Need a Tier 2 desalination plant (or something)

[Bluetooth the Pirate]

I had a pretty good time in my first main playthrough (just launched the rocket tonight) but one thing that annoyed me was how tricky it was to lay out the massive array of desalination plants I needed to make my nuclear plant self-sustaining. In order to recover depleted steam efficiently you have to use it in vacuum desalination, but laying out enough desalination plants to absorb all that depleted steam means a ton of space, four workers and 40 kilowatts of power per plant, and to absorb 288 depleted steam you need 24 plants. That's 96 workers and almost a megawatt of power. Maybe we can get a tier 2 version that processes more on the same footprint and maybe a little more efficient with the head count? (This isn't even getting into how difficult it is to provide enough seawater and dumping space for the surplus brine, but I don't want to overload.)

[Coheed]

Yeah, I considered this, then decided it was much more efficient to just import water from the ground water well outpost, less than half the workers needed, and saves you the 1MW electricity needed to power the desalination plants. Was a bit disappointed.

In the end I only use vacuum desalination as part of my refinery layout, as I use excess hydrogen to produce steam and use the depleted steam from the hydrogen to top up water.

[Iron]

i kinda use rainwater ;x

[Col.Firefly]

Uhhh, why are you depleting the steam first?

You've got a nuke, brute force using more high-pressure turbines and run the low pressure steam into the desals. At this point efficiency is detrimental, you'd be looking for throughput.

[n.]

Originally posted by Col.Firefly:

Uhhh, why are you depleting the steam first?

You've got a nuke, brute force using more high-pressure turbines and run the low pressure steam into the desals. At this point efficiency is detrimental, you'd be looking for throughput.

Why wouldn't you use 4Hi+2Lo turbines, and route the excess steam-hi through the desals instead? You'd get more water (require less desals), and you still get the same power generation.

[Wandering Mania]

This is how I have my nuke plant set up:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2830894721
Both of those reactors run at level 3, and it's 100% stable and self sustaining with: 4 desalinization plants, 4 seawater pumps, 4 brine dumps, 2 large water tank IVs, 7 cooling towers for the steam low, 12Hi turbines, 8 generators, 4 flywheels.

So I'm not sure why you would think you would need so much more water.

[CaPY]

Use nuclear steam to get more water?

[Gorilla-Killa]

I did the math behind the combinations of power plants, large cooling towers and desalination plants for a water neutral power plant (no water in, no water out). I considered pumps, dumps, turbines and desalination plants and calcualted fuel efficiency, man power required and maintenace.

Use a ratio of 1 large cooling tower and 8 depleted desalination plants, which is the only efficient use of the depleted formula compared to high or low steam desalination. If you use fossile fuels with exhaust, this can change, depending on your solution for the sulfer, e.g. if you need the excess water generated with the exhaust scrubber to make acid or fertilizer.

Do not use the depleted desalination plants to generate water for different uses. It is not efficient.

Low steam comes either as side product or after the use of high steam in a turbine. In the first case, use it for desalination, most efficient scenario, but limited usage. In the second case, the answer has two dimensions:
First, low steam desalination is about 4.9% more power efficient, but uses 4% more maintenance and 57% more man power.
Wasting more than 5% efficiency in your low steam desalination layout due to ramp ups or auto-mode makes high steam more efficient in all three categories.

I resulted to only high steam desalination because of the 100% constant efficiency. High steam stays in the pipes until it is used. No water need means no fuel consumption. It has no ramp up phases and is not interconnected between different plant areas.

[Gorilla-Killa]

Oh, and I totally agree with OP. We need a tier 2 desalination plant. I ended up with layouts that contained over 100 desalination plants, which just gets annoying.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Gorilla-Killa:

Low steam comes either as side product or after the use of high steam in a turbine. In the first case, use it for desalination, most efficient scenario, but limited usage. In the second case, the answer has two dimensions:
First, low steam desalination is about 4.9% more power efficient, but uses 4% more maintenance and 57% more man power.
Wasting more than 5% efficiency in your low steam desalination layout due to ramp ups or auto-mode makes high steam more efficient in all three categories.

This is why I just send the low steam to cooling towers, to recycle what ever water I can, and have 2 desalination plants running on 'high steam', per reactor.

With a single 'maxed out' high pressure turbine line, containing the 6 turbines, 4 T2-generators, and 2 flywheels, per added reactor.

Cooling towers added as needed, but about '3 and a half', 4 rounded up, large cooling towers seems to work per turbine line.

And even adding a 3rd reactor with that same formula, keeps it 100% stable, and self sufficient.

[Gorilla-Killa]

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

This is why I just send the low steam to cooling towers, to recycle what ever water I can, and have 2 desalination plants running on 'high steam', per reactor.

With a single 'maxed out' high pressure turbine line, containing the 6 turbines, 4 T2-generators, and 2 flywheels, per added reactor.

Cooling towers added as needed, but about '3 and a half', 4 rounded up, large cooling towers seems to work per turbine line.

And even adding a 3rd reactor with that same formula, keeps it 100% stable, and self sufficient.

Why do you send the low steam directly to the cooling towers instead of using it in a low steam turbine first?

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Gorilla-Killa:

Why do you send the low steam directly to the cooling towers instead of using it in a low steam turbine first?

Because the low steam returns more water than depleted steam. And when it's set up that way, it is 100% stable.

You can set it, and forget it, and the reactors will never overheat, never run out of water, and as long as you have storage for the waste, and uranium rods, you will have infinite power.

Trying to use every bit of steam, just adds more places for a bottleneck to occur. And your getting less and less water back for each step; Low steam returns less water than high steam, and depleted steam returns less than low steam. And in a system where you need a constant flow of water, lest the reactor fails and causes a meltdown; Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one.

[Coheed]

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

Originally posted by Gorilla-Killa:

Why do you send the low steam directly to the cooling towers instead of using it in a low steam turbine first?

Because the low steam returns more water than depleted steam. And when it's set up that way, it is 100% stable.

You can set it, and forget it, and the reactors will never overheat, never run out of water, and as long as you have storage for the waste, and uranium rods, you will have infinite power.

Trying to use every bit of steam, just adds more places for a bottleneck to occur. And your getting less and less water back for each step; Low steam returns less water than high steam, and depleted steam returns less than low steam. And in a system where you need a constant flow of water, lest the reactor fails and causes a meltdown; Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one.

Just to clarify, do you mean you send the low steam to the desalination plants? As you get more water from low steam desalination than depleted steam desalination.

As cooling towers return the same amount of water regardless of the type steam they are fed.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Coheed:

Just to clarify, do you mean you send the low steam to the desalination plants? As you get more water from low steam desalination than depleted steam desalination.

That's what I was talking about yes. But I send high steam to the desalinization plants. As high steam is the quickest, it's not the most efficient, but it can keep the water flowing.

Originally posted by Coheed:

As cooling towers return the same amount of water regardless of the type steam they are fed.

That I know, yes. But trying to send low steam to other turbines creates that extra failure point, and it's not the most ideal in such a volatile system, so I just send it to cooling towers.

I really hate that half my thoughts go untyped. Damn my translation of thought to text.