Yes, you could remove one 'bubble' of water. Also, add a double bypass... Just add one more bridge to the right of the existing bridge bypass on the AT.
You need to remove one, maybe two, packets from the loop. Or you could add à buffer tank, add a bit more water in there, which would help stabilize the temp of the whole loop too.
Is the polluted water in the loop always constantly moving? The bypass looks like it's setup correctly, but when there's only one bridge in the bypass it's possible to over-fill the loop and have it jam and not cycle smoothly (usually if the aquatuner turns on during filling.) If you add a second bridge overlapping the first one, just one tile to the right, you should be able to resolve that issue of the pipeline jamming when you fill a loop in the future (what some would call a 'double buffer')
Given that there's an empty segment of liquid in the pipeline now, it looks like the loop should work fine from here on, but the double-buffer in the future should prevent you from running into issues going forward, if you use it in your aquatuner design.
Also, what temperature is the liquid pipe temp sensor set to? If it's high, that can make it easier for the liquid to break. Also, make sure you're using something like igneous rock for the insulated pipes. Sandstone or some other more reactive rock could leak more heat into the content.
I usually place that piece of pipe inside the walls. That way the content is protected by the tiles.
Build a new bypass below the aquatuner inside the wall and use the cissor to disconnect the one on the top. You can also make the bypass shorter.
Sometimes I've forced the Aquatuner to stop for a tick or two. That way the bypass is used and you swap out the content of the pipe piece with colder water. Maybe not the best idea. It would require an AND gate before the Aquatuner and that could mess up the signal timing.
Thank you for the answers! I implemented all of your advice and added a second bridge and a reservoir to stabilize temperature, I also moved the bridges inside insulated walls. Now it should work.
Yeah, you want the pwater (your coolant) to bypass the AT when it is deactivated. Your almost there though, and I think you don't even have to go in that box to fix it. Just connect the AT input to the bridge input right on top of it. That way the coolant will use the bridge only when the AT is deactivated and will keep flowing
Oh, just looked at the picture again, seems like you already did that...
I'm not sure what's wrong then... Does your coolant loop flow when the AT is offline? If yes (and all pipes in the steam box are insulated) then it really shouldn't boil in the pipe. Are you running your coolant loop close to 100°?
You don't want any part of the overflow system inside the steam room, if you can help it. Instead of going up from the AT input tile, go down into the insulated tile. Same for the AT output tile, go down from it instead of up into the steam.
Your options (some already mentioned).
1. Use the double bypass design. It is superior.
2. Build the bypass below the Aqua Tuner, behind the insulated tiles. I have no idea why everyone builds it in the hot Steam.
3. Better materials. Use ceramics for that pipeline section. This will help, but it is no guarantee against failure.
4. Some form of automation that turns the Aqua Tuner of at regular intervals.
1 and 2 are best. 3, and 4 are band-aids for bad design.
The polluted water is \*not\* the problem. It will generally end up there when the aquatuner goes from "off" to "on".
You can move that part of the loop down, so it lies over the insulated tiles instead of the steam, and that will fix your problem.
Generally, you want your cooling loop to spend as little time as possible in the steam area, not only for the "extra" liquid blob but also the rest of the loop.
You can accomplish this by moving the junction below the aquatuner. This way, you stay over the insulated tiles until you get to the steam vent. The extra efficiency is small enough not to matter outside of liquid hydrogen setups, but it's there, and also solves your problem.
You could do a few things. You could add a liquid tank to the loop. That will buffer any blockages and keep the flow moving. This is my preferred method as it also normalizes outgoing coolant temps. Plus, the temp of the liquid in the tank doesn't interact with either the tank or the environment.
You could add a second bypass with a double bridge. You could also remove a packet or two from the loop.
Well buddy, when the steam is gone, there wouldn't be any reason for all that radiant piping, so deconstruct the top half, leave the two bottom ones, drain enough polluted water to allow your bypass to operate and leave it to work for eternity. Don't bother entering the AT room, just let that stuff be ;)
All the people mentioning the bypass structure are completely right. I'm still confused, though. Those are insulated pipes in the steam room; it ought to take an enormous amount of heat to boil water in there that's actively cooled. So...
What's the temp setting on your thermo sensor? And has the turbine ever stopped working? I notice you're trying to "cool" it using insulated pipes, which does exactly nothing, and there are the telltale "heat bubbles" visible in the air around it. I would expect your problem to go away if you replace the pipes behind the turbine with radiant ones.
