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[Jimmy]

Instead of sticking your heat generator in the water itself, have you considered having a separate heating medium underneath the water reservoir and using metal tiles for heat transfer?

For example, a steel thermo aquatuner in crude oil, with an automation wire set to keep it between 300°C and 325°C, with gold amalgam or diamond window tiles to transfer heat?

[EnigmaticHat]

No I hadn't, that is a good solution.  It trades setup costs (piping two types of liquid, 1.2k steel) for electricity (-720 Kw since you wouldn't need the tepidizer and you could use an existing pump).  Personally I'm rushing the structures that will use something other than steam.

[Finndibaenn]

What I had when I was using steam rocket is an aquatuner immerged in oil, keeping it a bit above 100° and then when i needed steam, I let a pipe drop a bit of water on top of the oil.
not sure why you'd need different "rooms" ?

[EnigmaticHat]

One room tepidizes and pumps the water, the other room has an aquatuner in it and is sealed.  Aquatuner can't heat water on its own, tepidizer can't heat past 85 on its own.  The advantage is that the system requires only a single conductive wire as input.  As I dug out the silo for the rocket, the existing water in the area naturally fell into a pit at the bottom and then I built the rocket above the pit.  The existing water gave me more than enough rocket launches to get research for an non-steam engine.

Does something bad happen if you don't use crude oil here?  Seems like a lot of effort.  Especially if you're keeping it stable at 100 degrees, might as well just use polluted water at that point, set your thermo sensor to 100 when you don't want steam and 115 when you do.

[Jimmy]

It's mostly about getting more bang for your buck using 300°C crude oil compared to 100°C polluted water. With a polluted water reservoir, you're working between a 100°C to 118.9°C range of temperatures, and it has a lower thermal conductivity than crude oil, meaning it's a slower heat transfer rate out of the crude oil, into the thermal transfer medium, and then into the water.

The upside with polluted water is that it's got great specific heat capacity, so it somewhat buffers against rapid temperature changes.

[Finndibaenn]

I'm not sure why the aquatuner can't heat the water on its own ?

Oil rather than water/polluted water is more tolerant to temp changes as mentioned by Jimmy, and you don't need that much, I think my setup was about about 4*2 or so of oil, with 1 tile free for dripping water

[EnigmaticHat]

But the thermal conductivity of crude oil doesn't matter.  Temperature exchange is dictated by the lowest thermal conductivity of the materials involved.  Water exchanges heat with crude oil, an aquatuner, or metal tiles all at the same rate.  The only reason to use crude oil is to prevent the aquatuner itself from overheating.  But one of you is only using 100 degree oil and the other is using a steel aquatuner, so neither of you is getting any benefit.  All you've done is buffer heat transfer in a system designed to transfer heat.

[Tack]

The real question is: Can you get petroleum hot enough to melt crude oil?
The answer- it’ll need a lot of steel.

In other news, 150+ cycles on my last map, got up to 100 on this one and I just found out you can make a hydrogen loop...

Meanwhile I just had to push to steam before my coal ran out.

[EnigmaticHat]

Steel can't vaporize rocket fuel beams.

Yeah steam is rarely the easiest solution to power problems.  In the short term have you considered going back to manual generators?  If you set a duplicant to only tinker it can be a great way to train athletics.  That's how I train up my anemic duplicants.

[Teneb]

Speaking of power, how do you all set up your power grids? Everything on a single grid regulated by transformers? Or separate ones?

[EnigmaticHat]

I build a powerplant outside my base, with everything on one heavywatt wire.  From transformers in the power plant standard or conductive wires come out towards my base and that's how I power everything.  I used to put the heavywatt wire + transformers in a utility tunnel that ran alongside the base but personally I've found that consumes too much time and space.

[Tack]

I don’t usually switch to conductive wire until way in the late game so I try to divvy my grids up to various 1kW draws. Hydrogen production is usually heavy-watted in to the base.


Also how are you people making superhot tepedisers? Mine hits 85 and is done

[Aoi]

So I just cracked open my first AETN and I want to make sure I've got this sorted out properly before I undertake a construction project with it...

To use it as an all-purpose cooler, the end result should have the AETN in a fairly small insulated box filled with pure hydrogen gas and packed with tempshift plates. Pack the room with radiant gas pipes filled with hydrogen (though piping an SPOM's product through it isn't a terrible idea either?), and route that wherever needed. And if I get it really cold, I can use it to solidify a bunch of other gasses for... reasons I haven't figured out yet.

Alternatively, how well does using a large tempshifted room and turning it into a refrigerator to use as a sleet wheat farm, while also bleeding gas out to use as general base coolant work out?

[Mini]

Sleet wheat only grows down to -55 degrees, so if you have them inside the same room as the AETN then you'd need to stop it from getting all the way down to -175.

[Sergius]

I've heard that using the shipping lanes with some conductive crap on them is also good for temp transfer.

Also liquid pipes are probably better at transferring heat than gases. Something like oil or petroleum that won't change state easily.

At least, I think so.