What is the best approach for air conditioning?

[crypticorb]

18 minutes ago, Segato said:

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) 

Petroleum works best if you don't have space coolant. Liquid radiator pipes though... those are expensive, as they require 25 refined metal per section. You can get away with standard granite pipes, but if you're trying to use wheezeworts, you're better off with just gas radiator pipes filled with hydrogen, as they require unrefined ore. Wheezeworts are gas cooling only anyways, they take forever to cool liquid unless you have 30-50 of them.

Once you have enough power to run an aquatuner, and enough refined metal, definitely upgrade to radiant liquid pipes, for the reasons @KittenIsAGeek outlined. Eventually you'll need to build something that cools liquid, for farms or other more advanced builds like LOX or LH2.

[Neotuck]

7 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Petroleum works best if you don't have space coolant. Liquid radiator pipes though... those are expensive, as they require 25 refined metal per section. You can get away with standard granite pipes, but if you're trying to use wheezeworts, you're better off with just gas radiator pipes filled with hydrogen, as they require unrefined ore. Wheezeworts are gas cooling only anyways, they take forever to cool liquid unless you have 30-50 of them.

Once you have enough power to run an aquatuner, and enough refined metal, definitely upgrade to radiant liquid pipes, for the reasons @KittenIsAGeek outlined. Eventually you'll need to build something that cools liquid, for farms or other more advanced builds like LOX or LH2.

I keep wheeze warts under my main PW tank with a metal tile between the two (see pic near the beginning of the thread)

All my cooling is done by aquatuners in the PW, works so well that I had to build a tempidizer in the PW to keep it balanced.

[crypticorb]

6 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I keep wheeze warts under my main PW tank with a metal tile between the two (see pic near the beginning of the thread)

All my cooling is done by aquatuners in the PW, works so well that I had to build a tempidizer in the PW to keep it balanced.

How deep does that pool get?

Once I'm done draining 2-3 swamp biomes, I get a 25x10 or larger pool of polluted water, so deep I had to reinforce the base. It's always so large that I've never had to worry about how much heat I sunk into it, even on maps that were scarce for water sources.

The again, it isn't about how large your heat sink buffer is, it's about how much input vs output thermal energy. Even 20+ wheezeworts doesn't seem like it would be enough to negate most heat sources mid to late game, though.

[Neotuck]

12 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

How deep does that pool get?

Once I'm done draining 2-3 swamp biomes, I get a 25x10 or larger pool of polluted water, so deep I had to reinforce the base. It's always so large that I've never had to worry about how much heat I sunk into it, even on maps that were scarce for water sources.

The again, it isn't about how large your heat sink buffer is, it's about how much input vs output thermal energy. Even 20+ wheezeworts doesn't seem like it would be enough to negate most heat sources mid to late game, though.

Considering I have 2 sieves and pump 10kg/s out it hasn't gotten very deep.  I have had to automate the pump to prevent it from drying up

[Cipupec2]

7 hours ago, crypticorb said:

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

Nice setup. Essentially it is a mix of the methods above, using radiator submerged in water as heat exchanger, with aquatuner instead of wheezeworts/AETN to remove heat from the system.

Thanks for posting a screenshot, as it made me realize the simple solution to my problem here, the water pump in the middle! Being a cheap bastard I have overlooked it in favor of the low power solution of door separated cooling rooms, which works fine for most industrial applications but rather unwieldy, costly, and imprecise way of cool a large body of water evenly.

I am still going to use AETN though

9 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.

I use wheezeworts extensively, but I always end up using a central Air cooling for my insulated main living hub, with good placement you avoid the pockets of cold/hot air. Here is how it looks in my current game (its not finished yet but you get the gist of it):
 

Spoiler

 

9 hours ago, thejams said:

[...]

It's like arguing that these two are the same.." 
 

Spoiler

Bottom line you are either using more wheezworts or your system is less optimal. Sure under perfect condition your system will have similar performance but it will never be better. IMO the real benefit of the setup you are using is that its can be cheaper to setup for high throughput systems (due to the doors low conductivity and or high cost) and possibly that late space game when you have too many wheezworts its just simpler to setup, overkill for the win! (nothing wrong with that, I also over kill sometimes e.g. my current cooling station would be able to deal with ~40dupes though I only need for ~12. Why?! because I can! ) 

[Yoma_Nosme]

11 hours 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 :/  

Try to build your first electrolyzer setup near a cold biome or next to it...then reroute the oxygen pipe through the ice biome and build some radiant pipes at the bottom of the ice biome before it goes to the base...

2 benefits...you will cool your oxygen for free for at least 100cycles and melt some ice that turns to cool ph2o that will stay at the bottom where your radiant pipes are...this makes this ~100cycles efficient. Another plus... If you melt ice you don't lose mass like when you dig

[clickrush]

1 hour ago, Segato said:

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) 

 

To add to @KittenIsAGeek petroleum is only used instead of water/polluted water because of its temperature range, but water and polluted water are more powerefficient coolants because the aquatuner removes a fixed amount of temperature from each packet it gets.

[Cipupec2]

On 10/29/2018 at 4:42 PM, clickrush said:

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.

