Aquatuner cooling build

[Stoof]

For about a week I've been trying to find water conservative Aquatuner cooling build so I've finally got my finger out and put something together in debug.  If nothing else it has given me a lot of respect for the people who put these builds together, it's not an easy job.

I wanted a cooling build that would heat the polluted water until just below boiling before draining off to my fertilizer makers and refilling with a fresh batch of polluted water without interrupting the aquatuner.  When the polluted water in the middle chamber reaches 120 degrees C (Thanks @JonnyMonroe) it is dropped into the lower chamber where it is pumped to my fertilizer makers.  The primed top chamber is then dropped to the middle chamber to introduce fresh coolant.  The top chamber is then refilled from my polluted water source ready for the next round.  I've been testing with inputted polluted water at 40 degrees C and outputting it at 120 degrees C, it takes about 17 cycles for this heat exchange, and each round takes around 4800Kg of polluted water.  One byproduct of the process is polluted Oxygen which I have gathering inside the airflow tile at the top, currently have 48Kg there and it hasn't cause a problem yet, though it wouldn't be a big issue to uncover the airflow tile and let this escape as when I was doing that it was only exiting at 40 degrees C.  Whole thing is surrounded with abyssalite.

 

Overlays below.

Spoiler

Plumbing:

Nothing too interesting here. Cool polluted water goes in at the top, hot comes out the bottom.  Whatever you want to cool goes through the aquatuner, in this case oil.

Automation:

This is the guts of the build.  When the Thermo sensor reaches the desired temp (I've been using 120 degrees C) the bottom airlock is opened to drain the chamber.  I had to add the hydro sensor in the middle chamber to ensure this closes again and have it set for above 500Kg.  The top airlocks then open to refill the chamber and close again, the middle airlock reopens to create a vacuum to prevent heat exchange.  The top hydro sensor is tied to the pump in my  polluted water tank, I have it set to below 700Kg to account for the length of pipe and the primed top tank ends up just above 800Kg  per tile, a liquid shutoff might be a good idea here.

Thanks for taking the time to take a look.  Happy to hear any comments or refinements, even if it is that I have wasted my time.  Enjoy!

[JonnyMonroe]

Polluted water boils at 125, so you should be able to take this a bit hotter without breaking anything or boiling it. You mind if I ask what advantage there is in heating it in batches like this rather than continuous heating?

[Stoof]

46 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

Polluted water boils at 125, so you should be able to take this a bit hotter without breaking anything or boiling it. You mind if I ask what advantage there is in heating it in batches like this rather than continuous heating?

Yeah, the boiling point of polluted water is 119.4 with maybe a few more degrees C before it actually turns to steam.  The over heat temps of a gold amalgam aquatuner and pump are 175 and 125 respectively and the aquatuner runs about 10-15 degrees above the temp of the water, so yeah there is definitely room to push this up a bit higher, I'll do a little more testing on this when home, see if I can push it to 120.

The concept of doing it in batches is to store the maximum possible heat within the polluted water before shipping it off to be destroyed by fertilizer makers, or you could send it to a water sieve.  This is the only way I could think of that avoids wasting polluted water that doesn't contain it's maximum heat potential.

Thanks for your reply.

[JonnyMonroe]

10 minutes ago, Stoof said:

The concept of doing it in batches is to store the maximum possible heat within the polluted water before shipping it off to be destroyed

I normally boil my polluted water but in my oil pre-heating setups I've found just hooking a thermometer to the outgoing pump to toggle it on at about 120 degrees always worked fine. Oil came in at 90 and went out at 120.

[Kuirem]

Wouldn't it be simpler to make 2 rooms, one with the Aquatuner submerged in liquid and the other with PWater. Separate the room with Metal tiles (and maybe some Tempshift Plate).

Now you just have to hook the pump in the PWater room with a Thermo Sensor and pump out as long as it's >100+ °C. You shouldn't even have PO² that way because the PWater room will always be full.

[Stoof]

55 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

I normally boil my polluted water but in my oil pre-heating setups I've found just hooking a thermometer to the outgoing pump to toggle it on at about 120 degrees always worked fine. Oil came in at 90 and went out at 120.

So I had thought of this but, at least in my head, as soon as I add any new cool input to the chamber it's going to cool the pool and even with a thermo sensor I could pump out cooler water than I intended. Also drip cooling appears to be a minefield and I wanted to avoid anything that could have been close to doing it even if unintentionally.

Interestingly you raise a secondary application for this build, with a few modifications you could place something like this above your oil boiler and heat the oil to 160ish before gravity dropping it into the boiler, would be difficult to control the flow into the boiler so maybe that's not viable.

