Aquatuner - Pipe Cold Damage WHY???

[Mullematsch]

This keeps happening in all my aquatuner designs. Results in me getting water in my liquid which might turn into steam and it annoys the living **** out of me.

What is going on here - the water should never be >0. Happened after auto-save, maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[Yunru]

Is it occasionally reducing water to <0?

Because that'll break the pipe.

[Zarquan]

The thermo sensor filter isn't working right because the system is backed up.  You need to keep the water moving to have a system like that work.  I saw a packet of 3.9 C go back to the aquatuner at around 16 seconds.  It probably wasn't the only one.

Also, if you are going to upload a video of a broken system, could you not run it at high speed?  It makes it hard to diagnose.

[Mullematsch]

7 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Is it occasionally reducing water to <0?

Because that'll break the pipe.

I am aware of that (water >0 = pipe damage) but in my mind, the water should never get to that temperature. 

 

2 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

The thermo sensor filter isn't working right because the system is backed up.  You need to keep the water moving to have a system like that work.  I saw a packet of 3.9 C go back to the aquatuner at around 16 seconds.  It probably wasn't the only one.

Also, if you are going to upload a video of a broken system, could you not run it at high speed?  It makes it hard to diagnose.

So if the system backs up, the sensor does not work? Why would that be. Also pipe damage happens like once every 20 cycles. I would imagine it would happen more often if that would be the problem. 

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, Mullematsch said:

So if the system backs up, the sensor does not work? Why would that be. Also pipe damage happens like once every 20 cycles. I would imagine it would happen more often if that would be the problem. 

The reason is that the sensor turns off the shutoff for one second (game time), giving the water time to pass.  If the system is backed up, then the cold packet that tripped the sensor could be stuck on the input of the valve.  Then, if the next packet is warm enough to un-trip the sensor, the shutoff valve will open and let the cold water through.

I recommend you create an overflow vent that will dump excess water.  Or perhaps build an overflow detector that can turn off the system if there is too much water.  The vent is easier.  Basically, stop the water if there is too much or make sure the water never stops flowing. 

I don't know why it would only happen occasionally.  Maybe the water isn't backed up the rest of the time and this only happens every once and a while.  Or perhaps it takes around 20 cycles to get to the point where it is backed up.  Perhaps your intake is also sometimes cold?  But that seems unlikely to me.  I only can see what is in the video.

I think you should watch the water in the outflow pipe in the prior 20 cycles to see if it is creeping back.  I also recommend you upload a save with this system if you think this isn't the only problem.  Then I (or someone else) can diagnose any other problems.

[Evillevi]

Try pressing the {Above} button in your liquid sensor and setting the temp to be 21C. I think it's activating when it's below 17 C which feeds back into the aquatuner and subsequent freezing below zero if there's not enough hot water in the backlog above to keep it above 20C (17- 20). 

[Mullematsch]

4 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

The reason is that the sensor turns off the shutoff for one second (game time), giving the water time to pass.  If the system is backed up, then the cold packet that tripped the sensor could be stuck on the input of the valve.  Then, if the next packet is warm enough to un-trip the sensor, the shutoff valve will open and let the cold water through.

I recommend you create an overflow vent that will dump excess water.  Or perhaps build an overflow detector can can turn off the system if there is too much water.  The vent is easier.  Basically, stop the water if there is too much or make sure the water never stops flowing. 

I don't know why it would only happen occasionally.  Maybe the water isn't backed up the rest of the time and this only happens every once and a while.  Or perhaps it takes around 20 cycles to get to the point where it is backed up.  Perhaps your intake is also sometimes cold?  But that seems unlikely to me.  I only can see what is in the video.

I think you should watch the water in the outflow pipe in the prior 20 cycles to see if it is creeping back.  I also recommend you upload a save with this system if you think this isn't the only problem.  Then I (or someone else) can diagnose any other problems.

I play around with it some more and see if I can find a fix and pinpoint the problem. Appreciate the help. This happens to me all the time I would imagine it is easy to reproduce the problem and not save specific.

3 minutes ago, Evillevi said:

Try pressing the {Above} button in your liquid sensor and setting the temp to be 21C. I think it's activating when it's below 17 C which feeds back into the aquatuner and subsequent freezing below zero if there's not enough hot water in the backlog above to keep it above 20C (17- 20). 

