Steam engine

[kudos]

I know I'll get a lot of flack for asking how to maximize a steam turbine, but hear me out.  Everything works great and I even figured out how to door pull the steam.  With lower quantities of water, the atmo sensor works just fine.  However, I can get a lot more power (600+ Kj) by adding more water to cycle into the equation.

 

Problem is the pressure is too much for the atmo sensor to toggle on / off.  

 

What other ways can I use to cycle the doors?  I'm dealing 300+ kg of steam if that's relevant .  Any help is appreciated. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

Without seeing your build, its hard to say what you're doing with doors.  Are you:

1. Using the doors to transfer heat into the system?
2. Using doors to pump steam?

If you're doing #1, you can use a temperature sensor underneath the steam generator.  If the temperature is over X, put more water in.  

If your'e doing #2, then use logic to continually rotate the doors.  Atmospheric sensing isn't necessary.

If there's some other reason you're using doors, then please let us know so we can help you out.

[kudos]

I'm using option #2.  I was using atmo to sense the steam and start the door pump.  I'm basically ask how to start the door rotation without steam, I'll try to get a pic in a sec.

[JukedByLife]

1 hour ago, kudos said:

I'm using option #2.  I was using atmo to sense the steam and start the door pump.  I'm basically ask how to start the door rotation without steam, I'll try to get a pic in a sec.

As KittenIsAGeek mentioned, there is no reason not to run the door pump continuously. If I remember correctly, the basic automation for a door pump is buffer-filter-buffer-not

[suicide commando]

Instead of using a cycling loop to run the doors, you can also use a pulser to initiate a door opening sequence. This is what I use for my door compressors.
To do this, you hook up a BUFFER gate in a cyclic set up with a NOT gate. ( Buffer out -> NOT in, NOT out -> Buffer in )

This will generate an 'ON' pulse every X seconds ( as defined by the buffer ) on the NOT out.

You can then send this to a series of BUFFER gates for the door opening sequence

[kudos]

5 hours ago, suicide commando said:

Instead of using a cycling loop to run the doors, you can also use a pulser to initiate a door opening sequence. This is what I use for my door compressors.
To do this, you hook up a BUFFER gate in a cyclic set up with a NOT gate. ( Buffer out -> NOT in, NOT out -> Buffer in )

This will generate an 'ON' pulse every X seconds ( as defined by the buffer ) on the NOT out.

You can then send this to a series of BUFFER gates for the door opening sequence

Well that's a new trick.  This indeed worked.  And now the final problem that I just realized I had. Kind of embarrassing to say, but I thought you could use conductive wiring made from steel to run in the steam room, out to a transformer (based on some youtube video I saw).  Then heavy watt wire that into my batteries and such.  It's not working.  Do I just need to run a heavy watt through one tile and deal with the heat loss? 

 

 

[JukedByLife]

11 minutes ago, kudos said:

Well that's a new trick.  This indeed worked.  And now the final problem that I just realized I had. Kind of embarrassing to say, but I thought you could use conductive wiring made from steel to run in the steam room, out to a transformer (based on some youtube video I saw).  Then heavy watt wire that into my batteries and such.  It's not working.  Do I just need to run a heavy watt through one tile and deal with the heat loss? 

1

The wire is not connected to the battery going to the rest of your grid. Also, you have the turbine connected to the batteries connected to the transformer then connected back to the turbine, it is currently doing nothing.

Edit: You don't need to to use steel for the wires, iron will work fine. Also, that volcano will eventually overpressurize and you will need to dig it out.

[thejams]

@kudos Set it up like this:

Turbine ==>> (high) Transformer (low)  ==>> Power Backbone (Heavy Watt) ==>> (high) Transformers (low) ==>> Consumers

[kudos]

Something to point out, that last screenshot was where I screwed some things up to confirm how I wasn't getting any power.  I should have shown the screen shot BEFORE I did that.  It was steel conductive wire to low transformer to hi transformer to heavy watt.  However I do see what thejams said and I'll give it a go.  Thanks all for the input, been trying to make this work for like 2 weeks.  It's been fun working on all this.

[SkunkMaster]

Why not just condense the water instead ? much more simple.

 

I use a condenser in all of my turbine builds, and i have 3 in my current colony.

[kudos]

And now something to add, wires burnt out try to do the setup thejams stated.  

@JukedbyLife I have been manually digging it out, havent figured out how to automate that section.  

 

 

[crypticorb]

28 minutes ago, SkunkMaster said:

Why not just condense the water instead ? much more simple.

 

I use a condenser in all of my turbine builds, and i have 3 in my current colony.

What do you mean by a condensor? Are you somehow cooling the steam above the turbine into water, then pumping it beneath the turbine and reheating it to steam?

Seems wasteful, but I'll hold my criticism until I see the design, you've piqued my curiosity.

