Jump to content

[OutDated] The Steam Turbine: Everything you need to know


Recommended Posts

Finally!!!!  With QoLIII, the old turbine is gone.  This thread is now mostly useless. If the new turbine has as many bugs/issues, I'll start a new thread. 

In honor of @SamLogan's "Everything you need to know" series, I now present,

The Steam Turbine: Everything you need to know.

To make a turbine work you need three things. 

  1. Steam in at least one of the 5 tiles directly beneath the turbine.
    5beb67ea14984_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-08-51.png.f7ae7266597f833b91db10fc8ffecea2.png
  2. One of these 5 tiles directly beneath the turbine must have a temperature of 500K or above (can be a solid tile, a liquid, or any gas - see spoiler). 
  3. The largest steam pressure under the turbine must be 3K larger than the smallest pressure (liquid/gas) in the 5 tiles located at the top of the turbine.
     5beb67e9873a5_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-05-32.png.23cdfe00fa7f1c83a3c35930147f9b30.png
Spoiler

Only one tile below must be steam. The others can be whatever you want. Here are a few examples,
5beb65716c93d_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-50-29.png.d7988aba719f1130f1b0a8fc47d8c6ea.png 5beb6571dcec8_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-50-48.png.bcf6a68f15802b0dd654ccf4cacb3c65.png 5beb65726065d_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-51-12.png.603face9785436a4baa27dd0a358101d.png 5beb6572ba397_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-51-29.png.14dfdcdb40b0aed8ac3dacd49f6ea522.png5beb65732f729_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-51-45.png.a3ffee8b2e5c4fadaf05340ebf206e31.png 5beb65738baf0_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-57-20.png.092874481facd707ac78e4f8d8425868.png

The power symbol just means the turbine has not been connected to the grid.  

What happens when the requirements are met?

5beb69335a60e_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-14-37.png.993775250923f6d8f989e48c8a137611.png 5beb6933dd092_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-15-05.png.74a9bc3354c0046e3d536c2d67678a67.png

  1. The steam turbine take a few moments to spin up (red bar becomes green).
  2. Once the bar reaches green, the turbine sucks up steam underneath the turbine (up to roughly 2kg/s per unblocked port for a total maximum of 10kg/s). 
  3. The steam spits out the top (in the top 5 tiles) at exactly 425K (no matter how hot it was to start with).
  4. You gain 2000W.

What kind of error messages will I see:

5beb65738baf0_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1316-57-20.png.092874481facd707ac78e4f8d8425868.png5beb6ad0c2f9d_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-19-27.png.93d649e28b007285f66d370e2e3d2e02.png5beb6ad14f474_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-20-54.png.854cd59972faec7888e1432c2eeb627d.png5beb6ad03efd9_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1317-18-53.png.47203554274d7b61af6be3b7d1b19582.png

  1. "No Wire Connected" - Connect a wire to the turbine.
  2. "Input Blocked" - One unblocked port is enough. This message can currently be ignored.
  3. "Underpressure" - The largest pressure steam tile under your turbine does not have 3K more pressure than the lowest pressure tile above.  Either increase the pressure below, or decrease the pressure above, or both.  
  4. "Cold Steam" - The hottest tile under your turbine dropped below 500K. You'll need to heat things up. 

Other Topics - Exploits/Bugs/Uses/Links/More

Each question below has several ideas in the spoiler. Some contain links, some do not.  Answers might be a single word, which means you'll find examples in the unsorted links group at the bottom of this post.  If you find a useful post I have not included, please let me know and I'll get it added.

Should I block ports, or leave them open?

Spoiler
  1. Each open port can consume up to 2kg/s of steam from underneath. Remember that the output is 425K. Blocking ports will diminish any cooling/heating effect. If you want stuff to cool really fast, leave all the ports open. If you want stuff to cool slowly (or want lots of power without loosing too much heat), then only leave one port open.
  2. Many have complained that this is one of the largest current exploits. 
  3. It's possible to build a 100% uptime turbine, with zero thermal input, that has all 5 ports open (see here).
  4. Blocking ports has no effect on power generation. Some suggest a change to the turbine should include an alteration here. 
  5. You can use doors to automate how many ports to block. If things get too hot, open more ports for rapid cooling. 
  6. For those building boilers and coolers, the correct number of ports to block can be essential to the design. 

How do I maintain the pressure difference?

