Condenser water buildup

[Itereus]

Hi. Been playing around with both nuclear and coal power. There seems to be an issue with the condenser not releasing water fast enough after the steam is cooled down. It's a slow buildup, resulting in a slow steam generation loss at the boiler. Condenser starts off with 0 water, as it should. Then once the boiler is hot enough to make steam, it cools it down but keeps a small amount of water inside for some reason.
To make sure it wasn't something I did, I imported the premade nuclear reactor and the same thing happens there, although at a slower rate. Anyone else encountered this, and have a solution?
I've tried running with pumps in different parts of the chain, but nothing seems to help with it.
Steam goes from boiler->turbine->condenser->boiler. I only run 1 turbine atm, trying to figure out some way to stop this from happening.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Same here, the condenser starts to accumulate water that won't get pumped out, even with an empty tank and a large pump inbetween.

[Troll]

It's indeed the temperature of the condenser that dictates how fast steam is turned back to water.
I you manage to keep it around 15/20° you'll have no trouble with water buildup. I put pumps on all circuits for my latest system and at the correct temperature it all runs pretty well.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by Troll:

It's indeed the temperature of the condenser that dictates how fast steam is turned back to water.
I you manage to keep it around 15/20° you'll have no trouble with water buildup. I put pumps on all circuits for my latest system and at the correct temperature it all runs pretty well.

Interesting, my turbines are running for 30 minutes now, condenser at 30°, yet the water is still building up. For some reason the intermediary water tank also started to fill up.

[Itereus]

Originally posted by Troll:

It's indeed the temperature of the condenser that dictates how fast steam is turned back to water.
I you manage to keep it around 15/20° you'll have no trouble with water buildup. I put pumps on all circuits for my latest system and at the correct temperature it all runs pretty well.

Would you mind sharing your build with that setup? Did some more testing today, and doesn't matter how many pumps I put in, how cool the condenser is running it's building up water (or steam, not clear what the fluid is). Try attaching a variable valve to the steam loop, no matter how much steam you let through, or the temperature of it fluid builds up in the condenser.
I attached a valve to the steam in port of the condenser, at all ranges between 100 and 1 fluid increased in the condenser. When I shut the valve off, it stopped building, but didn't decrease either. Tried with tanks on the water out side, pumps etc. nothing helps with this.
Edit: Running boiler temp at 105 or 250 doesn't seem to make much of a difference, neither does the condenser temp below 50-60.
Tried a couple of workshop submarines, both of them show the same behaviour with condenser buildup of fluid, resulting in a slow power loss unless you constantly feeds it fresh water, which only makes the boiler setup a horribly inefficient version of the normal engines.

[Troll]

Here is
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2506576943

[ElfBossHogg]

I'm seeing the same thing where it is a very slow lose in fresh water in the system. It takes a long time but eventually the water accessible to the boiler will diminish to the point of pressure loss and after much time total zeroization

I'm working on a system to slowly inject fresh water from a supplemental reservoir in order to recoup the loses. However in an enclosed system there shouldn't be any water loses as nothing is exiting the system... it's just being converted from liquid to vapor.

One interesting thing I found is that I experimented on measuring volume on steam ejected in to a container to see what registers. At the start I see volume numbers but eventually it disappears to zero and there is no water. I wonder if steam "evaporates" outside of a condenser but you don't get water returned. Something may be off where they need to increase the steam lifetime.

[Sampak]

Just want to add my two cents. I didn't notice the condenser accumulate water in my testing probably from lack of observation. However I do see in at least one of my builds, in particular with longer pipes between turbine>boiler and condenser, that pressure goes up first, then drops off, then builds up very slowly. Also it did seem like there was water disappearing after a while of not using any from the attached medium water tanks.

Another oddity is when using a variable valve to "throttle" steam into a turbine, the turbine still behaves like an all or nothing system. With either speed up after I open the valve a certain amount, or stops after dipping below that throttle setting. I expected as I believe many do, that varying steam pressure would have an effect. But apparently much like boiler pressure has no bearing on turbine power, I guess this is consistent too. Too bad.

They certainly have bugs that need to be fixed or features needing explanation.

[ElfBossHogg]

I'm not sure on this but one thing I observed is that water from the condenser doesn't appear to hit the boiler temperate as bad as water from a container. When I inject fresh water from a tank the temperature takes a bigger hit. I have to use variable valves set at low values wnd longer durations to ensure it doesn't smack the boiler to below 100. From the condenser directly it doesn't appear to be as bad. It's like the water is entering with a certain temperature. Is there another property of fluids behind the scenes we are not aware of: fluid temperature?

[Itereus]

Originally posted by Troll:

Here is
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2506576943

It's a cool ship, I like the cargo handling crane thingy a lot. But, the condensers on your ship also accumulates fluid, after about 5mins or so. I didn't change anything, just spawned in the ship and started the reactor.

https://imgur.com/a/wcY1yTK

It all seems to equalize once the fluid reaches around 74(?) although that's quite a lot of potential steam. I've had mixed results replenishing fluid to the boiler, as soon as I add more the generator output drops by around 10 (1 gen, 2 turbines). It slowly climbs, but I reach a point where I can't add more due to the pressure limit of the boiler, and a about a net 0 of generator output compared to just leaving the loop alone with the initial water.

And as Sampak said, they have some bugs or make tooltips more clear. If the loop slowly loses steam over time, fine. But make it clear on the condenser and not just some nebulous "Fluid" indicator.

[Itereus]

Originally posted by ElfBossHogg:

I'm not sure on this but one thing I observed is that water from the condenser doesn't appear to hit the boiler temperate as bad as water from a container. When I inject fresh water from a tank the temperature takes a bigger hit. I have to use variable valves set at low values wnd longer durations to ensure it doesn't smack the boiler to below 100. From the condenser directly it doesn't appear to be as bad. It's like the water is entering with a certain temperature. Is there another property of fluids behind the scenes we are not aware of: fluid temperature?

