best gas/liquid for moving heat

[mepatuhoo]

I have been using X as my main means to move heat from or too locations. Is this the best option? I know water holds more heat per cubic meter. however water can be a very costly element and often is hard to get large quantities to the point of being able to use some dedicated to moving heat around. Also do you think we will be getting an update where when water hits 0C it could turn back into a solid. Maybe breaking pipes and dumping out as ice. Now that I think about it. Would be cool to have a way to turn water into ice.

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Pipes already freeze water below 0C. I've also read X is the best coolant.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Pipes already freeze water below 0C. I've also read X is the best coolant.

No they don't. I took a lot of liquid pipes filled with water, then I created three more pipes that were not connected. I dropped the pipes that had over 3.2Kmol of water that was -2 degrees. Connected the three empty pipes, and the empty pipes now have water in them. Last I checked a pipe containing fully frozen water won't move the ice if you add more pipes to them, in real life anyway.

So not sure how you define "pipes already freeze water below 0C". Freeze it how? You can't fill a water bottle with it, but the contents of the pipe are not frozen in the normal sense.

EDIT: I just did it again with pipes that had water below -15 celcius.

[TX]

Originally posted by mepatuhoo:

I have been using X as my main means to move heat from or too locations. Is this the best option? I know water holds more heat per cubic meter. however water can be a very costly element and often is hard to get large quantities to the point of being able to use some dedicated to moving heat around. Also do you think we will be getting an update where when water hits 0C it could turn back into a solid. Maybe breaking pipes and dumping out as ice. Now that I think about it. Would be cool to have a way to turn water into ice.

Carbon dioxide has a specific heat of 28.2 Joule / mol.
Pollutant has a specific heat of 24.8 Joule / mol.

[[15th] lolpox]

Gas	@ 15 C 
H2	20.4
N2	20.6
O2	21.1
X	24.8
CO2	28.2
H2O	72
N2O	23

Source: Stationeers Engineering Tool
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QF-nbW7fUMBaZzKwUp9smkQxVwfxMicF7FhgRFf7-Tw/edit#gid=1718464320

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by Stooge:

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Pipes already freeze water below 0C. I've also read X is the best coolant.

No they don't. I took a lot of liquid pipes filled with water, then I created three more pipes that were not connected. I dropped the pipes that had over 3.2Kmol of water that was -2 degrees. Connected the three empty pipes, and the empty pipes now have water in them. Last I checked a pipe containing fully frozen water won't move the ice if you add more pipes to them, in real life anyway.

So not sure how you define "pipes already freeze water below 0C". Freeze it how? You can't fill a water bottle with it, but the contents of the pipe are not frozen in the normal sense.

EDIT: I just did it again with pipes that had water below -15 celcius.

Look, all I know is people have problems filling water bottles if the pipes are below 0C, or above 100C.

I'm a noob to this game, so if you have some sort of experience, then OP can disregard what I said. Feel free to tell us what works, because I don't know for sure either.

[JeanDeaux]

Water freezing/steaming is truly only considered at bottle fillers (at least currently), freezing water still flows freely through pipe networks. If the water temp is below 0° C or over 100° C then the bottle fillers don't work. Anything else regarding liquids still works normally so no worry about pipes getting clogged or bursting.

The new electric bottle fillers will warm up the water but don't cool as far as I know.

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by JeanDeaux:

Water freezing/steaming is truly only considered at bottle fillers (at least currently), freezing water still flows freely through pipe networks. If the water temp is below 0° C or over 100° C then the bottle fillers don't work. Anything else regarding liquids still works normally so no worry about pipes getting clogged or bursting.

The new electric bottle fillers will warm up the water but don't cool as far as I know.

So you can use water as a coolant instead of X, correct?

[JeanDeaux]

Yes, just remember with any gas/liquid you use as a "coolant", all you're really doing is transferring heat until they basically balance and become the same temperature. Whatever there is most of will win the temperature war.

So if you have a supply of water at -40° C and an equal supply of warm air at 40° C they will eventually balance each other out and both will be 0° C in the end without a means for either to maintain that temperature.

Usually a heat source continues to generate heat so if you plan to cool with water you will need to find a way to keep the water cool else it will eventually warm up to the same temperature as the warm gas since it's constantly generating heat.

