I got the steam engine working !

[BlueLance]

16 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

So the steam generator only works well when you're using tricks like door pumps and super-heated tiles.

This is only the case if you don't use enough pressure or don't want to condense the steam to water and pump it back in. My build cranks up the pressure to really high levels for instance just pumping in excess water that I have already heated and lets it turn into steam, and once it begins to run the steam which comes out is cooled by a coolant liquid in a short array of pipes, the condensation is enough to keep up with the steam turbine. 

All the condensed water gathers at the bottom gets pumped back into the steam chamber once enough water has accumulated in the basin, I forgot to post a picture last night so I will try to post one tonight XD

Also if you are wondering the build I have works with at least two steam turbines so plenty to power the aquatuner that it would need for the coolant, I never tried more because I honestly don't know what I would do with 4kw of energy never mind 6+

16 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

but then you have to flash the water back into 300c steam again which costs a LOT of heat energy.

If you use an aquatuner in the steam turbine build then there should me no loss of heat energy except for what the steam turbine itself consumes, since all the heat used to cool your coolant would be getting dumped into water that might be recycled in the build. I was gonna do that for my glass build since ideally with glass I would want to retain as much of the heat as possible instead of deleting it like my current steam build does via an AETN

13 hours ago, heckubis said:

this kinda works

the top section maintains the seal the bottom heats it back up.

only issues is keeping the coolant cold and the hotplate hot that thing is sucking up the heat fast

built in in debug just to check out the reactions

Out of curiosity why 5 pie outputs at the bottom? Steam Gens only use 10kg/s right? 1 water pump is 10kg/s

[he77789]

4 Turbines and some leeway

[BlueLance]

37 minutes ago, he77789 said:

4 Turbines and some leeway

Each turbine would consume the others output so your putting in 50kg/s and only consuming 10kg/s then passing that to the next one etc.

So thats a 40kg/s buildup of steam that shouldnt be going anywhere and its absorbing all of that heat, the other problem is if the water stops that steam will go well above the turbines melting point and then thats as good as gone XD

[heckubis]

6 hours ago, BlueLance said:

Out of curiosity why 5 pie outputs at the bottom? Steam Gens only use 10kg/s right? 1 water pump is 10kg/s

oh i habitually build with multi layout options . was thinking of feeding pre heated water and venting steam higher if it wasnt for the terrible lag state that save is in now (because i have no debug skills other then search and screen shot and accidently filled 90%of the remaining abyssal with vacuum). i was also thinking of lacing heated ducts along the tower of turbines to re heat the steam along the tower as it basically reheating the steam as the turbines transfer the steam to each other reducing the cooldown of the steam. would either have to step out the water drip points  providing better vapor sealing or build the system near space and just vent the steam after. but im a water miser.

but i can set each of those valves to 2k spreading out the thermal exchange across the hot plate

[Cipupec2]

I noticed that the steam engine will work at full capacity despite giving the error 'input blocked'. Is this has been changed in more recent releases, will it?

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 9/3/2018 at 11:34 AM, hacksaw12 said:

Just a relative noob here, really didn't need the power, and had already decided just to seal off space so I got no meteor damage. Was just playing around, since my goal was to make 1000 cycles with no problem areas, which I will do for the first time. Since I had all this hot debris, I just built around it and poured in water, which isn't limited in this seed. It's run for over a hundred cycles, including a reload of water about 10 cycles ago. Nothing astounding, and slow spin up to reload the battery (set at 45% and probably should be higher), but it powers a couple of circuits, including a tube station without much problem. Easy to build in survival mode would be an understatement.

 

You've used a couple of "tricks" to get it to work, even if you're not aware of it.  1) You're blocking off vents to reduce the amount of steam it uses to operate.  2) The abysallite and debris are telling the generator its hot enough.  

