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Some Borg Cube Alternatives


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Most people here are aware of the "drip cooling" bug, and of the Borg cube design by @Saturnus which maximizes the heat deletion potential of the effect. It is simple, cheap, and effective.

However, the community is divided, with many feeling that it is an egregious exploit of what is obviously a bug and thus not wanting to use it. I've even seen some people indicate that they use it only because they feel there is no alternative way to get the cooling they need.

So, I decided to look into two other heat deletion methods which people may feel less bad about using. My hope is that there is some subset of the community that A) has a lot of cooling to do, B) doesn't want to use the Borg cube for moral reasons, and C) does not have a moral objection to at least one of the following methods.

Method 1: Evaporative Cooling

Polluted water has a specific heat capacity of 6 J/gK, but boils into clean steam which has a capacity of 4.179 J/gK, resulting in a loss of roughly 1/3 of the heat.

I designed a cooling contraption that uses this effect. For now, I'm calling it the cold boiler:

ColdBoiler.thumb.png.b1cc42c49bc3b472d36cd0a28167c077.png

Stats (based on 3-cycle average recorded in-game and some math):

Input Power: 1573 W
Input Polluted Water: 10.3 g/s

Cooling Capacity: 233,363 W = 19.4 wheezeworts = 2.9 AETNs
Coolant Temperature: 1 C

"Exploits": Specific heat loss of boiling polluted water; conversion of water to polluted water

Math:

Spoiler

I observed an average power draw of 1573.6111 W. The aquatuner's average draw was 1072.1111 W, meaning it was active 89.34% of the time. So, it was moving an average of 0.8934 * 10,000 g/s * 6 J/gK * 14 K = 750,456 W. 
Polluted water boils at 122.6 C, so the aquatuner can boil 1 C polluted water at a rate of 750,456J/s / (6 J/gK * (122.6 - 1) K) = 1028.6 g/s. 1% of the mass gets lost (converting to dirt), so we need to replenish with an average rate of 10.29 g/s of polluted water.
For the cooling capacity: 750,456 W moved into the boiling polluted water, but a lot of that heat is returned when it boils and condenses. The water and dirt will give heat back down to 1 C, so:
Steam production: 0.99 * 1028.6 g/s = 1018.3 g/s
Upon evaporation, the steam loses 1.5 C, coming out at 121.1 instead of the expected 122.6.
Heat from steam: 4.179 J/gK * 1018.3 g/s * (122.6 - 1.5 - 1) K =  511,082.6 W
Dirt production: 0.01 * 1028.6 g/s = 10.3 g/s
Heat from dirt: 1.48 J/gK * 10.3 g/s * (122.6 - 1.5 - 1) K = 1830.8 W
Average number of active pumps: (1573.6111 - 1072.1111)/240 = 2.0896
Heat from pumps: 10 W * 200 (hidden multiplier) * 2.0896 = 4179.167 W
Net cooling: 750,456 - 511,082.6 - 1830.8 - 4179.167 =  233,363.433 W

Overlays:

Spoiler

Automation:

Spoiler

ColdBoiler_Automation.thumb.png.2e6a368ca77b5ffb68731ae142bfba9f.png

Upper left hydro sensor: Below 100 kg. Refills boil tank when empty.

Upper left thermo sensor: Below 130 C. Safety; prevents aquatuner from overheating if something goes wrong.

Upper middle hydro sensor: Above 0 kg. Diverts excess water to output line. Ensures that pump will turn on to get rid of the water.

Middle thermo sensor: Above 1 C. Prevents tank from getting too cold and freezing the clean water.

Lower hydro sensor: Below 750 kg. Requests clean water to get pumped down to be re-polluted. Turns on the pump to do so.

Lower thermo sensor: Below 3 C. Safety and consistency. Ensures a maximum temp of the coolant to give you more control, and prevents thermal runaway if you decide to run your oil pipe through a giant pit of magma or something.

Plumbing:

Spoiler

ColdBoiler_Plumbing.thumb.png.025aac9f1b0a48c1cb679c355de391c4.png

Left stub accepts polluted water input to boil, right stub outputs excess clean water. The two oil pipes you see are the endpoints of the coolant loop, which should circulate through your hot stuff. The bridge shenanigans in the upper left are to make sure that the system prioritizes accepting new input polluted water instead of its own cold polluted water when available.

Power:

Spoiler

ColdBoiler_Power.thumb.png.55527b351af041e83e96cffe04382ec9.png

Note: as far as I can tell, shutoff valves don't actually consume power.