If the water is above x it goes back into the system if it is below it means it's cold enough and can leave the loop. Aquatuners cool by 14 so in theory setting it at 15 should work.

I had the same problem in the past even with <20 so that is not that problem. Sometimes the sensor + shutoff does not work and I have not been able to figure out why. 

[Evillevi]

4 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

I play around with it some more and see if I can find a fix and pinpoint the problem. Appreciate the help. This happens to me all the time I would imagine it is easy to reproduce the problem and not save specific.

If the water is above x it goes back into the system if it is below it means it's cold enough and can leave the loop. Aquatuners cool by 14 so in theory setting it at 15 should work.

I had the same problem in the past even with <20 so that is not that problem. Sometimes the sensor + shutoff does not work and I have not been able to figure out why. 

Err correct me if I'm wrong, but in the video the sensor activates if water is < 17 C? And if at any point the water fulfill that condition it goes back into the system to be recycled does it not? So if the Aquatuner outputs 3C water, it's going to resend that water into the aquatuner to be coooled to below Freezing. 

A more effective way is to set up the filter/sensor  before it enters the Aquatuner to prevent excessively cold water from entering. and a secondary pipe to send said excessively cold water to wherever you want. 

So from beginning to end my proposed set up is 

1)Sensor detects if water is above 15/C

2) If yes filter is turned on and water is sent to the aquatuner which loops the water back to (1)

(3)if no filter is turned off and water is sent to wherever. 

Mind sending me the save if at all possible. 

[Mullematsch]

Playing with this some more the problem seems to have nothing to do with the aquatuner design itself. It messes up if the output pipe is backed up so just disabling the aquatuner if the output is backed up (element sensor + filter gate into not gate) seems to be working!

 

29 minutes ago, Evillevi said:

Err correct me if I'm wrong, but in the video the sensor activates if water is < 17 C? And if at any point the water fulfill that condition it goes back into the system to be recycled does it not? So if the Aquatuner outputs 3C water, it's going to resend that water into the aquatuner to be coooled to below Freezing. 

A more effective way is to set up the filter/sensor  before it enters the Aquatuner to prevent excessively cold water from entering. and a secondary pipe to send said excessively cold water to wherever you want. 

So from beginning to end my proposed set up is 

1)Sensor detects if water is above 15/C

2) If yes filter is turned on and water is sent to the aquatuner which loops the water back to (1)

(3)if no filter is turned off and water is sent to wherever. 

Mind sending me the save if at all possible. 

If the water is above 17 it goes back into the loop. If it is below 17 it will leave the loop and not go into the aquatuner again. 

Checking for the temperature before it goes into the system is only necessary if your input water would ever be below 14 which is not the case for me since it is hot water from the geyser.

 

[Evillevi]

Ahh okay, i forgot what the highlight for the temp sensor looked like. 

Then yeah you'll need to clear the pipe since it's probably slowing down the flow rate and making your water packet missed a particular opening or closing of the filter. 

[Nitroturtle]

1 hour ago, Mullematsch said:

I had the same problem in the past even with <20 so that is not that problem. Sometimes the sensor + shutoff does not work and I have not been able to figure out why. 

Had this exact same issue myself.  Pass-through shutoff valves, meaning one where it can either go in the valve or bypass, do not work correctly if either line backs up.  You need to use bridge priorities to have the liquid be able to always keep flowing.  Ultimate, it needs to bridge back into your feed line in the event a backup, which will cause a small loop to continue to cycle until the blockage clears up.

I got rid of the aquatuner altogether and built this monstronsity which is cooling 90 degree water to about 3 degrees.  All you need is a few hundred wheezeworts and a masters degree in piping priorities. 

Spoiler

 

[KidWobble]

Same issue, always on the exit of the aqua tuner.. it might be the incoming packets from the bridge and are coming in too cold and then dropping below the break point of the wolframite upon exit. I raised my incoming packet size in the liquid valve to 3000g/s so there's less cold water bridging back. Seems to be holding and still getting 6..6 C packets coming out.

[Capsup]

9 hours ago, KidWobble said:

Same issue, always on the exit of the aqua tuner.. it might be the incoming packets from the bridge and are coming in too cold and then dropping below the break point of the wolframite upon exit. I raised my incoming packet size in the liquid valve to 3000g/s so there's less cold water bridging back. Seems to be holding and still getting 6..6 C packets coming out.

