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Steam Turbine - 100% uptime - All ports open - Minimal (if any) heat required


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Tried building one of these. They're quite terrifying once you get them up and running. If you can supply enough startup heat it'll eventually reach equilibrium on its own even if you allow the right side to fill up with steam at first.

I used an exosuit dock to set up the gas conflict, though it was a pain to pull off. If you haven't vaporised the steam yet that can lead to some annoyance because the gas pump will suck in the oxygen instead.

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Been trying to pull this off in a survival game longer than I care to admit (the full behemoth).  I don't know how the OP manages it in 60-100 cycles.  Took me 220.  Finally settled on this solution:  

Build the liquid locks but not the steam generators and pump out to vacuum.  Install the piping and liquid vents which will eventually be used to fill the petroleum wells.  To evenly distribute the petroleum in three wells you will need a feedback loop in the first branch like this: 3-way split.jpg

Build the steam generators and seal up the wells.

Install high pressure vents and fill the whole space with about 4.2 kg of O2 per tile.  This will compress down to 25 kg of O2 in the top 5 tiles of each steam generator after you add steam.

Make a contraption like this to generate steam:

SteamMaker.thumb.jpg.3bb12ca59251512b283cc4a4fdda1174.jpg

The radiant pipe goes through a bath of petroleum that comes from the output of two cascaded metal refineries (so the temperature is about 300C).  The valve has to be set for 900 g/s or less, or the pipes will suffer heat damage when the temperature gets above 100C.  I know this seems like a lot of trouble but I couldn't find another way.  OP says to use tepidizers and bottle emptiers.  Not sure how (tepidizers go up to 85C unless I am missing something).  If the steam is hot like this the thing will just start immediately as soon as you turn the gas pump on that trickles 0.1 g/s into the petroleum wells.  Otherwise (with cold steam) I was often running into a problem that the heat is not transferred to the 100mg of steam in the petroleum well and the steam gens won't turn on unless you introduce another heat source like aquatuners.

Pipe this into the 3 steam sections while watching the F1 overlay.  Stop filling when the 2nd row down from the top is almost all steam.5c55a52687085_F1Steamfill.thumb.jpg.25c5e819e9a7db77ae508f8cad25a7de.jpg

Fill the petroleum wells with about 700kg per tile of 300C petroleum from your cascaded metal refineries.

Turn on the gas pump.  I find that the automation is not necessary, since the packets are divided 3 ways.  I use this setup (again with the feedback loop on the first branch so that all branches get the same flow):

5c55a8314b98a_GasDistroforbehemoth.thumb.jpg.f2422397638386a2aaf19c0255b1c212.jpg

 

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2 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

Been trying to pull this off in a survival game longer than I care to admit (the full behemoth).  I don't know how the OP manages it in 60-100 cycles.

If you want some tips, here they are. 

  1. Make sure you train someone in electronics early. I've had everything ready and built by 80, but then had to wait for my electronics engineer. If you love metronics, then this won't be an issue. 
  2. For Vacuum: I hollow out the needed region, then build tiles over the area, set a liquid lock (crude/petro - NOT water), and then decontruct tiles to get the vacuum. If I'm in the caustic biome, I just find a decent area to begin with, and then hollow out to vacuum. Super fast vacuum. 
  3. Structure build order. I build the outer walls, then hollow to vaccuum, then build the pipes and bottom structure below the turbine.  I'll build a 3 tile wide base where the ladder eventually goes, and put a metal refinery made of ceramic there. This is to heat the petro.  
  4. For hot petrol. I convert enough crude into petro to fill one metal refinery with 800kg of petro.  Then just run batches of whatever metal I want (gold if I'm short on refined metal, iron/steel if I want the heat to raise really fast.).  I build the refinery inside the vacuumed out region, and use a feedback loop of 4 insulated ceramic pipes to get the coolant to recirculate.  Once it reaches above 400C, and another run will cause pipe damage, I build an insulated igneous runoff to the desired spot, send it through a gold process, and let it runoff. Deconstruct refinery. After this stage, I build the steam turbines and seal off the petro area. For each set of two turbines, I use 400kg of petro. So one metal refinery, with one full cycle of heating, will prep the petro for 4 turbines. 
  5. For hot steam: Using automation, you can toggle the tepidizer on/off every second.  The tepidizer doesn't check the requirements and will output heat beyond 85C. While the metal refinery is heating up petro, I deliver the water with a bottle emptier. Once I have enough water, and the turbine is built, I build gas dispensers and deliver oxygen. Then I deconstruct the gas dispenser, build a tepidizer, and within less than half a cycle the water becomes steam from the tepidizer. Deconstruct the tepidizer once you have steam.
  6. Above the petro. Chlorine or steam is fine. Chlorine is a one time deliver (tiny amount in mcgs), and the one I usually choose. I deliver the chlorine once the turbine is built to lock things in. Steam requires the pump, and metered amounts to make sure the petro doesn't drop in temp. Lots of options. All exploits. 
  7.  Make sure pressure of gasses is correct:  I used to measure things pretty perfectly, now I don't. Once the steam gets converted, the turbine will start to work. If it stops because there is not enough oxygen, then I just build some gas dispensers and send more in. If too much oxygen, just build a liquid dispenser and send water in (it will turn to steam on it's own). 

