I present to you, the Thermal Annihilator!

[wachunga]

The two of you are failing to see the bigger picture. Turbines are now trivially easy to run with steel aquatuners. Reducing the heat required would make it trivially easy to get infinite power and break any sort of balance in the game. Before they were gated by the relative difficulty/scarcity of 227+C steam. Now the only thing holding them back is the absurd amount of heat required. Klei foolishly painted themselves into a corner with the steel/niobium/thermium change.

[suicide commando]

Well tbh, I don't think the heat is much of an issue, the issue is more the pressure IMO. having a smaller pressure difference or some other means that more heat is extracted from less material would be good I think. The main problem with the turbine to be useful is to be able to keep it running/pressured. The spinning up part along with the large amount of steam it needs without blockage make this very difficult.

 

[Saturnus]

I predict we'll see a nerf of the steam turbine to produce either a fixed 1000W output, or let the power production scale with the flow rate with each vent (as in bottom tile) blocked reducing the power produced by 20%. The same mechanics is already used with solar panels.

It won't stop or diminish the usability to delete heat but it will make it at least power negative (in most cases) to do so.

[suicide commando]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

I predict we'll see a nerf of the steam turbine to produce either a fixed 1000W output, or let the power production scale with the flow rate with each vent (as in bottom tile) blocked reducing the power produced by 20%. The same mechanics is already used with solar panels.

It won't stop or diminish the usability to delete heat but it will make it at least power negative (in most cases) to do so.

Very possible, and quite likely. It sounds like the best solution in general although this means it's no longer a real power system, but a cooling system instead that gives power as an afterthought.

 

[psusi]

10 hours ago, Iriswaters said:

And that's just one bloody steamer.  Any steamer.  The thing is a hole in spacetime into which energy just vanishes.  Your dupes looked at the anti entropy thermo- nullifier and said

Hold my beer

[clickrush]

7 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I predict we'll see a nerf of the steam turbine to produce either a fixed 1000W output, or let the power production scale with the flow rate with each vent (as in bottom tile) blocked reducing the power produced by 20%. The same mechanics is already used with solar panels.

It won't stop or diminish the usability to delete heat but it will make it at least power negative (in most cases) to do so.

I hope they do the scaling thing or simply don't allow blocking anymore. It seems super unintuitive to block the inputs in order to generate more power.

8 hours ago, wachunga said:

The two of you are failing to see the bigger picture. Turbines are now trivially easy to run with steel aquatuners. Reducing the heat required would make it trivially easy to get infinite power and break any sort of balance in the game. Before they were gated by the relative difficulty/scarcity of 227+C steam. Now the only thing holding them back is the absurd amount of heat required. Klei foolishly painted themselves into a corner with the steel/niobium/thermium change.

I like your observations about the first part here and fully agree. But I don't think this change was foolish we very much wanted a powerful cooling solution that doesn't rely on fixed temp material conversion right? I can't even imagine how we'd cool some of the rocketry tech w/o this now. LOX which you don't warm up again, liquid hydrogen and extremely hot stuff that comes out of rockets and touches your silos.

Also building steel aquatuner plus steam turbines is quite expensive so it feels balanced. The tile blocking trick is out of whack though.

[Iriswaters]

Talking about it being trivially easy to produce infinite power when it requires large amounts of supercoolant, thermium, and using either door pressure pumps or liquid cover over-pressure vent exploits to do, and even then is a beast to get right, is kinda silly.

It is a tricky thing, because it advertises itself as a power source.  So most people initially look at it as a power source, a way to generate some extra power(2 kW is a solid chunk of power) off either their waste heat, a volcano, or maybe... Hey I need to make a bunch of heat to get to space don't I?

The problem is the heat it requires, without the vent blocks, is more heat than you're ever going to need to be rid of.  And the only reason things can't be lowered is,  not it's own power output which barely covers its own operation, but the absurdly overpowered nature of super coolant.

It's the ridiculous specific heat of super coolant and the weird physics of the aquatuner, shifting temperature by degrees rather than by DTUs, that causes the imbalance and the possibility of infinite power.  NOT any issue with the steamer.  Or with thermium or steel.

I feel like it's either supercoolant, or aquatuners, or both, that need the nerf.  And that the steamer needs a -buff-,  since it is only their broken mechanics that make the steamer even viable.  Without that specific dynamic, it's very nearly useless even -with- the vent trick.