This is a different problem altogether. Your feedback loop isn't working right, because you're always mixing half/half between the incoming hot water and your aquatuner output due to your pipe joint on the input of the aquatuner. The bridge placement matters.

A proper feedback loop makes use of the output of the bridge to prioritize incoming hot water over the output cold water, allowing you to precisely manage how much you want to scale up the cooling factor of the aquatuner on the water, as defined by the input valve. Here's what you want it to look like: 

Doing this, you can precisely configure the output water temperature as long as your input is fairly stable. In the case above, the input valve is set to 3800 because 10000 / 3800 * 14 = 36.84 degrees and as you can see, the output is 40 (because sieve) - 36.8 = 3.2 degrees cold. This loop can never fail, as long as the following assumptions remain true:

• the input temperature is stable enough - the range for this depends mostly on how big your throughput is
• the output pipe is not backed up
• input is never empty

[PhailRaptor]

On 10/18/2018 at 12:37 AM, Capsup said:

Doing this, you can precisely configure the output water temperature as long as your input is fairly stable. In the case above, the input valve is set to 3800 because 10000 / 3800 * 14 = 36.84 degrees and as you can see, the output is 40 (because sieve) - 36.8 = 3.2 degrees cold. This loop can never fail, as long as the following assumptions remain true:

• the input temperature is stable enough - the range for this depends mostly on how big your throughput is
• the output pipe is not backed up
• input is never empty

So....  I'm looking at this and wanting to modify it for my bathroom loop, and ideally to integrate the Infected P-H2O Geyser I have at the edge of my starter biome.  Struggling to wrap my head around how to get that to work.  The "constant" flow of the bathroom loop would then be added to by the Geyser's eruption volume.  Those together would be the Polluted input you have in the top left, which would then be sucked back up by the pump after collecting heat from the Aquatuner.  That combined flow would go for Sieving, to then return for Aquatuning.  But...

I'm assuming "Optional water input" is not a required piece for this to function, right?  It's just there in case you have extra water you want to feed in for cooling?  And about the ending through-put, which is the source of the tooltip.  Since the volume of liquid in that pipe segment matches the setting you described on the Valve, I would then assume the final output of the cooling loop would be strictly regulated by the rate set on the Valve, correct?  I wouldn't be cooling as far as you are here, so my Valve would have a higher flow rate, correct?

Also, what sensor is that on the pipe?  And what, if anything, is it connected to?  It's not that kind of Valve...  Is it the Aquatuner, to make sure it's only running if there's liquid in the pipe?

[Capsup]

On 10/25/2018 at 7:41 AM, PhailRaptor said:

I'm assuming "Optional water input" is not a required piece for this to function, right?  It's just there in case you have extra water you want to feed in for cooling?  And about the ending through-put, which is the source of the tooltip.  Since the volume of liquid in that pipe segment matches the setting you described on the Valve, I would then assume the final output of the cooling loop would be strictly regulated by the rate set on the Valve, correct?  I wouldn't be cooling as far as you are here, so my Valve would have a higher flow rate, correct?

Yes and yes. I personally use the optional water input because I primarily want to cool water from a Cool Steam Vent and just use the sieve whenever the water is too hot.

The output of the loop matches the input on the valve due to Science! (math, but I digress). I've seen you posted the formula here so I'm not gonna go deeper into that.

On 10/25/2018 at 7:41 AM, PhailRaptor said:

Also, what sensor is that on the pipe?  And what, if anything, is it connected to?  It's not that kind of Valve...  Is it the Aquatuner, to make sure it's only running if there's liquid in the pipe?

It's just a band-aid fix to one of the requirements: "the input pipe cannot dry up". It's just an element sensor that goes directly to the aquatuner, meaning it shuts off when there's no more water to cool. It's not a good solution because the feedback loop takes a couple of seconds to stabilize, but it's better than freezing packets.

If you want a solution that mostly solves those requirements, you can look to my 2-Input source and automated Aquatuner Feedback Loop instead. I can't remember if I've fixed the few bugs that exist on that build or not and haven't played since before rocketry-upgrade V1, but I actively work with these builds myself on new worlds. I'm about to build the above on my current world soon, so I'll get back and re-do the pictures once I test the new buildings and such.