Super specific answers needed about insulation

[greggbert]

Hi guys!

Just looking for some really specific answers, about insulation, as I think people's understanding of it is vague.  Trying to form the questions so the answers are the most specific.  Again not looking for the WHY just the HOW.  Thanks in advance!

 

1)  Abysslite insulated tile is the best way to prevent heat from moving from one area to another.  The second best material to use for insulated tile is _________________(Sandstone?)

2)  ____________(?Granite?) is the best material to make liquid or gas pipes out of if the contents are hotter than the outside environment and you want to shed that heat into the surrounding gas.  The second best material to use for the pipes if you have no granite is _________________(????).

3)  If you have hot liquid or gas going through granite pipes in a cold biome and your goal is to cool the contents them without using any machinery then create a radiator structure out of granite pipe running through (Select one)

     A) A large totally cleared room in the cold biome filled with oxygen.
     B) A large totally cleared room in the cold biome filled with (?Some other gas?)
     C) A large totally cleared room in the cold biome backed with thermo-plates made of _________ (???????) and filled with _________(???????) gas/liquid
     D) Run the pipes through cold water.
     E) Don't clear the room, leave as much of the ice/snow as you can and only dig enough to let the pipes go through.  The solids will absorb the heat more efficiently.
     F)  No you can't keep it in the pipes, you have to empty the liquid gas into some sort of wheezewort filled chamber and let it sit there for a bit, then pull it back to your main base.

 

 

[avc15]

1) sandstone, but there's really no comparison, plain abyssalite tile allows less than a thousandth the heat transfer that an insulated sandstone tile does.

2) (oops , gas pipes) yeah, granite

3) you should be using tungsten or wolframite pipes to build a liquid radiator. Any of your various setups are fine, you only need shift plates or an optimal environment if you have limited space or need to reject a really huge amount of heat flux. Strictly though, hydrogen makes the best gas medium, and a few options are quite good as liquid coolants.

[Lacost]

1) Abyssalite and nothing but. The insulation system is broken at the moment because there is no incentive to use anything but Abyssalite. You also never need insulated tiles since normal Abyssalite tiles have semi-infinite insulation as long as you don't build something with extreme temperatures.

 

3) It depends on how you generate your entropy loss or better said: Which entropy destroying methods are available/necessary for you?

 

If you only have Wheezeworts then room filled with Hydrogen is the answer. All other gases are just plain worse than Hydrogen. However, cooling liquids with gasses in pipes is somewhat impossible since the thermal capacities of the two phases are just off by a huge amount.

For instance: You would need 32 Hydrogen Wheezeworts (more than are spawned) in Hydrogen to cool enough geyser water for Bristle Blossoms feeding 10 Dupes.

 

If you want to cool liquid number 1 you have to cool it with another liquid number 2 and then destroy liquid number 2 with some machinery. For instance: Cooling geyser water in Aquatuners with polluted water from natural gas generators and then destroy the polluted water in Fertilizer-Synthesizer.

 

It's not really the question what is the most efficient but which resources/techs are available. Crude Oil would be a better coolant than polluted water but it requires far more tech to mine/farm and destroy than polluted water.

 

Oh, and the biome background has only very little effect on the machines you build in them. If you dig everything out then it would almost behave like the same as any other biome. It's the cold tiles in the ice-biome that make it cold.

[Exa]

are you elementary school teacher in real life?

[greggbert]

When I was giving the blanks and the letter choices, I was trying to avoid an answer like the one that Lacost posted.

I have no idea what that answer means or how to cool the gas.  He's all over the place talking about things I don't understand and he told me I asked the wrong question.  He also talked about hacks like using machinery to destroy liquids, WTF?????.  To me that is so far out of the scope of my question it's meaningless.  

I want to cool gasses by running them through the cold biome.  I gave 6 possible options (A-F) of ways to do that. Things I already know how to do.

Reading through his answer it seems like he's saying "None of the above"  And all of them.  And also depends. Clear as mud.

[Luminite2]

5 minutes ago, greggbert said:

Lacost's answer is why I gave the blanks and the letter choices.  I have no idea what that answer means or how to cool the gas.  He's all over the place talking about things I don't understand and he told me I asked the wrong question.  He also talked about hacks like using machinery to destroy liquids.  To me that is so far out of the scope of my question it's meaningless.

I want to cool gasses by running them through the cold biome.  I gave 6 possible options (A-F) of ways to do that. Things I already know how to do.

Reading through his answer it seems like he's saying "None of the above"  And all of them.  And also depends. Clear as mud.

The answer to 3 is D. You can also use cold polluted water instead of clean water

If you find it hard to cool enough water for option D, then option B with hydrogen as the gas is the next best. It will cool gases in the pipes, but will not cool liquids in the pipes very much.

