Advice on a Geyser system

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

I have 3 geysers in close proximity, 2 salt water geysers and a CO2 geyser. I don't have them researched yet, as I didn't want to expose them and have them start until I had a system in place to cool the 95C water to a reasonable temperature, and I thought I might do it with the CO2 geyser helping.

Here's the numbers I have for the geyser (assuming a dormancy period of 33%)
CO2 geyser outputs 0.6384 kg/s Eruption Period 181 seconds, Eruption Cycle 469 seconds. Estimated average output 0.165 kg/s with a thermal heat capacity delta of 11.193 J/s assuming I want my system at 25C
Salt Water Geysers outputs 7.5 and 9.7 kg/s, Eruption Periods to cycles are 579s/899s and 300/610s respectively, for a total estimated output of 6.4 kg/s and thermal capacity delta of -1830 J/s

Doing the math, I figured that if I were to use just the CO2 geyser to cool the water to 25C, I could expect an average output of 36 g/s (0.036 kg/s). This would mean 46.5 cycles for a single ton of water. This is far too slow.

I'm on Arborea, so I don't have much clean water to begin with, and this isn't going to help without cooking my base, so I need to figure out a way to cool this water more efficiently.

Currently the only use I have for water is 22 Oxyferns and research, but I am at critical levels of water, and a single Oxyfern uses 31 g/s of water.

Desalianation was assumed to be the first step before cooling, as you kill 25% of the heat in the process. CO2 was going to be scrubbed using the hot clean water and reclaimed when the pressure of hot atmospheric CO2 got too great to maintain a pool of liquid CO2. I was considering instead pumping the atmospheric CO2 directly into the water reservoir to directly cool via gas and scrub it from there as well. Radiant gas pipes could be used in this case to quickly absorb the heat.

What can I use here to help cool this hot water? I prefer a solution that can maintain itself if possible, or at least is easy to maintain for a long time. For example of things I don't want to have to do, is mine and carry ice to drop into the water. This takes a long time, and there is only so much ice on the map.

Would it also be better to use the salt water itself to cool the water, and pipe the over heated salt water into space? This of course would reduce the total output of the geysers, but I'm already looking at not harvesting a full output, plus I'd have to make it to space to do so.

The only other vent I have available at the moment is a natural gas vent that doesn't produce much. I'm just using that for extra power when available.

[fractalgem]

If you want to go all-in on cooling, steam turbines +aquatuners are pretty much the go-to solution, as they will get rid of heat in exchange for simple power.

You can also use an aquatuner to dump some of your heat into your dirty bathroom water, and then feed that to pinchapper seeds instead of recycling it.

If you only go for cooling the water down to about 35 degrees, and then apply spot cooling to your bristleberry (e.g. a wheezewort or two), that'll make it a bit easier too. (wheezewort is easily sustainable if you have dreckos eating wild plants or domestic balm lily)

If you're going to electrolyze the water, don't bother cooling it first. The electrolyzers output a minimum of 70 degree gasses.

[ForwarD]

Perfectly would be find Cool Slush Geyser and use it's sieved water for farm purposes. But if it's not here, yes, steam turbine + aquatuner would be best available solution. Also consider decreasing cool water consumption with switching to less water-consuming food, closing bathroom cycle and ofc using hot water in electrolyzer.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by fractalgem:

If you want to go all-in on cooling, steam turbines +aquatuners are pretty much the go-to solution, as they will get rid of heat in exchange for simple power.

You can also use an aquatuner to dump some of your heat into your dirty bathroom water, and then feed that to pinchapper seeds instead of recycling it.

If you only go for cooling the water down to about 35 degrees, and then apply spot cooling to your bristleberry (e.g. a wheezewort or two), that'll make it a bit easier too. (wheezewort is easily sustainable if you have dreckos eating wild plants or domestic balm lily)

If you're going to electrolyze the water, don't bother cooling it first. The electrolyzers output a minimum of 70 degree gasses.

I'm on arborea. While I do have 4 bristle berry seeds from the printer, I don't have any planted, as water is a premium. There was only about 20 kg on this map of clean water at the start, and this is a big water start typically for here. The only 2 things I use clean water for is oxyferns and research, so my research has basically stalled.

Currently I get most of my Oxygen from Oxyferns and Rust Deoxidizers, so the salt from desalianation is very important to me. I hadn't considered electrolyzing it though, but I will need hydrogen I suppose for my fiber ranch.

Keep in mind that Arborea is a challenge where many of your normal practices that work on other maps won't work because of lack of the usual resources.

====Some differences between this asteroid and others====

Wheezeworts are scarce because there aren't many cold biomes at all. Most are replaced with rust biomes. You also might not find a single thermo nullifier for that same reason.

There are no bristle blossom seeds on the map naturally. Period. If you get them in the printer, good for you. Good luck irrigating them though. Maybe you can use a pip to plant it and then light it, but you're probably not making a food source out of it.

Oil biomes might not be generated normally without map modifiers adding them. Seriously, the two times I dug for them, I hit the magma before I even saw one.

