I accidentally made a Self Powering(?) Steel Refinery (SPSR?)

[Deustodo]

so I usually when I set up my steel factory, I have the extremely hot Crude Oil go to Refinery so it can go from 390ºC to 75º at the cost of half of its mass. 

 

However,

This time I thought:
HMMMM.... What if instead of sending that hot stuff somewhere to get destroyed, I send it somewhere else to be "cooled" down and then sent back to the Metal Refinery... so I made this:

 

Spoiler

The original idea was just to use it as cooling for the crude oil and get some power as bonus. so for the sake of just want it to cool stuff, I added 4 steel pumps so the pressure keeps stabilized. 

 

Spoiler

HOWEVER

I noticed that after a few cycles that my... main power source? of the Refinery was never being used, the idea was that the steam turbine would give it a boost, since M. Refinery is 1.2 kw and with the 4 pumps the Turbine is producing a net of 1.04 kw.

So I noticed that the downtime of the Refinery, that is, the time a dupe has to wait until the building has a minimum of 400kg of a liquid to function, combined with the heat harnest from the crude oil, was making it... well... power itself. And that was BEFORE I added an automation so I don't waste power.

Because come on.
 

Spoiler

At first it was like: Okay Steam Turbine, you are actually running. That's cute.

After a few cycles of still running the whole thing: Okay Dude, you can stop now, you are making too much power and I didn't build any automation for that.

5 cycles later: Can you maybe chill? 
Steam Turbine : HOW ABOUT MAYBE YOU CHILL? I'm COMING IN HOT, BRINGING THE HEAT

So let me tell you how this thing actually works and what not, because so far all I did was wasting your time telling a story.

Decided to change the liquid from Crude Oil to Petroleum, mainly because Oil boils at 400ºC and Petroleum at 538º.
Back when I was using crude oil, to avoid the Refinery busting the pipe with 401+ ºC Crude oil, I added an element sensor right at the end, disabling the Building and making sure the output to be empty before the next batch. The sensor (so far) is not necessary while using petroleum, the machine never manages to boil the petroleum.

One tile ahead, there is a thermo sensor, set to Above 300ºC (above 260 while using Crude Oil). If true, it will open the liquid shut-off and send the hot stuff to the Steam Turbine, if false, goes back to the Building. 

Now when the liquid reaches the lower chamber of the Steam Turbine, the Gold Liquid pipes, aided by diamond thermo shiftplates, transfer the heat inside the liquid to the steam surronding it. A thermo sensor at the end detects if the liquid is below 240ºC, if false it goes back to the lower chamber, if true, it is sent back to the Metal Refinery.

So yeah, I did a thing. I'm sure there is a way to make it 1000% more efficient and cool and profitable and dank, but I did a thing, and I liked it. 

[crypticorb]

The reason this is working as well as it is is due to the blocked inputs on the steam turbine. It draws only 1/5 the heat out of the system, and pumps can keep up with the throughput when limited to one input tile, meaning you don't have to resort to door compressors or conflicting gasses to cycle the steam. There are several similar threads that use this mechanic.

This is likely an oversight by the devs, and I'd expect it to be removed soon, either by scaling power output to the number of unblocked input tiles, or by refusing to spin up when any inputs are blocked.

Your setup will still be viable once it is patched, but it will not be power positive any longer. For now, though, enjoy your free power via exploit

[Lifegrow]

You made a cool bud. Enjoy it  Regardless of the "but it's blocked hurrpaderp" you saw something, tweaked it, refined it, and made it work for you. Be proud, for me thats what this game is all about  

@crypticorb isn't wrong - however nobody has a clue when (or even if) this will ever be changed, so enjoy it. Lets not forget we still have "exploits" in this game that have been here for 18+ months, so this could still be a thing on release if Klei don't pull their finger out.

[psusi]

14 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Your setup will still be viable once it is patched, but it will not be power positive any longer. For now, though, enjoy your free power via exploit

How will it still be viable?  You'd need 5x as much steam, so 20 pumps instead of only 4.  Also 5x as much heat.