I think I know the build you are referring to, iirc it looked slimmer, like this:

Which you expanded with additional air shafts on opposite side, extra tiles and few other variations, is it due to connivance or performance issues?  (I am considering using a variant of 4th one, with tuner)

[clickrush]

11 hours ago, Cipupec2 said:

I think I know the build you are referring to, iirc it looked slimmer, like this:

Which you expanded with additional air shafts on opposite side, extra tiles and few other variations, is it due to connivance or performance issues?  (I am considering using a variant of 4th one, with tuner)

You should definitely build a 2 tile high gap above the turbine. It was known to delete gases when the gap is only 1 or less tiles high.

The more bottom tiles you block the less heat gets removed. I tried different variants and I'am personally not a fan of blocking tiles anymore. First of all because I build steam generators mainly to cool things down and secondly I feel like it becomes overpowered (!) with the tiles blocked. It seems like something to be fixed soon either by having a proportional power conversion or by simply not allowing blockage.

Note that the gas trick to push down steam is intentional. Earlier versions of the turbine required homogenous steam, until they changed it to allow other gases, thus allowing us to use this simple mechanic to run the turbine.

[Evillevi]

On 10/30/2018 at 12:21 AM, crypticorb said:

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.

 

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.

Nooo....

Steam Generators then to get stupid levels of cooling only after you get super coolant and Thermium since it allows for you to very quickly and massively transfer heat for a steam gen to destroy,.. 

[Cipupec2]

6 hours ago, clickrush said:

You should definitely build a 2 tile high gap above the turbine. It was known to delete gases when the gap is only 1 or less tiles high.

yeah a remember this specifically being tested a while back. 

6 hours ago, clickrush said:

The more bottom tiles you block the less heat gets removed. I tried different variants and I'am personally not a fan of blocking tiles anymore. First of all because I build steam generators mainly to cool things down and secondly I feel like it becomes overpowered (!) with the tiles blocked.

yeah, after posting I run a quick test with the two shaft variant and that exactly the result I got. Since I am still not swimming in obscene amounts of solar power etc space magic that suits me just fine.

On 10/29/2018 at 6:21 PM, crypticorb said:

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.

I think you meant above 237C and that you can delete heat bellow that treshold. 

[crypticorb]

Just now, Cipupec2 said:

I think you meant above 237C and that you can delete heat bellow that treshold. 

You're correct, that was a typo.

The technical threshold is 237C, but hours of tinkering with designs showed that anything below 250C will result in the turbine struggling to spin up, with more downtime than production.

 

2 hours ago, Evillevi said:

Nooo....

Steam Generators then to get stupid levels of cooling only after you get super coolant and Thermium since it allows for you to very quickly and massively transfer heat for a steam gen to destroy,.. 

Why would steam turbines be limited to space materials?

You can create a very effective metal refinery heat reclaimer mid game by simply using granite/radiant pipes with petroleum. The threshold of the steam turbine's minimum temperature (250^oC) and petroleum's maximum temperature before boiling is (538^oC) is plenty to work with for a refinery/turbine cooling loop.

All you need is an effective way to move the steam from top to bottom. Thermium and supercoolant are only really needed if you need to move insane amounts of heat and destroy it, such as for LOX or LH2 systems.

[Evillevi]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

You're correct, that was a typo.

The technical threshold is 237C, but hours of tinkering with designs showed that anything below 250C will result in the turbine struggling to spin up, with more downtime than production.

 

Why would steam turbines be limited to space materials?

You can create a very effective metal refinery heat reclaimer mid game by simply using granite/radiant pipes with petroleum. The threshold of the steam turbine's minimum temperature (250^oC) and petroleum's maximum temperature before boiling is (538^oC) is plenty to work with for a refinery/turbine cooling loop.

All you need is an effective way to move the steam from top to bottom. Thermium and supercoolant are only really needed if you need to move insane amounts of heat and destroy it, such as for LOX or LH2 systems.

As I said, "Stupid levels of cooling... "

You can quite literally Freeze your base with super coolant +  Thermium if you really wanted to that said I misread your post so ti's a little off topic. 

[Cipupec2]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

You're correct, that was a typo.The technical threshold is 237C, but hours of tinkering with designs showed that anything below 250C will result in the turbine struggling to spin up, with more downtime than production.

Simply use memory toggle. Set Rest to bellow 237 and active to above ~275. That would guaranty a smother ride particularly if you running with weak or inconsistent heat source (I use these also in my Electrolizer setup and get 1000g packets much more consistently.)

Spoiler

 

 

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, Cipupec2 said:

Simply use memory toggle. Set Rest to bellow 237 and active to above ~275. That would guaranty a smother ride particularly if you running with weak or inconsistent heat source (I use these also in my Electrolizer setup and get 1000g packets much more consistently.)

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

That would definitely help with a threshold-based system like electrolyzers, but there really isn't any consequence for a steam turbine in the "struggling" stage, it simply won't produce power until enough heat is dumped into the system. Unless the noise of it toggling between operational and spinning up is annoying, I can't really think of a need for fine control when the turbine is below temperature.

I'll definitely be using that dual-threshold toggle in my crude/petroleum boiler though.

[Cipupec2]

32 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

there really isn't any consequence for a steam turbine in the "struggling" stage

I didn't know this, I assumed that it wasn't generating power at this stage, regardless I do find that spinning up noise annoying and prefer to have as smooth operation as possible.