Thermal:

Spoiler

ColdBoiler_Thermal.thumb.png.12309e69e98581fa3b574529f2db2451.png

 

The oil at the bottom is the output coolant; it should be circulated around whatever hot stuff you want to cool. I chose this instead of polluted water because it has a much higher thermal conductivity.
The clean water gets re-polluted in the vent under the single tile in the middle.
To save power and space, the pump for running the aquatuner is also used for filling the boil area. This is why the aquatuner can't run 100% of the time.
The middle shutoff valve is used to control when the polluted water is sent to the aquatuner or to be boiled.
The rightmost shutoff valve sends clean water out of the system if there is excess (which will happen if you provide more polluted water than necessary). This means that this design can also be used as a polluted water purifier. It exits the system at the lower right pipe stub.
The pipe stub on the left is where polluted water comes in. A small amount (10.3 g/s) is needed to counteract the liquid loss from dirt accumulation, but you can provide more (though the shutoff valve will only accept as much as can be boiled). The hotter it is, the faster it will boil it (and the more water you get), but this will trade off with the cooling of the oil.

 

Method 2: Fixed Output Temperature

The water sieve outputs clean water at a fixed 40 C, regardless of input temperature. This represents a significant amount of heat deletion.
For now, I'm calling this one the sieve cooler:

SieveCooler.thumb.png.08bb6d34d95cd8c1d0644a44fdf9e283.png

 

Stats (again, 3-cycle average and some math):

Input Power: 1738 W
Input Sand: 638 g/s


OutputPolluted Dirt: 127.6 g/s

Cooling Capacity: 833,362 W = 69.4 wheezeworts = 10.4 AETNs
Coolant Temperature: -4 C

"Exploits": Fixed output temperature of sieve; conversion of water to polluted water

Math:

Spoiler

I observed an average power draw of 1738 W. The sieve's average draw was 76.5556 W = 63.80% uptime. So, it was consuming 0.6380 * 1000 g/s = 638 g/s of sand and producing 0.6380 * 200 g/s = 127.6 g/s of polluted dirt.
The cooling capacity here is simpler: automation ensures that the sieve will delete all of the excess heat being added into the hot tank (on the right). So, we just need to discount the amount of heat being moved by the aquatuner by the added heat of the pumps in the left tank and the sieve. The oil one doesn't run 100% of the time though.
While the sieve was on, the automation loop kept the oil pump operating at 50% uptime, so:
Heat from oil pump: 0.638 * 0.5 * 10 W * 200 (hidden multiplier) = 638 W
Heat from cold polluted water pump: 10 W * 200 (hidden multiplier) = 2000 W
Heat from sieve: 20 W * 200 (hidden multiplier) = 4000 W
Net cooling: (10000 g/s * 6 J/gK * 14 K) - 638 - 2000 - 4000 = 833,362 W

Overlays:

Spoiler

Automation:

Spoiler

SieveCooler_Automation.thumb.png.bc19df520504df6fb6fc072b407ee570.png

The filter and buffer gates are each set to 8 seconds. This is roughly the amount of time it takes for the rightmost pump to fill the buffer pipe leading to the sieve. They are part of the alternator, which switches between the oil pump and hot water pump to prevent the circuit from overloading.

Upper left thermo sensor: Above -5 C. Prevents polluted water from freezing after exiting the aquatuner.

Upper middle thermo sensor: Above 98.7 C. Prevents the incoming clean water from boiling before it converts.

Lower right thermo sensor: Below 100 C. Safety. Cuts off the aquatuner if thermal runaway occurs in the hot tank (likely due to interruption of sand to the sieve).

Note: I forgot to put a safety thermo sensor on the oil pump. Combine it with an AND gate on the pump's current input and set it to something like Below 0 C. Optional as long as you don't try anything stupid with the oil line.

Plumbing:

Spoiler

SieveCooler_Plumbing.thumb.png.08b421954f26160a9b4aecc837d249e6.png

The two pipe segments in the lower left are the oil coolant line, which should circulate around your hot stuff. The clean water gets re-polluted at the vent.

Power:

Spoiler

SieveCooler_Power.thumb.png.84b9ae03ad1e9d50ae6c844a111feb12.png

Peak draw is over 2kW, which is why the automation is used to switch between the oil pump and hot pump.

