Ice melting using conveyor rails

[ArieBier]

I made a little room dedicated to melting ice / polluted ice / solid CO2 and converting everything into polluted water for my reed fibers. I'm using hot salt water and a liquid tepedizer to keep the room at 40C. Here's a pic of the room: https://i.imgur.com/ydhxVmm.jpg

Metal tiles / tempshift plates are made out of copper, the metal tiles on the bottom row are made out of aluminium.

However it would seem this setup needs several cycles to melt the 20kg ice blobs on the conveyor belts into water. Is there anything I can do to speed this up? The conveyor belts are made out of copper ore, would upgrading them to steel make a difference? Any other tips are very welcome.

*Edit: The ice / solid CO2 is coming in at -100C, there's about 2kg of oxygen per tile when its not processing CO2.

[Hedning]

Try taking the ice through solid blocks, like metal tiles. You can also try having two sections where the first is even hotter to pre-heat the ice.

You can try a heat exchange setup instead with a liquid that you are heating and keeping in pipes, flowing against the rail. That way you can have a greater temperature gradient. That room may be too uniform in its heat.

I don't think the material of the rail itself matters much, if anything, but don't quote me on that.

[ArieBier]

I didn't want to put the rails through the metal tiles in the middle out of fear that the materials might melt there and get into my tepedizer box (its filled with super coolant atm). I'll run the conveyor through the aluminium tiles and the liquid box at the bottom and see if that speeds things up. If anyone knows if converting the conveyor belts into some other material would improve the setup, pls let us know!

[Bokonon]

I think you need considerably more heat. One puny tepidizer can't put out enough DTUs to melt that mass of liquifiables. I agree the material of the rails shouldn't matter unless you exceed the heat threshold somehow.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Bokonon:

puny tepidizer

I don't think those words fit together. It should be strong enough to heat 20kg/s ice by 100°C.

[Ackranome]

I set ice blocks next to Copper spewing lava volcanoes - and they take 20+ cycles to melt.

[Angpaur]

Runnung rail via gas is bad idea. Gas has low mass, conductivity and heat capacity. Running it via metal tiles of aluminium would be much better idea. Also if you already have super coolant you can run the rails via small pool of it.

But if you just want to melt ice instantly then your best option is to build tempshift plates made out of it. You will lose a bit of cooling power this way but looks like you need something opposite here so you will spend a little less power to heat up the plates.
It won't work for CO2 though and won't be automatic.

[gimmethegepgun]

It looks like it's a vacuum in there? Without a medium to go through it's not going to go very fast. If you fill it with water/pwater and skim off overflow from melting ice/pice rather than draining it completely it should melt it a lot faster. And add more tepidizers.
Another solution would be to make metal block or diamond window spokes connected to the central box that the conveyors move through.
Also, use aluminum rather than copper if you have it. It's almost as good as thermium for conducting heat.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

It looks like it's a vacuum in there?

OP said there is 2kg per tile of oxygen.

[ArieBier]

I've upgraded all the belts to steel, this does seem to increase the conductivity quite significantly. But the best upgrade so far, as several people here have mentioned, was running the belts through metal tiles / liquids as gasses aren't great for temp exchange.

Here's the current version: https://i.imgur.com/iY1CVqk.jpg
Piping: https://i.imgur.com/u2QcqXN.jpg
Belts: https://i.imgur.com/tVXKNMl.jpg (when its mostly empty it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/6Lo2U9K.jpg)

It is now capable of melting several tons of ice / CO2 per cycle and outputs at least 5kg/s of polluted water :) Thx guys!