I've seen the same thing, just below you :P

Been thinking about pre-heating the fresh-water before letting it into the boiler, tho not exactly sure how. More testing required I guess

[Troll]

Originally posted by Itereus:

It's a cool ship, I like the cargo handling crane thingy a lot. But, the condensers on your ship also accumulates fluid, after about 5mins or so. I didn't change anything, just spawned in the ship and started the reactor.

https://imgur.com/a/wcY1yTK

It all seems to equalize once the fluid reaches around 74(?) although that's quite a lot of potential steam. I've had mixed results replenishing fluid to the boiler, as soon as I add more the generator output drops by around 10 (1 gen, 2 turbines). It slowly climbs, but I reach a point where I can't add more due to the pressure limit of the boiler, and a about a net 0 of generator output compared to just leaving the loop alone with the initial water.

And as Sampak said, they have some bugs or make tooltips more clear. If the loop slowly loses steam over time, fine. But make it clear on the condenser and not just some nebulous "Fluid" indicator.

Thanks. The crane as actually the main point of the ship (control room unfinished) and the rest was thrown together to see how an 18 container ship would fare. The answer is terribly inefficient, never needing to move 18 at once, and impossible to load/unload as soon as the ship lists even slightly to one side.

I have left the reactor running for over an hour while doing some other things earlier today. I saw a slight but continuous decline when the control rod throttle was at 750. Putting it around 700 saw a near stable fluid flow for a loss from 1300 to 1200 generated power.
As you've seen, there is a large fluid tank right before the boiler's water input, with pumps before and after it. So boiler is always filled at 175 L.
I made absolutely no effort on the pressure side, so it's far under 1 at any time. Some loss of potential power there.

[Itereus]

Originally posted by Troll:

Originally posted by Itereus:

It's a cool ship, I like the cargo handling crane thingy a lot. But, the condensers on your ship also accumulates fluid, after about 5mins or so. I didn't change anything, just spawned in the ship and started the reactor.

https://imgur.com/a/wcY1yTK

It all seems to equalize once the fluid reaches around 74(?) although that's quite a lot of potential steam. I've had mixed results replenishing fluid to the boiler, as soon as I add more the generator output drops by around 10 (1 gen, 2 turbines). It slowly climbs, but I reach a point where I can't add more due to the pressure limit of the boiler, and a about a net 0 of generator output compared to just leaving the loop alone with the initial water.

And as Sampak said, they have some bugs or make tooltips more clear. If the loop slowly loses steam over time, fine. But make it clear on the condenser and not just some nebulous "Fluid" indicator.

Thanks. The crane as actually the main point of the ship (control room unfinished) and the rest was thrown together to see how an 18 container ship would fare. The answer is terribly inefficient, never needing to move 18 at once, and impossible to load/unload as soon as the ship lists even slightly to one side.

I have left the reactor running for over an hour while doing some other things earlier today. I saw a slight but continuous decline when the control rod throttle was at 750. Putting it around 700 saw a near stable fluid flow for a loss from 1300 to 1200 generated power.
As you've seen, there is a large fluid tank right before the boiler's water input, with pumps before and after it. So boiler is always filled at 175 L.
I made absolutely no effort on the pressure side, so it's far under 1 at any time. Some loss of potential power there.

Think there's room for improvement with your setup. With 24 turbines you should be getting a lot more power than 1300/1200. Think it's due to running steam to the turbines in parallel. In Stormwork's implementation you don't seem to actually lose potential power from the actual steam, allowing you to run one boiler to turbines in serial, so in one, out to another etc.

WIth my test-reactor for stuff, I get around 200 power with 2 turbines hooked up to a large generator, with 1:3 gearing to the generator. Total output of the setup results in around 600 power from 6 turbines.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2508584764

After letting everything run for a bit, all seems to stabilize. Probably due to the condenser capping at whatever the fluid thing in it is.

Condenser is running a bit hot, though that's probably due to the radiators, I got my reactor setup in a for a lack of better word, janky submarine.

[Troll]

Interesting. Let me hook the turbines in serial and I'll give you the numbers.

Edit : Tested serial turbines. 12 on each side. Kept a generator geared at 3:1 on each extremity of the turbine series.
Similar results on the long term at around 1200 / 1300. Had more pressure at start but it was balanced out 30mn+ later.

Will try by keeping only 1 generator on each side, then by adding both sides to a single generator later.

As for the condensers, I'm starting to think the problem comes from the piping. I'll redo it so that the exiting water will merge the closest to the boiler instead of my knotty hell.

[Itereus]

Originally posted by Troll:

Interesting. Let me hook the turbines in serial and I'll give you the numbers.

Edit : Tested serial turbines. 12 on each side. Kept a generator geared at 3:1 on each extremity of the turbine series.
Similar results on the long term at around 1200 / 1300. Had more pressure at start but it was balanced out 30mn+ later.

Will try by keeping only 1 generator on each side, then by adding both sides to a single generator later.

As for the condensers, I'm starting to think the problem comes from the piping. I'll redo it so that the exiting water will merge the closest to the boiler instead of my knotty hell.

Do you split the output from the last turbine into all condensers on one side?
You could also try running the reactor hotter. From on my test-thing, if I run the boiler at around 105-110, then the water doesn't boil fast enough to produce enough steam for the loop - which results in really low output.

[Teamkiller]

You actually do not need condenser. You can just use open system an throw used steam out (with exhaust or separate port).
Condenser is needed for more efficient coal usage only (hot water needs less heat to produce steam)