Spoiler
  1. Condensation. Cool the gas (thanks @wachunga) above the steam turbine, then pump the liquid under the turbine and reheat it.
  2. Vent to space. The Space Turbine by @SkunkMaster is an excellent example. You can loose lose (haha) anywhere from 2kg/s to 10kg/s of steam this way, based on number of blocked ports. 
  3. Gas Pumps. It requires 4 gas pumps running full time to pump 2K gas from above to below. That's enough to supply gas for 1 open port. The pump must be made of steel or higher grade.  
  4. Door pumps. Use automation to create a door pump (powered or unpowered). The forums contain tons of these examples. 
  5. Gas conflict. Use a high pressure gas like hydrogen or oxygen,  above the turbine, to fight for control of the tiles that sense pressure. See @Aronia's post here for an example. 
  6. Liquid trick. Just like a "liquid over vent" trick used for storing infinite gas, or placing small amounts of liquid over an electrolyzer can cause it to never overpressurize, the same tactic works with a steam turbine.  Perhaps my all time favorite bug report is @R9MX4's post about an infinite turbine, posted shortly after the thing entered the game. 

Gas Deletion Warning: If you try to use a method that traps gas/liquid in the top 5 sensing tiles, then steam gets deleted. This was reported in the bug above (back in March), and still occurs. Gas conflicts work great, provided you leave one row of tiles above the turbine's output sensor area. If you don't, then you'll rapidly run out of steam. Saturnus and I discuss this in more detail later in this thread

How do I maintain the temperature underneath to be above 500K?

Spoiler

Remember that only one tile must stay hot. Some methods keep all tiles hot, while others focus on just one tile. Check the unsorted links at the bottom of this post for posts with examples/pictures/videos and more.

  1. Natural heat (magma, volcano, geyser, regolith, oil boilers, etc.)
  2. Man made heat (metal refinery, glass forge, kiln, etc.) 
  3. Direct heat transfer/creation using space age materials (aquatuners, thermoregulator, liquid tepidizer, space heater, etc.).  
  4. Zero thermal transfer exploit - Heat neutronium with tempshift plates and then build on it. This led me to use very tiny amounts of gas (like chlorine or steam), along with tempshift plates, to achieve zero thermal transfer.

Common uses

Spoiler
  1. Cooling device. Put 1000K+ steam in, and the temp drops to 425K. The machine transfers heat from underneath to above, so the steam will not appear to have cooled that much, but it did and then instantly transferred thermal energy with its surroundings. 
  2. Decent heating device. Put cool steam in (375K), and the temp rises to 425. See for example @KittenIsAGeek's polluted water boiler, or @Saturnus's Regolator (where the turbine is used to melt regolith to lava - not usable in the current game build, but this illustrates the concept of using the turbine to heat just about anything).
  3. Power generation. Based on setup you can get a little power as you delete heat, or you can get constant 2000W without any external inputs.

I'll add more links to the stuff above as I have time. Feel free to add links in the comments if something has helped you with this crazy contraption. For now, here are several things you can study further. 

Unsorted Links to Other Forum Posts - With Commentary

Spoiler

I'll sort these into the places above, as I have time.  Here's what I've got for now:

