Cool Steam Vent tamer followup.....

[cswiger]

After looking around, I found two colonies with good examples of a Cool Steam Vent tamer with a high-output vent, meaning the Vent produces more than 4kg/sec during the eruption phase.

The first colony is called Laboratory:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411864381
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gNk4YEvw1GV9IVXwxC8haKU64ox5q4fx/view?usp=sharing

This steam vent at the edge of space, so it has drywall backing and makes a good test case as the outside environment cannot provide even a little passive cooling. This one was easy to get the chamber completely vacuumed.

(I normally use regenerative heating from rocket engines to heat up a steam chamber, so there's a rocket engine above which could be used to add a lot of extra heat. Steam generation is now using the output water from this tamer and hot regolith instead of pumping steam directly from the tamer's steam chamber.)


The second colony is Fortress III:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411864970
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411865260
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yB0ud14T75WvX5UMd-kjBfR8QfzcLXD8/view?usp=sharing

This map has two high-output steam vents; the upper is almost exactly 5 kg/s and the lower one runs at 4.3 kg/s. The upper tamer still has about 1kg of CO2 inside; it just went active again before I managed to completely empty it. The lower tamer is vacuumed clean and filled up 40tons or so of liquid storage tanks while I was trying to clean the upper one.

These tamers are mostly built using Igneous Rock, although I tried using Ceramic when available. They are self-cooling and self-priming if the Liquid Pump has some water handy from the Vent's output by the time your dupes dig into the area. One could create another design using SuperCoolant which would be more power efficient.

The savefiles were loaded/saved without any mods or sandbox mode enabled. Maybe this means that if someone else loads them, they may activate Steam achievements...?

[Shame]

This doesn't look like a proper tamer. If the Steam ends up staying between 100C - 124C you will stay stuck with that steam in the chamber and will not be able to get any water out of it. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 25C margin at which you can't harvest the water (below 100C you can pump it out with a pump, above 125C via Steam Turbine) without an extended cooling method (jamming an Aqua Tuner + Liquid Tepidizer) means you are better off just using this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvRA80cPm4&pbjreload=101

This is legitemately the most fail proof and reliable method I have seen by far; creating a cooling loop with the aqua tuner around the vent. The method shown in this topic looks like it can very easily jam within the 25C mark.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Shame:

This doesn't look like a proper tamer. If the Steam ends up staying between 100C - 124C you will stay stuck with that steam in the chamber and will not be able to get any water out of it.

Almost all of the steam will be heated to just above 125C via the metal tiles adjacent to the aquatuner inside the central hotbox (which is kept at ~140C) and is consumed at a rate of 4 kg/s by the steam turbines.

For many cool steam vents, their peak output can and will be handled entirely by the turbines. However, there is a minority of "high volume" CSVs which have an output of significantly more than 4 kg/s of steam during the eruption phase.

For those, the extra steam output needs to be condensed and pumped instead to avoid loss of water due to the vent over-pressurizing. If the player cares to trade extra power needed to condense the water and pump it, they can do so efficiently with this design-- as shown in the savefiles above.

[Angpaur]

So I tested both variants:

Laboratory save: Vent should output 1475kg. Stored 1373.4kg (7% less)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412442714

Fortress save: Vent should output 1391Kg. Stored 1107kg (20% less)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412529073

7% lost water might seem not that bad, but 20% is just objectively bad.

[madcow]

OP...if a steam vent outputs more than 4kg/s, then you need 3 Steam Turbines to keep up with the vent's output. Each Turbine converts 2kg/s steam to water if all 5 inputs are unblocked, so you need a 3rd turbine to deal with the greater than 4kg/s output.

Otherwise you are not getting the full output of the vent as noted by Angpaur.

When built correctly, you will get 100% of the output since the vent will never overpressure.

[cswiger]

Thanks for running a test.

However, I don't recognize all the neutronium in the image of Fortress. That seems to be the lower CSV, rather than the upper one. Did you add neutronium via sandbox mode to prevent any heat transfer and cooling from the external environment?

The Lab CSV and the upper Fortress CSV are using a design which provides more active cooling; the lower Fortress CSV was built back in December and is less efficient.

The savefiles have the aquatuner temperature set to 140 C, which is the most power-efficient setting. I already have more water than I need on both maps, so saving power matters more to me than losing a fraction of the CSV output due to overpressure.

A player with different preferences can raise the aquatuner temp by 10C to run it more often, which will activate the turbines a bit sooner when an eruption starts, but more importantly, also cool down the water on the floor and condense more steam to water at the cost of power.

The tamer will need to condense up to 1 kg/s of steam to handle the maximum possible CSV output. That should correspond to running the aquatuner an extra 10% of the time and using an extra 120W, but using imperfect materials like Igneous Rock for Insulated Tiles reduces efficiency, so in practice that might be more like 15% and 160W.

