Heat transfer and layered pipes

[WanderingKid]

I've got a Gas liquefier setup I've used before but I tried to condense it a little tighter.  It's basically a hydrogen radiator to liquify CO2, nothing dramatic.  However, I'm using Tempshift plates to try to stabilize the inside, and because I built it so tight, my insulated liquid pipes (Sandstone, not abyssalite) are dramatically lowering their base to the target temperature of my tempshift plates.  I can't tell if the radiant gas pipes or the tempshift plates are messing with the insulated liquid pipes, but something's giving them a hug.

Strangely enough, additionally the CO2 won't drop to the target temperature, but the Hydrogen is on target.  The CO2 is getting stuck bouncing (I use F) between 1 and 9 degrees or so, when the target is -61.0. 

If someone's up for it, can you see if you can determine if I made a mistake, or if I'm getting some interesting mechanics with the new patches?  Appreciated.

Factory - W8.5 - Electrolizer 4 Cycle 63.sav

[Carnis]

Screenshots?

[WanderingKid]

7 minutes ago, Carnis said:

Screenshots?

Won't help in this case without me making a time lapsed portfolio or a few dozen screenshots.  If that's needed I'll do it but I'd rather not sit there for an hour documenting the issue when it can be found on the save file.    I understand if folks can't/prefer not to help me without them, I'm guilty of it myself.  After I get some sleep I'll take another dive at it tomorrow and see if I can figure out what is happening specifically.

I also got some really weird results from the sandbox painter when I was trying to locate the problem and I ended up in a permanent heat spike, so I'll probably need to try a different save file entirely to see if I can find the specific combination.

[WanderingKid]

I think I figured out the problem.  Need someone to doublecheck what I'm seeing, because this seems like unintentional behavior.  I'm mostly sure it's the external temperature of the Insulated Pipes haunting me.  Yes, pics this time, since I'm not creating an entire booklet on a thousand ideas of what might be the problem.  

So, here's the main room:

Relatively simple.  From right to left, a room to keep the thermos regulator from melting, a room to providing cooling for the CO2, then a final room to feed it into a storage chamber that can currently hold up to 4000kg of CO2 + gas region.

This room is just to keep the thermos from melting:

So here's where it gets interesting.  This is the main target area.  Temperature target for the tempshift area is -61.0F.  My tempshift is currently at -60.6, my insulated liquid pipe which hasn't found anything to pump yet is... ALSO at -60.8F.  My radiant pipe is at -61.9F for the pipe itself.   These obviously will wobble a bit.

So here's where I think it gets interesting.  On the right top where the insulated gas pipe comes in from the thermos, the insulated gas pipe is -61.7F.  Note this pipe is not on top of the tempshift plate.  However, the local Hydrogen is -60.7F.

However, at the return pipe, which has the CO2 layer on the bottom right, also out of the Tempshift plate, the insulated gas pipe is at 5.2F, and the CO2 is at 4.4F.  The insulated gas pipe is controlling, and controlled by, my atmospheric temperature.

As a final assumption point, the CO2 that is on top of the radiant pipe is trying to lower the temperature of the room.  The Radiant is at -60.7F, the contents almost at the insulated return pipe is -76.3F, and the CO is at -4.9F, and is trying to equalize with the CO2 only one tile over to its right at the insulated return pipe.

This last bit tells me the radiant is doing what it's supposed to, trying to transfer the heat from the pipe contents into the room, where the CO2 is trying to stabilized at ~-61F.  The insulated pipes though apparently are controlling what temperature the atmosphere is allowed to have, and vice versa.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I have insulated ceramic pipes that are carrying a hot liquid.  There is no change to the liquid temperature, nor is there a change to the atmosphere temperature.  Is this problem that you're seeing only because sandstone is a poor insulator?  What happens if you try a different pipe type?

[WanderingKid]

6 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I have insulated ceramic pipes that are carrying a hot liquid.  There is no change to the liquid temperature, nor is there a change to the atmosphere temperature.  Is this problem that you're seeing only because sandstone is a poor insulator?  What happens if you try a different pipe type?

I'll have to check.  The last time I tried messing with it a bit in sandbox mode I got some crazy stuff going on with the heat.  That'll take me a bit, though.

[WanderingKid]

7 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I have insulated ceramic pipes that are carrying a hot liquid.  There is no change to the liquid temperature, nor is there a change to the atmosphere temperature.  Is this problem that you're seeing only because sandstone is a poor insulator?  What happens if you try a different pipe type?

I don't use sandbox much.  Is there a way to swap my pipes to a different material without having to destroy everything else under them?  I know you can autobuild, but I can't seem to find a way to auto-deconstruct, and it'll take me about 10 times longer rebuilding and loading up everything to just destroy everything in the existing build to find out if a material type will fix the concern.

[JonnyMonroe]

Tempshift plates can mess with insulated tiles. I wouldn't be shocked if they messed with insulated pipes as well. I'm curious though to see what temperature and mass is in that debris. If it's a lot it will mess with your setup for a long time until it reaches equilibrium.

[KittenIsAGeek]

5 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

I don't use sandbox much.  Is there a way to swap my pipes to a different material without having to destroy everything else under them?  I know you can autobuild, but I can't seem to find a way to auto-deconstruct, and it'll take me about 10 times longer rebuilding and loading up everything to just destroy everything in the existing build to find out if a material type will fix the concern.

AFAIK, the only way to auto-deconstruct (and auto-dig) is to use debug mode.  Sandbox doesn't do it.  And no, you can't swap pipes without destroying them first.  Let me mess with your game a bit and I'll see what happens.