There is no gold, and very little wolframite on the map. Your main metals will be the aluminum at the start, and iron, lots and lots of iron. Iron from the rust biomes, iron from the caustic biomes, iron from the salt water biomes, and iron rust when you deoxidize it. If you need heat resistance, you must have steel, but the only way to get the flux is from pulverizing eggshells, so ranches are a must.

I mentioned salt water biomes, but they are far away, and also hold very little salt water. You'll only get a large pool if you have a "subteranean ocean" modifier, and I do not currently. The only other common liquid on the map is ethanol, which looks to me like water, and often gets my hopes up. Stupid ethanol.

====End of example differences there are many more but these are the biggest ones====

As you can see, much of what you suggest won't apply here. I appreciate your attempt though, but even I was shocked with how different this was. This is why I'm asking for ideas. You did have a good one though. Pinchapepper seeds. They need heat right? Well, instead of sieving all of the water that is used for CO2 scrubbing, putting it first to some pincha pepper plants would be a great idea. Thanks!

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by ForwarD:

Perfectly would be find Cool Slush Geyser and use it's sieved water for farm purposes. But if it's not here, yes, steam turbine + aquatuner would be best available solution. Also consider decreasing cool water consumption with switching to less water-consuming food, closing bathroom cycle and ofc using hot water in electrolyzer.

I already have a closed loop bathroom, as I said the only consumer of my clean water (I don't consider germy water clean) is oxyferns and science. My food production is exclusively omelettes and barbeque at this point, though early on I had to use mealwood to get by until my ranches were up to population. As such, I use constantly 697 g/s of clean water for 22 Oxyferns and whatever I need for science.

[ForwarD]

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

Originally posted by ForwarD:

Perfectly would be find Cool Slush Geyser and use it's sieved water for farm purposes. But if it's not here, yes, steam turbine + aquatuner would be best available solution. Also consider decreasing cool water consumption with switching to less water-consuming food, closing bathroom cycle and ofc using hot water in electrolyzer.

I already have a closed loop bathroom, as I said the only consumer of my clean water (I don't consider germy water clean) is oxyferns and science. My food production is exclusively omelettes and barbeque at this point, though early on I had to use mealwood to get by until my ranches were up to population. As such, I use constantly 697 g/s of clean water for 22 Oxyferns and whatever I need for science.

I got it about asteroid with scarse resources. But what's problem about aquatuner+turbine cooling? You can put aquatuner directly into steam chamber if you have no good heat exchanger (like oil or petroleum). And Oxyfern might be not best choice in long-term, because it requires cold water and electrolyzer doesn't.

[PastaCrusade]

you mentioned sending the hot salt water into space, did you intend to boil it first? using automated airlocks, some sensors and even just a gold ore aquatuner you can vent steam around 160C-170C. If you have steel you can get over 300C.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by ForwarD:

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

I already have a closed loop bathroom, as I said the only consumer of my clean water (I don't consider germy water clean) is oxyferns and science. My food production is exclusively omelettes and barbeque at this point, though early on I had to use mealwood to get by until my ranches were up to population. As such, I use constantly 697 g/s of clean water for 22 Oxyferns and whatever I need for science.

I got it about asteroid with scarse resources. But what's problem about aquatuner+turbine cooling? You can put aquatuner directly into steam chamber if you have no good heat exchanger (like oil or petroleum). And Oxyfern might be not best choice in long-term, because it requires cold water and electrolyzer doesn't.

To be honest, I haven't ever gotten a system like that to work yet. Might try it, and was considering it actually. I'd like to see a working setup for something like this, where you heat the steam till it can turn the generator, then pump it back. As for good transfer material, I do have access to oil this time. One of the modifiers was irregular oil, and another was the one where most of the oil needs to be pumped out, this and I can see a tiny oil biome with a place to pump it out from, but I'm not yet in a position to get there safely.

If I get this oil, would the expected system be to fill a pool of oil up to a certain amount, with heat exchangers across the back going into the steam turbine area, and then submerge the aquatuners in that? I'm really not experienced with oil setups or turbines honestly. I also doubt that ethanol would serve as a good heat exchanger due to it's low vaporization point and it's low thermal conductivity. I can see why you'd want oil in that situation.

In good news, 90% of the map is igneous rock, so insulation isn't a problem.

Also, ultimately oxyferns are just a supplement. It takes 3.2 of them to support one dupe. I have 22. That will only support 6.875 dupes, and I'm already past that. Rust Deoxidizers are my go to, because I need iron for metal, and this asteroid even when "metal rich" has little metal that isn't rust. It's not hard to run out of it. I can also turn these off temporarily with the flick of a switch if I really need to. It's not my main source of oxygen in the slightest.

I also need to get steel going, otherwise my aquatuner will overheat and break most likely.

Originally posted by PastaCrusade:

you mentioned sending the hot salt water into space, did you intend to boil it first? using automated airlocks, some sensors and even just a gold ore aquatuner you can vent steam around 160C-170C. If you have steel you can get over 300C.

