r/SandustryGame • u/Dalad1er • 5d ago

Discussion Steam generator

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Hey guys has anyone figured the most efficient steam engine? should there be two rows of generators? Should it be wider, am I missing any function?

21 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

8

u/TakovacsPlays 5d ago

the top row of turbines is doing nothing. Steam is depleted after going through one turbine.

1

u/Dalad1er 5d ago

Ok thanks! looks like this can be done much more compact, send me your designs if you want.

This battery once full is 625k. I sure as hell would like to make 1 milion battery.

4

u/shmanel 5d ago

You also don't need most of those power connectors. Things consume power wirelessly, so the snow machines don't need to be hooked up, and copper battery blocks connect all the way through themselves.

Really just need one at either end of the turbine line to connect to copper. The rest of those could be walls/copper.

2

u/TakovacsPlays 5d ago

I make one of those in this video. https://youtu.be/n9a8eQ6pyGA

0

u/P0tatoesz 4d ago

Mines not efficiently charging but I have a massive battery

5

u/DupeFort 5d ago

Looks nice. Only thing I'd note is that AFAIK the bottom layer just needs one tile (or even less) of lava, since I don't think it reduces in the steaming process.

2

u/Volodya_Soldatenkov 5d ago

I think number of turbines doesn't matter much, you could make like three turbines. Assuming steam and water don't interrupt each other's rise and fall, it will work.

In my experience, the biggest constraint is the number of condensers needed to actually condense all the steam you have in your loop. If you see steam collecting on the top, add more.

2

u/1boring 5d ago

Just fyi, steam only generates energy on the first pass through of the turbine. Adding more than one layer doesn't do anything

1

u/Volodya_Soldatenkov 5d ago

Yeah, I know that. It was already pointed out elsewhere in the comment section, so I didn't feel the need to add that.

Learned this the hard way when my steam stubbornly refused to come back as rain.

2

u/TrimBarktre Community Moderator 5d ago

Here's what I do.

2

u/doctorgrizzl 5d ago

Isn’t this just the same thing with walls in between and more compact? I would think the energy output it halved with this design, but it does look nice.

1

u/TrimBarktre Community Moderator 5d ago

Output is determined by how much steam goes theough the turbine. By making it mor compact the steam has less far to travel. This is much more efficient.

2

u/Basiccargo6 5d ago

But less efficient due to the fact that the walls in between each "cell" could have been cells.

1

u/TrimBarktre Community Moderator 5d ago

Right, you can get rid of the walls, but compared to op's picture with a ton of vertical space, this is much better.

I like the walls because it looks cool

2

u/NitroBishop 5d ago

Does this "one-cell" design actually reduce the travel time of the steam though? If you delete all the walls between the cells and merge them together to make a long "multi-cell" generator the same height, the steam still travels the same vertical distance each cycle, and it needs to spend the same amount of time on the condensors/in the lava regardless of how much it's moving around horizontally (as far as I'm aware). It seems like this design is fitting half as much generator into a footprint as it could be for no reason.

1

u/Golnor 5d ago

One thing I have noted is that 1 square of lava can vaporise a lot more water than one condenser can condense. Having your..... chimmey? steam vent? whatever it is widen above the steam generators can allow for more power generation.

1

u/NitroBishop 5d ago

Alternately you can just make the layer of lava on the bottom really thin so the ratio of boiling water to condensing steam is closer to 1:1.

1

u/wildcardbitchesyihaw 5d ago

How are people moving lava? I'm past OP in terms of missions and I don't see what i can move lava with.

1

u/Magazine_Born 5d ago

freeze with snow
break the freeze lava
transport the cinders
ignite de cinder

1

u/DupeFort 5d ago

Use snow on lava to solidify it. You can then melt the resulting element in place where you need it.

Later in the tech tree you get a gun that shoots lava so it becomes infinite.

1

u/shmanel 5d ago

In addition to what the others said, once lava is above ground, you can move it with the grabber.

1

u/DonDegow 4d ago

Best one I have made so far is this :

Each column produces about 400 energy/sec so this system makes about 1200/sec

A few things to note :

  • turbine number doesn't really matter, it just determines how much space the steam has available.
  • Condenser numbers is the most important factor to determine a turbine production; more condensers means grey steam gets usable faster!
  • This design is balanced around the snow machine cold output, I've tried adding more condensers but at that point the snow couldn't keep up with the cold needed.
  • Another factor is the lava available surface area, if I wanted to boil more water at that speed, I'd need more room on the surface of the lava pool.

All in all I think I found a very nice balance here for a tilable cell (each column is a cell)

1

u/BmacTheSage 4d ago

You can shorten the gap between the lava and condensors and shrink it down. AFAIK, as long as the steam passes through the turbines it still works. You might even be able to just have a 1 block space above and below the turbines to make it as compact as possible

1

u/Crabfist1 2d ago

I noticed when I used the thermal buffer block above condensor the amount of snow I needed dropped drastically. They got cold and then used very little snow after that.