[crypticorb]

16 minutes ago, psusi said:

How will it still be viable?  You'd need 5x as much steam, so 20 pumps instead of only 4.  Also 5x as much heat.

It will still run just fine, just not as often. The turbine will delete heat just as it does currently, but not with 100% uptime because it will require 5x the steam cycling.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

It will still run just fine, just not as often. The turbine will delete heat just as it does currently, but not with 100% uptime because it will require 5x the steam cycling.

Yes, but it also goes from being power positive to being highly power negative.

[crypticorb]

1 minute ago, psusi said:

Yes, but it also goes from being power positive to being highly power negative.

That's the idea.

Systems that generate energy at no net cost are something I do not agree with. It doesn't make sense that you can use a closed loop to create power from literally nothing.

[psusi]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

That's the idea.

Systems that generate energy at no net cost are something I do not agree with. It doesn't make sense that you can use a closed loop to create power from literally nothing.

It also doesn't make sense to have fixed temperature output from the sieve, or for generators to not consume oxygen, but when the choice is between making sense, and breaking the game, the choice is clear.  More to the point at hand, you can't really say his current setup that generates power will still "work" when it instead will consume massive amounts of power.  It may work as a power hungry heat deletion device, but it does not work as a heat hungry power generator, which is what it is now, and what it claims to be on the tin.

 

[Saturnus]

22 minutes ago, psusi said:

It also doesn't make sense to have fixed temperature output from the sieve, or for generators to not consume oxygen, but when the choice is between making sense, and breaking the game, the choice is clear.  More to the point at hand, you can't really say his current setup that generates power will still "work" when it instead will consume massive amounts of power.  It may work as a power hungry heat deletion device, but it does not work as a heat hungry power generator, which is what it is now, and what it claims to be on the tin.

The steam turbine isn't the only power generator which primary actual in-game purpose isn't producing power. The petroleum generator for example when used as intended with oil wells and refineries deletes water, hogs up dupe time, produces a ton of heat, and gives only a small surplus of power. Instead we primarily use them with cracked oil to produce excess water.

Likewise hydrogen generators is really just a convenient way to get rid of hydrogen from oxygen generation and have that self-powered plus a little excess power. Although, I've recently been made aware that I'm apparently a total n00b because I don't want to bother making a hydrogen storage until a point in the game where I could just build multiple electrolysers and make hydrogen by the bucket load in a location that makes much more logistical sense.

[crypticorb]

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

It also doesn't make sense to have fixed temperature output from the sieve, or for generators to not consume oxygen, but when the choice is between making sense, and breaking the game, the choice is clear.  More to the point at hand, you can't really say his current setup that generates power will still "work" when it instead will consume massive amounts of power.  It may work as a power hungry heat deletion device, but it does not work as a heat hungry power generator, which is what it is now, and what it claims to be on the tin.

 

You're correct on all of those points. The sieve is a bit broken, but it's a necessary evil until a balanced method of removing heat is added. Any petrol, NG, or hydrogen generator should consume oxygen, but don't.

When I said his setup will work if the turbine is fixed is that it will work for heat deletion, not massive power gain. I use a very similar setup that has an unblocked turbine with a door compressor. It consumes power, but I don't add enough heat into it from constant steel refining to keep it even 50% uptime.

[psusi]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

I use a very similar setup that has an unblocked turbine with a door compressor. It consumes power, but I don't add enough heat into it from constant steel refining to keep it even 50% uptime.

How is that?  If you aren't wasting it all on 16 air pumps and an aquatuner, where is all of the power going?

[PhailRaptor]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

How is that?  If you aren't wasting it all on 16 air pumps and an aquatuner, where is all of the power going?

Probably not using 16 Gas Pumps.  The majority of people use door compressors to push the Steam back down.  On average it's 4 Doors (though it can be done with 3), at 120W each that's a huge savings over Gas Pumps of 480W each.  With a door compressor you are also not limited by the 500 g absorption rate of a Gas Pump, or the 1 kg limit of Gas Pipes.  This pushes more mass faster.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, PhailRaptor said:

Probably not using 16 Gas Pumps.  The majority of people use door compressors to push the Steam back down.  On average it's 4 Doors (though it can be done with 3), at 120W each that's a huge savings over Gas Pumps of 480W each.  With a door compressor you are also not limited by the 500 g absorption rate of a Gas Pump, or the 1 kg limit of Gas Pipes.  This pushes more mass faster.

