Is Steam Power viable without volcanoes?

[Jigsawn]

Still on my 5th base from OC update, carried into Ranching update. So I have no shiny new volcanoes/fumaroles in my world. I just built a steam turbine for the first time but I have been sorely disappointed in the results. I was wondering if it's a technology that can't really be utilised efficiently yet? Or can you now use them with volcanoes as a reliable power source?

I reached oil and magma, and made plastic for the first time. Now I could finally build a steam turbine. I spent ages setting it up - pumping out oil to create a big chamber above a magma pool. The bottom half of the room had a pipe dripping water onto the magma, then the steam went up into the turbine. In the top half of the room the output steam was pumped away. At least that was the plan.

It all started off well, but the output steam overheated all of my pumping equipment. So I spent ages murdering the setup to let steam rise higher, and cool a little before pumping it away. Even now the steam is too hot to pump reliably without my equipment breaking, and too hot for wheezeworts. I'm thinking about making a tall cooling tower - the only problem is there is an ice biome directly above which houses my electrolyzer setup! Even with airlocks, lots of steam has escaped into the neighboring oil fields and made a mess.

But the main problem is the magma vanishes much faster than I anticipated. At first it was ok, but whenever the turbine wasn't pumping, the steam under the turbine cooled a little. This made the magma at the bottom solidify into indigenous rock. I lost whole pools to this process. Experimenting with using polluted water instead of water was a big mistake - "free germ killing!" I thought. I was rewarded with sand clogging up everything.

Back with normal water and when everything was kinda running smoothly, the magma was still dissapearing way too fast. Because it's surrounded by neutronium, you can't dig to get to new magma pools. You would have to relocate the turbine each time or come up with ways to get the steam to the turbine - very difficult due to its superhot nature.

I have seen from online searches that people moaned about the steam turbine when it first came out because it didn't seem viable yet. I have seen various online setups where hot steam is created without magma, but that seems very complex and inefficient, and often utilised old bugs in the game. 

I've now had to run, tail between my legs, and start building a petroleum generator instead to keep me going until I can rework my steam system. But I already have most of the systems in place for petrol generators due to plastic production. Therefore petrol generators seem far easier with equal power reward for much less work (assuming you already have plastic infrastructure).

Of course steam generators say they are renewable power, but in my game petrol is more renewable than steam thanks to many slicksters and two oil reservoirs.

Am I right about the steam turbine, or has the introduction of volcanoes provided a renewable heat source for them to be useable ? Did any of you find ways to make steam turbines work in the OC update?

[Kiros]

Steam Turbines are a royal pain even with volcanoes, since heating oil into NatGas is easier, cheaper, and more efficient. I can't think of a legit way to heat steam to it's requisite temperature with currently available technology, without the help of a volcano, in a way that is renewable.

[Jigsawn]

I wish the game told you on the details screen what is created when a material is condensed/melted etc. I would never have known that oil goes to Nat Gas unless I made a setup specifically to do so. Even accidentally it would be very hard to notice Nat Gas getting created unless you were looking for it. 

So dripping oil onto magma is a more efficient way of making power? Is that because you get lots of nat gas per oil?

[Coolthulhu]

The only actually renewable way of using turbines I can think of at the moment is abusing overheated aquatuners, then deconstructing them to avoid repair costs.

Pessimistic variant is that Klei added turbine, but didn't have a good idea of what should it do. Optimistic variant is that they added a turbine to show their ideas, but then put it on backburner because they want to add something (burning mechanic?) that is necessary to make their idea of turbine actually work.

IRL steam turbines can work off waste heat from gas turbines, so this huge temperature limitation surely isn't a nod towards realism.

Just now, Jigsawn said:

So dripping oil onto magma is a more efficient way of making power? Is that because you get lots of nat gas per oil?

Partly that, partly because you need much less setup to have it work, can store it, don't waste as much heat, don't end up with a room full of very dense steam that is just below usable temperature etc.

[Jigsawn]

If Klei doesn't add more stuff to make it viable, maybe they should just lower its resource cost and power output, and let it run on lower steam temperatures. I was gutted when it didn't run on the output of steam geysers.

Maybe that would be a bit OP, but what if you need a lot of steam to run it. So maybe you have to tap 2 steam geysers to run one turbine (or 1 geyser with player created steam from creative means). 

You'd have to be careful because you don't want to make steam geysers too much better than NG geysers. Because if you can use steam geyser for power you also get the steam back, plus the extra water output from the geyser.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

11 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

abusing overheated aquatuners,

It is not a viable solution, you have to invest much electricity but steam turbine only return little.

I guess Klei's idea is driving the steam turbine by volcano. But as @Kiros said, cooking oil is a better choice, at least for me.

[Oozinator]

56 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

. for them to be useable..

I experimented many hours with them and all i got / solutions with much dupe workload and / or inefficient systems.
 

