The AETN could do with a speed boost

[Hexicube]

Right now the AETN rate is 10g/s for -80kDTU/s. This conversion is fine in terms of cost, but is really slow when you consider you only get 3 (30g/s for -240kDTU/s).

As a comparison, one steam turbine pulling a full 10kg/s is capable of at least 75C * 4.179DTU/gC * 10000g/s = 3,134,250DTU/s. Equivalent to 39 AETNs.

There's also worts, which in dense hydrogen are -12kDTU/s. Just 7 worts exceeds the cooling of an AETN for a little added space (28 tiles for 7 worts vs 20 tiles for an AETN) and no hydrogen cost, and worts are infinite with rocket missions.

Also, even without the steam turbine, a few buildings produce substantial amounts of heat. One polymer press produces 32.5kDTU/s, one kiln produces 20kDTU/s, and one glass forge produces 16kDTU/s plus molten glass.

The metal refinery in particular is awful here, the 16kDTU/s is nothing compared to the heat pumped into the coolant. That added coolant heat is 80% of the heat required to cool the 100kg of refined metal from its melting point down to 40C (crafts are 40s, that's an added ~264,12kDTU/s for gold and ~1342.4kDTU/s for iron).

To make them more useful, they should either have a faster speed (50g/s for -400kDTU/s), or perhaps accept a second optional resource (super coolant perhaps?) that boosts the strength of the AETN (10g/s hydrogen + 1g/s super coolant = -1milDTU/s).

[D.L.S.]

As for steam turbine, you say it remove 3.1MJ(or dtu, not much difference they just renamed unit, while numbers remind mostly the same) of heat but on my tests i calculated about 20MJ of heat removed per second. Dont know why such difference, you sure about 10kg/s of steam flow?

And yes AETN require boost, i'd say something radical as: limit to only 1 device on map, and it consumes up to 1000g/s of hydrogen, with all other values reminds the same. So it would be -8MJ of heat per second...

[Hexicube]

1 hour ago, D.L.S. said:

As for steam turbine, you say it remove 3.1MJ(or dtu, not much difference they just renamed unit, while numbers remind mostly the same) of heat but on my tests i calculated about 20MJ of heat removed per second. Dont know why such difference, you sure about 10kg/s of steam flow?

3MDTU/s is the minimum it will delete at 10kg/s, but the upper limit is higher as it drops the heat to a set temperature (75C below the minimum input) as opposed to removing a set amount of heat.

[D.L.S.]

3 hours ago, Hexicube said:

3MDTU/s is the minimum it will delete at 10kg/s, but the upper limit is higher as it drops the heat to a set temperature (75C below the minimum input) as opposed to removing a set amount of heat.

I did tests with steam at 500C. But i dont think it drops heat to certain temperature, it rather drop output steam temperature by some constant value(looks like really something near 50-75C), so when you supply turbine with steam of 500C, output steam temperature is 400-450C.

So if your steam hot enough you can run several turbines in series.

[Hexicube]

That's likely because the turbine is pretty conductive. It should output at a fixed temperature, 151.15C IIRC.

[cpy]

I think AETN do pretty much beastly cooling if they are far from things you need to cool, even 2x boost would be pretty damn OP already.

Then again update multithreaded pipes so now your far away AETN won't be causing that much issue for CPU. I say 50-100% boost is pretty neat but not to AETN.

Maybe we could research AETN and craft it with some space material + 7x wort to create some Improved AETN with 2x cooling rate but still 10g/s H2 usage.

[Hexicube]

1 hour ago, cpy said:

I think AETN do pretty much beastly cooling if they are far from things you need to cool, even 2x boost would be pretty damn OP already.

The power of an AETN is seriously lower than it looks, 80kDTU/s is nothing. A metal refinery produces more than it can handle. For any cooling project, I would rather use worts or a steam turbine, depending on the requirements.

[theaspect]

On 12/4/2018 at 6:32 PM, D.L.S. said:

(or dtu, not much difference they just renamed unit, while numbers remind mostly the same)

3MDTU is 3GJ, three order of magnitude difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit

[Hexicube]

1 hour ago, theaspect said:

3MDTU is 3GDTU, three order of magnitude difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#Prefixes

[theaspect]

3,134,250 DTU = 3MDTU = 3,306,821,805 J = 3GJ

I mistyped, fixed

[Madbro]

Overloading that thing can be possible however with a risk of... faults.

[D.L.S.]

20 hours ago, theaspect said:

3MDTU is 3GJ, three order of magnitude difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit

From game files:

Quote

#. STRINGS.MISC.NOTIFICATIONS.DTU.MESSAGEBODY
msgctxt "STRINGS.MISC.NOTIFICATIONS.DTU.MESSAGEBODY"
msgid "For historical reasons, Duplicants measure heat energy using Duplicant Thermal Units or DTU.\n\n1 DTU = 1055.06 J"
msgstr ""

But! in game for example water specific heat capacity 4.179 dtu/g/C(or K) which means 4409 J/g/C this is sick 1000 times more, even in plain joules all thermodynamic looks messed, but this dtu make things even more confusing considering that 1 dtu = ~1kJ...

 

I mean they just renamed unit, all formulas still applicable, so i'm doing when considering dtu as joules.

[Hexicube]

1 hour ago, D.L.S. said:

so i'm doing when considering dtu as joules.

It's better to ignore any conversion from DTU to J, everything that involves heat works in DTUs now. It's a little weird having a special unit, but it's better than before where the heat capacity of stuff and the heat production of machines didn't line up at all. With DTUs, they've at least made it consistent in that something producing 10kDTU/s will actually apply the right amount of temperature change to a tile with a SHC of 1(DTU/g)/C.

[SakuraKoi]

The problem rather is that AETNs are limited to 3 and limited to their positions. They do not need to be like Steam Turbines which only work at very high temperatures but they need to be more numerous. Deconstructing one should (be part of) unlock(ing) it and for sure one would not mind the cost of whatever it might take, not only Plastic or Steel but i.e Super Coolant could be needed to built one.

Well, maybe also couple it with a little boost to make the space more worth it.

[Hexicube]

The limitations are not the problem, the power is. 10g/s hydrogen for -80kDTU/s is not worth it when you consider the same area occupied by worts. 4 worts is -48kDTU/s, zero running cost, and is 2 tiles shorter.

Even if you could build the AETN, it would not be worth it. This is the core problem.