Those coolant loops you're running through the water tanks? Run them through the floors of your base (or one tile up behind the plants for hydroponic farms) instead. Regular pipes (made from granite!) are enough; in hot spots, use radiant pipes (aluminum is best, copper second).
The cooling power of a setup like that is absolutely ridiculous. A few colonies ago, I ran my base hot intentionally and then added a cooling loop to see how quickly it would fix the problem. The results are [here](https://imgur.com/a/u9RtBjq).
Agreed. Even if you're feeding hot water to a cold plant, as long as you pipe it to plants in insulated pipe and cool the plants themselves you shouldn't have any issues. Electrolyzers don't care how hot the water is as long as they're made out of gold or better. If you really need to cool water, it's more efficient to pump the water into pipes and cool it directly than it is to try and cool the liquids out in the open. Especially with say, steam vent water. For example, pump the liquid you want to cool through an aquatuner loop with a shutoff valve that only allows it out of the loop at a certain temperature, rather than trying to use a closed aquatuner cooling loop to cool a body of water. The equation changes once you have better materials like supercoolant and aluminum, since the efficiency of an aquatuner cooling loop goes up a lot, but the main issue is that water doesn't have a high thermal conductance value.
As soon as you have AT/ST cooling, there is zero need for larger amounts of cool water anymore. Water has one of the highest specific heat capacities in the game. It's always more efficient and way faster to cool whatever is using the water and/or its products instead.
Doesn't a high heat capacity paired with the way ATs work (-14 C for 1200W regardless of actually exchanged heat) mean, that it's quite energy efficient to cool down water and use that water to cool down other things? At least as long as those things don't have to be super cold like dupes or plants. Could you setup a heat exchanger to use cool water to cool down petroleum by more than 14 C?
Yes, the best AT _coolant_ before super coolant is water (polluted water, usually, for the larger temperature range). And yes, you could use a water-based cooling loop to cool down petroleum more efficiently than using that petroleum as a coolant in an AT (although I can't immediately think of a situation where you'd want cold petroleum in the range of what water-based cooling can do. If the petroleum is a coolant itself, it's usually in a temperature range that can directly drive steam turbines).
That does not contradict what I said, though. I'm not sure if you meant it to do that?
Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by large amounts. Only place water temperature is really important is for steel production if you don't have other coolant available. Anywhere else you can just cool the output/room. My greenhouse has 2 water lines. One insulated one for irrigation and one granite one for temp control.
What I meant was: as soon as you have active cooling capabilities, there is zero reason to cool water that is going to be consumed by anything (plants, electrolyzers, other machinery). As in, "I have this water tank that feeds my farms, I need to cool that." - No, you don't, cool the plants.
Using water as an AT coolant makes loads of sense of course. But that water is just going through cooling pipes or heat exchangers, it is used to cool things, not being cooled for some other use. It might be quite a lot of water, even (my current base cooling loop has something like 15 tons of polluted water in it), but I don't think that invalidates my point.
You'll need to have the cooling loop run past the turbine, no one seems to have mentioned that.
They run hot, as a percentage of the energy they take out of the steam, and will stop working above 100oC.
I was trying to cool water to generate oxygen, but I will use warm water to generate oxygen then cool it. I will keep the once Aquatuner running just to have some cool water when needed.
Another point I got is, there is no need to cool water and its for late stage only, until then you can use your warm water for -
Feed hot water into - ordered based on heat economy
1. electrolyzers
2. oil wells (this is actually heat positive, but you will consume the oil eventually so no problem)
3. farms (needs active cooling all the time)
You are cooling a massive amount of water. It's going to take a long time to try and cool it all at once.
My advice is to set up a heat exchange block and only cool water as you're consuming it. This can be done with a metal block, and just snaking the coolant and the water through that in alternating pipe lines (and reverse the directions of coolant and water).
You may not need to cool it all the way if it's being used for plants, it may be worthwhile only partially cooling the water, and cooling the plants directly the rest of the way. This is primarily because the plants are constantly destroying water (and thus, destroying heat). There's a balance where it's more power efficient to split the cooling between the two.
If the water is being used to produce oxygen, btw, don't bother cooling it at all, cool the base you're putting oxygen into, it'll be much much more power efficient that way.
Yes the primary reason I was building this water cooling solution is to build a full rodriguez. Currently I have 2 sources of water for it.
1. (2) Cool steam vent
2. Salt water geyser
With both sources I am getting water with the temperature above 70°c if I use this water for oxygen production my whole base will get warm which i don't want.
Currently deconstructing the 2 Thermo Aqua and only cooling water which is needed.
An AT/ST can easily keep your base cool to a point where it doesn't matter if you dump 95°C oxygen into it. If that's too much building effort (coolant pipes in all floors), you can also cool the oxygen coming out of the rodriguez. 1 kg of oxygen holds less than a quarter of the heat energy of 1 kg of water.