I bet someone could get all this done pre-60.  (1) train to electronics and get atmosuit, (2) find oil and make petro, (3) make vacuum region, (4) put petro in refinery and start producing lots of gold to build things, (5) get a few bits of plastic (drekko or short term plastic plant - no need for long term plan), (6) once you get the petro to 400C, it's only another 2-3 cycles before it's up an running (getting enough oxygen delivered). Next time I play I'll take screenshots along the way of my progress and share how I build it. 

@Sigma Cypher, I'm glad you had fun building it. I was secretly hoping this latest testing branch would obliterate some of these exploits, but nope.  Maybe next time. :) 

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@mathmanican you told me how to trick the tepidizer I am so happy -- this is a much simpler solution.  It makes steam quite readily.  New problem though --  I keep blowing out the liquid lock when I try to make steam with it.  The problem is the water condenses when it reaches the upper chamber and flows into the oil/petrol lock and blows it out.  I see no way to recreate the lock short of taking out the steam generator, and basically starting the whole process over.   I am basing this on @Neotuck's advice about using 30g packets to make the lock by letting the liquid run off the target tile.  Maybe there is another way ... ?

Perhaps this is why god gave us the backspace key.  After all maybe it was just an unlucky fluke.  So ... I used it.  And ... it happened again.  And a third time.  So now I am thinking this is not a good solution after all.  How did you avoid this problem?

Liquid lock blowout.jpg

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When I played around with automation-tricking tepidizers, I noticed they wouldn't keep being tricked after loading the game, and would not go beyond 125C or so even though they were made from steel. I had to deconstruct and rebuild before it would work again, and after save/load it would again not work.

Has this been changed in the past two months?

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11 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

The problem is the water condenses when it reaches the upper chamber and flows into the oil/petrol lock and blows it out.

I've been there. Looks like I forgot a step (sorry).  Before adding water, after you have about 4kg of oxygen in there, use the tepidizer to heat up the oxygen, which will in turn heat the turbine. You want to make sure the turbine is hot enough that it won't condense the water.  Once the turbine is hot enough, then proceed. 

1 minute ago, Boxman_90 said:

Has this been changed in the past two months?

Last I checked it has not. Should be there pretty soon today though. I'm on cycle 42 right now, and I have everything ready. I'm currently heating petro, and hoping to get it functioning before 50. 

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Ever considered streaming?  I would create 10 accounts to sub and +1 it. 

I'm currently heating petro, and hoping to get it functioning before 50. "

THAT is the way I want to play.  At cycle 100 I am usually struggling with trying to get an exosuit on and a single dupe with pump down to the oil biome.

EDIT:  this makes me think it would be fun to issue an %any exploit% speedrun challenge.  Who can get a rocket out to 100km the fastest (in real time)?

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4 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

Ever considered streaming?

I have considered it, but my computer would die (not top end). I'm also happy just playing, though this steam turbine, and it's exploits, intrigued me enough to actually start participating in a forum for once, rather than just observing. 

4 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

THAT is the way I want to play.  At cycle 100 I am usually struggling with trying to get an exosuit on and a single dupe with pump down to the oil biome.

This run, I started digging for oil after I researched jobs (cycle 3). I next went for terrariums so I could have brief oxygen buffers in the caustic biome.  I literally went straight down, with a small CO2 lock right before leaving the main biome.  I was down to oil before I built a mess hall. Doesn't take much to get there, if you don't plan to wander around there.  

