What is the best approach for air conditioning?

[Cipupec2]

I am building my dupes a central air cooling unit, but still undecided on the exact the approach and setup specifics, any tips?

 

Usually I use this sort of setup for precise cooling:

But this time I am wondering if maybe there is way to use some sort of thermo regulator setup, if only for the cool graphics, for example:

or the common setup I use for precise cooling:

 

any suggestion on which is the better approach before I start  

[Neotuck]

try building flower pots on top of horizontal mech doors

you can then automate the wheezie by opening and closing the doors

[Mullematsch]

I usually just pump really cold oxygen in the base and if the base is colder than x, I will bypass the cooling chamber (usually wheezeworts) and just send the hot oxygen in the base to heat it up again. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've used thermo regulators before, but they're power hungry.  Of course, if you have lots of power, then go for it.

[Cipupec2]

22 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I've used thermo regulators before, but they're power hungry.  Of course, if you have lots of power, then go for it.

I am conflicted, I don't have many wheezworts left nor enough ceramic to extend a cooling loop to my AETN devices, and atm I am still not flush with power :/  

25 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

try building flower pots on top of horizontal mech doors

you can then automate the wheezie by opening and closing the doors

Unless you are really short on refined metals, which I am not, the solution i sketched above would be preferable as you get same level of control, but with much larger cooling capacity i.e. you don't turn off the wheezies (your finite and free resource) but disconnect the cooling chamber.

 

[Neotuck]

4 minutes ago, Cipupec2 said:

wheezies (your finite and free resource) but disconnect the cooling chamber.

define finite

[thejams]

3 minutes ago, Cipupec2 said:

I am conflicted, I don't have many wheezworts left nor enough ceramic to extend a cooling loop to my AETN devices, and atm I am still not flush with power :/  

Unless you are really short on refined metals, which I am not, the solution i sketched above would be preferable as you get same level of control, but with much larger cooling capacity i.e. you don't turn off the wheezies (your finite and free resource) but disconnect the cooling chamber.

 

That just means that the Wheezeworts will stifle and turn off themselves eventually.  The total heat destroyed and transferred is the same for both systems (unless you cool down something else with the same wheezeworts so you are slightly better optimized).

[Cipupec2]

It means that such system can use less Wheezeworts and able to deal with larger heat spikes faster. But lets not get derailed.

[PhailRaptor]

2 minutes ago, Cipupec2 said:

It means that such system can use less Wheezeworts and able to deal with larger heat spikes faster. But lets not get derailed.

Pretty sure Neotuck was referring to obtaining Wheezeworts from the Ice destinations in space.

Sounds like you were referring to the per-Wheezewort heat dissipation rate.

[thejams]

1 hour ago, Cipupec2 said:

It means that such system can use less Wheezeworts and able to deal with larger heat spikes faster. But lets not get derailed.

Well it is your thread, but that is just simply not true 

[Cipupec2]

Here is the pro/con list: (anything I missed?)  

Thermo Regulators

* Can be researched early on and require basic materials.
* Cheap to setup but power hungry to operate.
* Really simple to set up, with set effects. 
* Compact.
* Pretty.

Cooling Room
* Have more research prerequisite and need access to Wheezeworts and refined materials.
* Can be costly to setup but much more power efficient in the long run.
* Can be very tricky to setup and account for every scenario.

Thermo regulators seem like great solution early on, or for remote hub of the base or simply as easy or quick fix but I think I would like to try the more efficient approach and being in the late game and flush with gold I can afford it. The problem is that I only ever employed the cooling loop for specific setups which required little precision, mean while here I am strugling to figure out a way to cool down the air to comfortable temps and maintain high rate of flow. 

Also is there any way to prevent pumps from working when a pipe section is full ?  I think that splitting a pipe to use a small buffer could work but need to test it. 
 

7 hours ago, thejams said:

that is just simply not true 

Sure it is. By turning off Wheezeworts you are wasting its potential, which means that your average heat dissipation rate will be lower, and thus your system will need more Wheezeworts to remove the same amount of heat from the system. Also without a cooling room (think "cold" battery) you'd need to have more Wheezeworts than your peak load or have flow stifled, while with it you only need more than average load.  