Resource management will come very much into play when it comes to heat management. If you have a limited supply of a resource, like water, then it may be too valuable to use as a coolant. If you have plenty of cool air outside and you run the furnace a lot, then pollutants on a radiator system using a heat exchanger suddenly become a good asset for you to use.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by Stooge:

No they don't. I took a lot of liquid pipes filled with water, then I created three more pipes that were not connected. I dropped the pipes that had over 3.2Kmol of water that was -2 degrees. Connected the three empty pipes, and the empty pipes now have water in them. Last I checked a pipe containing fully frozen water won't move the ice if you add more pipes to them, in real life anyway.

So not sure how you define "pipes already freeze water below 0C". Freeze it how? You can't fill a water bottle with it, but the contents of the pipe are not frozen in the normal sense.

EDIT: I just did it again with pipes that had water below -15 celcius.

Look, all I know is people have problems filling water bottles if the pipes are below 0C, or above 100C.

I'm a noob to this game, so if you have some sort of experience, then OP can disregard what I said. Feel free to tell us what works, because I don't know for sure either.

If my response came across as anything other than a perfectly calm explanation of an experiment I performed to see if you were correct, because I could not recall having seen water not flow in the pipes. I use it as a coolant and I typically keep it very cold, but I wanted to specifically test the scenario of whether the pipes "freeze" as in the liquid stops moving.

My apologies if I came across as if I was being very negative, hostile, condescending, etc. I was honestly curious about your statement and decided to test it. Then simply reported what I had found. Did not mean to insult your level of play. I have over 1,000 hours in and honestly that is the first time I ever bothered to really check the numbers. To see if it impacted the flow to any level at all.

The game is very ... unrealistic in aspects of fluid dynamics. You could take many miles of pipe completely empty, hook them to a tank, and instantly the entire pipe is filled and balanced. It doesn't really "flow" as much as it just instantly appears.

So, when you said it freezes, that's why I asked "Freeze it how?" because in this game things behave in ways that do not make sense, so perhaps there was another definition of "freeze" then what we would think of here on Earth.

If they did ever have water freeze (and possibly burst) pipes, that would add a lot of complications to a lot of cooling systems I use.

... now I'm worried ...

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by Stooge:

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Look, all I know is people have problems filling water bottles if the pipes are below 0C, or above 100C.

I'm a noob to this game, so if you have some sort of experience, then OP can disregard what I said. Feel free to tell us what works, because I don't know for sure either.

If my response came across as anything other than a perfectly calm explanation of an experiment I performed to see if you were correct, because I could not recall having seen water not flow in the pipes. I use it as a coolant and I typically keep it very cold, but I wanted to specifically test the scenario of whether the pipes "freeze" as in the liquid stops moving.

My apologies if I came across as if I was being very negative, hostile, condescending, etc. I was honestly curious about your statement and decided to test it. Then simply reported what I had found. Did not mean to insult your level of play. I have over 1,000 hours in and honestly that is the first time I ever bothered to really check the numbers. To see if it impacted the flow to any level at all.

The game is very ... unrealistic in aspects of fluid dynamics. You could take many miles of pipe completely empty, hook them to a tank, and instantly the entire pipe is filled and balanced. It doesn't really "flow" as much as it just instantly appears.

So, when you said it freezes, that's why I asked "Freeze it how?" because in this game things behave in ways that do not make sense, so perhaps there was another definition of "freeze" then what we would think of here on Earth.

If they did ever have water freeze (and possibly burst) pipes, that would add a lot of complications to a lot of cooling systems I use.

... now I'm worried ...

Oh yeah, I meant "freeze", like molecules stop moving, and there's a phase change. I'm too new to know about in-depth game mechanics. I figured if pipes froze and messed up a water dispenser, then that would also mean you couldn't use them to cool below 0 C.

Makes me think about a future antifreeze dispenser?....

So what you're saying, is they can still be used as a coolant below 0 C? Because I'd already started up a pollutant loop for that, since I didn't think it could be done. But water has like three times the energy capacity.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by JeanDeaux:

Water freezing/steaming is truly only considered at bottle fillers (at least currently), freezing water still flows freely through pipe networks. If the water temp is below 0° C or over 100° C then the bottle fillers don't work. Anything else regarding liquids still works normally so no worry about pipes getting clogged or bursting.

The new electric bottle fillers will warm up the water but don't cool as far as I know.

So you can use water as a coolant instead of X, correct?

