Steam turbine setups?
Hey guys, so the base I stopped working on a couple days ago got to cycle 400 and I had a full setup - tube system, power plant that runs cold, oil and plastics refinery that ran cold, crazy amounts of food production, thermally stable base (cold if anything) running 24 dupes sustainably without any problems. So I was thinking I'd conquer steam power.
Oh my god, I spent days trying to get a system that works sustainably. I mean, yeah, i can get it to work, but the only way to deal with the massive amounts of heat is to just end up dumping it in a box or somewhere in the map. It took 3 aquatuners and a nullifier to counter all the heat being produced by the steam generator with the minimum amount of steam being used (which, btw, is 1900-1950 g/s drip on your flow valve into your steam chamber). Obviously that is not a good use of power. I had the bright of idea of doing them in series, and was able to get that to work with 3 turbines fine - but if anything it runs hotter since you still have to superheat the steam for that last turbine to hit the minimum threshold.
Anyways, long story short, steam turbines suck. Has anyone managed to get one working? I can post screens of mine/my base if anyone wants. I'm thinking they really need to change it to something reasonable - like maybe more than what a steam geyser will hit, but less what's currently necessary - somewhere slightly less than halfway between the two would seem okay. Have to admit its a bit disappointing right now though because I was all looking forward to being a Steam Baron lol.
Posted Feb 27, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC
To be honest I have no idea how you accomplish:
or
heat seems really problematic to me. I've completely annihilated all the cold biomes in maps before and setup wheezewort farms that are completely overwhelmed with all the heat I have. I simply cannot keep up with all the heat in this game.
Step 1) Build a shell out of abyssalite tiles around your base. Don't have any doors to any biomes unless they're temperature-airlocked. Here's my gas power room:
https://i.imgur.com/GPlG993.png
See the airlock that they have to go through to get in there? Build those on the transition points between biomes. I'll often use the abyssalite veins as tunnels and tunnel BETWEEN biomes at first, just to explore the regions AND keep my base safe from noxious gases and stray heat.
Same concept with the plastics - build enclosed near a nullifier and you're fine.
It makes cold air and excess hydrogen. He uses 4 wheezes which will output air near 0-5C, which will help you cool your base off. If its too cold, drop a wheezewort and it'll come out temperate enough. Those also have a bonus of producing slightly more hydrogen than they can use which you can pump into your nullifiers.
I used granite radiator tiles - since I store ice in the bottom of my reservoir this will automatically cool the entire base and evens out temperatures quite a bit. If you ever start running into trouble, just make some ice or dig out some ice and you can quickly cool your entire base.
5 wheezes is way overkill, but I had extra and just threw them in. basically, the idea is you fill whatever space with hydrogen and throw in 2-3 wheezes. That entire room stays steady at -30F with 4. But that negates all the heat bleed from electronics.
Just build with that kind of stuff in mind and its not too hard to negate the heat problems. Hope that helps :)
Thanks for the tip about the airlocks. I need to start building them that way.
I do use those oxygen generators with the hydrogen generator to self-power it. Never thought of building the wheeze directly into it through... I always built thermo regulators surrounded by wheeze to get the cold air I wanted. This seems more efficient so thanks for that as well.
I know the temp of output products from certain buildings, like the electrolyzer and a few others is fixed regardless of the input temp. This seems ridiculous to me and I expect it should be fixed in a future patch as that's clearly not how things should work. I would much rather see a method for radiating heat out the edges of the map the way infrared radiation would work in a space colony. Maybe some sort of buildable radiators for increasing heat radiation rates.
There are plenty of way to delete heat. Wheezeworts, Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier and Hydrofans are the most straightforward as they immediatly delete heat.
Thermo Regulator and Thermo Aquatuner can be used to transfer heat into something you will destroy after. For instance heat up Polluted Water and send it into a Fertilizer Maker. Or heat solids and feed them to Hatch.
Fertilizer Synthetizer, Carbon Skimmer, Electrolyzer, Oil Refinery output at a fixed temperature so dump the heat in their input. Same for the different generators, plus gas don't change state when heating up so the limit is whatever the Thermo Regulator/Aquatuner can handle.
dont forget the borg cube. its a bit exploity, but super efficient whn crude oil is used. for those who dont know what that is, its using a thermo aquatuner to cool itself for an (extremely) net positive cooling gain.
how to build: a 4x4 space surrounded by metal tiles. in the bottom half put a pump and TA. in the top row put a liquid output in either of the middle 2 spaces. in the 2nd row put a thermo sensor in either of the 2 outer spaces and metal tiles in the inner 2. set your thermos sensor for "above -20" and wire it to the pump and AT. fill the bottom half with crude oil and the rest with hydrogen. pipe the pump to the AT and the AT to the liquid vent.