His answer to 1 is basically: use abyssalite NON-insulated tiles.

[Lacost]

21 minutes ago, greggbert said:

Lacost's answer is why I gave the blanks and the letter choices.  I have no idea what that answer means or how to cool the gas.  He's all over the place talking about things I don't understand and he told me I asked the wrong question.

I want to cool gasses by running them through the cold biome.  I gave 6 possible options (A-F) of ways to do that. Things I already know how to do.

Reading through his answer it seems like he's saying "None of the above"  And all of them.  And also depends. Clear as mud.

1. Which gasses do you want to cool and for what purpose?

2. In which state of the colony do you want to build this cooling system? Early game, mid game or late game?

3. Are you comfortable with using exploits alias the infamous Borg-cube?

 

I can't give you specific answers on generalized questions. The answer will always be in such a case: it depends.

 

For question 3:

Pipe cooling to temperate your base below 30°C is a waste of time since a few Wheezeworts in your open base would do the job for you. However, if you want to cool a sleet wheat farm then Hydrogen-pipe cooling is an elaborate strategy. Then again, pipe cooling is too inefficient once you want to cool down liquids.

In one case you don't even need a pipe system.

In another case a pipe system is a go-to strategy.

In another case a pipe system simply won't work.

[The Plum Gate]

1 - igneous 

Think it has a low thermal conductivity. The lower the conductivity, the better it is..

[QuQuasar]

Answering your questions:
         
1. Thermal conductivity goes Abysalite < Igneous = Obsidian = Sedimentary < Sandstone < Granite. So igneous, obsidian and sedimentary rock are equivilent for this purpose.
    HOWEVER: Igneous rock tends to be harvested from warm biomes, and has high heat capacity. Over time, it will radiate that warmth into whatever you're trying to insulate.
             
2. Granite, then sandstone, per the above Thermal Conductivity order.
         
3. 
 a. Avoid digging anything out. 
 b. Fill the biome up with dense hydrogen. 
 c. Run granite pipes through the open and low spaces, esp. in area's where the ice water will collect as it melts.

[Kabrute]

2. Tungsten-Wolframite-Granite Tungsten tends to affect the contents more than the outside while granite goes the other way
3.  E w/ tungsten liquid piping, excess mass means more base cold available
Alternative sources of cold mass may be beneficial.

[Coolthulhu]

1) Obsidian and sedimentary. Their low heat capacity slows heat transfer (though it might look to speed it up at a glance).

2) Actually, sandstone is 1/80th better than granite in many cases, due to higher heat capacity. Higher conductivity generally only matters if something on either side of pipe has conductivity this high. Most gases and liquids don't have conductivity this high.

3) Both C and E are good answers. C will cool it down quicker, but E will be more efficient. When you dig out a tile, you destroy 50% of its mass. So when you dig out an ice tile, you lose 50% of the heat sink. Though piping non-polluted water through ice is risky, as it can freeze easily.

[greggbert]

Ha ha  Thanks to everyone!   Good discussion!   

[The Plum Gate]

I have a tendency to use sandstone to insulate early game. As @QuQuasar points out, igneous is often hot to begin with.

Also, @greggbert, if you want to use abyssalite in construction jobs, it's a good idea to collect it in its own storage compactors:

 

[Argelle]

On 12/02/2018 at 9:04 PM, Lacost said:

Oh, and the biome background has only very little effect on the machines you build in them. If you dig everything out then it would almost behave like the same as any other biome. It's the cold tiles in the ice-biome that make it cold.

Ohhh damned, you bring very bad news to my game (and belief)...

there's not even a medium temperature that biome go back to (once empty) ? like ice biome -10, starting biome 25, ... ?

[Lacost]

9 minutes ago, Argelle said:

Ohhh damned, you bring very bad news to my game (and belief)...

there's not even a medium temperature that biome go back to (once empty) ? like ice biome -10, starting biome 25, ... ?

The heat in a biome comes from all the tiles that are in it. If you mine everything then the temperature will go either way, depending on what you are doing. An empty ice biome might be hotter than an empty caustic biome.

 

The background has little effect. There was a forum post some time ago where a substance in insulated tiles dropped marginally in temperature in the ice biome. However, it shouldn't be enough to provide any active cooling whatsoever.

[Argelle]

That's a very depressing and entropic word (or asteroid)...

Setting a cooling system in an ice biome is working until all is melt or dig away. This means, on the long (very long) term, the (game) world is doomed? (not such thing as perpetual sustain world). Or destine to reach an average temperature everywhere? A sort of ONIc microwave background

[Lacost]

6 minutes ago, Argelle said:

That's a very depressing and entropic word (or asteroid)...