1 hour ago, Kuirem said:

Wouldn't it be simpler to make 2 rooms, one with the Aquatuner submerged in liquid and the other with PWater. Separate the room with Metal tiles (and maybe some Tempshift Plate).

Now you just have to hook the pump in the PWater room with a Thermo Sensor and pump out as long as it's >100+ °C. You shouldn't even have PO² that way because the PWater room will always be full.

Sounds like a good build man, I look forward to seeing it.

[Lifegrow]

Solid build @Stoof - did a bit of tinkering and there might be a couple of things you could incorporate if you're interested ?

Spoiler

I rebuilt your design slightly differently (i'm a sucker for symmetry!)

I replaced your vacuum lock with a couple of abyssalite tempshift plates - these virtually kill any temperature change between "douses"

 

My upper chamber water is at like 30 degrees, and it drops over the aquatuner once the thermo switch toggles the swap. Its currently set to 99 (as mentioned above, this could probably be pushed further, but meh - was just derping around  ). Once it hits 99 it's quickly dropped out, replaced with the cooler water above, and then the bottom chamber gradually cools the water back down to ~30 degrees with the magic of wheezeworts (could also use an aetn and some piping I guess), and pumps it back to the top chamber.

Ran it three times (kept dumping more hot oil in the top chamber) this pass it cooled to 27.1 degrees, last one was nearer 30 - so depends how active the aquatuner is I guess. Bottom chamber could use a temp shutoff between the liquid and the wheezeworts to prevent freezing - because I ran this non-stop for ~30 cycles (pumping in 100degree oil every time it cooled below 20).

 

The change over

 

Not sure if any of this is helpful, but the idea of being able to cycle the same water appealed to me more than using it elsewhere.

Quick disclaimer - if you were running it non-stop like I was (i.e. dumping the oil completely every time it got too cold, and replacing it with boiling hot 100 degree oil...) then you'd need way more wheezeworts.

However, if you were just using to to - for example, cool a sleetwheat chamber, or regulate some oxygen etc - I think a couple of wheezes could easily re-cool the water before the upper chamber needed refilling again.

Anyways, cool build bud.

[Denisetwin]

Neat build with several applications!  I think I want to try this to heat the water to keep my pepper farm in the right temp range while taking advantage of the aquatuner's cooling for clean water.  Thank you for sharing. 

[Stoof]

@Lifegrow wow, taken to the next level dude! Love the incorperation of wheezeworts and the tempshift (you learn something new everyday). Will admit it's a prettier module as well

 

1 hour ago, Denisetwin said:

Neat build with several applications!  I think I want to try this to heat the water to keep my pepper farm in the right temp range while taking advantage of the aquatuner's cooling for clean water.  Thank you for sharing. 

Cheers man, let me know how it goes with the peppers!

[Coolthulhu]

Why batch instead of continuous? Continuous has the following advantages:

• Less logic - only thermo sensor to prevent overheating is necessary. Much simpler design.
• No offgassing because the chamber is full at all times
• No downtime (unless you want it to ensure full use of heat sink)
• Less space taken because no doors needed
• Can be horizontal
• Works with gases
• No movement to liquid-less tiles means no chance of a tiny pocket of pWater falling on overheated machine and turning into steam
• In case of problems, can tolerate steam better because it tends to be hot at all times so the steam won't condense near pump

Also other hints:

• When fed into an aquatuner, petroleum is a bit (few %) better than oil. If you're running the tuner a lot, it adds up. Naphtha is even better. pWater is 3 times better than naphtha as long as it doesn't freeze. Aquatuner energy efficiency depends linearly on specific heat.
• Phase change happens 5C above/below the listed temperature. That is, pWater evaporates above 124C. There are some exceptions, but those involve contained (in buildings) liquids, not free standing ones

[Stoof]

@Coolthulhu I already exlained my reasons for the batch logic earier in the thread. This is just another option for people, one tgat specifly meets my needs.

I've tested this over 150 cycles, 50 of them running at 120 degrees C, so it works like a charm.

[Neutromancer]

I really liked this design, and tested it. I remade it with a few modifications, for some reason I got somewhat worried that it could end up in a bad state (like, if it failed for some reason to fill up the upper reservoir, it would flush the water below and stay empty, and then it wouldn't cycle again). My version is a mess right now, I made a huge switchboard on the side, there's no optimization of any kind yet, not even sure if all the logic gates are optimal or not, but it works, I think. There's no triple-airlock, it just leaves a vacuum above the aquatuner so heat doesn't travel up or something, and the flush area is also a bit bigger so there's room for more vacuum on top of it.