Note: the auto-sweeper is just a convenience for my testing. I did not include it in the calculations, which assume a dupe-fed sieve. Automating it is simple enough, but requires another power circuit.

Thermal:

Spoiler

SieveCooler_Thermal.thumb.png.4eb87dd919daefaff01b04d8358c2a4b.png

Note that I have the tiles at the top of the cold tank as granite, to cool the sieve. There are a number of other ways to keep it from overheating.

 

Again, the oil at the bottom left is the output coolant, oil chosen because of its high thermal conductivity.
Also again, the clean water gets re-polluted in the hot tank.
To prevent overloading the conductive wire, automation makes sure that the oil pump and the sieve pump are never on at the same time. When the hot tank temperature rises above a threshold (98.7 C in my experiments), an automation clock alternates between activating the two pumps for 8 seconds at a time (approximately long enough to fill the buffer pipe to the sieve). This makes sure that the hot water pump is only on for 50% of the time, averaging a throughput of 5000 g/s of polluted water, which is the maximum rate that the sieve can handle.

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*prepares popcorn for the inevitable firestorm about calling fixed temperature outputs, which are confirmed to be intended from the devs, an exploit*

(despite agreeing that it feels very exploity myself, but it's been declared intended, so whatever)

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Gas deletion.  If you heat hydrogen then run it to a hydrogen generator or an AETN, then the heat of the hydrogen is deleted.  Same with natural gas. 

The stuff that comes out of the natural gas generator is the same temperature as the natural gas generator.  If you cool natural gas generators to -20 C, you can use the cold polluted water to liquid cool thermoregulators.

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I feel like the borg cube makes the game to easy, so i don´t use it to cool my base.

Not sure why but i tend to don´t like to use a water sieve at all. Since the ranching upgrade my sand seems a bit harder to come by. So my main source of cooling is the fixed output temperature the oil refinery (running a aquatuner to transfer all my heat inside some crude oil till it exceeds 300 C and use it to make 75 C  petroleum.)

 

 

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2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Gas deletion.  If you heat hydrogen then run it to a hydrogen generator or an AETN, then the heat of the hydrogen is deleted.  Same with natural gas. 

The stuff that comes out of the natural gas generator is the same temperature as the natural gas generator.  If you cool natural gas generators to -20 C, you can use the cold polluted water to liquid cool thermoregulators.

By comparison to the above AETN equivalents, heating natural gas going into a NGG, while cooling the NGG to -20C so that the polluted water output is also -20C, then using that polluted water for cooling, is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 AETNs, depending how hot you're able to get the natural gas, a petroleum generator is easily 10-15 AETNs, same principles.  I'm puzzled that so many people have trouble cooling their bases, when simply running your generator complex properly is equal to running multiples of these 'exploity' power expensive coolers.

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24 minutes ago, trukogre said:

By comparison to the above AETN equivalents, heating natural gas going into a NGG, while cooling the NGG to -20C so that the polluted water output is also -20C, then using that polluted water for cooling, is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 AETNs, depending how hot you're able to get the natural gas, a petroleum generator is easily 10-15 AETNs, same principles.  I'm puzzled that so many people have trouble cooling their bases, when simply running your generator complex properly is equal to running multiples of these 'exploity' power expensive coolers.

+1 for cold petro generator cooling. Works great and runs at a power surplus.

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13 hours ago, Luminite2 said:

Most people here are aware of the "drip cooling" bug, and of the Borg cube design by @Saturnus which maximizes the heat deletion potential of the effect. It is simple, cheap, and effective.

However, the community is divided, with many feeling that it is an egregious exploit of what is obviously a bug and thus not wanting to use it. I've even seen some people indicate that they use it only because they feel there is no alternative way to get the cooling they need.

So, I decided to look into two other heat deletion methods which people may feel less bad about using. My hope is that there is some subset of the community that A) has a lot of cooling to do, B) doesn't want to use the Borg cube for moral reasons, and C) does not have a moral objection to at least one of the following methods.

 

I really like your designs.  I have used fixed-output temp methods in the past, but your ideas will help me improve things a great deal.

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3 hours ago, cpy said:

AETN is an exploit! :D

It's sure break the first and the second laws of the thermodynamics for sur but without ATEN and wheezie you never could manage heat because you are in a close system so enthropy (heat somehow) increase

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1 hour ago, BlueLance said:

Another thing which I noticed is that a natural Gas generator outputs CO2 at the temperature of the machine, so if you chill it you can use Natural gas to absorb heat and just delete that as well

Same thing with the P-H2O.  The thing is that NatGas isn't that great of a coolant.  So it's mostly a scenario of not caring how hot it is when you finish boiling your Petro into NatGas.