Heating it up as hot as I safely could first was indeed what I meant with this, though space is still a long ways off at this point. I just passed 100 cycles, and the main thing keeping me from digging straight up is searching for every ounce of salt water I can find to desalianate at the moment.

[ForwarD]

Good reliable example of steam turbine with explanation you can find here, section "Steam Turbine Cooling":
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1362621368
It contains 100 times more information then I can provide here.

Obviously you don't need whole cooling loop, only turbine and aquatuner. You can add second aquatuner in line with first one if you will need more cool water output. As for controlling output water temperature either use automation and cool down water until it's cold enough, either just and liquid valve and adjust throughtput. 1 AT will decrease 1kg/s Water temperature to 14C. So set valve to 500g/s to get 28C cooling, or 250g/s to get 56C, and so on. Not very effective but what could we do. And you will get some energy back from turbine, so it's not that bad.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by ForwarD:

Good reliable example of steam turbine with explanation you can find here, section "Steam Turbine Cooling":
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1362621368
It contains 100 times more information then I can provide here.

Obviously you don't need whole cooling loop, only turbine and aquatuner. You can add second aquatuner in line with first one if you will need more cool water output. As for controlling output water temperature either use automation and cool down water until it's cold enough, either just and liquid valve and adjust throughtput. 1 AT will decrease 1kg/s Water temperature to 14C. So set valve to 500g/s to get 28C cooling, or 250g/s to get 56C, and so on. Not very effective but what could we do. And you will get some energy back from turbine, so it's not that bad.

Some pictures:

Here's the geysers. They're in a rust biome just outside my base, less than 150 tiles from my printing pod. (It's about a screen to the left) The top is the CO2 geyser, and the bottom close ones are the salt water geysers. I'm currently pumping salt water back into my base through here, but that's running out soon. Once it does, I'll start remodelling.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/chthonicone/screenshot/775103761702217581

Here's all the pips on my map currently, in a giant nature preserve (really 2 of them with an open door) The side doors to the dining room are exit only so you have to batpole in from the bottom preserve. I call it the Three Die Preserve and Gambling Hall because of how many pips there are.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/chthonicone/screenshot/775103761702216187

[fractalgem]

There is no gold, and very little wolframite on the map. Your main metals will be the aluminum at the start, and iron, lots and lots of iron. Iron from the rust biomes, iron from the caustic biomes, iron from the salt water biomes, and iron rust when you deoxidize it. If you need heat resistance, you must have steel, but the only way to get the flux is from pulverizing eggshells, so ranches are a must.

Ah, that's riiiight, you don't have oil biomes scattered across all edges of the map like you would on oasis (and no slime biomes for amalgam either...), so unless you rushed the big one at the bottom you won't have tons of fossil to make lime!


I Seriously thought your water needs were for bristleberry-Oasis (which has the same start biome) has it...on the edges of the map. I avoided needing water for my oxyfern by keeping it wild. It helped I had a convenient clump of 4 oxyfern right about where I'd have wanted them anyways...

However, you have pips, so you can rewild them. Yes they'll be less effective, but you won't need water for them anymore.


Still, you can stall for more time regarding water.

The Ethanol distilation process produces polluted water and polluted dirt, but slightly less power than simply burning the wood. Both of those resources can produce polluted o2 directly if you don't process them, though you may find it more convenient to sieve the polluted water and either re-pollutiffy it with terrariums, or keep feeding it to your oxyfern. You can also, if you wish, dump heat into this polluted water and then feed it to pinchapper.

(note: the amount from polluted dirt is slim until it REALLY piles up after dozens of cycles...but it might let you get away with wild oxyfern for longer if you go that route!)

Other tide pool biomes should have cool/lukewarm puddles of salt water you can desalinate.

Caustic biomes usually contain a pocket of algae somewhere, thus allowing you to bypass the need for oxygen-related water for a time.



Either way, once you have a bit of breathing room, I recommend you go all in on extracting some oil (and a bit of convenient lead) from the bottom of the map. You'll probably get a few scalded dupes, so you'll want to micromanage them a bit while they set up the first pump.

Either that, or go all-in on glossy drecko ranching. They don't technically need hydrogen to produce plastic-you get one harvest per glossy drecko without it. This should net you enough egg shells for the steel aquatuner in the process.

Since it's not oasis, you should be able to get away with just one steel aquatuner (requiring only...22 egg shells in all if I did my math right), not the whopping 5 aquatuners I went for on oasis. Plus you actually HAVE ice biomes so you can occasionally dump ice on your crops and your machines, without needing to spend enormous amounts of dupe power on ice machines to stall for time.




Edit: WAIT 22 oxyferns consuming HOW MUCH water/second? YEEESH you are WAY overspending your water. you do NOT need that many domesticated oxyfern unless you took too many dupes before you were ready. Wildify those asap.

[Hedning]

You should think twice before cooling a cool steam vent down to base temperature. What are you using the water for? Most often water goes to 1 of three things: Research, o2 production and plants. Neither needs cooling of the water. In all cases it is better to cool the o2 or atmosphere around than to cool the water.