Using a Diamond Radiator to cool steam

[Neotuck]

I been trying out many forms of radiator builds to try and cool steam for a PW boiler and I have found that using a conveyor rail system works faster than any liquid or gas radiators.  I'm guessing because solids have a higher thermal conductivity rating than any liquids or gases.  In the picture shown I use diamonds as the solid with it's thermal conductivity of 80 ( W/m)/K

[Lacost]

Nice! I always disliked pipe-cooling because of how much space it takes and how small the cooling power is. I maybe give a conveyor cooler / condenser a shot.

 

Just a question: Wouldn't a cooled petroleum bath be more efficient in cooling down the diamond? The thermal conductivity is 20x higher than for hydrogen. This could save space for your design.

[Kasuha]

As an idea it is interesting, the question remains how will you cool down the other end of the conveyor. Because regardless how you set it up, the conveyor is just the way to transfer heat, not the way to produce cooling. Particularly in your case, the total long term amount of cooling you can potentially get is given by the number of regulators you use, not by properties of the conveyor. Low heat transfer for pipe radiator can be usually compensated with greater temperature difference, or with greater size of the radiator.

So I guess potential use of the conveyor is where you can't increase temperature difference (e.g. because the hydrogen would liquefy) and prefer more complex solution over simply bigger radiator. 

 

Conveyors seem to be a really convenient way of changing temperature of the solid payload, though. I think their best unintended use might be thawing ice.

[PickPay]

Always interesting to see what creative ideas players come up with  and others expanding on it, keep it up !

[Saturnus]

3 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Conveyors seem to be a really convenient way of changing temperature of the solid payload, though. I think their best unintended use might be thawing ice.

I use conveyors to cool plastic, to cool down my sleet wheat farm, to temperature control my power generators, etc etc. Basically, everywhere you'd normally transfer heat energy using gases or liquids I mainly use conveyors now and have been since the worst bugs with conveyors were fixed. I generally use either plastic or diamond as the medium depending on the desired properties.

For evening out temperatures I use diamonds as they absorb and release energy very fast they are very good at making a large room the same temperature. For transferring heat energy, especially cold for obvious reasons, I generally use plastic. 

Here's my plastic production where the plastic is run on conveyors in metal tiles and almost instantly get reset to 22C output. Note the slicksters making crude oil from CO2 from the power generators.

Here's my sleet wheat farm cooled by plastic running on conveyors

And my power generator and transformer array temperature controlled by diamond conveyors

@Neotuck Note how I set up the conveyors. The conveyor bridge is all that is needed to make an infinite loop.

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Note how I set up the conveyors. The conveyor bridge is all that is needed to make an infinite loop.

awesome on the conveyor bridge, I'll change mine to use that

 

2 hours ago, Kasuha said:

As an idea it is interesting, the question remains how will you cool down the other end of the conveyor. Because regardless how you set it up, the conveyor is just the way to transfer heat, not the way to produce cooling. Particularly in your case, the total long term amount of cooling you can potentially get is given by the number of regulators you use, not by properties of the conveyor. Low heat transfer for pipe radiator can be usually compensated with greater temperature difference, or with greater size of the radiator.

So I guess potential use of the conveyor is where you can't increase temperature difference (e.g. because the hydrogen would liquefy) and prefer more complex solution over simply bigger radiator. 

As @Saturnus mentioned there is a useful bug similar to the tempshift plates when solids pass through aybssalite insulated tiles they cool down to the default temp of 20C, also I use automation to prevent hydrogen from liquefying 

2 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Conveyors seem to be a really convenient way of changing temperature of the solid payload, though. I think their best unintended use might be thawing ice.

Melting plastic into naphtha is also useful

 

[Saturnus]

55 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

As @Saturnus mentioned there is a useful bug similar to the tempshift plates when solids pass through aybssalite insulated tiles they cool down to the default temp of 20C, also I use automation to prevent hydrogen from liquefying 

That appear to have been fixed fortunately. What I do it route the conveyor through metal tiles to set the desired temperature, and then run through abyssalite tiles to where it's needed. There is no temperature change in abyssalite tiles or abyssalite bridges.

