Cooling without much power?

[Storm Engineer]

I started playing again after a long hiatus. So I don't have much power but heat is already a big problem. I'm trying to use Wheezeworts but they just don't seem to be powerful enough, even when I use several in a hydrogen filled room.

So first question: How to optimize wheezeworts for maximum efficiency?

And the second question, what is the best way to cool oxygen from my Electrolyzer and water from the Cool Steam Vent so they keep my base at an ideal temperature (=safely below 30)?

Thanks in advance!

[Neotuck]

Wheeze warts are slow cooling so are best used inside your base next to heat generating machines like the electric grill, kilm, or coal generators.

As for cooling water from steam vents I don't bother and only use them for O2 and oil production.

Best to focus on polluted water production first.  It's easy to turn it into cold water by using a sieve and aquatuner to get 26C water.  

If you must use water from a steam vent then use a carbon skimmer first to turn it into 40C pwater.

[Saturnus]

Use water from the cool steam vents for electrolysers. No point in cooling down the water when the temperature is reset to 70C gas coming out of the electrolysers. Just cool them just enough so the steam can condense to 90-95C water.

[Steve Raptor]

28 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

I started playing again after a long hiatus. So I don't have much power but heat is already a big problem. I'm trying to use Wheezeworts but they just don't seem to be powerful enough, even when I use several in a hydrogen filled room.

So first question: How to optimize wheezeworts for maximum efficiency?

And the second question, what is the best way to cool oxygen from my Electrolyzer and water from the Cool Steam Vent so they keep my base at an ideal temperature (=safely below 30)?

Thanks in advance!

First thing to ask is what is the major source of heat in your colony?

Generally, spreading 3-4 wheezeworts around strategic locations around your base can solve all your cooling needs if you isolated major heating locations, and there is no need for any aqua tuners and such.

Wheezeworths have enough cooling power to overcome heat from things like toilets and kitchens.

For example, a classic mistake is not isolating your generators, batteries and transformers in an insulated room, as those typically generate the most heat in a colony, and if you keep them open, by cycle 200 you will start having heat issues.

 

 

[Saturnus]

Another thing that some forget. When planning your base make sure things that generate heat early in the game, like batteries coal generators, and especially research stations/supercomputers are placed at the top of the base and things that need to stay cool, like farms, is placed at the bottom. The starting water is about 20C which if you collect it all and keep it in an insulated tank at the bottom will provide an enormous buffer if used wisely. Just remember it doesn't last forever, well the water probably will but the temperature of it won't, so make sure that you plan for a longer term cooling solution for that.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, Storm Engineer said:

So first question: How to optimize wheezeworts for maximum efficiency?

The best way I've seen to optimize wheezeworts for early game is simply place them throughout the base next to heat sources, like the grill, generators, and hot material storages.

Mid to late game, after I've completed my oxygen coolant system (explained below) I use them in a pressurized hydrogen room with radiant pipes to cool water or other liquids.

1 hour ago, Storm Engineer said:

And the second question, what is the best way to cool oxygen from my Electrolyzer and water from the Cool Steam Vent so they keep my base at an ideal temperature (=safely below 30)?

This is actually two separate problems. First is the oxygen cooling system. I made a topic on this a while ago, and it holds strong even now, but I'll summarize.

The main cooling system is radiant pipes (can be granite early game) with cool water that is heat sinked with an external thermal aquatuner. If you keep the water at a nice 20^oC, the pipes snaked through the water will keep it perfectly temperature controlled. There are further details and screenshots in the linked topic above. None of this requires refined metal, though it becomes much improved and efficient later if you do.

The above build can be run with only half of it active, to save power, and the aquatuner rarely runs. It takes very little power to sustain with the hydrogen generator running, but does require some external power to maintain cooling.

 

As for the second part, cooling a steam vent to get it to condense, I route the polluted water from my latrines/sinks into granite (or radiant) pipes in a large sealed box around the vent. With a small amount of automation, I shunt the pH2O to a sieve when the pH2O in the pipes reaches above 70^oC, which produces 40^oC of germy clean water. Since this water isn't used for food directly, it doesn't matter.

With the oxygen cooling system, you really don't need to moderate the steam vent water lower than it's condensing point, as one wheezewort will keep an entire latrine cool from piped hot water.

This method isn't perfect, and can be optimized by rerouting the 40^oC sieve output to provide more condensation, or you could use the -10^oC pH2O from a slush geyser, etc.

[InternetGuy]

I'm actually just planning on cooling water using the new water reservoirs beside wheeze worts. Seeing this though makes me want to backout on it.

[Saturnus]

4 minutes ago, InternetGuy said:

I'm actually just planning on cooling water using the new water reservoirs beside wheeze worts. Seeing this though makes me want to backout on it.