Retest at 150C. If satisfied, stop; otherwise retest at 160C, and repeat as needed.

[Shame]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Almost all of the steam will be heated to just above 125C via the metal tiles adjacent to the aquatuner inside the central hotbox (which is kept at ~140C) and is consumed at a rate of 4 kg/s by the steam turbines.

For many cool steam vents, their peak output can and will be handled entirely by the turbines. However, there is a minority of "high volume" CSVs which have an output of significantly more than 4 kg/s of steam during the eruption phase.

The problem for me isn't the amount of steam that can be extracted, it's deadlock zone of about 25C that can very easily happen with this setup. If the turbines don't extract water because of the deadlock temperature being throughout the chamber (between 100C to just below 125C), then there is nothing for the Aqua Tuner to cool and no way to expel heat with. You could use a separate chamber with a tepidizer to keep the Aqua Tuner running, but at that point you might as well just use the Aqua Tuner to cool the chamber itself to conserve power. The deadlock zone also means that the liquid pump won't be able to just pump out the water from there at all.

Tepidizer itself is a ♥♥♥♥♥ and won't heat up past 85C so you can't throw that in the main steam chamber itself to heat it up to 125C and more. A deadlock could happen for instance due to the vent going dormant, or even just idle for too long before all the water is cooled down while the steam ends up below 125C.

So I really don't see how this could continuously and reliably provide water, let alone all of it being possible to be cooled down to a temperature you want with this design. But also, what is up with the output pipe being all weird in this setup? Really strange that you would also use the output water to cool the bottom of the chamber before throwing it out and without making sure the water actually is is guaranteed to be cool, that just seems to begging for things to break.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Retest at 150C. If satisfied, stop; otherwise retest at 160C, and repeat as needed.

I don't think there is need for more testing. To me it is obvious what is the problem -there is not enough room around vent for steam to spread fast enough. Starting few seconds sooner won't matter at all becase overpessurizing starts even before half of the eruption time.
Have you tried to test your build and see how much water you collect from one eruption? I have impression that you haven't and you don't really know flaws of your build.

Regarding the neutronium - I added it to speed up the game on debug ultrafast speed, because the second save file has the vent dormant and I had to let game wait 50 cycles.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by madcow:

OP...if a steam vent outputs more than 4kg/s, then you need 3 Steam Turbines to keep up with the vent's output.

Yes, this would be one solution. To make a symmetric design, you'd need to do:

turbine / aquatuner / turbine / aquatuner / turbine

....which requires twice the steel for the second turbine. Should work fine, though.

Each Turbine converts 2kg/s steam to water if all 5 inputs are unblocked, so you need a 3rd turbine to deal with the greater than 4kg/s output.

One alternative is to condense the extra steam by using some of the water being cooled by the aquatuner and pumping it away.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

I don't think there is need for more testing. To me it is obvious what is the problem -there is not enough room around vent for steam to spread fast enough. Starting few seconds sooner won't matter at all becase overpessurizing starts even before half of the eruption time.
Have you tried to test your build and see how much water you collect from one eruption? I have impression that you haven't and you don't really know flaws of your build.

If by "testing", you mean doing things or making changes via sandbox mode, the answer would be "no" until yesterday.

If by "testing", you mean starting with an empty Liquid Reservoir, and seeing how much liquid is present after an eruption cycle, the answer is yes. For Lab CSV, I get:

1456.2 kg (out of 1475 kg) @ 180 C
1465.5 @ 200 C
1487.1 @ 220 C
1474.6 @ 240 C
1475.3 @ 240 C

The liquid pump moves 10kg water per packet, so it can bounce a little under or even over the theoretical limit. Try setting the temperature to 200C and one should be able to confirm whether this stabilizes with no significant water loss over multiple eruption cycles.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412901297
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412902362
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412904738
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412908803
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412910153

Regarding the neutronium - I added it to speed up the game on debug ultrafast speed, because the second save file has the vent dormant and I had to let game wait 50 cycles.

I don't believe that constitutes a non-intrusive change.

Why would you wait 50 cycles rather than test the upper CSV which is higher output?

[Angpaur]

I didn't change anything in Laboratory test. Also adding that neutronium changed absolutely nothing for the test conditions.

I rerun the Laboratory test and after few trials it started to give similar results to yours. The vent's output, close to 2 turbines max capacity, allows to almost all of the water to be harvested.