It is a great idea, though, and it works great if you have excess water to get rid of.  In fact, I'd think it would be an awesome way to eliminate heat, since you're venting hot water THROUGH the steam turbine and off into space.  Pair it up with some aquatuners and you've got some impressive cooling power.

On 9/4/2018 at 2:22 AM, BlueLance said:

This is only the case if you don't use enough pressure or don't want to condense the steam to water and pump it back in. My build cranks up the pressure to really high levels for instance just pumping in excess water that I have already heated and lets it turn into steam, and once it begins to run the steam which comes out is cooled by a coolant liquid in a short array of pipes, the condensation is enough to keep up with the steam turbine. 

All the condensed water gathers at the bottom gets pumped back into the steam chamber once enough water has accumulated in the basin, I forgot to post a picture last night so I will try to post one tonight XD

Also if you are wondering the build I have works with at least two steam turbines so plenty to power the aquatuner that it would need for the coolant, I never tried more because I honestly don't know what I would do with 4kw of energy never mind 6+

If you use an aquatuner in the steam turbine build then there should me no loss of heat energy except for what the steam turbine itself consumes, since all the heat used to cool your coolant would be getting dumped into water that might be recycled in the build. I was gonna do that for my glass build since ideally with glass I would want to retain as much of the heat as possible instead of deleting it like my current steam build does via an AETN

Out of curiosity why 5 pie outputs at the bottom? Steam Gens only use 10kg/s right? 1 water pump is 10kg/s

I've built steam turbine using condensation and yes, you can get it to work just fine -- especially if you block off a couple of vents to reduce the amount of steam flow.  BUT aquatuners can't produce enough heat to run without tricking the generator into thinking the steam is hotter than it actually is.  So you need magma (or another very hot source) to bring the steam up from boiling point to the 260c necessary for the steam turbine.  OR you need to use a hot tile to trick the turbine.

[hacksaw12]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

You've used a couple of "tricks" to get it to work, even if you're not aware of it.  1) You're blocking off vents to reduce the amount of steam it uses to operate.  2) The abysallite and debris are telling the generator its hot enough.  

Was aware of the vent blocking trick, probably should have mentioned that. Was not aware the steam wasn't hot enough. So, the metal tiles trick the generator? I thought the debris heated the steam, once it could conduct heat outside the vacuum, and the tiles just transferred heat to the steam, too. The debris loses heat with use, where does it go, if not to the steam?

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, hacksaw12 said:

Was aware of the vent blocking trick, probably should have mentioned that. Was not aware the steam wasn't hot enough. So, the metal tiles trick the generator? I thought the debris heated the steam, once it could conduct heat outside the vacuum, and the tiles just transferred heat to the steam, too. The debris loses heat with use, where does it go, if not to the steam?

Mouse-over the steam under the turbine and see what temperature it is.  If the steam isn't 260c+, then it isn't hot enough to run the turbine by itself and the turbine is taking its temperature from the backwall plating or the tiles blocking the vents.  And the 260c is only if the turbine is already running.  It won't start up in the first place unless the steam is 300c.  Or at least, that's been my experience with it.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just an update on my "exploity" steam generator system.. Did some tweaking and reorganizing.  Its got a 100% up-time and produces a constant 2250g/s of pure water.  Before going to the aquatuner to cool, some of the hot is sent out to my oxygen generation system. What remains is cooled to an average of 8c.

Spoiler

I would like to point out that much of this design is thanks to @mathmanican.

[hacksaw12]

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Mouse-over the steam under the turbine and see what temperature it is.  If the steam isn't 260c+, then it isn't hot enough to run the turbine by itself and the turbine is taking its temperature from the backwall plating or the tiles blocking the vents.  And the 260c is only if the turbine is already running.  It won't start up in the first place unless the steam is 300c.  Or at least, that's been my experience with it.

