Steam Fail

[KittenIsAGeek]

  I've spent about 200 cycles trying to get a steam generator up and running.  Really, I should give up and wait until I find a good volcano of some sort.  At any rate, here's my failed experiments:

Examples of how to fail Steam Power:

1) Using buildings as intended to generate steam.

Spoiler

This design was inspired by Luminite2's coolers in this thread: https://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/89178-some-borg-cube-alternatives/.  It generates steam, lots of steam.  In fact, I never have a problem reaching the pressure differential needed for the generator.  The problem is .. its not hot enough.  The best this system can do is about 150c.  After that, things in the boiler start to melt.  Another drawback is that the cooling part is too efficient.  I could probably swap out the polluted water with regular water to get a system that would run more or less continually, but I'm still left with the problem of temperatures too low for the steam turbine to work.  So.. on to my next attempt.

2) Steam Vent.  OK, so, my problem was temperatures, correct?  So lets find something hot enough.  How about a steam vent?  It puts out steam at 500c, well above the minimum necessary to run the generator.  Well, there's a slight problem.

Clearly, while it does produce steam of the correct temperature, it does so at a very minimal amount.  124.4g/s is so small, it would take half of the eruption period JUST to reach a pressure of 3kg of steam in a single tile. Since there will be a minimum of 16 tiles open around the geyser, it could take 5 eruptions just to reach the necessary pressure.

So.. I figured, why not just use the heat and forget about the steam?  Over a period of way-too-many cycles during its dormancy period, I built a vacuum around the geyser, used abysalite to wall it off, and added a radiator to make sure that the steam would condense back into water.

However, I clearly forgot about one little tiny detail.  See that image over there? The one with the red underlining the steam generation?  That small amount of mass doesn't inject nearly enough heat energy into the system.  Out of curiosity I decided to turn on debug mode and inject heat into the system to get it started -- to see if it could sustain itself.

The answer is ... No.  It ran for nearly a cycle, but again, 124g/s at 500c is not enough to vaporize the water and bring it up to temperature for the steam turbine to run.

Spoiler

I ran into a couple of other problems that I will need to address before I try to use a volcano for steam power.  One is that my cooling radiator is too close and leeches too much heat from the generator.  The second is that the radiator isn't nearly big enough.  3Kg/tile of steam is a HUGE amount of heat energy.  Doing the math in my head, I'd say about 10 million Joules of energy per tile.  Which means that even if I do find a volcano to use, I'll need to design a very efficient cooling tower if I want to get any power back out of the system.

My conclusion is that as they currently stand, steam generators aren't a viable power solution.  To get the right pressure difference, you either have to use cascading doors to circulate the steam, or allow a pocket of other gas to 'trick' the system.  For the right temperatures, you need a volcano -- or at least one tile that can be kept at the right temp to 'trick' the system.  I'm not saying those methods are wrong, I'm just saying that without those techniques, it isn't currently possible to use a steam turbine to power your grid.  Without those techniques, you will use far more energy just keeping the system running, if you can get it running at all.

[Logicsol]

As it stands, the steam generator is a way to remove heat, rather than create power. The power creation is just a bonus. Cooking PO2 to steam already deletes a lot of heat, and the turbine removes even more.

 

[CantBreathe]

33 minutes ago, Logicsol said:

As it stands, the steam generator is a way to remove heat, rather than create power

The steam gen is a great power source primarily, there are better ways to remove heat

 

35 minutes ago, Logicsol said:

Cooking PO2 to steam already deletes a lot of heat, and the turbine removes even more

Volcanos and gas included, there are better ways of dealing with heat than dealing with the logistics of the steam turbine.

 

(Come at me @Logicsol xD)

[Lifegrow]

If you don't move the "cooled output steam" away from the turbine quickly, it really effects your builds.

Best I can suggest is keep the steam moving around your build and re-bake the cooled steam in the process.

1) All the top doors open to draw away steam from turbines. 

2) Bottom row of doors close to trap steam above and allow more steam to be pushed through turbines.

3) Doors close sequentially and steam is pushed to the bottom of the build and re-heated by temp shift plates.

 

 

Again - I understand you were trying to avoid volcanoes, but this is just something I threw together yesterday whilst tinkering  

[Logicsol]

50 minutes ago, CantBreathe said:

The steam gen is a great power source primarily, there are better ways to remove heat

 

Volcanos and gas included, there are better ways of dealing with heat than dealing with the logistics of the steam turbine.

 

(Come at me @Logicsol xD)

Easier ways? Yeah. Filtering PO2 in large enough quantities can remove huge amounts of heat, assuming you don't mess up your setups. But considering the Steam gen removes about 8 AETN's worth of heat, while creating power at the same time...

Steam gens aren't great for direct power gen as then are very limited in usage without a volcano. Magma is the only realistic power source outside a volcano, and that's cools to quickly for long term usage. 

Running a boiler as part of your Volcano cooler is about the only way to get long term steam power without using exploits. If we had a non-expliot based way to engineer one for long term use... yeah they'd be great.

But as it stands they work better for heat deletion with power gen thrown in.

[CantBreathe]

7 minutes ago, Logicsol said:

Spoiler

Easier ways? Yeah. Filtering PO2 in large enough quantities can remove huge amounts of heat, assuming you don't mess up your setups. But considering the Steam gen removes about 8 AETN's worth of heat, while creating power at the same time...

Steam gens aren't great for direct power gen as then are very limited in usage without a volcano. Magma is the only realistic power source outside a volcano, and i'm a nerd quickly for long term usage. 

Running a boiler as part of your Volcano cooler is about the only way to get long term steam power without using exploits. If we had a non-expliot based way to engineer one for long term use... yeah they'd be great.

But as it stands they work better for heat deletion with power gen thrown in.

 

Good observations, I'm just messing with you.

[Lifegrow]

18 minutes ago, Logicsol said:

Magma is the only realistic power source outside a volcano, and that's cools to quickly for long term usage. 

That's not true if you manage your steam generation in two separate steps.

1) boiling from water to steam - 2) Baking steam to turbine temperature.

The initial boiling of water to steam takes WAAAAY more energy out of your magma than the further baking process does - so creating the initial steam with an alternate means, then using magma solely for "baking" the steam is the way to make magma viable. Also - one thing to consider that a lot of people overlook with their magma builds - make sure you always have over 1500kg of magma (technically 1473kg) in contact with your hot plate section. Any less and when it cools it'll turn to it's mined out form, rather than the "melting wet looking tile" form. The tile form is WAY better for keeping your builds hot - so keep that magma level up and you'll get a much higher efficiency.

That being said - if you have a metal volcano then it's infinitely easier all round  

[Logicsol]

4 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

That's not true if you manage your steam generation in two separate steps.

1) boiling from water to steam - 2) Baking steam to turbine temperature.

The initial boiling of water to steam takes WAAAAY more energy out of your magma than the further baking process does - so creating the initial steam with an alternate means, then using magma solely for "baking" the steam is the way to make magma viable. Also - one thing to consider that a lot of people overlook with their magma builds - make sure you always have over 1500kg of magma (technically 1473kg) in contact with your hot plate section. Any less and when it cools it'll turn to it's mined out form, rather than the "melting wet looking tile" form. The tile form is WAY better for keeping your builds hot - so keep that magma level up and you'll get a much higher efficiency.

That being said - if you have a metal volcano then it's infinitely easier all round  

True, but you're still working with a limited energy source, and if you're unlucky with the neutronium spawns, you can have very little usable magma. It's also a very complicated setup process.

That said, you'd probably be able to get more engery out of that than coal if handled right.