  • 1. This page (follow link) lists every unarchived post that has the tag "steam turbine". If you made a post on the steam turbine, but didn't tag it, then go tag it. Unfortunately, archived topics do not appear - some of those are gems. 
  • 2. This build is by @kolyapedal. Temperature is maintained by an aquatuner (uses old bug, but can be made now with steel just as well). Pressure difference is maintained with hydrogen. This post also also gives several examples of how to create a chlorine clamp. 
  • 3. The following post by @goatt shows one of many metal refinery setups (to get 500K temperatures), along with one of many door pumps for keeping the pressure difference. There are also several steam deletion tests done in this post. 
  • 4. Here @Pyrrus showcases a build that uses magma to keep the temp above 500K.
  • 5. This was the first Metal Refinery post I could find.  Excellent work @Aronia
  • 6. @Sevio did some amazing things with the turbine, using both the glass forge and metal refinery to reach insanely high temperatures. Lots of screenshots of intermediate steps.  Fun builds. I loved them. 
  • 7. This is a piece of art @wachunga. It's found it's way into the treads in November (months after it was built).  Tons of changes to all kinds of things have altered the original build, but this remains for me the go to when I want to play with condensation run turbines. Edit (Jan2017) - He's simplified the build, and I've attached the new version as well. 
  • 8. @blash365 started a thread with a turbine that won't work.  Lot's of great suggestions on improvements. We see a "Bubble Pump" (fun alternative), with lots of commentary that newbies might find useful. 
  • 9. More from @Pyrrus in regards to his volcano build.
  • 10. Fun discussion on how to fix the turbine. Get some popcorn before you read (there might be punches thrown). 
  • 11. Awesome piece of art, @SkunkMaster. I just noticed they started archiving posts this old, so this might be the only link to it. He's moved on to a new design, described later in this thread
  • 12. Fun, sarcastic, build, with a challenge to show off your builds.  Lots of great stuff.  Gotta love @babba's sarcastic start.  
  • 13. Is there a simple steam turbine build? Define simple.  @Sevio, @landromat, and @mathmanican provide screen shots. Are they simple? You decide. 
  • 14. Steam deletion is discussed.  
  • 15. Gotta include @R9MX4's bug reports (some of my favorite reads).  Almost every exploit we use was posted by @R9MX4 back in March (right after the thing came out).  You even see the code that causes the exploits. 
    And here is a newer on that uses a single door, attached to a single NOT gate (with input and output connect) to do all the pumping. Amazing work of art. The liquid tepidizer has been nerfed a bit (so the save file he sends won't run forever), but the door pump is quite ingenious.
  • 16. Here a steam turbine is used to both cool and heat, at the same time, in an oil boiler.  Very creative use.  Thanks @KittenIsAGeek. He also noticed that he needs a 2055g/s flow rate to keep the turbine running (with 2000g/s, the turbine starts and stops). Fun nuggets inside this. 
  • 17. Great bug report describing heat transfer to tiles under the turbine. 
  • 18. The post that led me on the hunt for infinite power without neutronium.  The end result of following this trail was the chlorine clamp. 
  • 19. The steam turbine can overload conductive wire. Here is the bug report.  I've seen it in several posts.  
  • 20. The Chlorine Clamp and The Steam Behemoth. My first post in the forums. Showcases how to make a turbine work forever. 
  • 21. My updated version of the chlorine clamp. This uses steam instead of chlorine. All ports are unblocked. Will still work just fine if the only change to the turbine is to prohibit port blocking.
  • 22. @kolyapedal uses a steam turbine to keep a sleet wheat farm cold. Includes video. 
  • 23. @Nickerooni proposes a "no-guilt" turbine (debates ensue - get popcorn and enjoy the read) that uses condensation and tile blocking, with heat supplied externally (however you want) from a hot petro pipe.  Includes a save file for tinkering. This is a great predecessor to his groundbreaking post on how turbine stacking can reduce power costs on maintaining the pressure difference. Great combo.  Here are both posts. 
  • 24. @Lifegrow uses the turbine in his crude oit to natural gas boiler, the "SOUR GAS-TARD" and the "Boom Box" 
  • 25. @KidWobble posted a simple magma (heat) door compressor (pressure) build. 
  • 26. @DuckBoy's hydrogen drip (pressure), heat however you want, design. The design is suspect to steam deletion. Does make it easy to get the pressure difference right, for newbies, though you'll have to find your own way to keep it hot. 
  • 27. The Mantis - by @Boxman_90. Includes a YouTube video for the build. A door pumps keeps the pressure difference. An aquatuner supplies heat. A single aquatuner cannot supply enough heat, so the build blocks 4 of the 5 ports. Nothing new, but the video shows precisely how one can build such a device in game. 
  • 28. The Alien - Another build extending Mantis.  This adds to @Nickerooni's stacking turbines idea, by using aquatuners to heat steam at each layer. This build does use door pumps.  
  • 29. 3700 power transformers powers this puppy.  Haha. Thanks @Boxman_90
  • 30. Chungus: refinery/glass forge heat, turbine stacking, condensation build. 
  • 31. Volcano heat (1/5 open ports), gas conflict build. 
  • 32. Use phosphorous liquid/gas phase changes to keep up the heat transfer. 
  • 33. Here's @GemeinerJack's aquatuner(heat), 1/5 port open, air pump (pressure) design. 
  • 34. These steam turbine builds, by @gamengineering,  use condensation to maintain the pressure difference, and lava to provide a heat source. He's got videos attached. Not much new, but another person's take on how to use the turbine. 
  • 35. A simpler to build, fully exploited steam behemoth. 
  • 36. @tzionut created the SSST, which utilizes a liquid/gas conflict to pump gas upwards. Here's the starting point in this thread.  I'll be exploring this much more. 
  • 37. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 38. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 39. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 40. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 41. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 42. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 43. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 44. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 45. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)
  • 46. Comment to be added (insert new link - could be yours)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, R9MX4 said:

You could add some introduction of single door pump. I haven't seen many people talk about it.