Obviously the effects of this can vary from build to build depending on the input (e.g. geysers often idle ~50% of the time, which can amount to huge difference), your specific setup (e.g. you can use buffers to minimize these) and your needs (you might have more Wheezeworts that you'll ever need ) but bottom line turning off Wheezeworts is net loss and that for me this aspect of the setup has virtually no bearing on the topic of the thread

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Once I get back home I'll show you my AETN-Oxygen production device. It works a charm.

[thejams]

25 minutes ago, Cipupec2 said:

Sure it is. By turning off Wheezeworts you are wasting its potential, which means that your average heat dissipation rate will be lower, and thus your system will need more Wheezeworts to remove the same amount of heat from the system. Also without a cooling room (think "cold" battery) you'd need to have more Wheezeworts than your peak load or have flow stifled, while with it you only need more than average load.  

Both systems can only destroy as much heat as there is heat to destroy.  The maximum flow is 1000g/s of 70°C oxygen, so if you want to cool it down to 20°C you need to destroy 50.250 DTU/s.  The only difference is your system will cool down to -60°C before WW turn themselves off and @Neotucks' system will turn them off at around 20°C.  On the long run, both systems will turn off the same amount of WW the same amount of time.

Both systems can store cooling somewhere, be it lower temperature gas or high heat capacity objects like tempshift plates.  Also for the cooling of oxygen as is the OT, there will be absolutely no difference between the systems in any aspect, as there will be no large heat spikes.

There can be benefits in your system as it can store a lot more cooling, just not for this particular use.

[Sasza22]

1 minute ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

Once I get back home I'll show you my AETN-Oxygen production device. It works a charm.

I use something along those lines. Producing oxygen next to the AETN and pumping cold oxygen to my base.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Just now, Sasza22 said:

I use something along those lines. Producing oxygen next to the AETN and pumping cold oxygen to my base.

Exactly what I meant.

[DMFan79]

I'd like to add that if you insulate your base properly, you can also put wheezeworts around to keep it cool without resorting to using other methods.

[crypticorb]

Everyone keeps saying use wheezeworts, thermo-regulators, or an AETN, but there's a better way. Water.

If you don't care about the oxygen part, just look at the middle of this build. This is the source of my cooling.

That pool of water has the 40^oC oxygen from the electrolyzers run through it with radiant gas pipes. The liquid, which can be water or oil or anything, is circulated to an aquatuner, which cools the water packets by 15^oC whenever the thermo sensor you see above is tripped. This averages out with the entire pool, bringing it back down.

The aquatuner is exactly 2x as power efficient as the thermo regulator. It moves 10x the mass, but at 1/2 the power draw per kg. This method allows me to keep my base perfectly temperature controlled, as the water can be precisely controlled and the gas moving through it is distributed to the entire base.

Edit: I should note that the total average daily power use of the liquid pump and aquatuner is negligible. Once the water is brought to the desired temp, it takes a lot for it to change.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, DMFan79 said:

I'd like to add that if you insulate your base properly, you can also put wheezeworts around to keep it cool without resorting to using other methods.

Only if you have a ton of wheezeworts and aren't generating much power or using the metal refinery.  I don't understand these builds using 25 wheezeworts for cooling; I only ever seen to find half a dozen of them.

 

Thermo regulators suck.  You want an aquatuner on a closed loop of polluted water as coolant, cycling around a room full of polluted water to act as a heat buffer/transfer.  Then run other pipes you need to cool through there, like your oxygen coming out of the spom, or another closed loop of polluted water circling around the base.  You can use a valve and a packet combiner to limit the average amount of cooling the aquatuner does while making sure that when it does switch on, it processes a full packet for maximum efficiency.

5 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Everyone keeps saying use wheezeworts, thermo-regulators, or an AETN, but there's a better way. Water.

If you don't care about the oxygen part, just look at the middle of this build. This is the source of my cooling.

That pool of water has the 40^oC oxygen from the electrolyzers run through it with radiant gas pipes. The liquid, which can be water or oil or anything, is circulated to an aquatuner, which cools the water packets by 15^oC whenever the thermo sensor you see above is tripped. This averages out with the entire pool, bringing it back down.