Or they could just rename the thing into a Steam Powered Thermal Annihilator, and have it produce no energy at all, so newer players stop looking at it as a power source, and rogue engineers stop trying to figure out how to use it to make zero point energy.

[Nickerooni]

12 hours ago, wachunga said:

Because you are abusing the blocked input bug. You should be clear that what you are presenting only works because of a bug that is likely to get fixed at some point. Without the bug abuse, you will need at a minimum 5.3 super coolant aquatuners and 20 gas pumps running constantly.

Where does the 5.3 come from?

If you assume no wasted heat in the system, 10kg/s of steam is cooled from 228 degrees to 150. You get some breathing room while the turbine is spinning down, but for that you’d need hotter steam. Let’s give the calculation some breathing room and say 250 degrees to 150. That’s 4.179 MDTU/s. A fifth of that if you block ports, of course.

An aquatuner removes 14 degrees of heat from 10kg/s of coolant. Isn’t it 8.8 SHC? That’s 1.232 MDTU/s. Less than 4 are needed. And, the turbine is more efficient if it cycles up to full power and turns off, so you could likely do better with 2 with some automation.

The OP actually gains some efficiency with respect to pumping costs by chaining the steam turbines. And then loses some by probably requiring higher input temperatures for the fixed temperature outputs - to keep things running. Door pumps would make the steam turbine chaining do nothing of value.

 

[Iriswaters]

It definitely does not have fixed temperature outputs.  Using over pressurized vents and 500C steam, I stacked 5 steam engines without any appreciable loss of efficiency.  Just needs the bottom chamber to be super heated and pressurized to 300kg before things start.

But even with 1 vent on one steam engine, the heat loss seems far higher than is predicted.

It is really hard to tell exactly what is going on, because the engine itself is very heat conductive, and transfers heat from bottom to top.

[Saturnus]

7 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

It definitely does not have fixed temperature outputs.  Using over pressurized vents and 500C steam, I stacked 5 steam engines without any appreciable loss of efficiency.  Just needs the bottom chamber to be super heated and pressurized to 300kg before things start.

The output steam is exactly 425K. No more, no less. Confirm this by running the reverse where you use a chlorine clamp to keep the turbine running and actively cool the steam. If you cool the steam below 425K the steam turbine will heat it up to exactly 425K and if you heat it up above 425K the steam turbine will cool the steam down to exactly 425K.

However, the steam turbine is made of metal and will immediately heat up the output steam by transferring heat from the steam below the steam turbine, so what you have is a false conclusion to a correct observation.

[Nickerooni]

38 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

But even with 1 vent on one steam engine, the heat loss seems far higher than is predicted.

You lose 3.5 times more energy in that first steam turbine compared to my calculations. The turbine exchanges heat increadibly well with the input side. Even with one vent. I’m not sure if it’s boosted artificially when it’s running. I feels like it, but I doubt it.

In any case, when you chain turbines, your second turbine’s steam input is heated entirely through this artifact. Chaining turbines lets you get away with moving less steam vs running them in parallel, but your reliance on hot initial inputs and conductivity to reheat the steam really kills the efficiency.

[Iriswaters]

Huh.  Ok.  Well that changes my calculations somewhat.  That's a lot less heat annihilated, unless you -want- more.  And lets you get rid of a truly ridiculous amount if desired.

I'm now picturing a stack with heaters at each level, set to shut off over 228C.  They would fire off in succession, but supply pretty steady power and cooling.   There the heat conductivity of the engine is actually a plus.

Or yeah, door pumps.  They just feel so messy though.

This all does explain the wildly different numbers people have been getting for "how much heat is destroyed?", since it is entirely dependent on the input.

[Nickerooni]

I assume your doing all the extra work with chaining turbines to avoid the simple door pump solution? Why is it messy? I’ve also avoided them in my designs, but they don’t seem messy. Just hacky.

i like the idea of heating the steam at each interval to minimize recirculating. It’s actually not so challenging to construct either. It’s a great way to minimize steam throughout! I doubt you’ll be able to get the optimal 228 solution, but if it can be done at 250 or 260, that ain’t so bad.

20 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

HuhOr yeah, door pumps.  They just feel so messy though.

 

[Iriswaters]

Idk, it just feels inelegant. I guess hacky, but...

Ok, for real though I think it it's because it's a well established hack that I learned about by reading about it, instead of stumbling onto it by playing around with values.  Getting handed a pre made solution that seems to break the rules feels like cheating, whereas building your own workaround that happens abuse goofy elements of the game feels like ingenuity.