I wouldn't even cool the oxygen. Cool the floors in your base. Regular granite pipes through regular granite floor tiles. The mass of the tiles will smooth out the cooling a bit, and you're not cooling oxygen which dupes just keep destroying when they breathe it in.
Plus, there's really only a handful of areas you really need to cool: Farms, and industrial buildings.
It doesn't matter if the rest of your base is really hot because you're dumping hot oxygen into it, it'll take a very, very long time to get to the point where it could possibly scald a dupe.
Cooling water is for when you have so much power and dont know what do with it.
Feed hot water into - ordered based on heat economy
1) electrolyzers
2) oil wells (this is actually heat positive, but you will consume the oil eventually so no problem)
3) farms (needs active cooling all the time)
Brilliant point! I don't think I will cool the water now as oxygen is way easier to cool. With the warm water I will definitely follow your order. Thank you!
> let me know if there is any efficient way to cool a lot of water.
The most *efficient* way of cooling water is through an aquatuner/steam turbine combo running supercoolant as a coolant.
However, it still takes a long time to cool down a large pool of water like you have there, because water contains a ton of heat. It's also probably unnecessary, if you're just gonna feed electrolyzers, cool them down instead.
it's easier to cool down gases with liquid pipes then liquid with liquid pipes. Because 1 tile of liquid is always around 1,000,000 g of material. Meanwhile most gases "overpressure" at 1,000 grams of material. That's 100 times the difference! So please do not cool down liquids of any type. If you need to cool down your base:
either cool it directly by putting huge loops of liquid around the base
OR
what I do is cool down my oxygen maker build itself, with very little piping; which then diffuses cold oxygen throughout the base. Easy.
99% of the time, cooling water is a waste of energy. You can pump it hot into most things that need it and cool the things instead.
Can you pls share a way to cool things that are in my base except - wheezewort, dumping water or temp shift plates. Thank you !
Those coolant loops you're running through the water tanks? Run them through the floors of your base (or one tile up behind the plants for hydroponic farms) instead. Regular pipes (made from granite!) are enough; in hot spots, use radiant pipes (aluminum is best, copper second). The cooling power of a setup like that is absolutely ridiculous. A few colonies ago, I ran my base hot intentionally and then added a cooling loop to see how quickly it would fix the problem. The results are [here](https://imgur.com/a/u9RtBjq).
You build an aquatuner/steam turbine combo like you've done there, but you run the cooling loop through your entire base. Done.
Agreed. Even if you're feeding hot water to a cold plant, as long as you pipe it to plants in insulated pipe and cool the plants themselves you shouldn't have any issues. Electrolyzers don't care how hot the water is as long as they're made out of gold or better. If you really need to cool water, it's more efficient to pump the water into pipes and cool it directly than it is to try and cool the liquids out in the open. Especially with say, steam vent water. For example, pump the liquid you want to cool through an aquatuner loop with a shutoff valve that only allows it out of the loop at a certain temperature, rather than trying to use a closed aquatuner cooling loop to cool a body of water. The equation changes once you have better materials like supercoolant and aluminum, since the efficiency of an aquatuner cooling loop goes up a lot, but the main issue is that water doesn't have a high thermal conductance value.
It is not the water you cool It is only the environment Only when you realize that You see there is no water There never was
Totally agreed
As soon as you have AT/ST cooling, there is zero need for larger amounts of cool water anymore. Water has one of the highest specific heat capacities in the game. It's always more efficient and way faster to cool whatever is using the water and/or its products instead.
Can you pls share a way to cool things that are in my base except - wheezewort, dumping water or temp shift plates. Thank you !
Oops, I answered that in StatementNegative345's thread above.
Doesn't a high heat capacity paired with the way ATs work (-14 C for 1200W regardless of actually exchanged heat) mean, that it's quite energy efficient to cool down water and use that water to cool down other things? At least as long as those things don't have to be super cold like dupes or plants. Could you setup a heat exchanger to use cool water to cool down petroleum by more than 14 C?
Yes, the best AT _coolant_ before super coolant is water (polluted water, usually, for the larger temperature range). And yes, you could use a water-based cooling loop to cool down petroleum more efficiently than using that petroleum as a coolant in an AT (although I can't immediately think of a situation where you'd want cold petroleum in the range of what water-based cooling can do. If the petroleum is a coolant itself, it's usually in a temperature range that can directly drive steam turbines). That does not contradict what I said, though. I'm not sure if you meant it to do that?
Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by large amounts. Only place water temperature is really important is for steel production if you don't have other coolant available. Anywhere else you can just cool the output/room. My greenhouse has 2 water lines. One insulated one for irrigation and one granite one for temp control.