The aquatuner is exactly 2x as power efficient as the thermo regulator. It moves 10x the mass, but at 1/2 the power draw per kg. This method allows me to keep my base perfectly temperature controlled, as the water can be precisely controlled and the gas moving through it is distributed to the entire base.

Edit: I should note that the total average daily power use of the liquid pump and aquatuner is negligible. Once the water is brought to the desired temp, it takes a lot for it to change.

Pretty much what I was talking about, though you want to use polluted water instead of clean water so it doesn't freeze in the aquatuner.  Also the aquatuner is more like 5x more efficient since water has much higher specific heat than oxygen.

[thejams]

@crypticorb & @psusi - well cooling oxygen from a spom is one of the rare circumstances where WW are optimally usable.  You are already producing hydrogen and piping it to the generators, so it's extremely easy to fill the room and add the required 4-5 WW to get 20°C oxygen output for 0 power use, which is quite important early game.  That's why IMO a simple door controlled oxygen cooling solution is where WW shine.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

5 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Everyone keeps saying use wheezeworts, thermo-regulators, or an AETN, but there's a better way. Water.

If you don't care about the oxygen part, just look at the middle of this build. This is the source of my cooling.

That pool of water has the 40^oC oxygen from the electrolyzers run through it with radiant gas pipes. The liquid, which can be water or oil or anything, is circulated to an aquatuner, which cools the water packets by 15^oC whenever the thermo sensor you see above is tripped. This averages out with the entire pool, bringing it back down.

The aquatuner is exactly 2x as power efficient as the thermo regulator. It moves 10x the mass, but at 1/2 the power draw per kg. This method allows me to keep my base perfectly temperature controlled, as the water can be precisely controlled and the gas moving through it is distributed to the entire base.

Edit: I should note that the total average daily power use of the liquid pump and aquatuner is negligible. Once the water is brought to the desired temp, it takes a lot for it to change.

Hmm, I do like the power efficiency (although an AETN is much more power efficient). You'd still need to implement something ultimately to delete the heat generated by the aqua tuner as the tuner, just like the regulator, only moves around the heat. When cooling gasses I think the regulator did a good enough job concerning the amount of heat it moves. I think ultimately the only benefit regarding normal air conditioning would be the power efficiency. Of course when things go crazy with for instance oil cooking, just thermo regulators will likely be insufficient.

My advice would be to use petroleum as the coolant for the aqua tuner and have the petroleum vaporize (polluted) water and use that for a steam turbine to delete the heat and have a bit extra power efficiency.

[clickrush]

In my new base I use almost all the cooling techniques available with the exception of dumping materials into space.

There are three different cooling methods that all share the same principle: They destroy heat. The main difference is in potency and scalability.

(almost) unscalable cooling:

AETN: 80kW per POI

Wheezewort: 12kW per Flower Pot (submerged in hydrogen)

These methods are almost unscalable because they are weak in comparison to other methods and on top of that you have a fixed number of AETNs and Wheezeworts (you can gather them with Rockets but at this point you don't very likely don't care about them anymore).

They are both very popular beause they are the easiest/cheapest to set up cooling builds that don't even require heat moving methods such as an aquatuner or regulator and they require (almost) no continuous material conversion/usage.

I'am using the Wheezewort technique like @Cipupec2 and @Neotuck. I placed it between the industrial and the living area to support my other cooling methods. The room isn't finished yet as I didn't pump in hydrogen nor gathered enough WW to fill it.

semi scalable cooling with fixed temperature output buildings:

I only list the two most usable:

Water Sieve: max. 326kW per 1kg/s Polluted Water

Oil Refinery: max. 553kW per 1kg/s Oil

These two methods are already much more potent and scalable. I call the semi scalable because you are only going to produce so much polluted water or oil. The sieve method is super popular because it is easier to set up than the oil refinery method and most importantly a closed loop, if you just use it for toilets/basins/showers/skimmers.

Typical PH2O sieve loop. Currently it destroys very little to no heat because it isn't sealed off and my base is also cooled by other methods.

super scalable cooling:

Space Dump: almost infinite, restricted by the amount of materials you can afford to destroy.

