making it quite large. 

other thoughts:

The efficiency could vary depending on the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the gas/liquids. And using automation and valves you could slow the flow through the building to get the desired heat transfer. Also if we could get in pipe temperature sensors the possibilities could be amazing. But i think they could deserve a whole new thread. 

Just putting some ideas out there.