Steam Turbine without Debug

[nile_duart]

So I've seen a lot of crazy steam turbine setups on YT and the like, and I've tried to replicate them in game without debug, to no success at all :/. Then, in my current game, around day 600, I started fooling around with the magma pits at the bottom (as ya do) and sort of accidentally created this:

 

Someone else may have already come up with this, and if that's the case, apologies. But if not...

The idea here, of course, is that natural gas is lighter than steam, so essentially it rises to the top and pushes down the steam that comes thru the turbine. Tungsten tiles at the bottom pull the heat from the magma/natural gas below, and the two heat shift plates heat up the steam on the left side (where the turbine input is) slightly more than the steam on the right.

And of course that one slickster that wouldn't go away.

This setup has been running at about 97% efficiency for 75 days. The three percent margin is because every once in a while it powers down due to low pressure, but a few seconds later the natural gas shifts and it kicks on again.

Anyone else been able to work with the steam turbine without debug? Curious to see what people have come up with.

[Jigsawn]

Awesome, by happy accident looks like you have created a very simple truly self-renewing steam loop. Did you just have the Nat gas in there already when you built the room?

Unless the magma or steam eventually cools (does it?) then in theory this would run forever, right?

It seems kinda like an exploit, but I guess its just using the basic fundamentals of the physics in a clever way.

Ps only one tile exposed for the turbine fans, is that just to maximise pressure going in? They should probably make it so you need steam going to every fan tile.

[Neotuck]

4 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Unless the magma or steam eventually cools (does it?) then in theory this would run forever, right?

turbines delete heat so it will eventually cool

[Jigsawn]

Yes but as he is reheating the steam via the magma heat, rather than consuming the magma itself, won't it reheat forever? Or is it actually pulling heat "out of" the magma, meaning it will eventually become rock?

[Neotuck]

6 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Yes but as he is reheating the steam via the magma heat, rather than consuming the magma itself, won't it reheat forever? Or is it actually pulling heat "out of" the magma, meaning it will eventually become rock?

it's pulling heat out of magma, magma is not an infinite source of heat

[Luminite2]

7 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Or is it actually pulling heat "out of" the magma, meaning it will eventually become rock?

Yup. Magma isn't fundamentally different than other things in the game: it has a temperature and heat capacity, and heating stuff with it cools it. It just happens to spawn in large amounts at very high temperatures so it can take a while to notice the heat depletion.

[Jigsawn]

Ah, that's sad. So although this setup is very good, like all things in a survival game, it will eventually fade away

Still from Niles description it sounds like the magma is only losing heat very very slowly. In my own water dripping magma experiments to create steam turbine fuel, my magma cooled within a few cycles. Harnessing the heat via tiles and recycling the steam is very efficient. My water was coming in at about 70C so that was cooling the magma way too fast. This system could keep you going for ages and you could rebuild it over any exposed magma pool. 

[Lifegrow]

As soon as you put a foreign gas above a steam turbine, you run the risk of steam deletion - which this build would eventually suffer from. 

Without a method of topping up the steam, or a method of topping up the magma (i.e. volcano or dupe delivery) this build wont run for very long.

[Neotuck]

46 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Ah, that's sad. So although this setup is very good, like all things in a survival game, it will eventually fade away

Still from Niles description it sounds like the magma is only losing heat very very slowly. In my own water dripping magma experiments to create steam turbine fuel, my magma cooled within a few cycles. Harnessing the heat via tiles and recycling the steam is very efficient. My water was coming in at about 70C so that was cooling the magma way too fast. This system could keep you going for ages and you could rebuild it over any exposed magma pool. 

I experimented with this concept a few months ago were I would use doors to control heat transfer between magma and steam.  The magma would only drop 1 degree average every cycle.  

 

[Lifegrow]

5 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I experimented with this concept a few months ago were I would use doors to control heat transfer between magma and steam.  The magma would only drop 1 degree average every cycle.  

In fairness though, outside of debug you'd never have your hot plates in contact with so much magma - so your "1 degree change" is actually a massive amount of energy loss if you consider how much energy is within that pool of magma you have.

I must've said it a dozen times by now, but the only truly effective way of utilising magma for steam turbines is to handle the initial boiling of water -> steam with a separate method, whether that be volcano or tepedizer - it doesn't matter. Using magma solely for cooking your steam to happy-turbine temps is very important. Anything you can do to get the most from your magma is crucial, even if it seems there's a lot on the map.

 

[blash365]

28 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

As soon as you put a foreign gas above a steam turbine, you run the risk of steam deletion - which this build would eventually suffer from. 

