Cool Steam Vent
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Cool Steam Vent is a renewable source of Water, which can be found in Frozen, Swamp and Caustic Biomes. Both biomes are guaranteed to have one exposed Cool Steam Vent.
It is in the second tier of water-related geyser, averaging 1500 g/s of Steam overall.
During the eruption, emission can be blocked by over-pressurization. The maximum pressure it will emit at is 5 kg. The emission has a radius of 2, meaning that it can produce its outputs even if center tiles are over-pressurized, as long as there is a valid, reachable spot to place the output in a 3x3 block centered on the second tile in and second tile up from the leftmost Neutronium edge. In practice, this means that a Vent in a small space can quickly overpressurize if the steam is not condensed quickly enough, resulting in lost steam production. If the 3x3 square is filled with liquid of any amount the Vent will appear to erupt but not actually produce anything.
Tips
- A Cool Steam Vent cannot be used to directly power a Steam Turbine, at least without some additional heating, as the Turbine requires steam temperature above 125 °C.
- With access to Super Coolant it is possible to balance out the Steam Turbine/Thermo Aquatuner combo with Cool Steam Vent output making it self-running. Although it still will not generate significant net power without Engie's tune-up, it can provide another powerful cooling loop. However, with Engie's tune-up, the setup can generate significant amounts of power.
- A less efficient Aquatuner loop using Water as the coolant can be a renewable source of cold water in the mid-game. Although it consumes more power than the Steam Turbine produces, it does not require Space materials.
- Only one of the Steam Turbine's needs to be at 125 °C for the cool steam vent to activate. This can be used to save some of the power used by the Aquatuner. With careful tuning, it's possible to reach a barely power positive system this way, although this is difficult to achieve reliably. It's recommended to still rely on other energy sources for load balancing.
- Linking at least one Geotuner to the Vent will increase its steam temperature above the 125°C, making it directly usable by Steam Turbines, in addition to increasing the amount of steam generated. The Geotuner will have a small Bleach upkeep which over the long run will need to be sourced either from Squeaky Pufts, from Bleach Stone Hoppers, or from Space POIs.
- A convenient source of heating the Steam is to have a Thermo Aquatuner made of Steel cool the exhaust Water from the Steam Turbine and dump the heat into the Steam emitted from the Geyser.
- However, there is still the matter of the Steam Turbine(s) accumulating a lot of heat over the cycles; in order to get the most out of the geyser, they must run as long as the geyser is erupting. A second Aquatuner using regular Water as coolant, a Thermo Sensor for control and Radiant Liquid piping running a tight loop through the Turbine(s) may be useful for regulating the ambient temperature around the generators.
- This is more than certain to make water extraction from Cool Steam Geysers a net power negative. However, the Water can be more readily used afterwards since they have been cooled.
- However, there is still the matter of the Steam Turbine(s) accumulating a lot of heat over the cycles; in order to get the most out of the geyser, they must run as long as the geyser is erupting. A second Aquatuner using regular Water as coolant, a Thermo Sensor for control and Radiant Liquid piping running a tight loop through the Turbine(s) may be useful for regulating the ambient temperature around the generators.
- Vented Steam is at 110 °C, and must be condensed before applications.
- Wheezeworts are not useful for cooling Steam directly because they can only cool to within 5 degrees of the condensation point, which is above their comfortable range.
- The steam will condense into water at 97.4 °C, so you only need enough heat conduction to drop the steam by measly 13.6 degrees. Using highly conductive piping and super-cooled coolant may be excessive for applications where cool water is not required.
- The most basic set-up is to fill the space behind the vent with Tempshift Plate connected to the walls (pretty much any material will do, all gasses have low conductivity compared to solids). It will increase surface contact and eventually dump heat into the walls, slowly heating everything around in the same way untouched vent would, but faster.
- Next step will be adding the sealed Wheezewort chamber filled with Hydrogen next to the Steam chamber. Use some metal tiles as a shared wall and insulate the others to direct heat to Wheezeworts.
- Piping a cooled gas or liquid past Steam, such as Hydrogen cooled by Thermo Regulators, might be convenient if the same loop already collects heat from your colony.
- Electrolyzers, Research, Microbe Musher, Washrooms, and Showers are fine with near-boiling water.
- If further cooling is necessary (such as irrigating Bristle Blossoms and Sleet Wheat), it is better to use dedicated cooling setups.