Jump to content

Cooling base with pipes


Recommended Posts

I've seen talk on here about cooling areas using pipes. I'm at a point where I think I want to try something like that as my base is getting toasty. I wanted to run it by you folks first before I spend ages building it.

My plan is, I have a free AETN out on the edge of the map. I was thinking, build a big pipe system running through my base, a bit like an anti-radiator. Then pump a gas like oxygen or hydrogen into the piping system. The system runs through the AETN room on a huge loop with no vents (unless I need to have a room by the AETN to cool the gas better).

From the AETN to the base, use insulated pipes so the gas doesn't heat up en route. Inside the base, use normal pipes so the cold leaks out from the pipes into the environment, cooling it down. Hopefully the gas running in the pipes doesn't take on more heat than the AETN can deal with when its running through the base. Probably automate with thermo sensors to turn off the system once the base is cool enough.

Potential troubles: needing vast amounts of materials to set up such a big pipe system, pumping enough gas into the system in the first place (maybe I can use my electrolyser hydrogen?). Potentially pipes freezing from the AETN? Could the gas freeze, I never had that problem with electroyzers but they output at 70C before the AETN.

Could this work? Or am I living in a dream world? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Will Work but cooling with gas won't go very fast! Since gas pipe only transports 500g that's much less than 10l liquid pipe. Ergo less energy potential. 

The hydrogen or oxygen won't freeze because Aetn won't go so low. Oxygen turns to liquid at -183°C I think and h2 at -240°C around that number. Idk anymore exactly. Aetn only goes to -175

For consideration, if you like use the Aetn to cool aquatuner and cool your base that way with liquid (oil, p-water or petrol) this gives you a better bang for your buck

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suggest filling the AETN with H2 and using that to cool metal tiles with a conveyor rail in them, then use the rail to cool your base.  Can be hard to build but you'll never have to worry about pipes freezing

20180328170232_1.thumb.jpg.e8b65f9c03998b6284994b60eeb69576.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

here is a concept for you, this one can regulate temperature precisely using zone controlled temp thermostats.

I have here an open air electrolyzer system, only the H2 gets pumped out. My coolant header is petroleum at around -40C. I have 4 cooling "zones" around the air plant, this is because each area will need different amount of cooling based on how much air flows that way (where are duplicants spending more time)

 

nr5j24k.png

Each zone has a temp thermostat set to 25C controlling a liquid shut-off. Each liquid shut-off empties into a liquid valve set to 500 g/s. Then we snake granite pipes around the cooling zone and empty into a return header that goes back into the cooling plant.

image.thumb.png.d818a9921839f15d802d4b26c3320fff.png

Quiz: which of the 4 zones are active right now?

I know this makes one go a bit cross-eyed to look at but it is VERY efficient and works great. Warning, old computers might not be able to handle it.

Temp overlay for the base: (there are no cooling zones in barracks, bathroom, or kitchen right now)

image.thumb.png.7877999c149544015ab92e2a87324599.png

The cooling plant is only running at about 30% capacity right now, with air for 15 dupes, both geysers being cooled to 99C, and the powerplant+storage being cooled to 35C as well:

image.thumb.png.838609d1b8c1543cd1bb841e7f7d40a8.png

Piping: (circulating pump shut off in this picture to protect against under temperature)

image.thumb.png.1b4fbac9c1cb41463214af6dee62a80a.png

Thermal contacts cooling a tank are probably more efficient and less headache than a pump circulating through pipes to cool the petrol. But I wanted to experiment with a pipe loop.

Anyway this is a ferrari of cooling setups if you want something very controllable, that saves electrical power and doesn't waste heat. But it's also definitely overkill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks folks. Sounds like liquid is the way to go. Conveyor is probably unfeasible because the ATEN is super far from my base and I haven't got lots of metal. Very impressive setup by AVC, too complex for my needs though plus I don't have the piping space (my base is a mess!). A bit worrying that you are saying it impacts performance - my base is already very laggy so maybe this coolant idea is going to make it unplayable. What is it that causes the lag in that setup - the amount of liquid being tracked through the pipes? So if I have shorter pipes it;ll be less laggy? 

Cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

even if your AETN is far away you can do conveyor cooling, you should experiment with it.

You know how packets of liquid go first left and then right? You could do a series of branches on the conveyor to only fill up the rail 1 in every 8 or 16 slots. Feed back the rest of them into your cooler, so that you're not tying up tons of extra metal.

Build a vacuum tunnel for the delivery and return rails.

Yeah, my frames went down by about 10% when I switched my cooling system on, but I have about 30 cooling zones and the system is very large. So if you're doing something simpler it might not impact your performance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's more the amount of metal needed for the rails and metal tiles that I don't really have. Plus I didn't realise you use metal on the rails to use as coolant so that idea has to go on hold until I do some serious mining/refining. It's a cool (groan) idea though. 

With the conveyor cooling system, don't the metal hoppers heat up passing through other areas before they get to the base? Or do you need to make an insulated corridor for the conveyors to pass along (insulated tiles as a "road"?).

One nice thing about using conveyors is that there's much less interference in layout compared to pipes which are everywhere in my base.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Jigsawn said:

With the conveyor cooling system, don't the metal hoppers heat up passing through other areas before they get to the base? Or do you need to make an insulated corridor for the conveyors to pass along (insulated tiles as a "road"?).

just cover the rails with insulated tiles, even one's made with sandstone will be enough

3 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Plus I didn't realise you use metal on the rails to use as coolant so that idea has to go on hold until I do some serious mining/refining.

diamonds work best so dig out the oil biome when you can :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the trouble you have to work around with liquid is freezing. If you use a thermal plate to cool your liquid tank (hm) it's pretty easy to just freeze the entire tank solid. If you use pipes like me you'll wind up with broken pipes all over the place. One way or another you need some kind of automation to keep your coolant from going below the freeze point.

A few people have really simple setups that can prevent freezing, with just a row of wolframite doors that open and close. The way I did it (pipes circulating fluid through cold hydrogen) is more complex than it needs to be, but also has an upside too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jigsawn What I did was pumped all my water to electrolyzers next to an aetn and then pumped the cool oxy backed to base.
If your aetn is really that far then that's too bad. My base stay between 65-75. It's been getting a bit hot from fertilizer shipping sadly. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would suggest a system like avc15 proposes with liquid pipes and shutoff valves. It's not that hard to build, and can be really precisely regulated.

Small scale version:

image.thumb.png.212999332adc9e61d70947909638adf1.png

image.thumb.png.a13a31f147379a069dc25791caeedb26.png

image.thumb.png.f7458ca7ff5f13cba915c75617c5762a.png


Room of the right contains the AETN (I didn't have the blueprint so I skipped that part figuring it wouldn't matter too much).

The heat exchanging walls are made of tungsten, the tempshift plates of diamond and the door is made out of wolframite.

The right temperature sensor is set to open the door when the temperature in the tank drops below -52 degrees, thereby stopping cold transfer from the right tank to the left.

The pipeline through the base is abbysalite (I made it an insulated pipe to show the difference, but I tend to use normal abbysalite pipes).

The two temperature regulated loops are made of granite (I don't use tungsten or wolframite because those cool down the base too quickly with -55 degrees petroleum running through them, granite is easier to regulate and it also prevents the start of the cooling loops getting much colder than the end).

Another benefit of a system like this: the only energy consumed is the 10 watts per liquid shutoff valve.

AETN can't keep up? Make a room with high pressure hydrogen and wheezeworts adjacent to the petroleum heat exchanger and connect it with the same system of two heat conducting walls and a temperature controlled doorlock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's an example of how I build my base radiator system.  I run granite pipes in a big loop throughout the base

and have it bend down into the living areas behind picture frames (more surface area without being ugly).

