How to tame a magma volcano?

[SchlauFuchs]

Hi,

In my last game i was confronted with a magma volcano. I tried to utilize it with a steam turbine but then the magma was getting into contact with the turbine and it melts away. I was increasing the distance to the volcano but then sand built up in tile form (some tiles having just milligrams of sand) and that blocked the steam flow, caused overheating and gone the turbine was again. The magma heat was melting all installations in the chamber, so I wonder how to utilize the magma without causing blocks in the steam flow or in the volcano eruption? 

[Saturnus]

You need to contain the magma in insulated abyssalite tiles so it doesn't have direct contact with anything. And then you make a temperature clamp at one place which is diamond window tiles or tungsten tiles flanking a wolframite door. The door transfers heat when closed and stops heat transfer when open so you can temperature control your build without it getting into direct contact with the magma.

[Pyrrus]

This is one of the setups I use right now that I use mostly to drain heat from the magma but if the steam temp is set to 230C then it'll run continuously from a single volcano. This particular design has the partially blocked vents but as far as I can tell in all my testing of different designs, it makes exactly no difference. If you don't want to bother with removing the IG rock then  the somewhat finicky sweeper/loader setup is not needed. In this build volcano is above

[SchlauFuchs]

what is the atmosphere condition in the magma chamber? How comes the diamond tiles withstand the heat of magma? are there back plates behind the doors or just in the free tiles? 

[SchlauFuchs]

@Pyrrus, You maybe have missed my question above.Your screenshot looks as if you have a vacuum in the volcano chamber, but there seems to be a cooling liquid circuit behind them. AFAIK within a vacuum there is no heat transfer between object possible, or what are you doing there?

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, SchlauFuchs said:

AFAIK within a vacuum there is no heat transfer between object possible, or what are you doing there?

From what i can tell he lets the magma flow down the chamber where diamond tiles conduct the heat to his steam turbine room. Everything is vacuum beacause he doesn`t want to waste even a single joule of energy.

[Djoums]

5 hours ago, SchlauFuchs said:

Your screenshot looks as if you have a vacuum in the volcano chamber, but there seems to be a cooling liquid circuit behind them

Probably to cool down the auto sweeper setup, it's there to sweep hot igneous orck and will overheat at some point.

[0xFADE]

Sadly sacrifices don’t work well on these volcanoes. 

Best design I’d seen had conveyors and heat transfer stuff all over the place and was generally amazing.  Liquid solutions are fine for metal volcanos but dry seems to be the best for magma ones if you want to make the most out of everything. 

[BlueLance]

@SchlauFuchs It also depends on what you mean by tame it, are you wanting to make use of all the heat? some of it? None of it?

Like I usually make use of some of the heat and whatever i waste is just a waste, I tend no to worry too much. 

[The Flying Fox]

14 hours ago, SchlauFuchs said:

@Pyrrus, You maybe have missed my question above.Your screenshot looks as if you have a vacuum in the volcano chamber, but there seems to be a cooling liquid circuit behind them. AFAIK within a vacuum there is no heat transfer between object possible, or what are you doing there?

This is actually not.. quite true.  Yes, vacuum tiles do not transfer heat through them, however, if there's debris/chunks sitting in a vacuum tile, the debris will actually transfer heat to the tile below them at a fairly decent-ish rate.  This also applies to chunks shipping on shipping rails.  Chunks on the rails will heat tiles below them at a okay rate if they're in a vacuum tile.  This type of transfer, I've found, does not happen in a rarefied atmosphere.  (Well, it happens so slowly as it doesn't matter when the atmosphere is under >1g )

 

So far, this is the type of device I've been employing for squeezing the heat out of volcanoes.  The doors holding back the copper here only open for a second, letting some of it pour down on top of the next door.  The hydro-switch is briefly flicked OFF as liquid is detected then, turns back ON once it solidifies into a chunk as it cools.

 

This sets off a count-down on the first filter gate (200 seconds) giving the chunk plenty of time to further cool and eventually sets off the memory toggle.  This opens the door to let the chunk drop fully into the tank and the second filter gate resets the memory toggle.  The chunk then lands on the pressure switch.  Further filter gates keep the sweeper arm from activating to give more time for cooling, if needed.  Meanwhile, a NOT off the pressure sensor makes sure that no further copper is dropped into the tank and the temperature sensor also ensures that the tank isn't over-heated.  The sweeper arm can then corner grab the copper sitting on the pressure switch and then there's shipping rails through the tank as well.  The 20KGs chunks on rails exchange heat more quickly then a larger single chunk. 

 

This idea can work for both metal and non-metal volcanoes, although, as 0xFADE said, regular volcanoes will tend to work better with a 'dry' thermal tank, as opposed to a wet tank.  The reason being is that igneous has a much lower thermal conductivity and much higher thermal content then metals do, but oil/petroleum tanks store more thermal energy because of their higher mass and thermal capacity.  Of course, solid thermal tanks allow for higher storage temperatures.  The quickest way to exchange heat from igneous chunks is to ship them through metal/diamond tiles.