I saw it for the first time today (that exact bug post).  Gonna play with it and optimize it. :)

24 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Grammar tip

Haha.  Fixed, and I preserved the history for a nice laugh.  Here's a fun side video: Grammar Nazi.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Pretty sure neutronium heating has been fixed and chlorine clamping is all the rage nowadays.

Didn't know that about neutronium being fixed.  I'll play with it some, and cross it off when I'm done. 

I'm the one who introduced the chlorine clamped turbine - the Steam Behemoth. Most recent version doesn't even require chlorine (you can do it with steam under all 5 ports). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Pretty sure neutronium heating has been fixed

Just checked.  It still works great. Use a tempshift plate near the neutronium and something hotter than 500K, and then deconstruct the tempshift plate. Infinite power. 

5beba8b4360cf_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1321-44-46.png.8cb984d9995f38203696d4d831630087.png

The problem with neutronium is that the number of suitable locations are quite limited. In addition, you sacrifice the geyser/volcano/etc. My reason for making the chlorine clamp was to enable this idea anywhere on the map. No reason to use neutronium anymore, when the chlorine clamp is portable. Hopefully a redesign of the turbine will fix all this trickery. As someone ( @Oozinator) recently told me, "Hope dies last." Who knows where this is going. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, mathmanican said:

5beba8b4360cf_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1321-44-46.png.8cb984d9995f38203696d4d831630087.png

The problem with neutronium is that the number of suitable locations are quite limited. 

 

I don't know. With the neutronium edges there's bound to be at least 3-4 places along each map edge where there's a neutronium outcropping suitable for placing a steam turbine.

Btw, have you tried visco-gel instead of hydrogen? We now have 4 high temp resistant fluids to stack (5 if you count supercoolant but that stacks very badly) so we can make the liquid locked steam turbine without it deleting steam.

image.thumb.png.c0e09d1dba5b5d25762f8d65db0bee01.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Pretty sure neutronium heating has been fixed and chlorine clamping is all the rage nowadays. Chlorine clamping works by using a mass of chlorine that is so tiny that the "heat conducted" value rounds down to 0 and thus the chlorine stays hot indefinitely.

Grammar tip: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/loose-lose/

My debug testing world is still powered by neutronium "heated" turbines. Works like a charm in most recent version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

Btw, have you tried visco-gel instead of hydrogen? We now have 4 high temp resistant fluids to stack (5 if you count supercoolant but that stacks very badly) so we can make the liquid locked steam turbine without it deleting steam.

Hi @Saturnus, I just checked it.  The build you showed deletes steam. I started with 460 kg of steam, and the total just keeps on dropping (it's at 418 here, but 30 seconds later in my game it's down to 390kg). I was hoping the code had changed some from my last tests, but it hasn't. 

Spoiler

5bebbec3bfe0f_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1323-19-57.thumb.png.0f9f78ed953b0887ba28098f736427e3.png

To the best of my knowledge, if anything is locked in place and blocking any one of the top 5 tiles, that's what causes steam to be deleted. That's why hydrogen/oxygen, without 1 tile above the turbine, causes steam deletion. You can layer 10kg of crude, followed by 10kg of naptha on the first two layers above the turbine, and the steam deletion occurs at the same rate.

Spoiler

5bebc1c779047_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1323-27-48.png.2984f425cb237dd4a3d182042860a785.png

However, if you delete the petro and visco-gel (allowing steam to occupy the third level up), and then use a door pump to push the steam down, there is zero steam deletion - just checked.

Spoiler

5bebc1c58af0f_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1323-32-55.thumb.png.983305913329a9f865e61ce7089ebb56.png

 Most of us currently use oxygen or hydrogen for the gas conflict in our turbines, but a layer of carbon dioxide on top of crude oil does the exact same thing, with the gas fighting from underneath. This option is more dangerous, as one tiny bit of CO2 leaking out over the ledge and to the bottom would block a port (fixable, but still dangerous), and it takes one more tile of width to let the steam back down. I don't see any reason to swap to CO2 conflicts, but they do work (haven't seen one before in the forums).