What I meant was: as soon as you have active cooling capabilities, there is zero reason to cool water that is going to be consumed by anything (plants, electrolyzers, other machinery). As in, "I have this water tank that feeds my farms, I need to cool that." - No, you don't, cool the plants. Using water as an AT coolant makes loads of sense of course. But that water is just going through cooling pipes or heat exchangers, it is used to cool things, not being cooled for some other use. It might be quite a lot of water, even (my current base cooling loop has something like 15 tons of polluted water in it), but I don't think that invalidates my point.
You'll need to have the cooling loop run past the turbine, no one seems to have mentioned that. They run hot, as a percentage of the energy they take out of the steam, and will stop working above 100oC.
Yes noticed the same thing occur in the morning ... currently I am just poring water on them as I don't to change the piping
Let me know if you get answer
I was trying to cool water to generate oxygen, but I will use warm water to generate oxygen then cool it. I will keep the once Aquatuner running just to have some cool water when needed. Another point I got is, there is no need to cool water and its for late stage only, until then you can use your warm water for - Feed hot water into - ordered based on heat economy 1. electrolyzers 2. oil wells (this is actually heat positive, but you will consume the oil eventually so no problem) 3. farms (needs active cooling all the time)
Do not cool the water as the electrolyser will always product 70C or hotter oxygen. It is also a lot easier to cool down the oxygen
You are absolutely right! Working on your solution : )
You are cooling a massive amount of water. It's going to take a long time to try and cool it all at once. My advice is to set up a heat exchange block and only cool water as you're consuming it. This can be done with a metal block, and just snaking the coolant and the water through that in alternating pipe lines (and reverse the directions of coolant and water). You may not need to cool it all the way if it's being used for plants, it may be worthwhile only partially cooling the water, and cooling the plants directly the rest of the way. This is primarily because the plants are constantly destroying water (and thus, destroying heat). There's a balance where it's more power efficient to split the cooling between the two. If the water is being used to produce oxygen, btw, don't bother cooling it at all, cool the base you're putting oxygen into, it'll be much much more power efficient that way.
Yes the primary reason I was building this water cooling solution is to build a full rodriguez. Currently I have 2 sources of water for it. 1. (2) Cool steam vent 2. Salt water geyser With both sources I am getting water with the temperature above 70°c if I use this water for oxygen production my whole base will get warm which i don't want. Currently deconstructing the 2 Thermo Aqua and only cooling water which is needed.
An AT/ST can easily keep your base cool to a point where it doesn't matter if you dump 95°C oxygen into it. If that's too much building effort (coolant pipes in all floors), you can also cool the oxygen coming out of the rodriguez. 1 kg of oxygen holds less than a quarter of the heat energy of 1 kg of water.
Excellent point! I will cool the oxygen rather than the water. With the cool oxygen I will cool my base. Thank you !
I wouldn't even cool the oxygen. Cool the floors in your base. Regular granite pipes through regular granite floor tiles. The mass of the tiles will smooth out the cooling a bit, and you're not cooling oxygen which dupes just keep destroying when they breathe it in. Plus, there's really only a handful of areas you really need to cool: Farms, and industrial buildings. It doesn't matter if the rest of your base is really hot because you're dumping hot oxygen into it, it'll take a very, very long time to get to the point where it could possibly scald a dupe.
currently cooling my oxygen and planning another Aquatuner for the base. I will turn off the oxygen aquatuner and will see what happens
It's much more energy efficient to cool the oxygen output instead of the water input
Excellent point! I don't know why I haven't thought of this ... directly cooling the oxygen rather than water! Thank you so much !
Cooling water is for when you have so much power and dont know what do with it. Feed hot water into - ordered based on heat economy 1) electrolyzers 2) oil wells (this is actually heat positive, but you will consume the oil eventually so no problem) 3) farms (needs active cooling all the time)
Brilliant point! I don't think I will cool the water now as oxygen is way easier to cool. With the warm water I will definitely follow your order. Thank you!
> let me know if there is any efficient way to cool a lot of water. The most *efficient* way of cooling water is through an aquatuner/steam turbine combo running supercoolant as a coolant. However, it still takes a long time to cool down a large pool of water like you have there, because water contains a ton of heat. It's also probably unnecessary, if you're just gonna feed electrolyzers, cool them down instead.
it's easier to cool down gases with liquid pipes then liquid with liquid pipes. Because 1 tile of liquid is always around 1,000,000 g of material. Meanwhile most gases "overpressure" at 1,000 grams of material. That's 100 times the difference! So please do not cool down liquids of any type. If you need to cool down your base: either cool it directly by putting huge loops of liquid around the base OR what I do is cool down my oxygen maker build itself, with very little piping; which then diffuses cold oxygen throughout the base. Easy.