10 minutes ago, R9MX4 said:

I guess Klei's idea is driving the steam turbine by volcano.

There are some hot "gas volcanos" there too. One found a hydrogen with 500°(when i remember right), that could work, but it's very limited and complicated to build in survival.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

2 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

There are some hot "gas volcanos" there too. One found a hydrogen with 500°(when i remember right), that could work, but it's very limited and complicated to build in survival.

They have enough temperature, but that's all. The heat they can provide is too negligible. 

[Oozinator]

Just now, R9MX4 said:

They have enough temperature, but that's all. The heat they can provide is too negligible. 

I was thinking about using hot hydro, to heat preheated steam/water, from a (steam) geyser?
But for sure(for me), in the "now" state, it's not worth the output, to build something in survival..
 

[suicide commando]

I've been following Brothgar on this, and from his experiments, you need either a volcano or a metal volcano to make a turbine run smoothly.
I saw a setup of his that worked nicely, and also dumped oil into the volcano chamber to make some gas while at it.

The 'trick'  he used was using tungsten metal plates to transfer the heat from the iron volcano he was using into the steam turbine chamber.
He put a layer of tungsten plates at the bottom of the isolated iron chamber, then put a row of mechanical airlocks, another row of plates.
Under this was the steam chamber with a thermo sensor, which checked if the steam was hot enough for circulating into the turbine. If not, the mechanical doors would close, letting the heat transfer from the top tungsten plates through the metal doors and the bottom plates.
If the chamber was hot enough, the doors would open, creating a vacuum between the 2 layers of metal tiles, stopping all heat from transferring in and overheating the turbine room.
In the turbine room, temps were around 300 degrees Celsius, and he used door compressors to push the steam to the bottom, until the pressure down there was high enough ( 20kg per tile I believe ), then open the door to the turbine and let the steam do it's thing, which then would arrive at the metal plates ready to be reheated and then through the door compressors pumped back into the bottom. This was melt/breakdown free, the only reason his steam wasn't hotter was that the thermo sensor doesn't go above 300 degrees

Check out this link:

 

[NanoD]

yeah only problem he have already 16 ton of iron there and he just running it for a few cycles. So you will not see how long it will last in this video.

And average yield from a iron volcano is 165 g/s so to get that much iron it will take about 160 cycles to get. 

I did my own testing on iron volcano with thermal trolling so that it dont over heat and it was not even close to keep the turbine going.

But it looks like it would be possible to run one steam generator from a volcano, if you block of so that the steam generator only uses one vent and only using 1/5 of the steam. 

[SkunkMaster]

I make a turbine run of a simple hot steam vent ? - no it does not run 100% of the time, but it does give some extra power. 

 

I think the steam turbine is wrongly regarded as "power only" device. It is not. It's partly for power, partly for cooling high temps down. 

 

Cracking oil into gas leaves you with 530 degrees hot nat-gas, cool that gas with steam, divided with some automation and tungsten, and cool the steam with turbines. The end result is cool nat-gas and energy from turbines. Just one example how to use it in a "renewable" fashion. 

[suicide commando]

NanoD, that doesn't really matter, the 'hotplate' at the bottom that is covered with iron is the real key. That thing is made of tungsten, so it will never melt from the molten iron, and with constantly pulling out the heat for the turbine, it will be a constantly running powerhouse.

 

[0xFADE]

9 hours ago, Kiros said:

Steam Turbines are a royal pain even with volcanoes, since heating oil into NatGas is easier, cheaper, and more efficient. I can't think of a legit way to heat steam to it's requisite temperature with currently available technology, without the help of a volcano, in a way that is renewable.

And that gas turns in to more resources for free!

[NanoD]

5 hours ago, suicide commando said:

NanoD, that doesn't really matter, the 'hotplate' at the bottom that is covered with iron is the real key. That thing is made of tungsten, so it will never melt from the molten iron, and with constantly pulling out the heat for the turbine, it will be a constantly running powerhouse.

What I am saying is that he have stored 160 cycles of iron before he started.

[goboking]

9 hours ago, Jigsawn said:

If Klei doesn't add more stuff to make it viable, maybe they should just lower its resource cost and power output, and let it run on lower steam temperatures.

This is what I'm hoping for.  My water cooling system (a bank of aquatuners) produces a fair bit of steam, but it's nowhere near enough to run a turbine.  I'd gladly trade the 2kw of power for 800w if it meant I could run it at a lower temperature.

[FullMetalArthur]

Yeah, I also tried my good portion of experimenting and didnt got the turbine working for more than a few seconds. But I used metal plates in contact with the lava to transfer heat without the water cooling down the magma. It solves one problem but still cant make it work because it suck crazy ammounts of steam and eventually my room got overpressurized with pure steam.