As for the pump to get oil up, I built the pump above the oil biome. Long before I had exosuits (as soon as one person had gained miner level 1), I broke open the abysallite layer and then dug down to an overpressurized pocket of oil.  I didn't fully dig it out, rather I left one tile, and then ran away. The pressure broke the last tile a while later, and the oil bubbled out of the oil zone and covered my gold amalgam pump. No exosuit needed, and more than enough oil/petro.  I haven't been down again since. No diamond tempshift plates this time around. I jused Gold amalgam instead.

4 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

this makes me think it would be fun to issue an %any exploit% speedrun challenge. 

The only thing  keeping you back on this one is training an astronaut, with training them in exosuits being the longest problem. Everything else could be done (including liquid hydrogen) long before you have a dupe that can actually fly the rocket. So the speed run would consist of (1) speedily get everything done and (2) sit around and wait for many cycles for you dupe to be able to fly stuff....  

As for my current run, it's now cycle 52. I'm not done yet.  I've got O2 in, and getting water added.  I finally needed an exosuit, as I can't add oxygen without having my dupes exhale CO2.  This put me back a few cycles (had to research it - 4 dupes on that), find some reeds, and build a small O2 factory. The worst is that I only had room for 2 stations, so I'm really stuck behind waiting for 2 dupes to do the work. 

Oh, here's my plan for preventing the water from breaking the crude/petro lock.  Delete the top ladder tile and put a solid tile there.  Then heat up the steam and let it heat up the turbine, but leave the turbine OFF (automate it, or don't connect a power cord).  Only AFTER the turbine is hot enough, break open the block, turn on the turbine, and put back in your ladder. This is only really crucial for the first one you start, as it will heat up the oxygen in the chambers next to it, which will heat up the turbine as well.  

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Adding the water took less than a cycle. I added some granite temp shift plates between the water and turbine, to get the turbine up to temp faster (didn't even need to block the steam out), but I did turn the turbine OFF with automation to keep the steam below for longer.  My lock didn't give way. 

Spoiler

Prepared the region by cycle 39. 

5c5bbdeb652d4_Screenshotfrom2019-02-0607-34-50.thumb.png.1f74477ab5651e3f67b34463b38c5a11.png

Prepared to put in chlorine around 47 (small tiny room almost pumped to vacuum (mcg left). 

5c5bbe51b4cf3_Screenshotfrom2019-02-0614-52-33.thumb.png.59fc64c34e88702ad597e7149fe9dac7.png

Running at 52. Next time I'll aim for under 40 (might not be doable, but hey, sounds like a challenge...) Once this is running, heat and power are no longer an issue. Unlimited free power, and essentially infinite heat deletion (freeze the whole asteroid if you want). 

On 2/5/2019 at 9:22 PM, Sigma Cypher said:

 I am basing this on @Neotuck's advice about using 30g packets to make the lock by letting the liquid run off the target tile.  Maybe there is another way ... ?

To make my locks, I use the following setup. (1) Build a stair case. (2) Dump a load of crude oil on it. Let it settle, and then mop up the crude oil.  the crude naturally forms into blobs of a little more than 300g. (3) Repeat with petroleum.  (4) Build your bottle emptier where you want the lock and use the SWEEP only command to first drop a single blob of crude, then a single blob of petro. The blob will fall on a single tile, and no more.

5c5bc083a3f8e_Screenshotfrom2019-02-0607-57-38.thumb.png.f9c12ad89a2eeea3af6ec544cba3d27c.png

Note:  These locks used to be blown out by dupes when they exhaled CO2 while standing in the lock.  That no longer happens (as of QOL1). The lock will be destroyed by a blob of slime, bleachstone, polluted dirt, flatulence, etc., but those things aren't going to go into the turbine room, so no extra precaution is needed. 

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Brilliant.  Not enough hearts to give.  So you found that not hooking power up wasn't enough to stop your turbine from starting.  Me too ;)

I love the little room pumped to almost nothing idea, and the staircase.  Not sure how to set up CO2 lock yet but I see something that might trap CO2 at the bottom of your main ladder and I seem to recall something on this forum about it.  I'll check it out.

Off topic but what extra precaution would you take to keep from breaking a liquid lock where slime etc might be taken through the barrier?  Neotuck recommended one where the dupes have to jump across but that one broke for me as well.

Many many thanks.

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Here's a relevant thread:

At the start of the game, I often use three tiles high of polluted water, and then a pinch of water. Later, I move to three tiles high of crude, and one tile of petro. This guide requires 3 liquids, but 2 is enough, though the mopping instructions change slightly (mop two tiles away instead of 1). Even if the dupes dropped something into the lock, the fact that the bottom tile is full means that it won't off gas.  