Yes, BUT, water is a terrible way to conduct heat to the atmosphere. It will suck the heat right out of the air, but it does not want to give the heat back at anywhere near the same rate. So, as a coolant it's great, but it doesn't work as well to provide a source of heat to the atmosphere.

I did not write the numbers down, but it was a significant difference between the radiators if the water was col and the air was hot as opposed to when the water was hot and the air was cold.

I could be wrong. It was just something I took a brief note of when testing the does water freeze in the pipes experiment. It was significant enough that I did notice it, though.

In a vacuum such as on the moon, the results might also be different. Since the heat would be via radiated heat and not convection, I'm not sure what the results would be.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by Stooge:

If my response came across as anything other than a perfectly calm explanation of an experiment I performed to see if you were correct, because I could not recall having seen water not flow in the pipes. I use it as a coolant and I typically keep it very cold, but I wanted to specifically test the scenario of whether the pipes "freeze" as in the liquid stops moving.

My apologies if I came across as if I was being very negative, hostile, condescending, etc. I was honestly curious about your statement and decided to test it. Then simply reported what I had found. Did not mean to insult your level of play. I have over 1,000 hours in and honestly that is the first time I ever bothered to really check the numbers. To see if it impacted the flow to any level at all.

The game is very ... unrealistic in aspects of fluid dynamics. You could take many miles of pipe completely empty, hook them to a tank, and instantly the entire pipe is filled and balanced. It doesn't really "flow" as much as it just instantly appears.

So, when you said it freezes, that's why I asked "Freeze it how?" because in this game things behave in ways that do not make sense, so perhaps there was another definition of "freeze" then what we would think of here on Earth.

If they did ever have water freeze (and possibly burst) pipes, that would add a lot of complications to a lot of cooling systems I use.

... now I'm worried ...

Oh yeah, I meant "freeze", like molecules stop moving, and there's a phase change. I'm too new to know about in-depth game mechanics. I figured if pipes froze and messed up a water dispenser, then that would also mean you couldn't use them to cool below 0 C.

Makes me think about a future antifreeze dispenser?....

So what you're saying, is they can still be used as a coolant below 0 C? Because I'd already started up a pollutant loop for that, since I didn't think it could be done. But water has like three times the energy capacity.

Yes. Some of mine are well below 40 degrees C. It can take a while to get them that cold, but they will drop a very hot room to a comfortable level very, very, quickly.

EDIT: This is what caused me to be so curious about whether they "freeze" or not. I thought perhaps you meant the water somehow moved slower, but since gas does not behave that way in the game I never bothered to check if liquid did or not.

[Stooge]

PS -- By the way You can MAKE water via the H2 Combustor. All you need is power, oxygen, and "volatiles" (which is really hydrogen but they named it volatiles for ... some reason or another) and it will produce water. It's not hard to find hydrogen and oxygen, and the sun is a limitless power source. Oh, and run it outside. The heat it gives off can be ... quite hot. Or was the last time I used one. A few thousand degrees celsius, but water is not super rare given that you can typically find a lot of volatile ice and o2

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by Stooge:

Yes, BUT, water is a terrible way to conduct heat to the atmosphere.

Ahh, I'm new enough to still be thinking in "Moon". I haven't had to deal with an atmosphere yet. Thanks for the tips, though!

Now I did just read something about radiators. One person was saying to use the "round ones" in a vacuum. Then later, I read to use the regular flat ones. I have been using the flat ones this whole time, so they "radiate" in a vacuum. But which style radiator am I supposed to be using on the Moon? Flat, or round?

[Stooge]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by Stooge:

Yes, BUT, water is a terrible way to conduct heat to the atmosphere.

Ahh, I'm new enough to still be thinking in "Moon". I haven't had to deal with an atmosphere yet. Thanks for the tips, though!

Now I did just read something about radiators. One person was saying to use the "round ones" in a vacuum. Then later, I read to use the regular flat ones. I have been using the flat ones this whole time, so they "radiate" in a vacuum. But which style radiator am I supposed to be using on the Moon? Flat, or round?

Round in a vacuum. If you put a radiator of each type on a pipe and then with empty hands look directly at the radiator it will tell you how much energy it is transferring. Negative means it is losing heat, positive it is gaining heat. That way you can see which type transfers heat faster in a given type of atmosphere (or vacuum).