Without a method of topping up the steam, or a method of topping up the magma (i.e. volcano or dupe delivery) this build wont run for very long.

75 cycles seem to be quite a while without the need for further action (if the numbers in the OP are correct).

[Neotuck]

2 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

In fairness though, outside of debug you'd never have your hot plates in contact with so much magma - so your "1 degree change" is actually a massive amount of energy loss if you consider how much energy is within that pool of magma you have.

If you remember that old post I had said it was not worth building so I do agree with you

[Lifegrow]

4 minutes ago, blash365 said:

75 cycles seem to be quite a while without the need for further action (if the numbers in the OP are correct).

75 Cycles seems a little ambitious for this build - and I say this after doing a lot of tinkering myself - not just trying to downplay OP's build.

2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

If you remember that old post I had said it was not worth building so I do agree with you

Wasn't having a go buddy, just pointing out that quite often without debug, you'll only break out a couple of tiles to be in contact with your magma - so the heat spread isn't quite as generous - and more localised cooling of your magma would occur.

It's the "cooling an ocean vs a pond" scenario. I love steam turbines, I just wish they were more rewarding, and worked as intended - without people having to resort to "I bugged it with gas/liquid and now it works" solutions. There's a reason we've never seen the dev's play with turbines in an actual build  

[Neotuck]

Just now, Lifegrow said:

Wasn't having a go buddy, just pointing out that quite often without debug, you'll only break out a couple of tiles to be in contact with your magma

It was possible before the exosuits melt in magma lol 

[Lifegrow]

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

It was possible before the exosuits melt in magma lol 

I hear that...

Spoiler

https://clips.twitch.tv/UgliestCoweringDumplingsTakeNRG

fml 

[travaldofan]

did otto survive? lmao sub mission rescue his bones 

[Jigsawn]

Haha, that sucks! I lost a dupe the same way merrily digging out some sand on top of magma. Suddenly his suit is gone and he's burning up and then suffocating miles from any air. He actually made it out of the oil zone alive but then suffocated on the way up to the airlocks - RIP and don't let dupes play in magma was the lesson I learned!

[nile_duart]

7 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

As soon as you put a foreign gas above a steam turbine, you run the risk of steam deletion - which this build would eventually suffer from. 

Without a method of topping up the steam, or a method of topping up the magma (i.e. volcano or dupe delivery) this build wont run for very long.

Used alt-Z. It's now been running for 220 days. Still 97% efficiency. No steam deletion whatsoever... It is cooling the magma though, but I was lucky to find an exceptionally large pocket.

7 hours ago, Neotuck said:

it's pulling heat out of magma, magma is not an infinite source of heat

Yup. Magma has been cooling. But very, very, very slowly.

8 hours ago, Jigsawn said:

Awesome, by happy accident looks like you have created a very simple truly self-renewing steam loop. Did you just have the Nat gas in there already when you built the room?

Ps only one tile exposed for the turbine fans, is that just to maximise pressure going in? They should probably make it so you need steam going to every fan tile.

Yeah, it's almost impossible to avoid natural gas when digging down into the magma, which is why I sort of had no choice but to use it. Rebuilt it in debug last night using hydrogen instead. Been letting it run for an hour or so now. Not sure where people are getting this "steam deletion" idea from, but I've had nothing of the sort happen, and it's been about 90 days for the debug version and over 200 for the one in my current game. So idk.

And blocking off four of the five fans was because it cooled the steam waaaaay too fast with all of them running, and yes some slight variances in pressure control too.

So this is the debug version using hydrogen instead of natural gas.

This sucker has been running a little less than a hundred days (I may have stayed up all night tinkering, don't judge me). Still no issues at all with steam deletion, but the magma here has cooled waaaaaay faster than the set up in my current game. The hydrogen inside the system is pretty neat, it keeps that steam pushed down really well, maybe better than the natural gas. I think the problem is the hydrogen in contact with the magma. Higher heat capacity and conductivity, so it keeps the system running hot and bakes the steam real quick, at the expense of cooling the magma significantly faster.

Currently having a water crisis in my other game, but will post pics of the turbine setup (still going strong over 200 days somehow? Starting to feel like I glitched something out tbh) when I can get my dupes to stop pooping all over the floor lol. First time I've made it over a thousand days though!

Thanks for the feedback, guys :).

- Nicole

 

[tzionut]

This is my version using natural gas. Better than the door compressor type. Less steam loos. Congratulation. Very good design for the steam turbine.