Setting a cooling system in an ice biome is working until all is melt or dig away. This means, on the long (very long) term, the (game) world is doomed? Or destine to reach an average temperature everywhere? A sort of ONIc microwave background

That would be a nice ending for a colony and would give you an endgame goal .... to not die to the heat.

 

Unfortunately, cooling is very easy in the game. You can delete mass and heat with relative ease and thanks to a bug (drip cooling) you could freeze your entire colony in a few cycles if you want to.

 

But even without bugs it will take you forever until you really "use up" all tiles in the colder biomes and start to suffer from heat. It's safe to assume that once you would encounter heat death you want to start a new colony anyways.

[PhailRaptor]

The thing is about heat death is that the map has a certain amount it spawns with, then Geysers produce a small amount.  Even without the drip cooling bug, it should be possible to offset all the heat the Geysers produce, between the Wheezeworts and the AETNs.  The bigger concern is dealing with the heat that is output by your own survival methods.  It ultimately boils down to how effectively you can transfer heat from one source to another (specifically, since we're talking Wheezeworts, heat into Hydrogen) and how well you can exploit fixed temp outputs on H2O/P-H2O.

I am unsure if it would still be possible to keep up if the fixed outputs were removed.

[Kuirem]

7 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

I am unsure if it would still be possible to keep up if the fixed outputs were removed.

Hydrofans everywhere.

I'm just kidding don't kill me plz.

[JonnyMonroe]

1 hour ago, PhailRaptor said:

I am unsure if it would still be possible to keep up if the fixed outputs were removed

Tl;Dr - might be possible with a massive puft farm allowing you to use algae for o2 and slime for food. Even then I'm not certain.

 

It'd be an interesting challenge. You could aquatune and boil to recycle polluted water back into clean water. Use an astonishingly large morb/puft farm to make algae for o2, polluted water to recycle, and slime for a mushroom farm. Powering it all with minimum waste heat would be a challenge as most of your cooling would go to condensing the steam.

I'm not sure it's possible tbh. Essentially you're relying on blocking off the geysers to prevent them generating heat, then operating on natural sources of polluted water and an aquatuner setup to process it into clean water. The aquatuners are the crux as the power cost of running them will mean generators which means more heat, although if you're using slime for food and algae for o2 I'm not sure how much water you would even need to process each cycle. You cut out showers and after that it's just lavs and sinks, which both generate net o2.

 

Edit-

If you use an algae still in a puft farm and loop the water back in to sublimate you can effectively turn all your polluted water into algae and thus oxygen. This means 2 algae still, fed by 8 pufts, can supply 1 algea deoxydiser (not quite 100% of the time). Lavatories provide more than enough polluted water to feed this cycle but it doesn't provide enough slime to keep an adequate mushroom farm running. You would need another 12 pufts (20 total) to get enough slime for 3 dupes worth of mushrooms. You could suppliment their diet with wild crops to reduce this to a manageable number. In a realistic game you would build this in a large colony then kill most of your dupes off and sustain the rest on this setup.

 

Wheezeworts can easily cool the whole system. Obviously germs will be a problem and you would need chlorine to clean it all.

[Ketmol]

On 2018-02-12 at 6:52 PM, greggbert said:

 

2)  ____________(?Granite?) is the best material to make liquid or gas pipes out of if the contents are hotter than the outside environment and you want to shed that heat into the surrounding gas.  The second best material to use for the pipes if you have no granite is _________________(????).

 

I am not sure I get this, why granite and not wolframite. Shouldn't higher conductivity material transfer the heat faster? Or have I misunderstood something...

[Coolthulhu]

9 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

I am unsure if it would still be possible to keep up if the fixed outputs were removed.

We'd still have outputs with different total heat content. It would take a lot more effort, but we could still do things like boiling polluted water, then cooling clean water (which has ~70% the heat capacity) or its electrolysis products.

There are buildings with non-fixed outputs that still aren't dependent on inputs. Gas generators produce outputs at own temperature, so 125C natural gas can still turn into -20C pH2O and CO2.

Morbs produce pO2 at 30C, but dupes are fine with 69C O2, so you could condense pO2 to clean it, then heat it up before releasing it back to colony.

This wouldn't produce enough heat sink to farm berries or wheat, but a slimefarm colony could survive indefinitely just fine.

[greggbert]

UPDATE!  On my map today I cleared some ice and found a machine that takes hydrogen as fuel and destroys heat!!!!  Like a super wheezwort you can't move.

[PhailRaptor]

1 minute ago, greggbert said:

UPDATE!  On my map today I cleared some ice and found a machine that takes hydrogen as fuel and destroys heat!!!!  Like a super wheezwort you can't move.

That would be an AETN -- Anti-Entropy Thermal Nullifier.

[travaldofan]

bcs of the change in Igneous rock i think after granite igneous rock is the choice (but not tested).