OK, so.. replacing the pipes helped, but there was still some issues.  Turns out the debris on the floor was a significant part of the problem.  I removed all the debris and the carbon dioxide started to liquify pretty quickly.  The exposed insulated ceramic pipe had to cool down for that far corner to drop the temp of the CO2 -- however, the hydrogen inside the pipe didn't change temperatures at all inside the insulated pipe.

Spoiler

It took only seconds after removing the debris for the CO2 to liquify.  As you can see in image #2, the CO2 at the pipe in the corner is at 9.2C.  This is because the outside of the pipe hasn't cooled down to the room temp. CO2 has a relatively minimal heat capacity, so even though its conductivity is low, it will quickly adjust to the temperature of the things it is near.  The ceramic pipe has an equally low thermal conductivity, but a much higher mass, relative to the CO2 pocket, so it might take a cycle to normalize.

TL;DR: Try using the toolbox tool "Clear floor" in your cold and hot rooms and see if that solves your problem.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

OK, so  I reloaded the save and only cleared the floor of debris.  Within 1/4 cycle all the CO2 liquefied.  The problem is not the insulated pipes -- the problem was the huge amount of heat-holding mass at the bottom.  

 

** Correction, without changing the pipes, I had to set your temp sensor to -55c to get the CO2 to liquify.

[WanderingKid]

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

OK, so  I reloaded the save and only cleared the floor of debris.  Within 1/4 cycle all the CO2 liquefied.  The problem is not the insulated pipes -- the problem was the huge amount of heat-holding mass at the bottom.  

In short, "Thank You".

I finally had some time to come back to this that wasn't work related so I could poke at it in my sandbox.  I had apparently not realized the influence of the cell related heat averaging, and was expecting to get fill heat averages for the local atmosphere.  However, I didn't contain the multiple gas types and the way that the CO2 layer would interact with the Hydrogen layer and what it could affect for the thermshift plates.

I've got a much tighter window for when the CO2 should liquify now, and that is due to @KittenIsAGeek's help.

However, we have to look at the new bottom right corner without changing the coolant value of the insulated sandstone pipe  after removing the overly heated debris.  Replacing the pipe *should* have removed the issue, but I haven't removed them yet.  Why? Because even with the obvious evidence that Kitten provided as an alternate way to remove the issue, an insulated gas pipe of Thermal 0.050 shouldn't be able to even MOVE my heat, nevermind make a mess of the local cell sharing.

I'm still concerned that insulated pipes are reacting inappropriately to atmosphere.

[KittenIsAGeek]

The external part of the pipe is the part that is changing temperature with the surroundings.  The internal contents are completely insulated.  Once the external part of your pipe cools down to the ambient room temperature, you shouldn't have a problem with that corner.  

BTW, at -55c, the room handled a constant feed of 150g/s no problems and could probably have gone 200.  At 300, however, it quit liquefying because the incomming CO2 has such a slow thermal conductivity.

[chemie]

You can change pipe material without deconstructing or debug.  Change the type like regular to insulated or regular sandstone to insulated anything to regular granite for example

[WanderingKid]

 

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

The external part of the pipe is the part that is changing temperature with the surroundings.  The internal contents are completely insulated.  Once the external part of your pipe cools down to the ambient room temperature, you shouldn't have a problem with that corner.  

BTW, at -55c, the room handled a constant feed of 150g/s no problems and could probably have gone 200.  At 300, however, it quit liquefying because the incomming CO2 has such a slow thermal conductivity.

Thanks for your help on this.  I'll take another swing at it when I can soon.  I was able to get the materials to go cold enough, I guess I'm just still trying to figure out why the insulated pipe is able to fight with my atmosphere so enthusiastically.  I may just have to stare at it a bit more.

1 hour ago, chemie said:

You can change pipe material without deconstructing or debug.  Change the type like regular to insulated or regular sandstone to insulated anything to regular granite for example

… Well, that seems simple in retrospect.  Thanks!

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, WanderingKid said:

 I guess I'm just still trying to figure out why the insulated pipe is able to fight with my atmosphere so enthusiastically.  

An insulated pipe has 400kg of material.  Your ambient CO2 drifting into that corner has, at most, 1kg of mass.  CO2 doesn't transfer thermal energy very well -- so it will take a long time for the mass of the pipe to reach ambient temperatures.  However, if you pump it all out as soon as it liquifies, then that corner will often have about 2kg of hydrogen.  Hydrogen will move the heat much more quickly than the CO2 does.  Once the pipe reaches ambient temperatures, it should act as a stabilizer -- the CO2 being added to the room won't affect its temperature much.

Prior to Cosmic, insulated pipes (particularly abyssalite) did not interact with the environment OR the contents.  Now only the contents are insulated -- the mass of the pipe will interact with the environment just like any other mass does.

2 hours ago, chemie said:

You can change pipe material without deconstructing or debug.  Change the type like regular to insulated or regular sandstone to insulated anything to regular granite for example

I can not get that method to work since Ranching unless my dupes do it -- and they basically deconstruct, then rebuild which lets the contents spill out everywhere.

[chemie]

30 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 

I can not get that method to work since Ranching unless my dupes do it -- and they basically deconstruct, then rebuild which lets the contents spill out everywhere.

Works for me.  Yes dups have to do it, that was my point but it avoids deconstruction and loss of contents.  

[WanderingKid]

25 minutes ago, chemie said:

Works for me.  Yes dups have to do it, that was my point but it avoids deconstruction and loss of contents.  

Oh, if the dupes are doing it that means I have to reset the system anyway.  I thought you meant it would sandbox swap them.  Well, thanks anyway.