HOW to choose Liquid pipe building material

[travaldofan]

So this topic is bit hot now, Neotuck showed us that if u want to make radiator (that cooling down area or heating up area) SEDIMENTARY ROCK or Obsidian is the best choice.

But If u want to cool liquid using cooling loop the BEST material is WOLFRAMITE, but GRANITE is the next best choice. And Tungten is somehow very bad for cooling liquid.

I pumped 100C Petroleum in each 100 tile granite, sedimentary rock, igneous rock pipes through -55C Petroleum. 

Wolframite     -        100C to 34.5C

Granite          -         100C to 36C 

Tungsten       -         100C to 47C

Igneous         -          100C to 47.1C 

Sedimentary  -         100C to 48.4C 

 

Basically if u want to cool liquid using pipes GRANITE(wolframite) is the way to go.

If u want cool room or heat up room using liquid sedimentary rock or obsidian is the best choice. (example generator room, greenhouse room etc.)

[Lutzkhie]

cooling large body of water is a different story, because of the thermal conductivity of the coolant and the liquid being cooled
and i quote: "between two object, the rate of transfer will be determined by the object with the lowest thermal conductivity"
that means, pipe material, and coolant are dependent to what your trying to cool

[travaldofan]

25 minutes ago, Lutzkhie said:

cooling large body of water is a different story, because of the thermal conductivity of the coolant and the liquid being cooled
and i quote: "between two object, the rate of transfer will be determined by the object with the lowest thermal conductivity"
that means, pipe material, and coolant are dependent to what your trying to cool

very surprising is granite cools liquid very good and granite pipes emerged with petroleum temperature was colder than other pipes. which means efficient and maintain cool more before cold petroleum heats up

[Lutzkhie]

you know you could cool it way more by limiting the flow of liquid by valves, 10kg/s of water is too much, yeah it cools but not that much, can you retry the test at 1kg/s or 500g/s, for the sick of science!

[Kasuha]

It would definitely be better if you added your experiment into @Neotuck's topic instead of creating your own.

Edit:

Okay I reread the post and reconsidered it and think there's too many transient effects in the play. @Neotuck measured how much did he cool the environment, you measured how much you heated the medium in the pipe. That's two different things. But neither of you measured actual equilibrium heat transfer efficiency of pipes - changing temperature of pipes, the pipe medium, and the environment medium is affecting results of you both.

I don't have access to ONI right at the moment but I would suggest the following experiment:

Draw a 1-tile high horizontal passage between abyssalite tiles and drip the cooled medium into it at one side, let it fall into a pool at the other side.

Draw a radiator pipe through this passage and send the cooling medium through it in opposite direction. Drip contents of the pipe into another pool after being used once.

Have starting temperatures of both set to defined value (so e.g. petroleum at 0 C is always put in the passage and petroleum at 100 C is always sent through pipe).

Wait until the temperatures along the pipe reach equilibrium. It shouldn't take too long. Then check temperature of outputs at either side. Not temperature in the collecting pools but temperatures of the medium as it's leaving the radiator area.

[Master Miner]

Test idea:
- abyssalite tank divided in two equal parts by abyssalite with the same liquid or gas at different temperatures, pipes through both of them, closed loop, no external influences
- petroleum in the pipes with starting temperature (T1 + T2) / 2
- let it run some time, measure temperatures and calculate the exchanged heat
- or, measure the time needed to exchange 20% of the heat
- test in parallel with different pipe materials and different liquid or gas in the tank

[vovik]

Uhh, guys, did you misread the whole post Neotuck showed us ? he says that starting from the right is: Granite, Sedimentary rock, Igneous rock, Obsidian,  and that means that far right is GRANITE, and second coldest one is IGNEOUS ROCK. i am mistaken or dumb, or what?(or i need to test this myself?)

Or i just misread the whole post whre people were appraising post author for finding out that sedimentary and obsidian are best for cooling?

 

[travaldofan]

I didn't want any drip cooling bug interfering, and both separate tank, liquid is not mixed and connected, only heat exchange is between liquid pipes.