The loop is fed from a cold water tank that also feeds my lavatories and berry farms.  The water is cooled

from an aquatuner in a polluted water tank outside of the living areas (filled from my NGG and from the environment).

The polluted water is eventually run through a sieve and a CO2 scrubber so it never gets too warm.

The base is kept very cool and can offset the warm O2 that I'm generating (so I don't have to worry too much about cooling the O2).

The great thing is that you can build it quite early in the game and just rely on the natural coolness of the base water to

stabilize things early on, with real cooling being achieved once you have an aquatuner and the power to run it.

 

The Deep Well.sav

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just my opinion here, but if you want to cool things, it's best to do the cooling at the source of heat instead of 'damage control'. Most likely it's your electrolysers outputting hot O2, look up the SPOM design on this forum with the 4 wheezeworts, it's a very good design, and it will ensure that the O2 you're pumping into your base is nice and cool. Also wall off vents into their own little rooms with abysallite so they won't radiate out their heat into the entire map. These really are the two most important things to remember to keep things cool.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another trick that I expect to be patched at some point down the road, is to abuse the input/output temperature of the NatGas Generator.  The P-H2O and CO2 that are produced by the NatGas Generator will be at the same temperature as the Generator itself.  And because the P-H2O drops to the floor, instead of having an output, it becomes self cooling.  Simply refrigerate the NatGas Generator before you turn it on.

If you were being really clever, you would find a way to transfer the waste heat from your base to the CO2, which you then feed to Slicksters.  They produce Crude Oil at the same temperature as the CO2 they consume.  This reduces the amount of heat you need to add to the Crude to boil it into Petro, and then again into more NatGas.  Which you can then deliver straight to your refrigerated NatGas Generators to delete all the heat stored within that freshly boiled NatGas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8-4-2018 at 12:33 PM, suicide commando said:

Just my opinion here, but if you want to cool things, it's best to do the cooling at the source of heat instead of 'damage control'. Most likely it's your electrolysers outputting hot O2, look up the SPOM design on this forum with the 4 wheezeworts, it's a very good design, and it will ensure that the O2 you're pumping into your base is nice and cool. Also wall off vents into their own little rooms with abysallite so they won't radiate out their heat into the entire map. These really are the two most important things to remember to keep things cool.
 

I actually decided against that and still prefer a liquid cooling loop for several reasons:

1. A liquid cooling loop can automatically regulate the temperature in your whole base.
2. The only way to regulate a wheezewort is placing it on a doorlock. If you don't it requires micromanagement to regulate your base temperature: more oxygen production: more heat --> more wheezeworts needed, less production --> base cools down --> risk freezing your base or remove wheezeworts.
3. A wheezewort creates a cold area, which might trigger negative emotions in your dupes. Yes, it provides decor, but you could do that just as effective with art.
4. If you automate wheezeworts using doorlocks, you don't use their cooling capacity constantly. They might be inactive for (short) periods, while you could use that cooling capacity elsewhere in your base. 

You could use the wheezeworts to cool the system shown higher up in the thread. That is a bit more complicated than just placing the wheezeworts near the heat producers, but gives you an automatic way to cool whichever parts of your base you want. No wheezeworts or not enough wheezeworts? You can easily use other cold sources. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎8‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 5:15 AM, avc15 said:

the trouble you have to work around with liquid is freezing. If you use a thermal plate to cool your liquid tank (hm) it's pretty easy to just freeze the entire tank solid. If you use pipes like me you'll wind up with broken pipes all over the place. One way or another you need some kind of automation to keep your coolant from going below the freeze point.

A few people have really simple setups that can prevent freezing, with just a row of wolframite doors that open and close. The way I did it (pipes circulating fluid through cold hydrogen) is more complex than it needs to be, but also has an upside too.