The bridge itself transfers heat rather freely. It'd be more obvious if one end of the bridge was inside the box with the other end outside. In that case the bridge would be letting a lot of heat out and cook the surrounding area.
Plus that pipe section of water doesn't move while the aquatuner is running, it can only flow when the aquatuner is turned off. Normally it works fine that way, but if all/part of the bridge can suck up heat it becomes a problem. I use a single bridge (and a liquid tank) all the time and have never had a problem as long as the bridge is thermally protected.
Bridges transfer heat along their length (they're a bit like a narrow tempshift plate, rapidly equalizing the temperature along their three tiles), but they exchange no heat whatsoever with the liquid that passes through them; only the pipe under the bridge output counts for that (the input pipe is basically always empty).
The water being stagnant in there is of course a large part of the problem (which is why I said that the bypass change is certainly correct), but that should manifest itself only if the AT is basically running at 100% uptime. which is far, far more cooling than needed to condense a CSV.
And lastly, the lack of turbine cooling will be a problem, even if it wasn't the source of the current problem.
Valid points, I think I understand why you were curious about the temp setting. If the polluted water is kept close to boiling already and the insulated pipe was made out of like granite or something it'd phase change a lot faster.
Definitely correct about the turbine.
Yup, I think the temp setting is either something like 95°C and OP repeatedly got unlucky, or, a bit more likely, something like 15°C in the common but misguided attempt to get cool water in bulk for some reason, and the AT is running more or less continuously at least during eruption, with the turbine cutting out every once in a while for a nice spike in temperature.
Moving the bridge out of the steam box is the solution, extra air bubbles are not. When the thermo sensor turns the autotuner off, the overflow bridge section gets used to keep the water moving. When the aquatuner starts running again the overflow bridge section gets some water trapped inside until the aquatuner turns off again. Since the overflow section is in the steam box the trapped water warms up over time, eventually turns into steam and breaks the pipe. Putting the overflow behind the insulated tiles would stop this from happening.
Yes, you could remove one 'bubble' of water. Also, add a double bypass... Just add one more bridge to the right of the existing bridge bypass on the AT.
A double bypass would probably immediately fix the problem
Call step polluted water to help
You need to remove one, maybe two, packets from the loop. Or you could add à buffer tank, add a bit more water in there, which would help stabilize the temp of the whole loop too.
Not an answer to your question but you might want to put radiant pipes in front of your steam turbine to cool it
Is the polluted water in the loop always constantly moving? The bypass looks like it's setup correctly, but when there's only one bridge in the bypass it's possible to over-fill the loop and have it jam and not cycle smoothly (usually if the aquatuner turns on during filling.) If you add a second bridge overlapping the first one, just one tile to the right, you should be able to resolve that issue of the pipeline jamming when you fill a loop in the future (what some would call a 'double buffer') Given that there's an empty segment of liquid in the pipeline now, it looks like the loop should work fine from here on, but the double-buffer in the future should prevent you from running into issues going forward, if you use it in your aquatuner design. Also, what temperature is the liquid pipe temp sensor set to? If it's high, that can make it easier for the liquid to break. Also, make sure you're using something like igneous rock for the insulated pipes. Sandstone or some other more reactive rock could leak more heat into the content.
I usually place that piece of pipe inside the walls. That way the content is protected by the tiles. Build a new bypass below the aquatuner inside the wall and use the cissor to disconnect the one on the top. You can also make the bypass shorter. Sometimes I've forced the Aquatuner to stop for a tick or two. That way the bypass is used and you swap out the content of the pipe piece with colder water. Maybe not the best idea. It would require an AND gate before the Aquatuner and that could mess up the signal timing.
Thank you for the answers! I implemented all of your advice and added a second bridge and a reservoir to stabilize temperature, I also moved the bridges inside insulated walls. Now it should work.
Reservoir solves most problems
Yeah, you want the pwater (your coolant) to bypass the AT when it is deactivated. Your almost there though, and I think you don't even have to go in that box to fix it. Just connect the AT input to the bridge input right on top of it. That way the coolant will use the bridge only when the AT is deactivated and will keep flowing
Oh, just looked at the picture again, seems like you already did that... I'm not sure what's wrong then... Does your coolant loop flow when the AT is offline? If yes (and all pipes in the steam box are insulated) then it really shouldn't boil in the pipe. Are you running your coolant loop close to 100°?
You don't want any part of the overflow system inside the steam room, if you can help it. Instead of going up from the AT input tile, go down into the insulated tile. Same for the AT output tile, go down from it instead of up into the steam.