Spoiler

5bebc5805f303_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1323-45-34.png.7edad04f76376cef1b0c90b4204fc65b.png

There is a layer of 10kg crude oil over the turbine, with a layer of CO2 above that. The CO2 fights with the steam for control of the top tiles of the turbine, which is why the trick works. This setup works without flaw, and because the CO2 never goes more than 1 tile up before coming back down, it doesn't fail. The setup below worked as well without steam deletion - the CO2 got trapped on the second layer, for all except the left most tile (with a very rare swap of steam/CO2 in the 4 right tiles, but none were trapped).

5bebc9164f4e1_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1323-57-54.thumb.png.80d02ab84b38a9812b51eedaf0325e00.png

If you block off the entire top, then no more gas conflicts occur and the turbine stops spinning. 

5bebca62b70d0_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-10-08.png.b980c3efc6bb66e819c08fce71270fec.png

Opening the rightmost port allows the conflict to continue, but eventually a bit of CO2 makes it's way over the lip and down the chute, stopping everything. 

5bebc9183c4f1_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-00-10.png.39f8c35f0d1b312820eedbe21becb87a.png

None of the builds above cause any steam deletion, but some don't run for very long because of other flaws.

The second you do anything that causes gas or liquid to get trapped on that top layer of the turbine, you start loosing steam.  For example, if you block just 1 of the 5 tiles above the turbine (using an oxygen/hydrogen trick), then when one bit of gas ends up underneath this tile, it gets stuck and can't be forced away - steam gets deleted. Hence you need all 5 tiles above the turbine open. Here's another version that traps CO2 on that top layer, and steam disappears. 

Spoiler

Here we have a layer of 10kg crude, topped with a layer of 10kg petro.  On top of that is a layer of CO2. The steam comes out on the third layer up (where the CO2 is).  However, the steam does not displace all the CO2, and so some of the tiles remain as CO2 without any conflict. The CO2 is trapped on the top row of the turbine, hence steam deletion occurs.  You can see the cross hairs from debug which I used to verify this. 

5bebc91b7bd1a_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-03-41.thumb.png.132f6ced8f55a72d9f0752300b8f2e74.png

Similar mechanics seem to be at play with natural vents and geyers (maybe volcanos too).  There are specific spots where stuff gets emitted, but if you block those specific ports with something that cannot be moved (because of 1 element per tile rules), then odd things happen. You can force something to overproduce, or underproduce. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

Hi @Saturnus, I just checked it.  The build you showed deletes steam. I started with 460 kg of steam, and the total just keeps on dropping (it's at 418 here, but 30 seconds later in my game it's down to 390kg). I was hoping the code had changed some from my last tests, but it hasn't.

I see no steam deletion when I build it. So no, you are wrong. It's been at 30kg/tile for over 100 cycles. You are not building the same way I did. That's your problem.

I tested your set up with insulated tiles instead of metal tiles... instant steam deletion. With metal tiles... no steam deletion.

image.thumb.png.1176af0cbe185902ea897aae7fad3439.png

And when I replace the insulated tiles back to the metal tiles. There is some minor steam deletion. Destroy it all. Rebuild the entire thing with metal tiles. No steam deletion.

Very peculiar.

If you really want to delete a ton of steam then just build it like this and you'll see the steam pressure drop by the second.

image.thumb.png.7bacea9dae5651bbd370067f7548f3d2.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I see no steam deletion when I build it. It's been at 30kg/tile for over 100 cycles now so clearly you're either doing something wrong. Maybe the insulated tiles instead of the metal tiles. Or you simply just start with a high pressure and there's an initial steam steam deletion in your build?

I started with 30kg per tile of steam. The material properties I used to build everything are listed in the pictures. I even tried to duplicate the fact that you have more than one tile of crude on the bottom layers (missed that the first time).  Here are several snap shots, taken about 30 seconds apart. I'm running my game on x3 speed. 

  • Are you running it on x10 speed? 
  • I'm also on Linux (Ubuntu), though I hope that doesn't affect this.

I still have quite a bit of steam deletion. This thing won't stay on for a single cycle. Hmm...  Do you have a save you would be willing to share?  Here is mine. İRocketİTesting.sav

Spoiler

5bebd1f40a875_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-39-08.thumb.png.220ed85f2404136b26ad28a9acea08e0.png

5bebd1f7d2409_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-40-01.thumb.png.676ccafcad56386235dcca9b672c51f9.png

5bebd1fc7b885_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1400-40-45.thumb.png.1be39dd814cddbd2916f60c183b8e294.png

 

27 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

With metal tiles... no steam deletion.

