cooler The Singularity Mk 3 - A smaller efficient sieve-based cooler

[Sevio]

Hi everyone, this is a followup thread to the Singularity Mk 1 and 2, a cooling machine using an Aquatuner, polluted water and the Water Sieve. This build has similarities with polluted water boilers since both delete heat, but where polluted water boilers tend to focus on boiling as fast as possible, the goal for the Singularity is to be a black hole for heat while cleaning as little polluted water as possible. To help with that, it can also heat up an incoming hydrogen stream to over 150 C which you can then use up in Hydrogen generators!

In the older versions I experimented with various heat exchangers to transfer the heat from the closed Aquatuner loop to a separate coolant that would cool the base. As it turns out, being able to move as much heat as possible in a pipe with polluted water trumps all other considerations so I started working on a version that does away with the heat exchanger idea entirely - the polluted water going through the Aquatuner can be used directly as coolant!

Now I can show you the result, the Singularity Mk 3.

As usual with my builds, overlays in the spoiler:

Spoiler

Explanation of the different areas:

• Heating chamber - This chamber is heated by the Aquatuner, temperature here is kept at up to 155 degrees.
• Polluted water cleaner - This room is heated by the Heating Chamber to up to 115 degrees. An auto sweeper automatically supplies the water sieve with sand and removes polluted dirt. This is where most of the heat gets removed from the system. Because of its size, it makes for a great radiator that heats up incoming polluted water to up to 115 degrees before it gets cleaned.
• Automatic sand and polluted dirt storage - This room isn't really part of the build but feeds the water sieve with sand for testing and stores polluted dirt.
• Moderator - This tank with polluted water replaces the heat/cold exchanger in my previous designs. It now serves 3 different purposes:
  1. Averages the temperature of incoming polluted water so the packets are roughly the same temperature going into the Aquatuner (and out into the cooling loop)
  2. Measures the average temperature of the polluted water going into the aquatuner so it can be turned off to prevent freezing in the pipes.
  3. Stores reserve polluted water that can be pumped into the main coolant loop to maintain maximum flow. Excess polluted water from the main loop that can't be stored in the storage loop also ends up back here. (more on that later)
• Moderator Topup - Just a pipe with liquid shutoff that can be used to fill the Moderator tank initially, and refill it when a lot of the Moderator's coolant gets pumped into the main coolant loop (for example if you vent coolant out of the main loop somewhere)
• Bristle Farm - Not part of the build, but I added this example farm to demonstrate how to branch a portion off the main coolant loop to regulate temperature. Because it is being fed 40 C water from the polluted water cleaner (and the heat generated by the lamp), the farm is in need of constant cooling to keep the plants from overheating.
• Cool water tank - Not part of the build, but it stores cleaned water (and voids excess) and gives the build something to cool for testing purposes.

Explanation of the plumbing loops shown in the overview:

• Main coolant loop -  (priority 1) The idea here is that this is an ever moving, half-open loop - It can go throughout your base to distribute coolant where needed and at any point you can branch off a portion of the flow with a liquid shutoff and a valve to cool something. You could even dump the cold polluted water in a tank somewhere if needed. Of course this will drop the pressure in the coolant loop or even leave gaps. Or coolant from a branch loop can come back into the main loop and slow or stop the flow of the main loop. Neither of these is good for our Aquatuner. That is where the next two flows come in.
• Storage loop - (priority 2) This loop is optional but is meant to buffer pressure fluctuations in the main loop without having to resort to liquid pumping. Sometimes the flow in the main loop slows or stops when coolant from a branch loop comes back into the main loop. When this happens, the storage loop will take in the excess coolant and keep the flow through the aquatuner at maximum. If there is polluted water stored here, it waits to enter the main loop via a bridge when pressure drops or there is a gap.
• Moderator overflow - (priority 3) Indicated by the grey arrows, this is where the coolant goes if the main loop has stopped or slowed and the storage loop is full. It goes back into the moderator tank. If the pressure in the main loop ever drops and the storage loop can't fill it, (for example when starting up the system for the first time) the liquid pump in the moderator tank will pump in coolant to keep the flow going.
• Branch loop - This loop branches off the main loop with a liquid shutoff and a liquid valve set to 1000 g/s. When temperature in the bristle farm goes too high, the shutoff takes some water from the main loop and sends it through the yellow branch loop until the farm has cooled down again. The coolant that comes out of the bristle farm goes back into the main loop with priority because the main loop bridges onto the pipe coming out of the bristle farm. You could feed up to 10 of these loops at the same time from a single main loop if you gave each one 1000 g/s, which is much more than needed for this bristle farm.