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15 hours ago, Flydo said:

It's sure break the first and the second laws of the thermodynamics for sur but without ATEN and wheezie you never could manage heat because you are in a close system so enthropy (heat somehow) increase

...Except we're not in a closed system. You have multiple geysers at different temperatures injecting mass into the system. So you have a thermal gradient. Which you can extract energy from to pump heat around.

Sure, the average temperature must converge to the weighted average of the geyser temperatures, but that is not the same thing as saying that the entire system must converge to said temperature.

 

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46 minutes ago, TLW said:

...Except we're not in a closed system. You have multiple geysers at different temperatures injecting mass into the system. So you have a thermal gradient. Which you can extract energy from to pump heat around.

Sure, the average temperature must converge to the weighted average of the geyser temperatures, but that is not the same thing as saying that the entire system must converge to said temperature.

 

Injecting mass and heat, so it worse, heat will grow faster than it will do in a close system. You just pump the heat around, it don't disapear (except with weezie, ATEN, exploit and now steam engine).

 

Thermodynamic law use the close system to show that the heat can  be stable or increase never decrease except, i never say that the temperature converge.

if you do nothing yes the asteroid converge to a stable temperature (close biome have a stable temperature except ice cause of weezie), if you do something the same but with higher temperature is for that dev include something like ATEN and weezie, if it's not here each game finish by a dead heat end, even worse with volcano injecting heat and material

 

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1 minute ago, Flydo said:

You just pump the heat around, it don't disapear

 

Absolutely.

But you also say:

16 hours ago, Flydo said:

without ATEN and wheezie you never could manage heat [because you are in a close system so enthropy (heat somehow) increase]

This is what I am disagreeing with. You can still manage heat without exploits, ATEN, wheezewort, or any other heat-deleters. You can't change average temperature - but you absolutely can keep the temperature of a part of the system where you want it.

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33 minutes ago, TLW said:

This is what I am disagreeing with. You can still manage heat without exploits, ATEN, wheezewort, or any other heat-deleters. You can't change average temperature - but you absolutely can keep the temperature of a part of the system where you want it.

I will simplify: Thermodynamic say more heat more heat and one again more heat and ONI is a game with realistic physic laws (as it's possible to have a playable game)

 

the batteries heating up, algae dezox too, electrosyzer, all the gen, almost all machine made heat, you can manage it without deleting it (except if thermo regulator or thermo aquatuner deleting more heat they made in certain condition, but it will be a heat deleters by the fact)

I started this game at the first day and one of first thing they added it's ice biome to help us survive a little more time (with weezie that could help us survive more longer.

If you sure of this, please try it without anything they can't delete heat, survive, eat food, made oxygen, and die by heat at the end. even if you made a wall vaccum, put the machine heating outside (they will breaking by overheating at a time) or inside and evacuate it (at a moment you will have trouble of overpressured and you can't evacuate heat anymore and you're screw)

You need a void to evacuate heat indefinitly and it's already in the code, dev planned to add

 

It's for a reason that player with big base use heat deleter and exploit to manage heat cause without the end is already fixed

But it's not a critic, try it, use debug mode at the begining and delete all the wezzie, the ATEN, and don't use any exploit or something that can deleting heat, you will see by yourself it's the better way to understand

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49 minutes ago, Flydo said:

You need a void to evacuate heat indefinitly and it's already in the code, dev planned to add

Voids were added to the game - and could (very rarely) spawn within your colonies until they were removed maybe 5-6 months back.

It isn't a future planned addition, it was an oversight that was swiftly deleted.

 

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2 hours ago, Flydo said:

the batteries heating up, algae dezox too, electrosyzer, all the gen, almost all machine made heat, you can manage it without deleting it

You can definitely reduce temperature without the use of ATEN, Wheezeworts, or heat deleting bugs.

Not all generators produce heat, Natural Gas and Petroleum Generators can be configured to produce cold, Which isn't precisely heat deletion. But a quirk of how output temperatures work on variable output temperature machines and the incredible heat capacity of polluted water. And it doesn't take advantage of any known bug.