Which metal?  I used Thermium and still saw steam deletion. If it's really just a type of metal tile issue, then that's a new bug that we should exploit like mad. :)

Well, I just tried changing to every metal. No luck. I'm still loosing steam. Maybe the material of the turbine matters. If you can share a save, I'd love to see exactly what's going on.  There is probably some esoteric bug located here, that should definitely be reported. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've tried changing the turbine material.  I've tried using the fill option to accidentally fill the vacuum layers of the turbine with steam.  Every thing I've tried, doing my best to perfectly match your picture, has resulted in consistent steam deletion.  Are your quantities of liquid the same as mine?  I used the following:

  • Crude oit: 1kg (675 on right tile, 325 on tile to left). 
  • Naptha: 875 g
  • Petro: 375 g
  • Visco-Gel 1kg

I used sandbox mode to drop 1kg of each liquid, and then vacuumed over any excess. 

I even rebuilt the entire thing (deleted it all) entirely in metal (and yes - this differs from yours as its got a tile of super hot abysallite instead of neutronium - another modification I've tried). Still steam deletion.

5bebde5b9fe8b_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1401-34-31.thumb.png.dde2fcb0646b73f15daec950019f8575.png

7 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Very peculiar.

I'd agree.  Peculiar is a great word for this. Gonna sleep.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I didn`t know the output is fixed. I assumed it lowered the temperature instead. I guess there`s no reason to put multiple turbines on top of each other then.

As far as temperature goes, there is no reason to stack turbines.  However, as @Nickerooni discovered this last week, you can save tons of pumping power on a condensation built steam turbine, by stacking 5 turbines but only have on average one of them running at a time. That thread describes the details nicely.

The real value in stacking comes in meeting the pressure difference requirement. All previous stacking builds suffered a major heat loss issue, as you'd have to super overheat things (and then loose massive amounts of heat) to get the second (or higher) turbine to run. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mathmanican I found the flaw. And it's quite embarrassing. It had 30t/tile of steam in my first steam turbine setup, not 30kg/tile. No wonder it was working a long arse time :D:D:D

However, I did find something interesting. Once pressure is below 50kg/tile in any of the steam turbine tiles, the deletion is fixed to exactly 400g/s total, or 240kg per cycle, or 10.4348kg per steam tile per cycle in the illustrated set up. Note I used 100g of each liquid. I tried other amounts of fluid but it didn't effect the steam deletion rate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I found the flaw. And it's quite embarrassing. It had 30t/tile of steam in my first steam turbine setup, not 30kg/tile. No wonder it was working a long arse time :D:D:D

I'm laughing, truly laughing.  I don't know how many times I've done something silly like that.

11 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

the deletion is fixed to exactly 400g/s total

Awesome find.  Thanks a ton for analyzing it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

I'm laughing, truly laughing.  I don't know how many times I've done something silly like that.

Awesome find.  Thanks a ton for analyzing it. 

It's one of those facepalm moments. I'm not ashamed to admit mistakes though. We all make them sometimes, learning to accept that it happens and how to deal with it is another issue entirely.

Another thing. I think the deletion rate is related to the number of open vents compared to the number of blocked 3rd tile row ports. As 400g/s deletion seems awfully coincidental with 2kg/s flow rate with one of 5 3rd row ports blocked. I'll do more tests to see if I can nail down any definite relationship between open ports and open vents on steam deletion.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To test my theory above that steam deleted is related to number of 3rd row ports block I had to make the ridiculous set up below. But my assumptions was correct.

With this set up where two 3rd row port are blocked the steam deletion was 800g/s total which is exactly 2/5th of the flow rate.

image.thumb.png.bc6430ddeedff325a198a3b8952bd29e.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see that you put a lot of effort into this but dude I have to admit, I have 500+ hours of this game, read this carefully  and I still have no idea how to actually get the turbine to work.  Is there any way you could dumb this down about 10 levels?  Any articles you can point to that might help would be great.

-----

Prime example:  How to make it hot?

One of your answers:  Regolith.  

Me trying to figure out how to use regolith to make steam hotter than 500K = ?

Another of your answers:  Refinery.   