Thanks for spending time on a somewhat noob, but I still don't see the trick. The steam is 257.4C, the mafic drywall is 257.4C, the gold metal tiles are 257.8C, and the debris ranges from 252.2C to 264.7C. I don't remember the temps when I first started it, but I believe the debris temp was around 5C hotter. Reasonably sure it wasn't as high as 300C, but it started and runs, and stops, and runs again when the smart battery tells it to, all below 260C.

[mathmanican]

The magic temp is 226.9C.

[hacksaw12]

16 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

The magic temp is 226.9C.

Ah, that would be about what I thought it was, I work in F, and I was thinking the first start was in the 450ish degree range. That would also indicate no trick for the generator from the metal tiles or the drywall, the steam was hot enough.

[mathmanican]

Yep.  The input temp required is exactly 500K or larger.  The generator starts to power off once the temp drops to 499.9K (226.8C).  

Fun fact.  The output temp is 425K.  Seems like these numbers were chosen for ease of programming.  Input steam temp is 500K or  higher, and output steam temp is 425K (no matter what).  So it's definitely designed as a heat deleter. Of course, if you trick it by putting 1 tile under it that remains above 500K (neutronium, chlorine, etc), then you can input cold steam and heat it up to 425K (and the machine becomes a heat creator). Works great either way. Want to boil water - done.  Want to cool down some really hot gas - done. Works way better as a heat deleter, as you can cool any temp down to 425K, so you can drop the temp hundreds, probably even thousands, of degrees (as long as you don't overheat the generator and break it). 

[Cipupec2]

The best and simplest method for me to run the steam turbine was by using the blocking ports trick, otherwise I was only able to maintain pressure by using the door pump trick. It could be possible to run without both with very measured system setup but its not worth todo unless you have a constant heat source, if at all.

[KittenIsAGeek]

5 hours ago, hacksaw12 said:

Ah, that would be about what I thought it was, I work in F, and I was thinking the first start was in the 450ish degree range. That would also indicate no trick for the generator from the metal tiles or the drywall, the steam was hot enough.

Yep. I stand corrected.  

5 hours ago, mathmanican said:

Yep.  The input temp required is exactly 500K or larger.  The generator starts to power off once the temp drops to 499.9K (226.8C).  

I think I somehow got "500k" and "close to 300c" crossed in my head and started thinking "Needs 300c."  Thank you for clarifying the details.

59 minutes ago, Cipupec2 said:

The best and simplest method for me to run the steam turbine was by using the blocking ports trick, otherwise I was only able to maintain pressure by using the door pump trick. It could be possible to run without both with very measured system setup but its not worth todo unless you have a constant heat source, if at all.

I've run it both ways.  Yes, without covering any ports, the turbine can process a LOT of steam.

[BlueLance]

14 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I've built steam turbine using condensation and yes, you can get it to work just fine -- especially if you block off a couple of vents to reduce the amount of steam flow.  BUT aquatuners can't produce enough heat to run without tricking the generator into thinking the steam is hotter than it actually is.  So you need magma (or another very hot source) to bring the steam up from boiling point to the 260c necessary for the steam turbine.  OR you need to use a hot tile to trick the turbine.

The thermal energy the aquatuner absorbs and puts into the fluid its sitting in essentially can be used to pre heat the water to roughly 100 before you put it in to be boiled and steamed up. thats 100 degrees versus any cooler amount of water. All I was referring to was that you can help reduce heat loss in some way by recycling the water you heat up. but yes you would then use another heat source to make the transition from near 100 to the amount required, the closer the better because thats less heat being wasted.

[KittenIsAGeek]

6 hours ago, BlueLance said:

The thermal energy the aquatuner absorbs and puts into the fluid its sitting in essentially can be used to pre heat the water to roughly 100 before you put it in to be boiled and steamed up. thats 100 degrees versus any cooler amount of water. All I was referring to was that you can help reduce heat loss in some way by recycling the water you heat up. but yes you would then use another heat source to make the transition from near 100 to the amount required, the closer the better because thats less heat being wasted.

Exactly.