Steam Generator: almost infinite, restricted by the amount of Steam Generators you can fit on the asteroid.

These are the most potent and are best used for cooling high heat output buildings, oil boilers, oxygen/hydrogen condensers etc. Using a space dump is only recommended if you have a very large reservoir of stuff that you want to get rid of or if you have large surplus geyser outputs but is as simple to set up as the semi scalable methods.

The Steam Generator is the hardest to set up method because it requires quite a bunch of refined materials such as plastic, refined metals, steel, ceramic etc. And you need to build and prime it properly. But once it runs it will often generate surplus power.

I'am using a build I first saw here on the forums that uses a light gas to push down the steam and tiles below the generators to create a stronger suction. This build is *very* potent and I have redundant cooling power here. The aquatuner made out of steel is cooling my whole industrial area to about 45°C (including all the mid game refinement such as glass, multiple kilns and multiple polymer presses etc.) and is moving petroleum which can easily be water but I wanted to play it safe first. I will definitely exchange the coolant to cool it down even further.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

Hmm, I do like the power efficiency (although an AETN is much more power efficient). You'd still need to implement something ultimately to delete the heat generated by the aqua tuner as the tuner, just like the regulator, only moves around the heat. When cooling gasses I think the regulator did a good enough job concerning the amount of heat it moves. I think ultimately the only benefit regarding normal air conditioning would be the power efficiency. Of course when things go crazy with for instance oil cooking, just thermo regulators will likely be insufficient.

Polluted water on its way to the sieve/toilet loop is a good way to delete heat earlier in the game.

1 hour ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

My advice would be to use petroleum as the coolant for the aqua tuner and have the petroleum vaporize (polluted) water and use that for a steam turbine to delete the heat and have a bit extra power efficiency.

Yes, this is great later in the game, though there is on reason to use polluted water for this.  You only need to prime the system with some fresh, hot water from a steam vent then it's self sufficient.  It's quite a bit more complicated and takes a good bit of automation though.  I'm still tweaking my design.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, clickrush said:

semi scalable cooling with fixed temperature output buildings:

I only list the two most usable:

Water Sieve: max. 326kW per 1kg/s Polluted Water

Oil Refinery: max. 553kW per 1kg/s Oil

These two methods are already much more potent and scalable. I call the semi scalable because you are only going to produce so much polluted water or oil. The sieve method is super popular because it is easier to set up than the oil refinery method and most importantly a closed loop, if you just use it for toilets/basins/showers/skimmers.

Something to note here: you can actually double dip the cooling capacity of the oil refining method. You can heat the crude oil before running it to the refinery, and then heat the petroleum before burning it in a petroleum generator.

 

1 hour ago, clickrush said:

super scalable cooling:

Space Dump: almost infinite, restricted by the amount of materials you can afford to destroy.

Steam Generator: almost infinite, restricted by the amount of Steam Generators you can fit on the asteroid.

These are the most potent and are best used for cooling high heat output buildings, oil boilers, oxygen/hydrogen condensers etc. Using a space dump is only recommended if you have a very large reservoir of stuff that you want to get rid of or if you have large surplus geyser outputs but is as simple to set up as the semi scalable methods.

The Steam Generator is the hardest to set up method because it requires quite a bunch of refined materials such as plastic, refined metals, steel, ceramic etc. And you need to build and prime it properly. But once it runs it will often generate surplus power.

A bit of a problem with the steam generator, it only deletes heat above 250^oC. You can't really delete heat above this threshold, as the generator will stop running.

Most people know this, but I thought it worth mentioning before someone invests a large amount of resources into it.

[Segato]

Since we are talking about cooling, whats better for a radiator?

Air pipes with Hidrogen or 

Liquid pipes with Petroleum (I think thats the coolant everybody uses) 

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

Liquid is always better.  You have a much higher density of mass to carry the heat energy around than you do with gas.  At best, with hydrogen in gas pipes, you can carry 1kg/s.  With, say, water, you've got 10kg/s  -- and that's not counting the difference in SHC.  Water is about 4 while hydrogen is about 2, so a pipe of water can carry 20x the cooling potential as a pipe of hydrogen.