Using space biome to cool liquids

[valenti_scott]

Hello-
I'm working on an idea to use the space biome to cool liquids. However, according to the wiki, "there are no gases in the space biome, which leads to a limited heat exchange."

So I'm not sure if it would work. I suppose running some pipe through an area with space exposure would not cool the liquid very much?

Or maybe a thermo-aquatuner could be used, and use space to radiate the heat from the machine. Again, how would the heat "radiate," in the absence of gas or liquid?

Also I noticed that the abyssalite right next to the space biome is very cold, and maybe that fact could be used for cooling. I dug out some tiles right next to the "space exposure" tiles, and they were quite cold.

Yet again, if hot liquid were piped through those cool gases, the gases would heat up, so the cooling effect might not last for long.

I'll probably experiment with some ideas, and in the meantime some tips would be nice!
-Scott

[veryinky]

There's no radiating heat transfer in this game. Only conduction.

[Mringasa]

Space exposure conducts heat at an absolute minimal rate. I found this out last game when hot Regolith kept dropping on my Telescope, heating it up and damaging it, but when I dug it out because it was completely built on Space Exposure squares it wouldn't cool for ♥♥♥♥.

I ended up just leaving the Regolith on there until it all cooled down because having it there caused a "connection" with the nearest tile and thus heat would conduct through it.

[Hedning]

The space biome tiles start out cold, but that's not because space cools them, they just spawn that way. They will get heated up by meteors and then you can no longer use the space biome for cooling. You have to transfer heat through tiles of solid, gas or liquid. Vacuum doesn't transfer heat at all.

[0restes]

The space biome is perfect for gases and liquids because you don't have to pump out any unwanted gas from rooms and if it was to happen you can purge it easily. It also acts as a perfect insulator so liquid hydrogen and oxygen production is less cumbersome. Steam turbines are marginally better managed IMHO.

[Tech Enthusiast]

If you want to "vent heat away", you can still use the Space area.

Just use a gas or preferably liquid you don't need anymore. Heat it up,... let it fly in space.
You can delete A LOT of heat that way, since there are plenty of endless sources of liquids and gasses.

Oil is a pretty solid pick since you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees before it becomes a gas. It will shift to petrolium before that. So just have a pump push oil trough a pipe, passing all the hot stuff you want cooled, then vent the hot oil away.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Oil is a pretty solid pick since you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees before it becomes a gas.

Anything above 125°C can be turned into power with the heat carrier returned. So creating oil just to heat it up and toss it is a waste of power and a waste of production resources.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Not if you can't find enough ways to spend the energy.
Also, the question was about removing heat trough space, not about converting it into something else like energy.

[madcow]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

If you want to "vent heat away", you can still use the Space area.

Just use a gas or preferably liquid you don't need anymore. Heat it up,... let it fly in space.
You can delete A LOT of heat that way, since there are plenty of endless sources of liquids and gasses.

Oil is a pretty solid pick since you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees before it becomes a gas. It will shift to petrolium before that. So just have a pump push oil trough a pipe, passing all the hot stuff you want cooled, then vent the hot oil away.

Why would you dump hot oil like that? That heat is potential power you are throwing away...as well as using power to pump it away, which is more wasteful.

Convert it to petroleum and consume it, not waste it. Refining the crude will halve its mass (and delete half the heat).

[Tech Enthusiast]

Happy for you guys that you can spend all that energy on the map and need to actually reduce waste. Never happened for me tho.
All the Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Petrolium, Solar....

If you want to reduce heat tho, you gotta get rid of it. Turning it into energy and using it, just moves the heat elsewhere. If that is what you want, sure.

But again:
The question from the OP was about getting rid of it, not converting it or moving it from one end of the map to the other.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Oil is a pretty solid pick since you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees before it becomes a gas. It will shift to petrolium before that. So just have a pump push oil trough a pipe, passing all the hot stuff you want cooled, then vent the hot oil away.

Oil found on the map usually has temperature around 100C, sometimes more than that. Produced by well will be at least 90C. Can you give examples what machines/things you can cool down by 90C oil so you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees?

[Tech Enthusiast]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Oil found on the map usually has temperature around 100C, sometimes more than that. Produced by well will be at least 90C. Can you give examples what machines/things you can cool down by 90C oil so you can heat it up to hundreds of degrees?