Ok My refinery is taking in water at 30c and outputting it at 70c.   How to get 500K Steam?  Who knows?

Another of your answers:  Magma

How to get the magma to the refinery?  Who knows.  It will melt the pipes and a pump.  Maybe I have to build the turbine near the magma?

How to get the magama to make 500K steam?   Drip water on it?  Turns to rock water never makes it to 500K = ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

To test my theory above that steam deleted is related to number of 3rd row ports block I had to make the ridiculous set up below. But my assumptions was correct.

With this set up where two 3rd row port are blocked the steam deletion was 800g/s total which is exactly 2/5th of the flow rate.

I love it.  Nice work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, greggbert said:

I see that you put a lot of effort into this but dude I have to admit, I have 500+ hours of this game, read this carefully  and I still have no idea how to actually get the turbine to work.  Is there any way you could dumb this down about 10 levels?

Still haven't finished the top part, as I do have lots more links to add. Rather than be a "Beginners Guide to the Steam Turbine" (if even such a thing could exist - oh wait (sarcastic side note), @babba did it here), I want this to be a place to gather links to useful ideas that are out there.  I ran out of time, and so currently only have one word answers in some places (with several planned links to go there).  Every one word answer I gave brings to my mind 1-5 different posts on the topic, all of which have value.  I've got a huge master list (made more than a month ago) with every topic related to the steam turbine. I need to sort through it again, add the recent stuff, and remove unrelated stuff.

If anyone has links they found useful to helping them master the turbine, please add them below.  I'll move them up to the main post, so they can easily be found. If you wrote an article that you'd love to have included in the list above, feel free to add it. 

13 minutes ago, greggbert said:

Prime example:  How to make it hot?

One of your answers:  Regolith.  

Me trying to figure out how to use regolith to make steam hotter than 500K = ?

Another of your answers:  Refinery.   

Ok My refinery is taking in water at 30c and outputting it at 70c.   How to get 500K Steam?  Who knows?

Another of your answers:  Magma

How to get the magma to the refinery?  Who knows.  It will melt the pipes and a pump.  Maybe I have to build the turbine near the magma?

How to get the magama to make 500K steam?   Drip water on it?  Turns to rock water never makes it to 500K = ?

Sweet! The post did exactly what I hoped.  It got you asking lots of questions, and hopefully trying some of these things. If it led to some frustration along the way, that's precisely the same feeling that researchers get as they try to figure out complicated things that aren't making immediate sense.  That frustration, provided you don't loose enthusiasm, is what leads to success.

  • Did you try using Regolith to make steam? Add water, it boils - oh but the vacuum sucked it all away.  OK, maybe we need drywall.  OK, now the steam only reaches 180 degrees. How to make it hotter?  More regolith? Maybe a liquid tepidizer can help? 
  • Have you played with the sandbox feature of the game yet? If not, then trial and error experiments are not going to be much fun. It's way more frustrating without. Once you find something that works, then build it in survival. 
  • I hope you discovered you can't use a refinery with water to reach 500K.  However, use petroleum or crude oil, and it's trivial.  Start making iron and steel, and you hit these temps all the time.  How do you get steam from this though?  Hmmm.  Run the pipes through water to cool the pipes off.  Perfect.  Oh, make the pipes radiant pipes to get the transfer to happen faster - even more perfect. Now how do I get this to all fit around a steam turbine?  Sounds like a fun challenge.
  • Can I do the same think with a kiln - get steam hot enough by just using a kiln?  What about a glass forge?  What other devices do I use that make heat? Space heater? Liquid tepidizer? Those make heat.  Maybe I can just transfer the heat with an aquatuner/regulator?  Might as well try several. Oh, people have done all this - and more - (and there are hundreds of posts). If you see a post about making/deleting heat, it's applies to the steam turbine. 
  • Magma has tons of heat.  How do I use it?  Oh no, I cracked open a magma source and now the air around is so hot my dupes can't enter without melting their atmo suits (looks like we need to learn about vacuums). Should I pipe magma in?  Obsidian doesn't melt, so I should use that, but all the pumps melt. What if I built the turbine over the top of some magma, starting with a vacuum and then slowly adding water?  Bingo, but the turbine cools the magma down so fast..... How do I keep the turbine from removing all the heat really fast. Now I've got to play with vacuum separated doors, to control heat flow. Oh boy, the learning curve is all over the place. Oh, and if I use a bottle emptier, I can transport the magma in 200kg chunks.  Maybe I can move the magma where I want.  Hmm.  So many options.  Which is right?  All of them. 

