Factorio Forums

Posted: **Mon Nov 05, 2018 11:51 pm**

A way to recycle used steam back into water.

Whether it is an entity, add-on, or research, condensing steam would basically add a way to recover water from steam engines and turbines for a modest performance hit, which could then be fed back into the turbine after being cooled somehow.

The general idea is an option to lower the water usage ceiling at the cost of marginally lower turbine performance and additional room needed for condensers and radiators.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 12:37 am**

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.

This has also been discussed a bit in the following thread:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45032 Re-use of steam

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:18 am**

Can't this be modded? Simply take the steam engine or turbine base, add another output or throughput to the side for water and add a water production at half the steam consumption into the mix. But to be honest... why would you even need to bother? It's not like water is rare...

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:23 am**

Aeternus wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:18 am Can't this be modded? Simply take the steam engine or turbine base, add another output or throughput to the side for water and add a water production at half the steam consumption into the mix. But to be honest... why would you even need to bother? It's not like water is rare...

It can be done much easier, just new recipe with ingredient = steam, result = water. Which factor was used by vanilla?

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:38 am**

darkfrei wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:23 am
Aeternus wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:18 am Can't this be modded? Simply take the steam engine or turbine base, add another output or throughput to the side for water and add a water production at half the steam consumption into the mix. But to be honest... why would you even need to bother? It's not like water is rare...
It can be done much easier, just new recipe with ingredient = steam, result = water. Which factor was used by vanilla?

Problem is that "steam" and "water" are no longer the same thing as they were in older versions of the game. They're different fluid types now.
So if you add water to the recipe for a standard steamengine, where is it going to go? The connectors on that thing are defined as in/out for steam only. It has no water outlet.
You'd need to make a different version of the steamengine or turbine to do water recovery. Which could be a plus - if you want to "upgrade" existing steamengines or turbines, just make a recipe that takes an existing one, plus some bricks and a pipe, then add a model that has 2 cooling towers slapped behind it (4x2 instead of 3x2 design) with water output pipes and healthy puffs of smoke to match.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:30 pm**

darkfrei wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:23 am
Aeternus wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:18 am Can't this be modded? Simply take the steam engine or turbine base, add another output or throughput to the side for water and add a water production at half the steam consumption into the mix. But to be honest... why would you even need to bother? It's not like water is rare...
It can be done much easier, just new recipe with ingredient = steam, result = water. Which factor was used by vanilla?

Unfortunately, steam is destroyed after being used by a steam engine. In order for this to work, the steam would have to be converted either: a into a lower temperature steam that couldn't be re-used or b: directly into water. If into a lower temperature steam, it could then be pumped out of a secondary output over to a cooling tower to ultimately be turned back into water. If directly into water, then out of a secondary output slot and directly back over to your water supply line.

The use case I see for this is for remote bases where you want to be producing power away from a water source. If water was converted to steam, power extracted from another machine, and then the steam converted directly back into water then the process could be done with a much smaller amount of water. If say... 95% of the water was reclaimable, you could setup a pump somewhere pumping to a water train and that water train could deliver water to steam setups. It would allow you to to create fully independent bases that don't even care about being connected to your main power supply that are supplied by steam and don't care about location. Blueprints that rely on steam power and don't need to be manually hooked up to a water source, but instead utilize your train network for water delivery would be interesting.

I'm not certain how necessary that really is... but that's the use case I see for it.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 2:35 pm**

You can find cooling tower in the mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RealisticReactors

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:13 pm**

I've read all over about how water logistics is a bottleneck for large nuclear power plants. There is just so much of it needed, so an option to recycle water could be useful.

Here is an example plant: https://imgur.com/a/HHmWn This guy is using 24 blue belts of water barrels per 1/2 blue belt fuel cells for a 20GW plant. I'd say water logistics definitely becomes a concern at that level!

Taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... gn_tested/

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:13 am**

adam_bise wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:13 pm Here is an example plant: https://imgur.com/a/HHmWn This guy is using 24 blue belts of water barrels per 1/2 blue belt fuel cells for a 20GW plant. I'd say water logistics definitely becomes a concern at that level!

I would say, that using barrels to feed a nuclear power plant is a bad idea.
Especially since barrels were buffed to limit the use for special appliances like uranium minung.
Before that barrels were better than fluid waggons which doesn't make any sense.

If you build a really big nuclear plant you should build it on a lake und use tons of landfill.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:52 am**

I've gotten pretty good at editing the source code to add fluid boxes to entities... I could attempt to add an output fluid box to the generator entity similar to how the boiler has separate input and output fluid boxes. The problem is, I doubt this will ever have a function outside of modding. is this something that you'd be interested in? Also keep in mind that even if I do edit the code, it might not get approved to be added to the game.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 10:32 am**

bobingabout wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:52 am I've gotten pretty good at editing the source code to add fluid boxes to entities... I could attempt to add an output fluid box to the generator entity similar to how the boiler has separate input and output fluid boxes. The problem is, I doubt this will ever have a function outside of modding. is this something that you'd be interested in? Also keep in mind that even if I do edit the code, it might not get approved to be added to the game.

Fluid nuclear fuel for nuclear reactor sounds very interesting! But we must wait for 0.17.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:39 am**

bobingabout wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:52 am I've gotten pretty good at editing the source code to add fluid boxes to entities... I could attempt to add an output fluid box to the generator entity similar to how the boiler has separate input and output fluid boxes. The problem is, I doubt this will ever have a function outside of modding. is this something that you'd be interested in? Also keep in mind that even if I do edit the code, it might not get approved to be added to the game.