In case of Fortress upper vent, which I didn't test first time because I thought I was supposed to test the one that was shown when game loaded, I'm getting inconsistent results accross 5 trials: 585.5, 632.3, 597.4, 640, 586.2. Average is 608kg, which is close to max value of 618kg. That vent has a really low eruption peroid and when I observed steam pressure it reaches 5kg just seconds before vent goes idle. So it is just on a verge of overpressurizing. The lower vent has much longer eruption period and steam accumulates afrer some time and the tamer cannot peform so well as the upper one. Also it doesn't have that radiant pipe a the bottom of the vent, which helps to reduce steam pressure. But that was the one, which you showed in the other tread and seems that of 3 tamers you showed the worst one and from the very beginning I had doubts about that one particular tamer - whether it is able to harvest all vent water.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

I didn't change anything in Laboratory test. Also adding that neutronium changed absolutely nothing for the test conditions.

OK with regard to Lab test.

As for the Fortress lower CSV, that is in the middle of an ice biome and surrounded by ten wheezeworts. It has/had environmental cooling in some abundance.

I rerun the Laboratory test and after few trials it started to give similar results to yours. The vent's output, close to 2 turbines max capacity, allows to almost all of the water to be harvested.

OK; thanks for retesting.

In case of Fortress upper vent, which I didn't test first time because I thought I was supposed to test the one that was shown when game loaded, I'm getting inconsistent results accross 5 trials: 585.5, 632.3, 597.4, 640, 586.2. Average is 608kg, which is close to max value of 618kg. That vent has a really low eruption peroid and when I observed steam pressure it reaches 5kg just seconds before vent goes idle. So it is just on a verge of overpressurizing.

That seems to match up closely enough. It's almost perfectly balanced at 140 C, but maybe losing about a second or two of output per cycle. Bump it up to 150 C and it ought to average right around the expected max results.

The lower vent has much longer eruption period and steam accumulates afrer some time and the tamer cannot peform so well as the upper one. Also it doesn't have that radiant pipe a the bottom of the vent, which helps to reduce steam pressure. But that was the one, which you showed in the other tread and seems that of 3 tamers you showed the worst one and from the very beginning I had doubts about that one particular tamer - whether it is able to harvest all vent water.

Yes, I suppose that's accurate-- the lower CSV was depending on outside cooling to help. Without that, it's not going to do much better than just the turbine intake alone; not enough steam will condense.

Well, I've got a save from C100 before the lower vent went active. Gimme a while and I'll produce a save from C165, just before the lower vent activates, with a ton of Liquid Reservoirs in place. That way one can check the long-term average over several cycles as well, if so desired.

[cswiger]

For Fortress lower CSV with max output of 1391 kg, running at a temp of 160C:

Cycle Total Water Delta
C167: 1404.7 kg 1404.7 kg
C168: 2769.4 kg 1367.4 kg
C169: 4119.2 kg 1349.8 kg
C171: 5530.1 kg 1410.9 kg
C172: 6956.3 kg 1426.2 kg
C173: 8235.3 kg 1279.0 kg
C175: 9608.4 kg 1373.1 kg
C176: 10968.8 kg 1360.4 kg
C177: 12357.2 kg 1388.4 kg
C178: 13770.1 kg 1412.9 kg

Over the course of ten eruption cycles: average of 1377 kg and a loss of 14 kg. It probably needs to be run another 10 or 20 degrees hotter to avoid losing that ~1% of water.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VgwYz2LW8kKGOR1u_nltJoymALuWIPIu/view?usp=sharing

[Paveway]

There seems to be a few posts about cool steam vent tamers lately - what are you trying to achieve here? Are you just trying to cool down the water coming out of the vent so you can consume it elsewhere or are you trying to heat geyser water above 125 so the steam turbine can extract the heat?

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Paveway:

There seems to be a few posts about cool steam vent tamers lately - what are you trying to achieve here? Are you just trying to cool down the water coming out of the vent so you can consume it elsewhere or are you trying to heat geyser water above 125 so the steam turbine can extract the heat?

The goal is to extract all (or most) of the water, using as little power as necessary.

The main trick of this design is that the power used to run the aquatuner only needs to heat up one tile worth of steam to just over 125 C, namely the tile under the turbine intake on each side next to the metal tiles.

The other 4 turbine intakes on each side are consuming steam which is under 125 C.

Simply chilling down the steam to condense the entire vent output works, but requires ~600 W of input power. Heating the steam up past 125 so the steam turbines activate is roughly power-neutral at the most efficient aquatuner temperature of 140 C.

I am not unduly concerned with simply pulling in 4kg/s of steam and wasting some of the additional output due to vent over-pressure. However, by looping the water being cooled via the aquatuner past a pool of water kept on the floor, the additional steam past 4kg/s can be condensed and pumped instead. This requires about 120 W of power per kg/s of extra steam to run the aquatuner longer to obtain the needed cooling.

[Strygald]

If your goal is to be power efficient while 'harvesting' the water from a cool steam vent, wouldn't the typical steam turbine/aquatuner setup with radiant piping covering the vent be more effective(and of course you would use super coolant as it's not particularly hard to get)?