Re-use of steam

[joufantasy]

Hey guys,

Is there a way to re-use the steam that comes out of the steam engine or turbine? Like... the steam still got some heat after coming out of the steam engine, let's say 110 degree. In reality, we can use the low temperature steam to help us heating the water before the water goes into the boiler, so that we can save a lot of energy on heating the water. Is there any way in 0.15 we we can do this?

Thanks!

[viveks711]

I ran a test scenario and concluded for myself that when you have the boiler connected to the steam engine in optimal ratio (i.e. 1:2), you will hardly have any steam leftover when your electricity consumption from the steam engines is at Maximum.

I've not tried it with the turbine yet... but I would assume it would be the same result.

[BlooSkies]

Yup. Used steam is consumed. No re-use.
Anything going through to the other side of your engines is excess, not used.

[Mehve]

There was originally talk by the devs of doing just that, but I believe it got shelved.

[Tekky]

There was originally talk by the devs of doing just that, but I believe it got shelved.

That is correct.

The original plans for the cooling tower were discussed in Factorio Friday Facts #164. Later, in Factorio Friday Facts #173, it was announced that the cooling tower and the plans for a closed water cycle had been dropped, at least for now. However, it was explicitly said that they may decide to add them at a later time.

I really hope they do.

[Aru]

A more proper nuclear plant setup would be fun, but it looks like they focused on the enrichment process rather than the plant process. Which added enough complexity that, pitted against the new-and-improved steam engines, might already be considered technically not worthwhile to some players (still fun, though). Adding more complexity would just make it harder. Properly, you'd have multiple loops of vapor, and several tiers of turbines to handle steam at every temperature as it gradually drops. Once the temperature has dropped so that the difference with ambient is low enough that it's not worthwhile to capture, then you get rid of the excess, in the form of large volumes of semi-warm water. Some dump it into a river, some vent it with giant cooling towers, either way results in some environmental disruption, but that water has to go somewhere, and it would be not-so-good to recycle it back into the system when you have a source of cool water to use instead. To recycle the warm water, would require that you invest even *more* hardware in cooling it, and as you see with towers it already takes quite a lot just to vent the water into the air along with the heat. So, that's why the final stage water is not re-used, it would be unnecessarily expensive.

A proper imitation would involve these multiple tiers of heat exchange, beginning 600 degrees F and up. The hotter the vapor, the more efficient the system, because the larger the difference with ambient temperature is, and the greater a proportion of energy can be captured. However, the higher the temperature, the more extreme the engineering of the turbine blades has to be. The more heat the blades can withstand, the more efficient the reactor, so this is a serious point of engineering. They use ceramic blades in the hot stages, like in turbochargers, and even they have a limit. Each stage optimized for a specific temperature drop at a specific range.

Likewise, centrifuges are organized into many tiers, so they can enrich between each stage of purification, and specialize the hardware. And they sort gaseous uranium hexafluoride (so wikipedia says), meaning that there's chemical steps to bind and remove the fluorine. Putting all this complexity in the game would be fun, sure, but the gameplay would be technically not worthwhile. Maybe, this is where the next nuclear mod will be going.

[AcThPaU]

Thermal power without cooling tower just weird.

Turbines don't exhaust steam to atmosphere. Unless you use the crap designed during industrial revolution on nuclear power plant.

Its not "discussed" they don't use cooling tower, they just decided not to, because it's less work to do.

[DaveMcW]

The main purpose of cooling towers is to conserve water. But water is free in this game.