[SkunkMaster]

6 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

What do you mean by a condensor? Are you somehow cooling the steam above the turbine into water, then pumping it beneath the turbine and reheating it to steam?

Seems wasteful, but I'll hold my criticism until I see the design, you've piqued my curiosity.

While yes it does require a little more power, it is also much more reliable and scale able. And it's, in my opinion, more fun then using doors or hydrogen, or some other gimmick solution ,to making the turbines work.

[crypticorb]

1 minute ago, SkunkMaster said:

While yes it does require a little more power, it is also much more reliable and scale able. And it's, in my opinion, more fun then using doors or hydrogen, or some other gimmick solution ,to making the turbines work.

Well now I really want to see it, either screenshot or drop a save file.

[SkunkMaster]

I'll warn you, the save will most likely not run on your rig if your rig is not up to date

Pipedream Asteroid.sav

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've done something similar to this in the past. Don't have one set up in my current base, but they generally work really well.

[SkunkMaster]

5 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I've done something similar to this in the past. Don't have one set up in my current base, but they generally work really well.

i have a closed loop turbine build for power. 5 turbines, 4 tuners and 1 tepedizer. powers 80% of my base... rest i get from my rocket driven turbines...

Hydrogen rocket = sicko amounts of heat - no joke

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, SkunkMaster said:

I'll warn you, the save will most likely not run on your rig if your rig is not up to date

Pipedream Asteroid.sav

My laptop must be better optimized than I thought, I can run your base at 15-20FPS with zero issues at fastest speed, though it did take forever to load.

I like the steam turbine build. If I'm picking apart the system elements correctly, it uses an aquatuner(s) to cool liquid to condense the steam at the top, and sinks that heat from the aquatuner into circulating liquid for the bottom turbines. Does that sound correct?

It's a decent design, but I have a few questions:

1. Is the single iron volcano enough to keep it running continuously, or often enough to be worthwhile?
2. Do the turbines run enough to keep the aquatuners actively circulating? Even while the volcano is dormant?
3. Does it produce enough power to do more than power itself? I'm thinking using a metal refinery to add heat as well as a volcano.

I may give this design a try, though your use of supercoolant is prohibitive to early construction. It might be possible with petroleum, but I'll have to redesign it somewhat to make it work. I like your idea because it avoids all use of gimmicks or exploits such as door pumps or gas fighting.

[kudos]

2 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

Why not just condense the water instead ? much more simple.

 

I use a condenser in all of my turbine builds, and i have 3 in my current colony.

I was working on that at first. But ran into problems when I couldnt figure out how to drop water past the steam turbine tiles.  I then thought the door method would be interesting as I could figure out the automation and I really wanted to push using less power.  I kinda figured out the power situation, but someone else may have another method.  I simply tied the turbine to heavy watt, which ran through insulated tile.  I ran some tile along the heavy that came out so to minimie heat loss. It's firing up fine.

 

 

 

[SkunkMaster]

Super coolant is a must. but the amounts are very limited. i think 3-4 rocket trips are enough to atleast put together the heaters. 

 

if you lack the patience to farm more super coolant for the bigger loops, then you can instead increase the amount of loops and fill them with petrol.

 

The turbine build in the left of the map is fresh, and i had to do some minor modifications to have it run more optimal. - see safe if interested.

 

All 3 turbine builds run reliably, but the closed system, the one in the middle of the surface area, on the right of the rocket silo, is THE turbine build. That one is the one i use for power.

 

The copper cano was a late addition. - and i added it so i could cool it with the turbines, more then it could help me heat the system.

See pics for proof.

 

 

Pipedream Asteroid.sav

[kudos]

What's going on with gimmick discussion.  I'm not following?

[crypticorb]

3 minutes ago, kudos said:

What's going on with gimmick discussion.  I'm not following?

You asked in the original post about other methods to move steam from top to bottom.

@SkunkMaster's method is to condense the steam and reheat it beneath the turbine using supercoolant and an aquatuner, with a volcano for heat to make it power positive.

[SkunkMaster]

Actually the volcano is not needed. hence it's positive even while the volcano is dormant for 70 cycles.. the one with copper dosen't even interact with it... check temp changes while it's active.. 

[crypticorb]

Just now, SkunkMaster said:

Actually the volcano is not needed. hence it's positive even while the volcano is dormant for 70 cycles.. the one with copper dosen't even interact with it... check temp changes while it's active.. 

It's power positive without external heat? Is this because the aquatuners heating the steam above 250C consumes less power than the turbines reclaim?

hmmmmmmmmm

I doubt Klei will let us have infinite power generation forever.

[SkunkMaster]

16 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

It's power positive without external heat? Is this because the aquatuners heating the steam above 250C consumes less power than the turbines reclaim?

hmmmmmmmmm

I doubt Klei will let us have infinite power generation forever.

Yes, the aquatuner + tepedizer create positive power. That is correct.