Ive seen setups using complex automation doorways to “move” gas throughout a tunnel but most of them built in debug mode, while in the normal game you have neutronoum, limited ammounts of lava and usually, very far from the base, which make construction take forever

[QuantumPion]

The trouble is, all the other power generators work by basically handwavium. But the steam turbine has some semblance of the real properties of a heat engine - a device that turns heat from an energy source into work and waste heat. But we don't have an energy source (except for volcanoes, which aren't on every map seed) or a heat sink (except the thermal nullifier, although that is also based on handwavium). I've said this before and I'll say it again, I would really like to see the application of the laws of thermodynamics. And in order to do so, we need heat sources (fuel, radioactivity, solar, geothermal, etc) and a real heat sink (e.g. void hole, asteroid surface radiators, etc).

[Flydo]

45 minutes ago, QuantumPion said:

 I would really like to see the application of the laws of thermodynamics.

Me too, i want to compress gas into liquid or making gas by made vaccuum

46 minutes ago, QuantumPion said:

 void hole

Dev will make it, you have void in the element in paint mode, so wait and see

[Kiros]

2 hours ago, QuantumPion said:

The trouble is, all the other power generators work by basically handwavium. But the steam turbine has some semblance of the real properties of a heat engine - a device that turns heat from an energy source into work and waste heat. But we don't have an energy source (except for volcanoes, which aren't on every map seed) or a heat sink (except the thermal nullifier, although that is also based on handwavium). I've said this before and I'll say it again, I would really like to see the application of the laws of thermodynamics. And in order to do so, we need heat sources (fuel, radioactivity, solar, geothermal, etc) and a real heat sink (e.g. void hole, asteroid surface radiators, etc).

How about pockets of freon found in the asteroid and condensers? The problem with heat transfer right now is that we can't pull it out of an area and dump it somewhere else, only average it out or outright delete it.

[avc15]

14 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

IRL steam turbines can work off waste heat from gas turbines, so this huge temperature limitation surely isn't a nod towards realism.

I'd ask for something a bit different, pumps and fans that can move hot fluids.

Some steam turbines take "saturated" (cool) steam, some take "superheated" (very hot) steam - the difference is efficiency. A cool steam plant usually gets about 50% efficiency, while a hot steam plant can achieve efficiency in the 80-85% range. It has to do with the way gas stores energy and the amount of energy you have to spend completing the rankine cycle (not trying to sit on semantics, just offering an example, and also: it's ok to put a thing in the game that's meant to be the most challenging thing to set up)

I would like to see klei introduce more realistic pump and fan variants, though. In the real world, industrial pump motors aren't submersible, or, the electrical part of the motor doesn't sit inside the fluid you're pumping. Only the pump blades (a pure metal impeller) ever touch hot fluid, while the motor sits in air or some other cooling fluid.

Hopefully they give us pumps and fans that can move very hot fluids. Right now being restricted to only pumping cool fluids feels a bit too harsh.

 

 

[Luminite2]

56 minutes ago, Kiros said:

The problem with heat transfer right now is that we can't pull it out of an area and dump it somewhere else, only average it out or outright delete it.

That's exactly what aquatuners and thermoregulators do.

[NurdRage]

I agree the steam turbine at the moment is way too much hassle for far too little return. It can be made to work, but i haven't seen anyone run it for a useful period of time.

 

If we want to give Klei the benefit of the doubt, they may have put it in specifically to see if we can break it. If there was some ingenious hack that would make it excessively overpowered and needing to be nerfed. Introducing it now is just phase 1 of a much bigger rollout.

Phase 2 could be actual viable mechanisms of generating superheated steam. Burner technology is one method, but we already know in the game files they're planning on nuclear materials.

Perhaps the steam turbine is actually meant to be coupled with a nuclear reactor. It would make perfect sense. The reactor core is built separately and generates MASSIVE amounts of heat. by itself it can be used for all the fun heating things we normally use heat for. But if you build a decently complicated  boiler system you can use the steam turbine to generate power. 

Releasing it now was just a test to see if there was some unintended interaction with another mechanic. Klei knows we explore every possibility with excessive fervor and maniacal effort. 

[travaldofan]

not reliable, bcs of the volcano dormant most of the time doesn't work 247 but, 2K power is 2K. Still making some changes at my turbine but will share soon quite small and build it forget it setup

[Flydo]

4 hours ago, NurdRage said:

but i haven't seen anyone run it for a useful period of time.

Really? Not even with magma? It's seem to look a good challenge so , i have some idea but it need a important hundred (or thousand ) of cycles to test it, in survival

 

6 hours ago, Kiros said:

How about pockets of freon found in the asteroid and condensers? The problem with heat transfer right now is that we can't pull it out of an area and dump it somewhere else, only average it out or outright delete it.

You can cheat with paint mode to made a tile of void somewhere, it's suck the gas inside it but me i don't want to kill my long time survival now