TOP -50C petroleum

BOTTOM 50C petroleum

1. Granite pipe top sedimentary pipe bottom

2. Sedimentary pipe top granite pipe bottom

3. both granite pipes

4. both sedimentary pipes

Results

1. Granite top tank most of them still -50C only near liquid vent 10 tile -38C, sedimentary bottom tank is average 39C(really bad heat exchange)

2. The heat exchange between two were way faster than others.

Top tank with Sedimentary pipe is average -20.5C (vent side -10C, pump side -31C),

Bottom tank with granite pipe cooled way faster than other tanks averaging 23C (vent side is 12.8C)

3. both granite pipes, Top average -24.5C, bottom average 28.5C

4. both sedimentary pipes,   Top average -24.25C, bottom average 29C

As @Neotuck and my experiment proved that heat capacity is more important number than thermal conductivity.

Sedimentary is really good at exchanging heat.

But in hot liquid tank granite pipe is way better cooler.

But for heating up liquid tank sedimentary is little better.

So if u want heat exchange between two liquid best way is hot liquid run through sedimentary pipe and cold liquid run through granite pipe.

Interesting part is granite pipe merged in cold liquid stays cold longer.

I don't think in real game i would try this, If i want heat exchange between two liquid i will just build metal tile between two tank.

[Kasuha]

2 hours ago, travaldofan said:

As @Neotuck and my experiment proved that heat capacity is more important number than thermal conductivity.

Heat capacity is irrelevant in long run. When you're cooling geyser water, boiling water, condensing steam, condenxing oxygen etc, you eventually reach an equilibrium state where you have constatn temperature of inputs, constant temperature of outputs, and constant temperature slope over the radiator. In this state, all materials except abyssalite behave the same. I already ran my experiment and it was conclusive about it. There was absolutely no difference between the materials.

 

[Neotuck]

49 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

Heat capacity is irrelevant in long run. When you're cooling geyser water, boiling water, condensing steam, condenxing oxygen etc, you eventually reach an equilibrium state where you have constatn temperature of inputs, constant temperature of outputs, and constant temperature slope over the radiator. In this state, all materials except abyssalite behave the same. I already ran my experiment and it was conclusive about it. There was absolutely no difference between the materials.

This is true if your build is running 100% of the time however if your builds are automated to turn on depending on events then using materials with a low heat capacity would be ideal.

For example I plan to have my PW boiler only turn on when I'm low on water. So I'm going to want to cool the steam as quickly as possible 

[Kasuha]

31 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

This is true if your build is running 100% of the time however if your builds are automated to turn on depending on events then using materials with a low heat capacity would be ideal.

For transient states there's no clear winner. Low heat capacity radiator will reach the equilibrium state faster from a distant point, while high heat capacity radiator will stay near the equilibrium state for longer time, reducing the distance the system has to  travel after it's switched on.

If you're concerned about cooling steam fast and you only produce steam occasionally, you can have the condenser pre-cooled. That will be more efficient with high thermal capacity pipes. Or you may want to start the cooling at once with steam generation, then you'll get better effect with low thermal capacity pipes. If you keep your condenser insulated during the inactive period, it will stay close to equilibrium and will more or less work immediately regardless of radiator material.

[Neotuck]

Just now, Kasuha said:

For transient states there's no clear winner. Low heat capacity radiator will reach the equilibrium state faster from a distant point, while high heat capacity radiator will stay near the equilibrium state for longer time, reducing the distance the system has to travel during the off period.

If you're concerned about cooling steam fast and you only produce steam occasionally, you can have the condenser pre-cooled. That will be more efficient with high thermal capacity pipes. Or you may want to start the cooling at once with steam generation, then you'll get better effect with low thermal capacity pipes. If you keep your condenser insulated during the inactive period, it will stay close to equilibrium and will more or less work immediately regardless of radiator material.

you make many good points, I'll have to keep playing around with my build and try new things to see what works best

[travaldofan]

4 hours ago, Kasuha said:

For transient states there's no clear winner. Low heat capacity radiator will reach the equilibrium state faster from a distant point, while high heat capacity radiator will stay near the equilibrium state for longer time, reducing the distance the system has to  travel after it's switched on.

If you're concerned about cooling steam fast and you only produce steam occasionally, you can have the condenser pre-cooled. That will be more efficient with high thermal capacity pipes. Or you may want to start the cooling at once with steam generation, then you'll get better effect with low thermal capacity pipes. If you keep your condenser insulated during the inactive period, it will stay close to equilibrium and will more or less work immediately regardless of radiator material.

you are right, before i did not care about heat capacity, but now with this experiment i understand that heat capacity is really important.