So if I'd been the one to come up with the door pumps myself, or reinvented the wheel without a tutorial, or even been involved in talks like this when it was being developed I would feel differently.

[Nickerooni]

You should try a condensation solution. That’s a fun one with room for exploration. And, your idea has merit. I’m gonna combine it with my condensation solution! Tons of diamond might be good enough.

[Iriswaters]

Started trying to build it in sandbox, stepped away after realizing each separate thermoregulator was going to need its own separate infinite plumbing loop(an example of something I stumbled into myself, so feel ok with despite it being well established and definitely a hack) to supply its own separate stream of coolant.   They are a bit of a pain to make and mean I have to rebuild a bunch and was fustrarated.

The problem with condensation is that whole conductivity of the engine issue.  Though maybe using a layer of chlorine?  A chlorine clamp as Saturnus put it?

[Nickerooni]

1 hour ago, Iriswaters said:

The problem with condensation is that whole conductivity of the engine issue.  Though maybe using a layer of chlorine?  A chlorine clamp as Saturnus put it?

A gold turbine transfers a bit less heat due to its lower SHC. That gets you an extra 10 degrees lower output steam. Then, you can cool it further by using the hot output steam to reboil the condensed water. That way, the remaining cooling should be achievable with a single aquatuner. That works up to about 6kg/s throughput, in practice, for my builds - which is why the chained steam turbines may work so well. As long as you have at most 2-3 of 5 running on average.

[Iriswaters]

I built a chain of 5, using gas pumps and a single thermoregulator below each, each with its own coolant loop pushed through a bath of hot coolant(for testing purposes, it creates a huge heat store to play with).

The result is that it is definitely very much energy positive.  But it wheezes and groans like crazy.  That 75-100C temp drop at 2kg/s isn't easy to recoup. Every time an engine kicks over, there is a stall before things get going again as the sudden cooling propogates. It produces energy, but only while operating, and it is only operating occasionally.

 

  I feel like I want like 3 regulators at each level.  Which sounds like it won't be energy positive, but they won't be running full time, or even close.  The total amount they run won't change, just the speed at which they change the local heat environment.

Also I'm unsure that blocking steam vents reduces the amount pulled by a full 1/5 each.

 

And finally, the idea that this is 'free infinite energy' is a little weird.  It is turning heat into energy.  You still need to get the heat from somewhere.

Once I work out the bugs on this, I'll try a condenser.  I'll probably use a layer of chlorine to separate the engine and the condensation chamber, since it sinks and has super low heat conductivity.  

 

Not sure what you mean by allowing the steam to reboil the condensed.  Like heat exchange tiles to balance the cool water and hot steam?

[Nickerooni]

I don't think you need to actually heat each steam turbine level. Maybe a heat transfer loop with supercoolant. Or just cram it full of diamond thermal shift plates and a few well-placed thermium shift plates. Make the heat transfer work for you! Something like the attached image. As far as I can tell, this outputs an average 1000W (eg. half a steam turbine over the course of a cycle), but only requires an input steam at ~250 degrees. This is interesting, since the steam throughput per watt is cut by a fifth. This massive structure is equivalent to a steam turbine that generates 400W, but only uses steam 2 kg/s. Exactly the turbine people have been asking for :).

As for the condensation cooling loop - see: 

 

[Iriswaters]

Ok, done! 

So, my creation is a quad stack, with 3 aquatuners per level, using 4 gas pumps and over-pressure vents(ie: liquid overpressure exploit).  The tuners are set to run if the temp drops below 230C.  The pumps only run if the pressure goes above 5kg. 

End result:  Over the course of one day, the steamer produced 2524.8 gross kj and the total for the system was a net 1233 kj. 

Assuming that covering the vents results in reducing the amount processed in 2 kg increments, a steamer with 4 blocked produces 2 kj and processes 2kg of steam per sec, meaning 1 kg per kj.  Handy that, makes the math easy.  With it dropping the temp very nearly exactly 75C, that is:
2524*4.179*75*1000

Or 791M DTU.   Or 1,318,000 DTU/s to produce 2kW/s

Switching over to condensation or door pumps would give me up to 400 kJ more per day(that's how much the gas pumps are eating.  Surprisingly they eat almost half as much as the tuners!).   Or an extra 666W of power.  Since the condensation requires some heat loss, requiring more heating at the first set of tuners, there is some power loss that is going to occur, but not power loss per DTU. 

