How the hell do you pump steam?!

[Toaster]

Hey all,
so I am really confused on how the ♥♥♥♥ pumping steam from point A to point B works, and it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ me off that for some reason I have to start with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ steam engine.
It cools down way too quickly and just doesn't get anywhere at all.
So I have two questions:
1.How to actually make steam (yes heating water duh), but how to keep the ambient heat(?)100+ degrees and the steam at said temperature
2. How do you tranfer said steam from point A to the steam rocket engine without it going below 100 degrees and just condensing back to water.

[Aeven]

Pump water into space and heat it there? There is no heat transfer in vacuum so the steam won't get colder.

[AquaX]

Insulated pipes. The steam converts back to water if it is allowed to exchange the heat through something else in a decent rate so the less heat transfer you allow to happen, the better. Igneous can work at first but ceramic should be you next and permanent solution.

[Toaster]

Originally posted by Aeven:

Pump water into space and heat it there? There is no heat transfer in vacuum so the steam won't get colder.

Wouldn't the steam and water just disappear into space if I put it in vacuum?

Originally posted by AquaX:

Insulated pipes. The steam converts back to water if it is allowed to exchange the heat through something else in a decent rate so the less heat transfer you allow to happen, the better. Igneous can work at first but ceramic should be you next and permanent solution.

Ah,forgot about the ceramic. Will try that first. Thanks.

[Clonefarmer]

Originally posted by Toaster:

Originally posted by Aeven:

Pump water into space and heat it there? There is no heat transfer in vacuum so the steam won't get colder.

Wouldn't the steam and water just disappear into space if I put it in vacuum?

Use drywall to create rooms in space. The drywall prevents gas/liquids from escaping into space. The closer the steam is created to the rocket the less it has to travel through pipes.

[mikek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5WY8iy95U

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Toaster:

Originally posted by Aeven:

Pump water into space and heat it there? There is no heat transfer in vacuum so the steam won't get colder.

Wouldn't the steam and water just disappear into space if I put it in vacuum?

Originally posted by AquaX:

Insulated pipes. The steam converts back to water if it is allowed to exchange the heat through something else in a decent rate so the less heat transfer you allow to happen, the better. Igneous can work at first but ceramic should be you next and permanent solution.

Ah,forgot about the ceramic. Will try that first. Thanks.

Do not forget to preheat the pipes as the pipes can transfer heat with the steam. If you first pump something really hot through them a few cycles, like oil, you can heat the pipes up enough that the steam won't cool when passing through.

[L37]

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

Do not forget to preheat the pipes as the pipes can transfer heat with the steam. If you first pump something really hot through them a few cycles, like oil, you can heat the pipes up enough that the steam won't cool when passing through.

It would be quite hard to pump oil through gas pipes...

Also IMO with how temporary any steam-based setup is (you need few launches and then you switch to petroleum) building metal refinery right next to rocket, using it to heat up stem to relatively high temperature (like ~150-160+C) and pumping it into rocket is the easiest way.

If you need to transfer it over large distances there are basically 3 options:
1. Heat it up enough for it to reach destination even with temperature loss, use insulated pipes (Igneous, ceramic, whatever. Does not matter), make sure it does not stay in pipes by either pumping exacly required amount or looping it back into hot room.
2. Use insulated insulation pipes (not practical as it requires stuff from space).
3. Keep pipes in vacuum, once heated up to required temperature they will never cool down (no radiative heat transfer in the game).

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by L37:

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

Do not forget to preheat the pipes as the pipes can transfer heat with the steam. If you first pump something really hot through them a few cycles, like oil, you can heat the pipes up enough that the steam won't cool when passing through.

It would be quite hard to pump oil through gas pipes...

Also IMO with how temporary any steam-based setup is (you need few launches and then you switch to petroleum) building metal refinery right next to rocket, using it to heat up stem to relatively high temperature (like ~150-160+C) and pumping it into rocket is the easiest way.

If you need to transfer it over large distances there are basically 3 options:
1. Heat it up enough for it to reach destination even with temperature loss, use insulated pipes (Igneous, ceramic, whatever. Does not matter), make sure it does not stay in pipes by either pumping exacly required amount or looping it back into hot room.
2. Use insulated insulation pipes (not practical as it requires stuff from space).
3. Keep pipes in vacuum, once heated up to required temperature they will never cool down (no radiative heat transfer in the game).

I just woke up, sue me.

Anyways, anything hot can be pumped through there, pick something that has a low evaporation point then, like ethanol.

[reprodukTOOOOOOOOOOOR]

Make it as close as possible to your rocket, lol

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/764974771696206382/C825C06A934A4F19CB7A335F6630B90AC8E43CA2/

[GMC]

Make the steam close to the rocket. Like, right next to it. A typical setup has regolith fall onto a bunker door which forms the roof of the steam chamber (which is backed with drywall). A tempshift plate transfers heat from the bunker door to a shallow pool of water to create steam. Also, if you use metal tiles, a bunker door, or airlocks on the steam chamber wall nearest to the rocket, the rocket exhaust will heat the steam chamber for the next batch.

Limit the flow rate of the water using a liquid valve and/or automation to prevent the steam from getting too cold. Use the warmest water that's available and/or pre-heat it en route (but not to the extent that it boils in the pipe). For the steam, use insulated pipes, preferably using "thermally reactive" materials (low specific heat capacity) so that the steam heats the pipes rather than the pipes cooling the steam.

On the bright side, you only need to use steam for 2 trips, which is enough to research hydrocarbon combustion. With 6 research modules, you get 310 data banks per trip; you need ~602 (it should be 600, but you lose a couple due to rounding error because the programmer doesn't appear to understand floating-point arithmetic, or how to avoid it, or why they should have avoided it).

A similar principle applies to transferring liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen: cool them to significantly below their boiling point so that they won't boil from gaining a few degrees in the pipes. This isn't straightforward for hydrogen as its freezing point is only 7°C below its boiling point (and if you accidentally freeze it, it takes forever to melt), so you need to use ceramic pipes and keep them short. For liquid oxygen being produced with a thermoregulator, you need to stop pumping in oxygen a cycle prior to launch to give the liquid time to cool down. If the oxygen which condenses is being replaced with (relatively) warm gas, the liquid will be only just below its boiling point, and will boil in the pipes. The issue goes away if you get super coolant and switch to an aquatuner, as that will condense oxygen as fast as it's pumped in while also cooling the liquid oxygen.

[Hedning]

1 Make your production close to space so that the entire (short) pipe can be built in vacuum.
2 Heat the steam as much as you can
3 Use insulated pipes, preferably from igneous, mafic or ceramic.

You may lose a tile or so of steam, but once the pipe heats up from the leading tiles it will be fine. You shouldn't sustain enough damage to break any pipe segment.

[Toaster]

Thank you all for your tips. I was overthinking it like an idiot (wanted to have 2 seperate pipes/vents full of something hot as the steam running along the main pipe as "heaters") and i was trying to pump said steam from the magma area all the way up top to the rocket lol. Will go and try your suggestions.

[Frostas]

The simplest system for making steam
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1889326305
Clock Sensor is used to turn the system on / off
Steam pipes can be made of cheap materials

[Toaster]

Originally posted by Frostas:

The simplest system for making steam
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1889326305
Clock Sensor is used to turn the system on / off
Steam pipes can be made of cheap materials

Looks sweet! However how did you manage to heat up the water to >100 degrees with the liquid tepidizer? I tried to do that but the target temperature is set to 85 and I did not find a way to change that value. Is it with automation too?

[Hedning]

This is an exploit. By rapidly turning it on and off you get short bursts of heating even though it is above it's intended working range.