Cooling water with gas is a very long term prospect so yeah. Best bet is to find a slush geyser and just use an efficient heat exchanger.

[Neotuck]

5 minutes ago, InternetGuy said:

I'm actually just planning on cooling water using the new water reservoirs beside wheeze worts. Seeing this though makes me want to backout on it.

I don't think that works, from what I've seen reservoirs don't exchange heat from outside sources

[crypticorb]

9 minutes ago, InternetGuy said:

I'm actually just planning on cooling water using the new water reservoirs beside wheeze worts. Seeing this though makes me want to backout on it.

That will take hundreds of cycles. I tried this a very long time ago with a hydrogen loop and cooling with every wheezewort on a map, high pressure hydrogen, radiant pipes (granite pipes where all we had when I first tried this). It took 20 cycles to drop water a single degree for a 5x5 space.

[InternetGuy]

9 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I don't think that works, from what I've seen reservoirs don't exchange heat from outside sources

 

8 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

That will take hundreds of cycles. I tried this a very long time ago with a hydrogen loop and cooling with every wheezewort on a map, high pressure hydrogen, radiant pipes (granite pipes where all we had when I first tried this). It took 20 cycles to drop water a single degree for a 5x5 space.

Well, definitely not doing it now. Rip. I guess I'll go with electrolyzer and carbon skimmer use for that vent then. Thanks, guys.

[Neotuck]

I usually only use reservoirs as a buffer to pervent pipes from backing up

Or for killing germs

[crypticorb]

10 minutes ago, InternetGuy said:

Well, definitely not doing it now. Rip. I guess I'll go with electrolyzer and carbon skimmer use for that vent then. Thanks, guys.

It's still a viable method for condensing steam, with wheezeworts, hydrogen, and radiant pipes. It just doesn't work well on water because liquids are 1000x as dense as gas, and steam/water isn't terribly conductive.

[InternetGuy]

2 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

It's still a viable method for condensing steam, with wheezeworts, hydrogen, and radiant pipes. It just doesn't work well on water because liquids are 1000x as dense as gas, and steam/water isn't terribly conductive.

Alright. I'll use that idea for a future powerplant then. :3

 

[crypticorb]

11 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I don't think that works, from what I've seen reservoirs don't exchange heat from outside sources

 

[Storm Engineer]

Lot of replies in a short time, so I'll get to the key points:

I want to cool the water for internal use (eg hydroponic farms, toilets, sinks etc.) and NOT for the Electrolyzer. The pipe branches off into the Electrolyzer but running 80 degree water to my Bristle Blossom farms is not an option...

Condensation of the steam happens on its own, I have no issue with that. But I have 90+ degree water.

Since Water Sieves do not remove germs, the steam went is my sole source of germ-free clean water.

And as said I don't have much power (still on coal, which is not ideal, but I don't have anything better.) so using aqua-tuners is out of the question.

 

And by optimizing wheezeworts I meant how to get the most cooling out of them, not where to place them.

I had some packed in a small room with 2k Hydrogen per block but they aren1t doing too well. Someone told me I need to space them out with free blocks around them and use more Hydrogen but I couldn't find proper info on this.

[Zarquan]

The air in the colony can be quite hot without causing any problems as long as the farm is cool (<30 C).  I only cool the farms until late game.

In the early game (before I find a cold biome), I pipe oxygen through the water and to the farms if I am having any troubles.  I also sweep up any hot material in the farms, as that increases the heat of the air.  The water is around 20-25 C, so it will.  If I have the tech, I use radiant gas pipes at the farms and in the water.  I also keep the hot stuff, like coal generators and research, far away from the farms.  This option can take no power, as a bridge can force oxygen to move along.

I put wheezeworts around the farm when I get them.  This works quite well in the early mid game.  You will have to keep an eye on it in case it cools too much and make sure they are in ventilated areas so that they always have good pressure on the lower tiles.

After a while, I build a hydrogen room with wheezeworts in it and loop hydrogen around the base.  It can be quite effective, but be sure to put automated doors under your flower pots to turn off the wheezeworts when it gets too cold.  I forgot in my last base and my farms froze.  If you use this approach, be sure not to run the piped on the lower tile of the plant, as that is where the plant object is.  I then add petroleum when I get it.

All of these options take a finite amount of energy to set up and no power later.

[crypticorb]

1 minute ago, Storm Engineer said:

Lot of replies in a short time, so I'll get to the key points:

I want to cool the water for internal use (eg hydroponic farms, toilets, sinks etc.) and NOT for the Electrolyzer. The pipe branches off into the Electrolyzer but running 80 degree water to my Bristle Blossom farms is not an option...

Condensation of the steam happens on its own, I have no issue with that. But I have 90+ degree water.