Luckily, the forum has a search feature. Typing "Regolith Steam Turbine" or "Magma Steam Turbine" will give you loads of useful info. This article posts some essential features, and I hope to expand it with lots more links. 

All we have to do is meet the three key requirements to run the turbine. How to do that is the fun, challenging part. There are so many great ways to do it. My hope is to gather in one place links to the ideas people have used. Then we can easily compare our ideas with others, and contribute when we have found something new. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, greggbert said:

Any articles you can point to that might help would be great.

I just added about 20 links to articles into the main post.  I finally had some time.  I hope they help.  If you find some that I didn't point to, let me know and I'll add them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So this topic got me thinking...

then calculating...

Turbine needs 500K below it, and outputs at 425K, so how much heat actually gets killed by it?

Specific heat capacity of Steam is 4.179 DTU/g/K, depending on ports we got 2kg/s

  1.  626850 DTU/s
  2. 1253700 DTU/s
  3. 1880550 DTU/s
  4. 2507400 DTU/s
  5. 3134250 DTU/s

What does that mean to us now?

  1. This is the "smallest" possible cooling number, since the output is fixed, it can take additional DTU/s without a problem.
  2. An aquatuner cooling super coolant puts arround itself 1181600 DTU/s so 3 aquatuner cooling supercoolant should supply enough heat to run a turbine without blocking ports using 10kg of steam per second
Spoiler

So i present: stupid dirt cooker 2000

20181115025414_1.thumb.jpg.fdf2a43a4e8d1eb35e0c6173b31a38be.jpg

The steam turbine runs without a break, since i got 33 petrol generators in there which produce 660000 DTU/s, enough for one port and since the also drop water in the mix, pressure is also a non problem, i got at the moment of the screenshot around 1400 kg of steam, above around 75 kg... oh, and it is power positive, the liquid pumps are not running all the time so i get around 68000 Watt per second out of it...

At first, i wanted to make it a oversized battery cooler, but over 2500 batteries out of steel are not doable, even if i want to ^^

Now that i am finished with posting something stupid, let's get back to realistic stuff: What produces that much heat so we could run the turbine without blocked ports, nevermind the "logistics" of pumping the steam back down... (20 air pumps with 10 high pressure vents without doorpumps). Any ideas?

Since liquid pumps move 10kg/s, can it be they intended for something like that?

20181115040453_1.thumb.jpg.d73770604bcc6604fdb9f82d9e0f8b61.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, GemeinerJack said:

So i present: stupid dirt cooker 2000

Haha!  I love it. Nice work. 

3 hours ago, GemeinerJack said:

What produces that much heat so we could run the turbine without blocked ports, nevermind the "logistics" of pumping the steam back down... (20 air pumps with 10 high pressure vents without doorpumps). Any ideas?

A liquid tepidizer can produce 4064000 DTU/s, more than enough to run a single turbine. With a build modified from @R9MX4's bug report, the tepidizer can be exploited into running nonstop without any automation. The build on the left below uses a gas conflict (pressure difference), liquid tepidizer (heat generation) build. All 5 ports consume the total 10kg/s max steam. 

5bed19ec086ca_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1500-00-45.thumb.png.784a2bb6f0b0a1841256a5d4b00b9527.png 5bed1b3f4474d_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1500-07-16.thumb.png.b04ab5aa9afab4bc34a82adc18bef2c5.png

Unfortunately, the numbers you gave for heat deletion are theoretical minimums, and the actual heat loss increase with every degree the steam is above 500K.  I have not been able to successfully run a single turbine (yet) off one tepidizer (theoretically it should be possible, but experiments so far have not been fruitful). If I also enforce low pressure conditions under most of the turbine (allow one tile entry from one side - the right side under the turbine has very low pressure), then I can get a single tepidizer to easily provide enough heat. That's the picture above to the right. 

Three tricked tepidizers can run two turbines with ease, leaving more than 1000W  of power. Add a thermosensor, and you can increase that to over 1500W average.  Here's a picture.

5bed1fef2c6f0_Screenshotfrom2018-11-1500-25-04.thumb.png.1903ec033b6a39ba6f60458eb39c7c35.png

This could probably also be done with an automation loop (cycling the power on/off), but the liquid trick above is pretty fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...