[Neotuck]

Just now, Saturnus said:

That appear to have been fixed fortunately. What I do it route the conveyor through metal tiles to set the desired temperature, and then run through abyssalite tiles to where it's needed. There is no temperature change in abyssalite tiles or abyssalite bridges.

gotcha, that would have been a game breaker

[Master Miner]

Very simple way to cool / liquefy steam - with polluted water that needs to be heated anyway

PW can then pass through a metal refinery before being boiled.

The amount of used PW can be regulated by turning on/off a number of fertilizer synthesizers...

[JonnyMonroe]

This is how I cool steam:

Ignore the broken dirt extractor. This thing uses a petroleum ice machine to create polluted ice at -150c to condense the steam created by the boiler. Theboiler is taking heat from 95c geyser water and recycles the condensed steam back through the system at higher priority than the incoming geyser water and recycles polluted meltwater with a higher priority than the backup polluted water source.

Various overlays:

[Yoma_Nosme]

I haven't played around with conveyors yet but I really like all of your builds! Looking at your results conveyor cooling/heating seems very "op" compared to the existing methods. It looks like you could cool even water more efficiently than with an aqua tuner.

Do you think the devs will leave it as is or maybe up the power consumption to make it less efficient. Because traditionally if u think conveyors you think transport not cooling.

No criticism on your contraption. I'm just curious on your thoughts.

[Saturnus]

You never know. What works in this upgrade could be gone in the next so it's anyone's guess really. I'm not particularly worried though as I don't design bases to be played through multiple upgrades because designing for what changes might just maybe get nerfed down the line is non-sense in my opinion. You play the game in the state it is in, not what you hope it will become.

[Kuirem]

Has anyone tried to use plastic for cooling? With the crazy Thermal Conductivity as long as the source transfer "cold" quick enough it shouldn't melt right?

[Neotuck]

13 minutes ago, Kuirem said:

Has anyone tried to use plastic for cooling? With the crazy Thermal Conductivity as long as the source transfer "cold" quick enough it shouldn't melt right?

I had thought about using plastic but with it's melting point at 76.9C and the steam is between 125C and 99C I didn't want to risk getting naphtha mixed in with my water so I went with diamonds.  Also plastic has a high heat capacity which will slow down the heat transfer 

[Kuirem]

In a cooling system heat capacity should only affect the time it takes for the system to start. Once the plastic is cold it shouldn't affect the effectiveness of it.

And yes I know that there is a risk of melting that's why I was wondering if anyone tried it. As long as the plastic receive cold quicker it shouldn't (for instance by using Petroleum bath on the other side) but it's hard to be sure without trying it.

[Saturnus]

1 hour ago, Kuirem said:

Has anyone tried to use plastic for cooling? With the crazy Thermal Conductivity as long as the source transfer "cold" quick enough it shouldn't melt right?

Read my post above were I have pictures of such a set up.

[Kuirem]

Oh I was thinking of using the Plastic (tiles maybe) directly but I guess that work too.

[Lacost]

1 hour ago, Kuirem said:

In a cooling system heat capacity should only affect the time it takes for the system to start. Once the plastic is cold it shouldn't affect the effectiveness of it.

 

That depends on which cooling system you use and where you want to place the plastic tiles. In this conveyor belt setup heat capacity is very important to maintain a high temperature difference. The higher the temperature difference, the faster the heat transfer.

 

On other setups where the heat should just be transferred through the tiles, you want a small heat capacity so that the temperature difference increases as fast as possible.

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, Kuirem said:

Oh I was thinking of using the Plastic (tiles maybe) directly but I guess that work too.

I like using plastic tiles in a cold water reservoir.  Helpful in keeping water temp down for bristle blossom and sleet wheat farms

[Denisetwin]

@Saturnus  can you explain this set up a bit more please?  << Here's my sleet wheat farm cooled by plastic running on conveyors >>  I'm having temp issues in sleet wheat farm (long story) how did you cool the plastic to begin with?  Does it stay at the same temp or how do you cool it again? I haven't messed with conveyors at all yet.  Can you post a few overlays of that area?