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If you ever have time, a small screenshot guide of you putting it together would be awesome. I haven't tried it yet but the small things like doing everything in the working area and adding the tiny amount of chlorine and such is hard for me to visualize. I'm definitely going to try it, but a little more detail on the hows of each step would help me a lot I think. 

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Little things that are not so little.  Here is something that helped me with setting up the metal refinery to make hot petrol:5c61f9b36afcd_BehemothRefinery.thumb.jpg.7afed0459975f2f5618c5cc740d55396.jpg

I had to use automation because a moment of inattention causes broken pipes and sour gas everywhere with scalded dupes running around yelling obscenities, followed by me running around my computer yelling obscenities.  The atmo sensor on the left is so I can (manually) control the flow of petrol into the refinery.  The atmo sensor down in the pit is so I can (manually) relieve the clogged output pipe that happens when I overfill the refinery.  I end up with a few kilos of petrol in the reservoir, and if I am lucky it doesn't overheat (but use steel if you have it). The only automatic part of the automation is the thermo sensor at the output; it sends oil out to the wells when the temperature is above 425C, otherwise it cycles it back through for another go.  Pipes are insulated ceramic - but maybe just the output pipe needs this.  I use the "iron ore to iron" recipe on the refinery because at this point I am struggling with getting enough refined metal to make 5 steam generators (4000 kg).  It is twice as efficient as the rock masher thingy.

Mesh tiles are under the refinery in case I need to break a connection and don't want to contaminate my hot oil or break the liquid lock.

Notice the little blob of oil + petrol waiting for a top block to make the liquid lock.  Worked like a dream!

The OP used a small 4-tile room in the middle of a caustic biome almost fully evacuated to put chlorine into the wells, which is brilliant and much better than restricting the flow with a gas valve and shutoff .  I had a problem where the game deleted my chlorine and replaced it with CO2 - twice!  Again, I believe this is why god gave us the backspace key.  I replaced it with 500mg of Chlorine per tile (cheating) and it has stayed there for the last few cycles.  Might be Klei's attempt to squash this exploit (running QoL2 test branch now).

Another thing worth mentioning is that the tepidizers have to be made of steel or you they overheat before they can finish the job of warming up the oxygen and steam generators to above 100C.  And don't forget to make the refinery out of ceramic.  I did ... more than once.  Not good. 

Perhaps you already know how to trick a tepidizer.  I didn't.  Here is how you do it:5c62019d40a95_BehemothSetupAutomation.thumb.jpg.1e01f3b5a8561f7d18893bd1f16d7188.jpg

Set the buffer and filter to 1s each and prepare to be annoyed.

One thing I do differently from OP is to use high pressure vents to get 4.2 kg per tile of oxygen in the whole room.  I think this is easier and cheaper in materials than using the canister method.  It compresses down to 25 kg/tile in the top tiles once you fill it with steam.

My new record is 156 cycles -- quite happy.  I wasted a bunch of time with mushrooms and fish and sieving pw pools etc.  It's just in time to prevent colony heat death. 

Notice I'm using @Neotuck's terrarium setup and have yet to lay down an electrolyzer or diffuser.

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how can this work with door pumps? Since its moving steam will be slow, pressure of steam under other turbine ports will grow, and high intensity gas will take more heat away from petroleon. That's what i can imagine. And probably turbine can't run 100% uptime either for the same reason?

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On 2/15/2019 at 2:35 PM, goatt said:

how can this work with door pumps?

This particular build (all ports having steam under them) cannot work with door pumps. I requires low pressure steam.  However, if you are willing to use a chlorine clamp, then door pumps work great. All you need is high pressure steam. The spolier below has several links if you are interested in more. 

Spoiler

You can find tons of examples different than the one above at 

 

 

On 2/10/2019 at 11:27 PM, Mazz312 said:

If you ever have time, a small screenshot guide of you putting it together would be awesome.

Your request has made me think of making an alternate design that is slightly larger but also easier to put together.  When done, I'll make a new post. 

On 2/5/2019 at 9:22 PM, Sigma Cypher said:

New problem though --  I keep blowing out the liquid lock when I try to make steam with it.  The problem is the water condenses when it reaches the upper chamber and flows into the oil/petrol lock and blows it out.

Using tempshift plates below the turbine, and blocking the airflow with a tile between top and bottom sections (while you wait for the turbine to reach 103 C or so) before you turn the turbine on, works every time. The new design I'm thinking of will avoid this complexity. 

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