Since Water Sieves do not remove germs, the steam went is my sole source of germ-free clean water.

And as said I don't have much power (still on coal, which is not ideal, but I don't have anything better.) so using aqua-tuners is out of the question.

Your options seem limited. I'd recommend getting a hatch/coal ranch started, because you'll run out of coal otherwise. It's a good source of food in case bristle blossoms fail. Make one for coal, and one for eggs/meat.

You have three options without an aquatuner:

1. Ice. Pump hot water into a box, and build as many ice sculptures as you can immersed in water. Use cooled water for farms.
2. Find an Anti-Entropy Thermo-Nullifier, and use radiant/granite pipes into the water to cool it. Not ideal, as it's slow and relies on a constant source of hydrogen and long setup time.
3. Find a slush geyser. Pipe the freezing pH2O through radiant/granite pipes into a separate box of hot water to cool it.

Until you get a strong power system in place, you'll be hurting for power, and an aquatuner is your only realistic method of bringing hot water to reasonable temperatures at any sustainable rate.

[Zarquan]

15 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

I want to cool the water for internal use (eg hydroponic farms, toilets, sinks etc.) and NOT for the Electrolyzer. The pipe branches off into the Electrolyzer but running 80 degree water to my Bristle Blossom farms is not an option...

You could pull this off with careful use of valves I believe.  Limit the bristle blossoms to exactly what they need and there won't be much heat transfer before the water is consumed.  Though the amount is 33.333333333 g/s, which can't be covered exactly.  This would need to be coupled with a rather robust cooling system to compensate.

15 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

And as said I don't have much power (still on coal, which is not ideal, but I don't have anything better.) so using aqua-tuners is out of the question.

Coal is fine for much longer than it used to be.  You just need hatch ranches.  I run on coal for quite a while now.  I recommend going for stone hatches, as they can consume igneous rock.  Or sage hatches, that have a 1:1 conversion rate.

15 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

And by optimizing wheezeworts I meant how to get the most cooling out of them, not where to place them.

I had some packed in a small room with 2k Hydrogen per block but they aren1t doing too well. Someone told me I need to space them out with free blocks around them and use more Hydrogen but I couldn't find proper info on this.

Is the room pure hydrogen?  There should be no gases other than hydrogen in the room. 

Hydrogen is the best option for wheezeworts, as they destroy 12 kJ of heat per second (or kDTU, whatever a DTU is).  But they have to be only in hydrogen.

[Storm Engineer]

The aquatuner doesn't remove heat though, it emits it back around it so it's not a real solution because I'll have to cool teh aquatuner too.

[crypticorb]

3 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

The aquatuner doesn't remove heat though, it emits it back around it so it's not a real solution because I'll have to cool teh aquatuner too.

This is true, but far easier to solve than you think.

Early to mid game, you'll have to drain/dump large quantities of polluted water from swamp biomes and latrines. Who cares what temperature it is, so long as it's not near the base?

Sink the aquatuner into the massive pool of polluted water, and all your coolant problems are gone.

 

Edit: For perspective, I'm at cycle 368 and have made tons of refined metal, have multiple aquatuners, a glass forge, and other heat sources sinked into this one pool of pH2O and it's only raised it by about 10^oC.

[Zarquan]

Also, you can pipe germy water to the bristle blossoms.  They don't care and they won't get germy.

[0xFADE]

Right now you just have to exploit the current game mechanics of things that   disregard the input heat on output. 

Hot water to plumbing and electrolyzers,  polluted water through filters then cooled further.

it isn’t too much of an issue. If they fix all of them without giving us good cooling options early bases will all heat death pretty fast. 

[Storm Engineer]

Alright, there were many ideas here so I have plenty to think about now.

Let me ask another question then: What kind of electricity should I move to from coal?

I have a natural gas near my base, and that should also give me germ-free polluted water as byproduct.

I also have two hot steam vents around me! But I've heard steam turbines are crap right now and don't wort the effort. Is that true?

[InternetGuy]

2 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

Alright, there were many ideas here so I have plenty to think about now.

Let me ask another question then: What kind of electricity should I move to from coal?

I have a natural gas near my base, and that should also give me germ-free polluted water as byproduct.

I also have two hot steam vents around me! But I've heard steam turbines are crap right now and don't wort the effort. Is that true?

Next to coal power, I would pick the natural gas but natural gas vents seem to be unreliable as a source of continuous use. If you're running one generator though, I think it'll be feasible even if it's running continuously depending on the kind of natural gas vent you have. If all else fail, I use the runoff power from the infinite power from electrolyzers using a hydrogen generator. Not so reliable source of power but it is self sustaining if set up properly.

For steam turbine, they're tricky to use. Been working a way to use volcanoes. On paper, the calculation does hold up that it's a very feasible power source. Still have to test.