Of course, and he said he is using doors.  My question was, if the original design used 4 gas pumps and blocked ports and was power positive, how is a design that does't block ports and doesn't use up a lot of the produced power on pumps, how is it not power positive?

[crypticorb]

3 hours ago, psusi said:

How is that?  If you aren't wasting it all on 16 air pumps and an aquatuner, where is all of the power going?

I should have clarified.

I was referring to a refinery/turbine combination. The refinery runs at about 60-70% uptime, consuming 1.2kW, and generating a fair amount of heat. A fully unobstructed turbine destroys this heat much faster than the refinery dumps it into the steam, so the turbine doesn't produce more than the 1.2kW to be power positive.

I'm not using gas pumps at all, I'm using an unpowered door compressor, which I plan to make a separate thread about, it's a work of art in my opinion.

[psusi]

7 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

I was referring to a refinery/turbine combination. The refinery runs at about 60-70% uptime, consuming 1.2kW, and generating a fair amount of heat. A fully unobstructed turbine destroys this heat much faster than the refinery dumps it into the steam, so the turbine doesn't produce more than the 1.2kW to be power positive.

Ahh, I see.  How does that compare to using an aquatuner to pump heat into the turbine?  Does an aquatuner cooling water produce more or less heat than a refinery making steel?

[crypticorb]

7 minutes ago, psusi said:

Ahh, I see.  How does that compare to using an aquatuner to pump heat into the turbine?  Does an aquatuner cooling water produce more or less heat than a refinery making steel?

That depends on the coolant. Aquatuners will always pull 15 degrees Celsius worth of thermal energy out of whatever liquid is used, and the amount of heat it radiates into the surroundings is dependent on the specific heat capacity of the coolant.

Polluted water has a SHC of 4.179, petroleum has 1.76, naptha has 2.191, and supercoolant has 8.44, which is insane. This is almost five times as much as using petroleum through the aquatuner, for the same amount of power. This means that using supercoolant through an aquatuner will dump 5x the heat into the steam turbine than using petroleum.

Comparing the three actual use cases:

1. Refinery with any coolant: this dumps a static amount of heat into the turbine, dependant on the type of metal refining.
2. Aquatuner with petroleum: I haven't done any scientific tests, but I'd bet my Meep this wouldn't exchange the heat fast enough to keep the turbine running
3. Aquatuner with supercoolant: I'll do some tests, but from what I've seen, this will keep a steam turbine running forever, so long as the AT doesn't melt and you have enough raw material to cool, such as LOX or LH2.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, crypticorb said:

That depends on the coolant. Aquatuners will always pull 15 degrees Celsius worth of thermal energy out of whatever liquid is used, and the amount of heat it radiates into the surroundings is dependent on the specific heat capacity of the coolant.

That's why I said with water.  And don't you mean 14 degrees?

2 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Aquatuner with supercoolant: I'll do some tests, but from what I've seen, this will keep a steam turbine running forever, so long as the AT doesn't melt and you have enough raw material to cool, such as LOX or LH2.

I think someone recently said it needs 2-3 even with supercoolant.  Unless you block the ports.  If that's the case, then the only way to remain power positive is by blocking ports... and possibly then only with supercoolant.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

That's why I said with water.  And don't you mean 14 degrees?

I think someone recently said it needs 2-3 even with supercoolant.  Unless you block the ports.  If that's the case, then the only way to remain power positive is by blocking ports... and possibly then only with supercoolant.

Is it 14 degrees? I was sure it was 15 at some point. Ah well, you know what they say about assumptions.

I didn't even consider water as a possible coolant, because it'll boil and explode everywhere. I included polluted water for completeness, but you never want to use it for cooling refinery.