Jump to content

Regular Piping vs. Insulated Piping


Recommended Posts

Hello there,

I have a (for some of you probably trivial?) question regarding pipes - for both gases and liquids alike.

 

Checking the stats of insulated pipes and regular ones, there is no difference whatsoever in thermal conductivity nor specific heat capacity.

While I kinda didn't expect a large difference in specific heat cap (since it's the same material, after all, maybe a bit different because of whatever insulation there is) I'd at least expect a change in thermal conductivity (aka putting a layer of styrofoam around it or something :P). It's 1E-05 (W/m)/K one way or the other...

The only difference I see here is mass. Insulated versions of pipes take twice the material, but what's the gain?

 

My current method is to use abyssalite - but with regular pipes, because why would I choose to use extra materials, if they doesn't actually do anything?

I even tried enclosing rooms with regular tiles made from abyssalite, and never noticed any change in temperature one way or the other.

Maybe I missed something and got it all wrong, but I like to believe that it's possible to use abyssalite twice as efficiently when picking the regular version of pipes and tiles, rather than using the insulated version.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

Cheers

Vaia

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I totally agree with your statement, @Risu.

Still, when I think "insulation", then I think "the exchange of heat between the pipe, the pipe content, and the surrounding medium should be slower". (Edit: I think in technical terms it should read "the thermal conductivity of insulated pipes should be lower")

However, abyssalite already has insanely low heat exchange with the environment by default. Is there any case where you'd recommend abyssalite insulated pipes over regular abyssalite pipes?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Coolthulhu said:

Insulated pipes not only have more mass, they also have a hidden property that makes them transfer heat at only 20% (or 25%?) the usual rate.

20%, so effectively 10 times better in total.

For abyssalite is hardly makes any difference at all if the comma is moved one position left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Insulated pipes not only have more mass, they also have a hidden property that makes them transfer heat at only 20% (or 25%?) the usual rate.

Insulated pipes don't have the component required to tell the simulator about that.
So all it does is inform the UI to change the pipe color in overlay.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If there's no special property reducing heat transfer, wouldn't that mean in a steady state radiator system there's no functional difference at all between regular and insulated pipes of the same material? Except for making the radiator slower to react to temperature changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Insulated pipes not only have more mass, they also have a hidden property that makes them transfer heat at only 20% (or 25%?) the usual rate.

Oh, a hidden stat! I had no idea about that... So it DOES do something, other than "just slapping more of the same material on the same tile" :)

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Risu said:

Insulated pipes don't have the component required to tell the simulator about that.
So all it does is inform the UI to change the pipe color in overlay.
 

You sure about that? I tracked the isolation getters/setters around and I was pretty sure that there is a connection.

If they don't use that mechanic, then nothing does and the whole section of code dedicated to isolation mechanics is unused.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

You sure about that? I tracked the isolation getters/setters around and I was pretty sure that there is a connection.

If they don't use that mechanic, then nothing does and the whole section of code dedicated to isolation mechanics is unused.

The Insulator component is what uses the insulation value. It passes the value on to the simulator.
However it passes the cell the tile is in, not a reference to the structure. I suspect adding this to the insulated pipes would cause issues.

The insulated tile has no issue using the Insulator component because it's modifying the cell itself by existing.
 

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...