Thermo Regulators Useless?

[MadCre8tor]

They seem pretty useless.

I was thinking about cooling down fresh oxygen after it is created using electrolyzers.

My argument for using the thermo regulators is that the oxygen has bad thermal conductivity.
Soo pumping the oxygen through a cold environment (20°C) is likely not going to cool it down enough.

Thermo regulators enforce an instantanious temperature decrease/ exchange, but it seems like a huge waste of energy if I can just cool a large body of liquid for the same energy using an aquatuner?

Is there ANY use for Thermo regulators in the mid to late game?

[Retarded Crow]

Yes, they aren't that useful and a aquatuner is more effectif for cooling.
So if i were you, you should let the aquatuner cool a body of water and put the oxygen pipes (make the pipes conductive pipes) through the cooled liquide and that should do it

[Frai]

No, mid to late game it's all about thermal energy(most of it) and more than 40 thermo regulators' output is barely enough to compare to a single thermo aquatuner.(14kdtus vs 583kdtus) besides thermo regulators doesn't function underwater so you can't even make use of steam turbines for heat deletion
sure it costs 20% the power but it only cools down 10% of the mass compared to an aquatuner(gas pipes hold 1kg max per segment, liquid pipes hold 10kg)
its better to just cool liquid using aquatuner then cool gasses with the cooled liquid imho.

[MadCre8tor]

Originally posted by SvenSpeeltGames:

Thanks!

[Frai]

on another note, if you want to cool oxygen from electrolyzers, you can make radiant liquid pipe radiators around the gas outlet with your starting water(assuming you're not using the water coming out of a water/salt water geyser/ Csteam vent) to neutralize the heat, if you use any water from the geysers i stated above, slap in an aquatuner or two and you can cool both gasses and liquids.

[MadCre8tor]

@Nuke Fishron

I use water coming from my steam turbines, so 95°C. I read on the wiki the output will always be 70°C minimum though, so.. using hot water is advised.

I'll pump the water through my 'cool water' tank with radiant pipes like you advised.

[Frai]

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

I'll pump the water through my 'cool water' tank with radiant pipes like you advised.

crap, i think i didn't say it right
what i meant by "starting water" is the water that is going to go through your electrolyzer, so if its not 70 degrees make it neutralize heat with the 70 degrees oxygen to heat it up and then feed into the electrolyzer, if it is above 70 degrees send it into some aquatuner steam turbine setup to cool it below 70 degrees, not pump the 95 degrees water through your clean 20 degrees water :facepalm:

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

I use water coming from my steam turbines, so 95°C. I read on the wiki the output will always be 70°C minimum though, so.. using hot water is advised.

You're right about that. Due to 4x times lower heat capacity of oxygen comparing to water, it also requires 4 times less energy to cool down oxygen. The same energy needed to drop 1kg of water from 95C to 70C will allow to cool down 1kg of oxygen from 95C to -9C.

[Frai]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

I use water coming from my steam turbines, so 95°C. I read on the wiki the output will always be 70°C minimum though, so.. using hot water is advised.

You're right about that. Due to 4x times lower heat capacity of oxygen comparing to water, it also requires 4 times less energy to cool down oxygen. The same energy needed to drop 1kg of water from 95C to 70C will allow to cool down 1kg of oxygen from 95C to -9C.

though when using aquatuners you get a direct reduction of 14 degrees celsius and all that heat energy is going through your steam turbine to recycle for power, so if you're using water anywhere above 70 degrees I'd recommend to cool it down first and extract thermal energy before it's electrolyzed(as you said about the SHC of oxygen)

[MadCre8tor]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

The same energy needed to drop 1kg of water from 95C to 70C will allow to cool down 1kg of oxygen from 95C to -9C.

Yea you are right. Sometimes it's just better to do the math.

I also noticed that pumping slightly warmer oxygen into the base isn't an issue. I'm pumping water in a circle around my base anyway for bathrooms and my bristle berry farm, and that keeps things in check.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

I also noticed that pumping slightly warmer oxygen into the base isn't an issue. I'm pumping water in a circle around my base anyway for bathrooms and my bristle berry farm, and that keeps things in check.

And you are right again. This is same way I use. I don't cool hot oxygen at all. I have a water cooling loop inside my base so that oxygen is not able to change the base temperature at all. Looks like you ate getting grip of this game quite fast :-) Congrats

[Frai]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

I don't cool hot oxygen at all. I have a water cooling loop inside my base so that oxygen is not able to change the base temperature at all.

Instead of cooling my base, i just cool the oxygen i send in and i keep no other gas(well occasional CO2 from breathing is fine before it sinks and gets scrubbed) in my base, that way i don't need any sort of air conditioning in my base although i'm not saying my method is obviously better since i can't say i'm good at the game. Is there comparable differences between these two methods?

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by Nuke Fishron:

if you're using water anywhere above 70 degrees I'd recommend to cool it down first and extract thermal energy before it's electrolyzed(as you said about the SHC of oxygen)

You can also use aquatuner to cool down oxygen and you will spend less energy so in the end you will save more power. Aquatuner running water lets you get back 49% of used energy. If you use super coolant you get back 99% so to have optimal setup you should send 95C water to electrolyzer and then use super coolant to cool down the 95C oxygen to desired temperature. Or you can send it hot to your base and keep running a cooling loop of the whole base.

[MadCre8tor]

Originally posted by Nuke Fishron:

Is there comparable differences between these two methods?

I do think angpaur is right here. You suggested sending 95°C water from a steamturbine through an aqua tuner first to cool it down to 75°~ish and then sencing it to the electrolyzer.

But I think you are using up more energy in the process.
The 1.2k the aquatuner needs means that somewhere else a generator is burning fuel and heat yet again. And cooling the base using fluids opposed to gas seems to be the way to go.

That's why I oppened the topic, cooling gases seems pretty pointless, and so do thermo regulators.
Maybe if the game gave us better gaspumps, and bigger gaspipes...

But yea, the more I play the more I understand just how OP water is and how important the handling of water is.

[Frai]

Originally posted by MadCre8tor:

That's why I oppened the topic, cooling gases seems pretty pointless, and so do thermo regulators.
Maybe if the game gave us better gaspumps, and bigger gaspipes...

directly cooling gas is bad, yes, i'm just trying to compare the two methods of cooling water then cooling the gas with water
Do i cool down the output oxygen with the water that will be sent into the electrolyzer next OR, do i use other waters to cool the oxygen coming out and ignore the hot water that's sent into the electrolyzer
Seems like they are equally energy intensive since the results are the same, hmm...

[Angpaur]

Nuke Fishron, the fact that sending water to electrolyzer results in destroying 3/4 of the heat energy stored in that water should already give you correct answer to your question. The hotter the water is then the more heat just gets deleted, which otherwise will require spending energy on cooling.