Infinite Steam Power!

[Aner-Dyfan]

Over the weekend on the Discord channel Skunky informed us that steam turbines operate in a different way to what we thought. We all thought that they required high pressure steam over 220C under in order to power them. As it turns out, that is not the case. ONI looks for 3 conditions to be met:

• High pressure steam under the turbine
• Lower pressure above the turbine
• A temperature over 220C

This means so long as you have a hot tile under the turbine, you can feed it cold steam (ie 120C) and it will generate power, in fact it will actually warm the steam up as it comes out at 175C!

So that's all well and good, we just need less thermal energy to power steam engines. But that's not infinite! How you do that is by placing a tempshift plate next to neutronium to force it to warm up. This can then act as your "hot" tile (despite never ever cooling down) and then you can use a door pusher to circulate the steam back around to the input once more. Thus creating a perpetual steam turbine!

If you've not quite understood it from the text, I also have produced a YouTube tutorial on the matter:

 

[Soulwind]

 I've seen a couple of threads about this that are all using these exploits.  Yes they work, and if you like them, then by all means use them, but realize that sooner or later they will probably be fixed.  I personally prefer to avoid using exploits whenever I can.  Just my opinion though. 

[blash365]

And again someone who just casually drops "you just have to add a little bit of steam every now and then".

What is a little bit of steam in your book? 1g every hour? 1kg/s? 100kg/s?

Please give a bit more information about this.

[Bobanaut]

i think the full trick is to use a small pocket of hydrogen to trick the generator into believing there is a pressure gradient. no pumping needed

[blash365]

1 minute ago, Bobanaut said:

i think the full trick is to use a small pocket of hydrogen to trick the generator into believing there is a pressure gradient. no pumping needed

I understand the trick and the trick causes gas deletion. The question is: how much gas is being deleted.

[Aner-Dyfan]

One of the 4 steam turbine generators I had operating, stopped working after over 100cycles because of a pressure reduction, the other 3 were still operating without issue. But since I've saved and loaded the game dozens of times since then, and also blackholed it more times than I can count I'm actually not certain where the gas was going and at what rate.

But since one of them did stop working, it shows that it can occur. It could even be just an issue with debug play.

[NanoD]

I think it is the door compressors that kills some steam. if you change the door delay to 2 seconds they will not delete any steam. 

[blash365]

So you are talking about a rate that only show significance after dozends (hundreds) of cycles, right? So it is not a notable "cost" to produce the power. Just a few grams that accumulate over a very long time. Am i correct?

So whatever the leak might be, it's should not be very costly.

[GrindThisGame]

Interesting exploit. If you can heat up neutronium like that, I wonder if you can heat up abyssalite as well.

[Lifegrow]

Aaaaaand in one swift swish of the hotfix wand this build will be completely useless

This has been discussed on these forums, reddit and steam for weeks now. 

Don't do bugs, kids!

[Aner-Dyfan]

That's fine, fixing exploits like this is important to the growth of the game. Part of the whole early access thing, just doesn't really fit under a "bug". I guess the neutronium heating up.

[0xFADE]

1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

Don't do bugs, kids!

Nice. 

[Soulwind]

Neutronium heating up, blocking off most of the intake vents, and fooling the temp sensor with a hot spot . . .

[Neotuck]

5 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

Don't do bugs, kids!

[GrindThisGame]

I tested this out. With the neutronium cheat and without. When used without, you need to continue to add small amounts of water (eg 20g/sec) to keep the pressure up. This was the case with a 2 sec delay in the door automation. It didn't take very long (50 cycles) for my magma to cool down to below 220C and turn the entire system off. If steam didn't get destroyed this would be much more viable. I think I would prefer to turn oil into nat gas and burn it AND get polluted water out of it.

Solar power arrays built on the edge of the asteroid could be a neat way to get power. Or straight geothermal power which tapped into the magma directly and avoided the steam part. I hope they eventually add nuclear power.

[0xFADE]

The natural gas cycle is the key to all life. 

[Neotuck]

Just now, 0xFADE said:

The natural gas cycle is the key to all life. 

I'm a fan of natural gas for long term power but "cycle" are you referring to? 

[Aner-Dyfan]

P.water to make fertiliser and NG, the fertiliser can feed hatches to make coal. Coal burns to make CO2. NG is burned to make P.water and CO2. The CO2 is then given to slicksters to make oil/petrol which is then cooked to make more NG. All in all each NGG uses <10g/s of natural gas if you are able to reuse each step.

[0xFADE]

Natural gas in to power, pwater, and co2.

pwater in to more natural gas and fertilizer or clean water and dirt.

co2 in to oil and back in to natural gas etc.

 

[Neotuck]

Ya I heard about that @Aner-Dyfan and @0xFADE

however the math never adds up to make an infinite cycle

a nat gas gen needs 60 g/s gas to keep running and emits 67.5 g/s PW and 82.5 g/s CO2

Even if you turn the CO2 into PW which requires water the total PW is 150 g/s which can only create 20 g/s natural gas with fertilizer synthesizers

Alternatively if you use slicksters to turn the CO2 into oil and cook it into natural gas you get 41.25 g/s natural gas and if you add the gas from the fertilizer synthesizers that get 67.5 PW then that's 50.25 g/s natural gas
 

nether options offer a complete infinite cycle

[0xFADE]

It doesn't have to be infinite.  It is still more of something than a buggy steam generator can do.

The oil well produces more water than it consumes when you plug it in to the system.

But since there are only around 2-3 wells per map that has an upper limit. 

[blash365]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Ya I heard about that @Aner-Dyfan and @0xFADE

however the math never adds up to make an infinite cycle

a nat gas gen needs 60 g/s gas to keep running and emits 67.5 g/s PW and 82.5 g/s CO2

Even if you turn the CO2 into PW which requires water the total PW is 150 g/s which can only create 20 g/s natural gas with fertilizer synthesizers

Alternatively if you use slicksters to turn the CO2 into oil and cook it into natural gas you get 41.25 g/s natural gas and if you add the gas from the fertilizer synthesizers that get 67.5 PW then that's 50.25 g/s natural gas
 

nether options offer a complete infinite cycle

As said in a different topic:

On 29.4.2018 at 11:37 AM, Carnis said:

Your Post just highlights the imbalance caused by cooking oil into natgas.

The dreckos arent needed.

60g oil. -> 60g ngas -> 800 joules + 82g co2 + 67g polluted water.

Slicksters -> 41g oil.

Water sieve -> 67g water -> oilwell 200g oil

60g oil turned into 241g oil, 13 grams sand consumed.

 

Cooking natgas can and will need fixing at some point. Simplest solution will be decreasing ngas energy density and compensating this chance on fert synth and geysir. For instance, by making natgas gens eat 100g natgas and fert synths to produce 33g would be a step on The right direction.

 

 

 

With this cycle (not even using the CO2) you end up with more NG than you started with.

 

[Neotuck]

15 minutes ago, blash365 said:

With this cycle (not even using the CO2) you end up with more NG than you started with.

so if I understand correctly you use a water sieve and oil well to turn 67.5 g/s PW into 202.5 g/s of oil to cook into nat gas?

sounds plausible  

[blash365]

I dont do it myself, but it seems plausible and i might even try it out in the next 200 cycles of my base.

I wouldnt use a slieve though.

 

Less sand required:

 

[NanoD]

18 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

This was the case with a 2 sec delay in the door automation.

Did you run on Super speed?