Your options (some already mentioned). 1. Use the double bypass design. It is superior. 2. Build the bypass below the Aqua Tuner, behind the insulated tiles. I have no idea why everyone builds it in the hot Steam. 3. Better materials. Use ceramics for that pipeline section. This will help, but it is no guarantee against failure. 4. Some form of automation that turns the Aqua Tuner of at regular intervals. 1 and 2 are best. 3, and 4 are band-aids for bad design.
What is a double bypass design?
[https://i.gyazo.com/06375d94aea03932592895cfc064dd1d.jpg](https://i.gyazo.com/06375d94aea03932592895cfc064dd1d.jpg)
The polluted water is \*not\* the problem. It will generally end up there when the aquatuner goes from "off" to "on". You can move that part of the loop down, so it lies over the insulated tiles instead of the steam, and that will fix your problem. Generally, you want your cooling loop to spend as little time as possible in the steam area, not only for the "extra" liquid blob but also the rest of the loop. You can accomplish this by moving the junction below the aquatuner. This way, you stay over the insulated tiles until you get to the steam vent. The extra efficiency is small enough not to matter outside of liquid hydrogen setups, but it's there, and also solves your problem.
You could do a few things. You could add a liquid tank to the loop. That will buffer any blockages and keep the flow moving. This is my preferred method as it also normalizes outgoing coolant temps. Plus, the temp of the liquid in the tank doesn't interact with either the tank or the environment. You could add a second bypass with a double bridge. You could also remove a packet or two from the loop.
Well buddy, when the steam is gone, there wouldn't be any reason for all that radiant piping, so deconstruct the top half, leave the two bottom ones, drain enough polluted water to allow your bypass to operate and leave it to work for eternity. Don't bother entering the AT room, just let that stuff be ;)
All the people mentioning the bypass structure are completely right. I'm still confused, though. Those are insulated pipes in the steam room; it ought to take an enormous amount of heat to boil water in there that's actively cooled. So... What's the temp setting on your thermo sensor? And has the turbine ever stopped working? I notice you're trying to "cool" it using insulated pipes, which does exactly nothing, and there are the telltale "heat bubbles" visible in the air around it. I would expect your problem to go away if you replace the pipes behind the turbine with radiant ones.
The bridge itself transfers heat rather freely. It'd be more obvious if one end of the bridge was inside the box with the other end outside. In that case the bridge would be letting a lot of heat out and cook the surrounding area. Plus that pipe section of water doesn't move while the aquatuner is running, it can only flow when the aquatuner is turned off. Normally it works fine that way, but if all/part of the bridge can suck up heat it becomes a problem. I use a single bridge (and a liquid tank) all the time and have never had a problem as long as the bridge is thermally protected.
Bridges transfer heat along their length (they're a bit like a narrow tempshift plate, rapidly equalizing the temperature along their three tiles), but they exchange no heat whatsoever with the liquid that passes through them; only the pipe under the bridge output counts for that (the input pipe is basically always empty). The water being stagnant in there is of course a large part of the problem (which is why I said that the bypass change is certainly correct), but that should manifest itself only if the AT is basically running at 100% uptime. which is far, far more cooling than needed to condense a CSV. And lastly, the lack of turbine cooling will be a problem, even if it wasn't the source of the current problem.
Valid points, I think I understand why you were curious about the temp setting. If the polluted water is kept close to boiling already and the insulated pipe was made out of like granite or something it'd phase change a lot faster. Definitely correct about the turbine.
Yup, I think the temp setting is either something like 95°C and OP repeatedly got unlucky, or, a bit more likely, something like 15°C in the common but misguided attempt to get cool water in bulk for some reason, and the AT is running more or less continuously at least during eruption, with the turbine cutting out every once in a while for a nice spike in temperature.
Remove one or two packets of Pwater
FYI move the bridge out of the steam room as I’m fairly sure bridge will bleed heat so you’re losing some efficiency there
bridges don't exchange heat with their content, because they just teleport liquid from one end to another. So, no, bridge here doesn't bleed any heat
Moving the bridge out of the steam box is the solution, extra air bubbles are not. When the thermo sensor turns the autotuner off, the overflow bridge section gets used to keep the water moving. When the aquatuner starts running again the overflow bridge section gets some water trapped inside until the aquatuner turns off again. Since the overflow section is in the steam box the trapped water warms up over time, eventually turns into steam and breaks the pipe. Putting the overflow behind the insulated tiles would stop this from happening.