I'll repeat the survival build notes of the previous thread here in a spoiler:

Spoiler

You will need to have researched most of the late game technologies and you will also need a plentiful supply of abyssalite, refined gold, about 3 full tiles of petroleum and some crude oil.

• Insulated Tiles are abyssalite, but normal abyssalite tiles will work just as well.
• The orange Insulated Gas/Liquid Pipes are abyssalite, in most cases normal abyssalite pipes will work fine too, however if the pipe runs across a liquid or metal tile in the hot area, this should be insulated abyssalite to avoid any heat leakage. Also consider using insulated abyssalite when crossing rock tiles (other than abyssalite).
• Liquid Bridges are abyssalite.
• Metal Tiles and yellow Radiant Liquid Pipes are gold.
• Yellow Radiant gas pipes are wolframite.
• Airlock doors are wolframite.
• Water Sieve and Aquatuner are gold amalgam.
• All tempshift plates can be made of Sedimentary rock (low heat capacity, average conductivity) due to the amount used. If you have enough diamond, you can use it in the moderator and hot areas to get a more responsive system and maybe push temperatures a bit further.
• The heating chamber contains 50 kg of oil in the bottom tiles and 50 kg of petroleum in the top. The thin layer of petroleum in the polluted water cleaner is also 50 kg.
• The submerged petroleum tiles with thermo sensors are full tiles (740 kg).
• In the polluted water cleaner, the layer of air above the petroleum is actually 50 kg of steam! This helps conduct heat better to the polluted water pipes and can be prepared while building with a 50 kg layer of water over top of the petroleum.

Before building this, I also considered using a pipe logic system to loop coolant that comes out of the aquatuner back into the main loop until it is the desired temperature (and let cold coolant skip the aquatuner) but combining that with a main loop that is always full of coolant going through the base seemed a lot more complicated. You would still need a reserve tank of cold polluted water to fill in gaps, so I settled on using that reserve tank as moderator instead, avoid too much pipe logic and let it stabilize over time. If you come up with a version that uses pipe logic, please do share it!

As before, I hope you found this build useful, inspiring and/or interesting. Questions, comments, advice, your own builds on this theme and constructive criticism are all welcome!

And last but not least, if anyone would like to poke around the save file, I'll post it on request.

[Megouski]

Neat!

[PhailRaptor]

All that for under 2 kW?  Wow...  that's efficiency!

[Denisetwin]

Impressive!  And thanks so much for all the screenshots of the various systems, so helpful to understanding. 

[Sevio]

A little background story behind this build... My colony was started at the beginning of the cosmic update and I had some bad luck. I've explored the map about two screens up from the starting area and all the way down to the oil biome, edge to edge.

I've found no slush geyser (and no volcano so far), the only nearby ice biomes I could find were on the very left and right edge of the map, I've only found 8 wheezeworts total so far and not a single AETN. I've been pumping polluted water lakes trickling it through pipes to cool my base and my steam geyser. (and then sieving it) I'm electrolyzing only geyser water which is in abyssalite pipes to make my starting water last longer as a cooling source and that has allowed me to survive to cycle 400+ and even do some refinement and plastic production.

My 8 wheezeworts are doing their best but the colony is now in an advanced stage of heat death.

Temperatures are reaching or exceeding 40 C almost everywhere except near some remaining starter lakes of water. My small mushroom farm is still working thanks to being next to one of those starting lakes. I'm running out of polluted water and since I'm feeding my CO2 to slicksters the only polluted water I get comes from Lavatories. That's why I needed a cooler that uses as little polluted water as possible. Now that the build is finished, it's time to make it in survival and see if I can save my colony from heat death...