Spoiler

The logic on the top gate makes it so it only opens if it is full, UNLESS the tuner area is already full. So flushing the tuner sets off the timer before the top opens. But if somehow got flushed before there was enough water in the reservoir, it will still activate as soon as it gets enough water - also the aquatuner is shut off if there's not enough cool water.

Also, doesn't work for polluted water, because vacuum and polluted oxygen... This is just my attempt at doing the logic from scratch, and I removed the triple-airlock because it was giving me a headache.

I also added a sensor at the bottom of the tuner section to check if it was empty or not, which could be a bit overkill...

 

[onlineous]

I submerged my aquatuner is a pool of clean water, which I feed to the electrolyzers. The downside over your system: polluted water can be heated further than clean water. The upsides: you don't have to worry about it gassing of to polluted oxygen, and since you need to store the clean water anyway you need one less pump.

[BlueLance]

8 minutes ago, onlineous said:

I submerged my aquatuner is a pool of clean water, which I feed to the electrolyzers. The downside over your system: polluted water can be heated further than clean water. The upsides: you don't have to worry about it gassing of to polluted oxygen, and since you need to store the clean water anyway you need one less pump.

If you fill the room you will only have 1 offgassed tile at most, I have a similar design which pumps in polluted water and dumps it all once the temp gets too hot, the room them fills and repeats, but the sheer size of the room means it wont be happening for a fairly long time.

[Carnis]

If you let The pW boiler and collect The Steam as electrolyzer fuel, you create massive amount of cooling for free.

[BlueLance]

You still have to cool the steam to put into the electrolyzer, versus using a water sieve to get clean water.

[Carnis]

18 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

You still have to cool the steam to put into the electrolyzer, versus using a water sieve to get clean water.

My boiler deletes 2J/gram/K of pW boiled & then water recooled. This is More than 840 kW of cooling, which means My system needs a constant heatsource (a 2nd aquatuner) to not continously freeze.

Sieve is simplest, but If you are boiling anyway... Infinite heatsink.

[BlueLance]

So how are you condensing the steam into water? using the liquid you cooled?

[Carnis]

1 minute ago, BlueLance said:

So how are you condensing the steam into water? using the liquid you cooled?

Yeah. The cooled liquid condenses Steam and 2nd tank also condenses steam. 2nd tank runs aquatuner, which cools My electrolyzer cooling pW tanks. 2nd tank needs to Be on nonstop, or you run into overcooling on your boiler Fuel.

[The Flying Fox]

I used the OP's design back in Ranching Mk I and it worked fairly well  It's fairly simple to setup and get going compared to other builds.  However, I've decided that I like being able to use the aquatuner as a boiler as well, at least, if you have abundant amounts of pH2O.  With the introduction of the pipe temp sensors it's made them even easier to create.

 

I got terribly lucky with this map.  The two water geysers and this polluted water vent just produce silly amounts that I don't know what to do with.  

 

The concept is simple, more or less, but is complex compared to the OPs design.  Basically, the tuner sits in a vat of oil over a hot plate and a set amount of pH2O is dripped onto it and then heated until it boils.  The steam is then cooled by the incoming pH2O on the right side and then it drops into my geyser tank.  Meanwhile, the tuner is cooling a loop of pH2O which goes up to cool that upper tank of oil to 1C.  Water is run through a separate radiator in the oil tank and then that water is used to cool the air from my electrolyzer units that are just above.  There's valves for each unit that lets only 400G/s of water through a radiator to cool the oxygen.  Both the oxygen and the water comes out around 20C and the water is fed to my bristle blossoms and  sinks/lavatories (Because why not and I had extra water  )

 

The automation looks complex because I like to over-design for possible failure modes.  Probably only one sensor is really needed to keep the aquatuner from overheating itself, which is the temp sensor sitting in the oil with it, but the pipe temp sensor is also important for making sure that it doesn't over-cool the pH2O within it's cooling loop.  The hydro switch on top of the hot plate detects if there's pH2O sitting there or not so more can be dripped on. (And shut off the tuner after a few seconds if none is continued to not be detected.)  The temp switch in the top tank is for shutting it down when the oil has hit 1C to prevent over-cooling that tank.  Water is only released from the water radiator when the water has hit below 5C.

 

I left a pump in the top oil tank just in case I ever wanted to pull cold oil out of the tank for-whatever reason.  I see I forgot to hook up the automation wire from that AND gate to the pump. Oops!   I left a sweeper in there so that one-day I could automate pulling out the dirt created from boiling the vast amounts of pH2O it consumes.  When I first started it and it was running continuously to cool that top tank of oil, it was going through around 2KG/s of pH2O if not slightly more.