You don't need to cool the base with this oil.
There are plenty of ways to cool with hydrogen or other gasses and liquids, and only using the oild to transport the heat away.

Example:
Run a loop of Hydrogen trough your base and have it pass a row of gas coolers. These gas coolers are sitting in a hydrogen room themselves, moving heat from the loop into the room. Made out of steel the room and machines can get quite hot, upwards of 200 degree.
You can easily cool everything with this loop and only need the oil to pass trough the hydrogen room with some radiant pipes. The oil will cool down the room back to 90ish degree and take 100-110 degree of heat with it. A LOT of heat, since it is also a liquid and comes in 10kg packs.

If you need stronger cooling for very hot machines, hydrogen is not gonna cut it, because it is a gas and is therefore not blessed with plenty of mass. For those purposes you can use Oil and cool that down to your desired temp... while having the machine in a room full of [insert whatever has great mass and head transfer and is conveniently available]. Let the 90degree Oil pipe pass trough there,... same concept as above, just using different elements and machines.

What kind of cooling you use, is pretty dependend on what you want to do really. There are almost endless possibilities you can find after some tinkering.


Nothing is stopping you from adjusting the loop from early game to endgame either.
I usually go with a pretty strictly designed center base, with outposts for energy generation and rockets. Nothing but the center base (food, beds, etc.) need cooling, so, I just use a single cooling loop, which starts out with plain poluted water I find all around me. Find any cold biome and let the loop pass trough there as needed.... melting the cold biome in the meantime, but giving enough time to upgrade the loop to a more reliable form.

From there you can do whatever. The first things you usually want is more energy, so collecting heat in a single room, while taking the heat out of your base is an amazing idea. Upgrade the loop as describved above, but don't flush it away with a secondary loop, but turn it into power with a steam engine.


Or, you could just be lucky and have either of these,...
Maybe your map has thermo nullifyers and a hydrogen vent? Well, heat is not an issue on that map. Or you find a cold slush geyser? In that case heat won't be an issue either.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Happy for you guys that you can spend all that energy on the map and need to actually reduce waste. Never happened for me tho.
All the Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Petrolium, Solar....

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

The first things you usually want is more energy, so collecting heat in a single room, while taking the heat out of your base is an amazing idea. Upgrade the loop as describved above, but don't flush it away with a secondary loop, but turn it into power with a steam engine.

So which one is it? You need more energy or you don't? Also your first idea was just to dump oil into space, but now you suggest to use steam trubine? Both Hedning and Madcow suggested to use heat for more energy and seems like you agree with them.

By the way - you don't need any loops. Just keep hot machinery in steam atmosphere and regulate it at stable temperature using a steam turbine.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Uhm, you can't just combine two fully different answers to different questions.
The first answer was a simple way of using space to get rid of heat energy. You don't usually have a heat problem, before you have more energy than you can use.

The second question was specifics and I went into how to turn a cycle 10 loop into an early energy battery for cycle 70ish.

Two questions, two different answers.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Happy for you guys that you can spend all that energy on the map and need to actually reduce waste. Never happened for me tho.
All the Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Petrolium, Solar....

If you want to reduce heat tho, you gotta get rid of it. Turning it into energy and using it, just moves the heat elsewhere. If that is what you want, sure.

But again:
The question from the OP was about getting rid of it, not converting it or moving it from one end of the map to the other.

If you don't waste you can get away with not building as much power, focusing instead of building other things. You could for example not waste your time building a huge solar farm if you just used steam turbines to cool aquatuners instead of one way oil cooling thermo regulators.

Even if you have plenty of power turning some generators off because you don't need them will generate less heat. If heat is your issue then generating lots of heat by powering wasteful systems is counter-productive.

The steam turbine destroys lots of heat by turning it into energy. It does not just move it elsewhere. You will never have a problem of finding things to use the power on. If you don't need it you can just waste it, power that is not used does not heat anything up, but if you need it it is good to have.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Uhm, you can't just combine two fully different answers to different questions.

And what exactly were that 2 questions? Both Hedning and Madcow asked why would you waste oil to just dump it into space instead of using it to generate power. You answered that more power is not needed.

I asked for a more detailed examples where you can take advantage of wide range of temperature that oil can have. I hopped that you would show that there is a good use case to heat up oil to high temperature and then dump it into space. You didn't give any specific answer and in the end you started to suggest that more power is a first thing people would want. I'm sorry but at this point I'm totally lost in what you want to say or prove.