And at some point it becomes a question of Watts per DTU, since there is a finite amount of cooling that is really physically possible.

23 minutes ago, Nickerooni said:

As far as I can tell, this outputs an average 1000W (eg. half a steam turbine over the course of a cycle), but only requires an input steam at ~250 degrees. This is interesting, since the steam throughput per watt is cut by a fifth. This massive structure is equivalent to a steam turbine that generates 400W, but only uses steam 2 kg/s. Exactly the turbine people have been asking for :).

Hmm.   But what is your steam source? 

[Nickerooni]

23 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

Hmm.   But what is your steam source? 

My steam source is 260 degree big bin of 1000kg steam per tile. I didn't do the whole condensation setup, since I know how that works :). Plus, it's taken 20 cycles for the last of steam turbine to start running even. The next turbine won't run until it hits a backpressure scenario.

I'm just heating it with a pipe of supercoolant that enters at 300 degrees and exits at 260 degrees. That's much supercoolant carries 3.3 MDTU/s. Almost 3 aquatuners. I'm not saying that I'm producing 1000W for 3.3 MDTU/s. The system hasn't stabilized. I'm just saying that it's not hard to pipe in a lot of heat on your steam source.

I'm not sure how you'd automate such a monstrosity. You can't just turn it off like a hydrogen generator. I don't think so anyway.

Looking at more reports, it looks like the 250-255 degree steam keeps this thing running at about an average of 2000W. But, even a cycle isn't enough to keep the output steady. Therefore, this system is exactly the same as a single steam generator with one tile blocked!!! Very cool! And it's not that much bigger. Just 16 tiles taller.

[Lifegrow]

Just, one point i'm confused about here - where are you heating your coolant that allows your aquatuners to run in the first place ?

Have you played with supercoolant yet as an actual coolant? It's very effective... I'm curious what in the heck you could sink all that cold energy into  

 

[Nickerooni]

Just now, Lifegrow said:

Just, one point i'm confused about here - where are you heating your coolant that allows your aquatuners to run in the first place ?

Have you played with supercoolant yet as an actual coolant? It's very effective... I'm curious what in the heck you could sink all that cold energy into  

 

It's the new externality. Too much cold!

But seriously, One iron volcano should power this, no? Isn't the heat output of that around 3 MDTU/s? Fill the base of the the iron volcano with petroleum, like you did with your gold volcano. Then, circulate supercoolant to a nearby massive turbine thingy. Insulated ceramic circulating 300 degree supercoolant heats to only 40 degrees, so you could run it pretty far if you needed. And, if you only get 1 MDTU/s from the volcano. That's still 800 W. That's the same as a nat gas geyser :).

[Lifegrow]

1 minute ago, Nickerooni said:

It's the new externality. Too much cold!

But seriously, One iron volcano should power this, no? Isn't the heat output of that around 3 MDTU/s? Fill the base of the the iron volcano with petroleum, like you did with your gold volcano. Then, circulate supercoolant to a nearby massive turbine thingy. Insulated ceramic circulating 300 degree supercoolant heats to only 40 degrees, so you could run it pretty far if you needed. And, if you only get 1 MDTU/s from the volcano. That's still 800 W. That's the same as a nat gas geyser :).

I cool my gold volcano with a single aquatuner that runs intermittently. I'm honestly a little confused by what you're working on  

[Thanatos994]

4 minutes ago, Nickerooni said:

 

I'm not sure how you'd automate such a monstrosity. You can't just turn it off like a hydrogen generator. I don't think so anyway.

That's actually a fascinating point, and one that plays out in real life. All electric grids irl are fed by steam- nuclear/coal/oil/whatever, steam is the final step before electricity, and those generators take a long time to spin up or down to max efficiency. The solution in theory is to have 0 downtime using parallel generators that use energy storage such as batteries to keep overflow from being wasted, and then that stored energy isn't used until above average production is required, with the result, in theory, that you dont need to build generators that feed your max wattage but rather only your average wattage. A perfect grid in ONI could almost work this way since we have ways of storing energy near losslessly (not via batteries: thermally, by putting steam in a vacuum-sealed abyssalite-insulated room, which allows 0 heat transfer; although there would be energy loss when heating the steam since the conversion to heat energy isn't perfect).

 

Now you've filled my head with dreams of a closed-system automated steampunk power grid gdi... there goes another hundred hours of my life xD