The simple solution is to automate it using temperature sensors. You can either seal the liquid tank and use the door/vacuum lock to prevent heat transfer from the AETN or you can block the hydrogen supply from the AETN,
Blocking the hydrogen input is easier but you restrict your total cooling capacity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Suicide Commando: Its easier to deal with heat problems at the source.  In the early days, I would build a borg cube with granite tiles above my oxygen production system.  Its quick, its easy... but has the drawback of eventually getting too cold.  I did some more experimenting, using wheezewarts and various other systems.  My favorite so far has to be this:

oxygen1.thumb.png.40737adb38d54de2cff8f9ab74a5d920.png

The temperature sensors open the valves letting coolant flow over the structure. The oxygen going into my base is always 18c and this system provides ~600kg/cycle of oxygen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I agree with Suicide Commando: Its easier to deal with heat problems at the source.  In the early days, I would build a borg cube with granite tiles above my oxygen production system.  Its quick, its easy... but has the drawback of eventually getting too cold.  I did some more experimenting, using wheezewarts and various other systems.  My favorite so far has to be this:

oxygen1.thumb.png.40737adb38d54de2cff8f9ab74a5d920.png

The temperature sensors open the valves letting coolant flow over the structure. The oxygen going into my base is always 18c and this system provides ~600kg/cycle of oxygen.

Downside: I see 3 gaspumps, 2 shutoff valves, and somewhere 'down there' probably is a liquid pump as well. You could cool much easier by placing the electrolyzers directly above my above pictured cooling loop system, which is also 'dealing with heat problems at the source'. Build your base in a dome shape, with a funnel at the top and the hydrogen can automatically be separated from the oxygen. In that system you only use 1 gaspump and a few liquid shutoffs, to produce and separate oxygen and hydrogen and cool the oxygen as well. Less energy consumption and most likely less space needed as well.

Additional benefit: you get a nice airflow from the top to the bottom of your base, which pushes down CO2. Carbon skimmers or morbs at the bottom of your base and you don't have to think about CO2 anymore either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, onlineous said:

Downside: I see 3 gaspumps, 2 shutoff valves, and somewhere 'down there' probably is a liquid pump as well. You could cool much easier by placing the electrolyzers directly above my above pictured cooling loop system, which is also 'dealing with heat problems at the source'. Build your base in a dome shape, with a funnel at the top and the hydrogen can automatically be separated from the oxygen. In that system you only use 1 gaspump and a few liquid shutoffs, to produce and separate oxygen and hydrogen and cool the oxygen as well. Less energy consumption and most likely less space needed as well.

Additional benefit: you get a nice airflow from the top to the bottom of your base, which pushes down CO2. Carbon skimmers or morbs at the bottom of your base and you don't have to think about CO2 anymore either.

It works just fine.  I get a steady 600kg/cycle of O2 at 18c.  I can run a hydrogen generator continuously off it, which will power the electrolyzers, gas pumps, liquid pump, provides enough power to keep the pool cold, and I still have power left over.  It ran all my base's needs for about 150 cycles, before I put in a bunch of automated transport.  

Technically, I could reduce it to one electrolyzer and two pumps since the change in how gas pumps work and get the same effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

It works just fine.  I get a steady 600kg/cycle of O2 at 18c.  I can run a hydrogen generator continuously off it, which will power the electrolyzers, gas pumps, liquid pump, provides enough power to keep the pool cold, and I still have power left over.  It ran all my base's needs for about 150 cycles, before I put in a bunch of automated transport.  

Technically, I could reduce it to one electrolyzer and two pumps since the change in how gas pumps work and get the same effect.

I don't say it doesn't work, just that you can make the system more energy efficient, and less complicated. Gas pumps consume quite a lot of power, and produce a bit of heat as well, and it's quite easy to avoid using pumps, except for one pump to pump the hydrogen to the generator.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Nat gens currently output stuff at their temperature. This means you can use the exiting co2 and polluted water to cool things down as they travel to their destination.

Not a bad idea, a few wheezeworts in the generator room and you could use the cold polluted water in a loop to cool down your base. Feels a bit 'exploity', but if you're fine with that this way of cooling makes sense. Most probably you need to pump away the polluted water anyway, so that would not use any additional energy either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...