(hot) Steam Vent Tamer

[cswiger]

Here is a split-steam design for a Steam Vent tamer. The map seed is S-FRZ-1726386072-0, which has a high-output vent down and to the right of the printing pod, which produces 1.83 kg/s of steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2455268107
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2455268726
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2455268975

The AquaTuner is cooling a loop of Brine to 30C, controlled by the Pipe Thermo Sensor. This cools down the turbines. There's a pressure sensor set to 20kg, which opens the Liquid Vent and adds more water to the AquaTuner chamber as needed. This vent is active enough for it to be up around 190 C, but less active vents the AquaTuner chamber is usually more like 160 C.

Inside the main steam chamber, the Thermo sensor is set to 190 C. This turns off the Steam Turbines if the steam is not hot enough for the turbines to run at peak power.

The Atmo Pressure Sensor is set to around 2.5 kg. It opens the Liquid Vents and disables the Liquid Shutoff to divert water back to the main steam chamber when the steam pressure drops below what is needed to keep the turbines running at full power.

The main steam chamber temperatures range between 195 C just before a new eruption starts to a peak of about 250 C. Ideal temp for a turbine with all 5 ports open is 200 C, and the ideal temp for a turbine with 4 ports open is 226 C. This design is doing a pretty fair job of running at the right temperatures, but is wasting a bit of the thermal energy.

The AquaTuner only needs to be made of Steel and not Thermium, since it is kept is a separate chamber that runs cooler than the main steam chamber. Insulated tiles and pipes are Ceramic; Drywall is Granite; Tempshift plates are diamond. There's a few hundred kg/tile of Petroleum on the floor to help balance and transfer the heat around.

[caseyas435943]

Never understood people taming one. People spend 1200w running a tuner to make it work. So most times you are making almost no extra power. You waste all that time building something that for the most part does nothing for you but run.

Your set up works sure. But 400w? 1 hatch farm can run a coal plant 27/4 for the same 400w.

You're probably ranching anyway for the BBQ. Or at least you should be.

So taming them is almost worthless other than you tamed it I guess.

[Bob]

Well, compared to your setting, it doesn't generate CO2, cools down the map instead of warming it to make use of that salt water. Sure, the set up is more complicated, but if it's your thing, it might be fun.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by caseyas435943:

Never understood people taming one. People spend 1200w running a tuner to make it work. So most times you are making almost no extra power. You waste all that time building something that for the most part does nothing for you but run.

So you don't realize that the aquatuner in this build doesn't run 100% time? Its up time is probably somthing close to 40%, when turbines are active.

[AlexMBrennan]

Never understood people taming one

Since ONI maps have a finite number of geysers your options for getting more water are either this, a petroleum boiler or a rocket chimney.

[cswiger]

Yes, @casey, I like Hatch ranches for food and coal and eventually power-free refined metal.
@Angpaur is correct that the Aquatuner runs less than half of the time.

The turbines don't run at 850W peak power all of the time either, quite, but they run close to 90% duty cycle and produce ~1100W surplus power during the active period, depending on the Steam Vent details. It's enough power to outproduce a NatGas Vent and compete with Hydrogen Vents.

This design is 12 tiles wide by 10 high, so it is quite compact even compared to a Cool Steam Vent tamer. It would be fair to criticize the design for needing a lot of Ceramic, but too much heat leaks using Igneous Rock.

It also doesn't do a perfect job of transferring heat during the eruption, so the turbines are consuming up to 260 C steam right over the vent, just as the eruption phase ends. The pressure sensor will recycle the turbine output water, so it will continue to run until the steam chamber falls below 190 C (or whatever you set the Thermo sensor at).

If one has SuperCoolant, that would improve the AquaTuner cooling loop efficiency by a lot.

Furthermore, using 50 kg/tile of SuperCoolant on the floor balances out the temperatures about as well as 500 kg/tile of petrol; using 200 kg/tile of SuperCoolant buffers the temperature swing during eruption even better, so you get a bit more power.

[cswiger]

Lets assume we have end-game materials available:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457177409
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457177624

The Liquid Shutoff can be made of Thermium now and live inside the main steam chamber.

Cooling loop is SuperCoolant, also used on the floor by the vent. AT duty cycle is down around 10%, so this is producing around 1400W surplus. Or you could spend some of that power to cool more stuff down, since the cooling loop has plenty of extra capacity available.

[seik0ixtem]

>It would be fair to criticize the design for needing a lot of Ceramic

you could save Ceramic replacing it with outer layer of vacuum. The only really needed - under Steam Turbines.

Though, it will take more space. But may save some time for building, as most of insulated tiles can be build as normal tiles due to vacuum layer.