power will seem expensive (1420W) but the overall gain in cooling is well worth it. you can put a cube in the middle of your power plant to keep it cool. you can nestle on up to a sleetwheet farm to keep it at the minimum temp to effectively grow sleetwheat. while i havnt tried it with other fluids, (LOx, LH2, etc.) i know it works well with Crude oil or water. the only other things to mention is to never set your thermos sensor to less than 20c above the freezing point of your coolant. water freezes at 0c, so putting 20c water through the TA will output at 6c. if the TA starts putting fluid through that is too cold, itll freeze in the pipes and they'll break. also temp shift plates can be used inside to improve efficiency and outside to improve coverage.
edit: to get power to the cube, i find it easiest to use a Heavy Conductive Joint Plate for one of the outer shell tiles and Heavy conductive wire to connect everything. this avoids needing to use transformers as everything can be powered directly off the main power grid. i only use transformers to send power across my base or into areas where my dupes will be. everything else is run straight off the grid.
The Borg cube is amazing, even with ordinary water—a single one in your base can cool virtually everything to a reasonable temperature.
It's the same exploit as "drip cooling", which most people seem fine with.
why is it called that, any pictures? :P
I've literally grabbed every single wheezewort in a map before and set them up in a farm. A single steam geyser can completely overwhelm it with heat when I pump the water in radiator style pipes behind the wheezeworts. This is literally just for when I try to get cool sustainable water to feed my plants.
I know all about thermo regulators and aquatuners. That's how I've annihilated every single cold biome on maps before. I've dumped heat into every single piece of ice and snow I could find until they melted. Then I just have a ton of hot water I need to cool down before I can use again.
You describe a bunch of ways to heat things up, which is literally the exact opposite problem from what I am having. I want to cool things down. Hydrofans and Nullifiers are both pitifully slow and don't even make an appreciable dent. Nothing you've mentioned here is something I haven't tried before. Nothing you've mentioned here even slows down the massive heat buildups I get from just the oxygen generation, carbon scrubbing, water pumps, and juuuuuust enough power generation to run those.
You don't really need to cool down Geyser water, if you use it for Electrolyzer the oxygen output is fix so might as well cool that down, if you send it to your lavatory might as well cool the lavatory a bit and delete the hot polluted water in a Fertilizer Synthesizer.
Hmm no. Ok Electrolyzer output oxygen at 70°C BUT if you send in Water at 90°C you've just deleted 20°C. Same for the other stuff I mentioned.
Then where do you get water from?
I know the temp of output products from certain buildings, like the electrolyzer and a few others is fixed regardless of the input temp. This seems ridiculous to me and I expect it should be fixed in a future patch as that's clearly not how things should work.
I would much rather see a method for radiating heat out the edges of the map the way infrared radiation would work in a space colony. Maybe some sort of buildable radiators for increasing heat radiation rates.
Don't use wheezes for geyser water. if you do, you only need 1-2 wheezes tops, and it'll cool your water to ~130 F, just fill the room with hydrogen first and the wheezes do fine. But honestly, it's a waste of weezes, just use your hot water on stuff that doesn't care about input temp (electrolyzers/bathrooms/etc)
Then were do you get cool water to feed your plants? AFAIK geysers are the only sustainable source of water.
The Carbon Skimmer is a good example here I think. The polluted water it sends through its output is always fixed at 40°C.
Now let's say you give the Carbon Skimmer clean water that is 10°C. Remember that the output is always 40°C. In other words it turns the 10°C water into 40°C water. The result is a massive addition to total heat in the world.
Now let's say you give the Carbon Skimmer clean water that is 80°C. Remember that the output is still 40°C. In other words it turns the 80°C water into 40°C water. The result is a massive reduction to total heat in the world.
In this case you can take even 90°C water directly from the steam geyser, but it is also possible to move heat between liquids with the help of the Thermo Aquatuner. This is what I call an indirect way of cooling.
Let's say I take a little bit of the Steam geyser water into the Aquatuner and the rest of it is used to keep the Aquatuner below damaging temperatures. The cold water can be used in a farm while the hot water can be used in a Carbon Skimmer. (Probably an impractical example, but fine as an example.)
I know the temp of output products from certain buildings, like the electrolyzer and a few others is fixed regardless of the input temp. This seems ridiculous to me and I expect it should be fixed in a future patch as that's clearly not how things should work.
I would much rather see a method for radiating heat out the edges of the map the way infrared radiation would work in a space colony. Maybe some sort of buildable radiators for increasing heat radiation rates.
1kg of water at 80°C contains 334320 J of energy, 1kg of polluted water at 40°C contains 240000 J of energy. So you delete 94320 J per second which is equivalent -94.32 kW of heat produced by the Carbon Skimmer (-94.315W if you want to count the 5W produced by the Skimmer itself).
By comparison a Wheezeworts cooling Hydrogen is at -12kW and the Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier by -400 W.