There does need to be a distinction between heat deletion as the result of a bug like the borg cube, and heat deletion as the result of deliberate design decisions by the developer. Electrolyzers, for example, can be configured to delete heat by pouring heat into the water being used to fuel them. Water cleaned by a water sieve comes out at 40c, you can use that to cool aquatuners or thermoregulars then pump the heated water into the electrolyzer. You could even use the thermoregulators cooled by the sieve water to then cool the oxygen down and end up with netcooling. None of this is particularly exploitative of bugs.

There is frankly a lot of heat that comes from nowhere, it only makes sense that a lot of it goes to nowhere.

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2 hours ago, Flydo said:

I will simplify: Thermodynamic say more heat more heat and one again more heat and ONI is a game with realistic physic laws (as it's possible to have a playable game)

I don't disagree with that.

But more heat != rising temperature in a non-closed system. For instance:

(numbers simplified to make things easier, and playing fast and loose with units.)

incoming (from e.g. geyser): 1kg/s @ 400K & 3J/kgK

Incoming (from e.g. geyser): 1kg/s @ 1600K & 3J/kgK

My base: 200K

Let's say we leak 0.375W/K difference, all from the 'mid' output to the base.

I use a stirling engine between the two geysers. Consider what happens in a second. We have 1kg@400K@3J/kgK and 1kg@=1600K@3J/kgK and we're harnessing the temperature gradient between them. Total work extractable from two finite heat reservoirs is C[Th+Tc-2sqrt(ThTc)]. Works out to 400K*3J/K ->1200J. 1200J/s is 1200W. So we can pull out 1200W. Output temperature is 800K. Double-check - 6000W coming in, 4800W going into output + 1200W useful work = 6000W. So we're good there.

Now. I cool my base. Let's assume that the normal output is at 100K. You'll see why in a moment.Qh/W is 5/4. So I put in one joule of work to move 0.25 J from the base to the normal output. All told we move 300W from the base (and 1200W of useful work from above) into the normal output. Given that the normal output starts out at 800K, it heats up to (remember 3J/K)... 1000K. (A little off because of rounding.)

(The song and dance there is because our heat engine puts out heat to a finite reservoir, which heats it up, which causes our efficiency to drop, etc.)

Meanwhile that 1000K output loses 300W to our base. Which we need to cool.

So all told, we have the following:
'hot' and 'cold' geyser drive a heat engine, producing 2kg of 800K output / second.

That 800K output is used as a heat sink for a heat pump cooling our base by 300W from waste heat, and gets heated up to 1000K in the process.

Meanwhile, that 2kg/s of 1000K waste heats up our base by... 300W.

So overall is that we can keep the rest of our base cool by harnessing the temperature gradient between the geysers.

 

We do have material buildup here. 2kg/s of 1000K material, in this case. But that's not a thermodynamics problem, but a general problem with a system with an input and no outputs. You'd have that problem even without any heat considerations.

 

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22 hours ago, Flydo said:

It's sure break the first and the second laws of the thermodynamics for sur but without ATEN and wheezie you never could manage heat because you are in a close system so enthropy (heat somehow) increase

We need to be able to drill to the surface of the rock and put massive radiators there...

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4 hours ago, TLW said:

I don't disagree with that.

But more heat != rising temperature in a non-closed system.

 

Yes but you re in a close asteroid with volcano inject heat so if you don't delete it by some feature or heat deleter, at the end heat increase.

You can manage it for a time but not for an infinite time, you have without volcano and heat deleter a perfect close system, if you open a volcano, you will add extra joules so you need to store it somewhere. and without deleting it at the end you will have heat trouble

37 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

I have a dream..
27ofhf.jpg.aab4c27b9bda63154f4cd4c822ec986c.jpg

image.png.2f8bee943bae77c9d0ee4c3775249ec9.png

5 hours ago, Whispershade said:

 heat deletion as the result of deliberate design decisions by the developer.

There is frankly a lot of heat that comes from nowhere, it only makes sense that a lot of it goes to nowhere.

It's just what i explain, dev add some heat deletion feature in the game to make possible to manage heat for an infinite time (whatever you way to take it, you need to delete heat to have a playable game with physics law)

If you add nothing yoiu have to have heat goind nowhere to survive thousand cycle and even more if you add energy from nowhere

7 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

Voids were added to the game - and could (very rarely) spawn within your colonies until they were removed maybe 5-6 months back.

It isn't a future planned addition, it was an oversight that was swiftly deleted.

 

Never see it, but it's always in the paint mod as an element "the void", i suppose that this is what exist outside the asteroid maybe one time we could dig out and evacuate heat outside

 

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