I'm interested in so far as that i need a $cooling_machine for one of my projects. So far the plan is to use staged furnace recipes that cool the fluid one step at a time. Furnaces will nessecarily waste all the heat though becaues they can't produce energy (except: see below). Though i guess a generator could still only turn "steam" back into "water" and not gradually reduce it's temperature like in the old days, so i'm not *too* sure if this is the right solution for me. Sounds a bit like sticking a furnace in front of each generator and having it turn 1 steam into 1 cold water and 1 magic power fluid, then sending the cold water along and the magic to the generator.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 3:48 pm**

bobingabout wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:52 am I've gotten pretty good at editing the source code to add fluid boxes to entities... I could attempt to add an output fluid box to the generator entity similar to how the boiler has separate input and output fluid boxes. The problem is, I doubt this will ever have a function outside of modding. is this something that you'd be interested in? Also keep in mind that even if I do edit the code, it might not get approved to be added to the game.

I thing what the OP was looking for was the capacity to output either a cooled steam (say steam that's at 120 degrees, not enough to power anything) or water out of the steam engines/turbines (optional, if there's nowhere to output the cooled steam it's just deleted like it is now) and then a condenser to turn it back into water.

So, as an example, you run steam engines/turbines in parallel just like you do today, but you also make sure they're connected side-to-side. Hot steam runs top-bottom, 'cooled' steam runs side-to-side and could then be transfered into cooling towers that transform the 'cooled steam' back into water which would then be reutilized on-site to reduce the water requirements for a steam setup that wasn't actually directly attached to a water source.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 4:18 pm**

Darinth wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:30 pmIt would allow you to to create fully independent bases that don't even care about being connected to your main power supply that are supplied by steam and don't care about location. Blueprints that rely on steam power and don't need to be manually hooked up to a water source, but instead utilize your train network for water delivery would be interesting.

I'm not certain how necessary that really is... but that's the use case I see for it.

Idk about "necessary", but I like it. Stringing power poles has enough disadvantages that I would give mining/smelting outposts their own power generation, if I could just get the water. And it would motivate interesting designs for smaller reactors, not always 2x2 and larger.

Currently, shipping water is so impractical that people will ship the actual steam instead.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 4:31 pm**

morsk wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 4:18 pm Currently, shipping water is so impractical that people will ship the actual steam instead.

Shipping water + coal is more complicated than just shipping steam. Fewer trains → less network congestion.

Posted: **Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:43 am**

eradicator wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:39 am Though i guess a generator could still only turn "steam" back into "water" and not gradually reduce it's temperature like in the old days, so i'm not *too* sure if this is the right solution for me.

Depends how I program it.

Posted: **Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:30 am**

bobingabout wrote: ↑Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:43 am
eradicator wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:39 am Though i guess a generator could still only turn "steam" back into "water" and not gradually reduce it's temperature like in the old days, so i'm not *too* sure if this is the right solution for me.
Depends how I program it.

Is it possible to make recipe like this:?

Code: Select all

ingredients = 
  {
    {name = 'water', type ='fluid', amount = 5}, 
    {name = 'steam', type ='fluid', amount = 5}
  }
results = 
  {
    {name = 'water', type ='fluid', amount = 9, temperature = 90}, 
    {name = 'steam', type ='fluid', amount = 1, temperature = 110}
  }

Posted: **Thu Nov 08, 2018 2:20 pm**

Darinth wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 3:48 pm
bobingabout wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:52 am I've gotten pretty good at editing the source code to add fluid boxes to entities... I could attempt to add an output fluid box to the generator entity similar to how the boiler has separate input and output fluid boxes. The problem is, I doubt this will ever have a function outside of modding. is this something that you'd be interested in? Also keep in mind that even if I do edit the code, it might not get approved to be added to the game.
I thing what the OP was looking for was the capacity to output either a cooled steam (say steam that's at 120 degrees, not enough to power anything) or water out of the steam engines/turbines (optional, if there's nowhere to output the cooled steam it's just deleted like it is now) and then a condenser to turn it back into water.

So, as an example, you run steam engines/turbines in parallel just like you do today, but you also make sure they're connected side-to-side. Hot steam runs top-bottom, 'cooled' steam runs side-to-side and could then be transfered into cooling towers that transform the 'cooled steam' back into water which would then be reutilized on-site to reduce the water requirements for a steam setup that wasn't actually directly attached to a water source.

Yes, and I like the idea of cross pipes. If something were made for this it would need to be designed in a way that turbine farms would not have big holes of wasted space.

If there were an entity off the side, perhaps and condenser and a stack would together be no wider than a turbine, and output towards were a boiler would be so players can use a T pipe to backfeed the reclaimed water.

Also, the smoke animation reduced on turbines depending on whether the water output is able to "drain" back into the system. (A pump could be used to prioritize recycled water.) A highly setup with a pressurized water source should display more steam coming out of the turbines than an efficient setup.

Posted: **Thu Nov 08, 2018 3:23 pm**

darkfrei wrote: ↑Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:30 am
bobingabout wrote: ↑Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:43 am
eradicator wrote: ↑Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:39 am Though i guess a generator could still only turn "steam" back into "water" and not gradually reduce it's temperature like in the old days, so i'm not *too* sure if this is the right solution for me.
Depends how I program it.
Is it possible to make recipe like this:?
Code: Select all
ingredients = 
  {
    {name = 'water', type ='fluid', amount = 5}, 
    {name = 'steam', type ='fluid', amount = 5}
  }
results = 
  {
    {name = 'water', type ='fluid', amount = 9, temperature = 90}, 
    {name = 'steam', type ='fluid', amount = 1, temperature = 110}
  }

That's a recipe, you can do that now on other things.

The steam engine doesn't work that way, it has all it's own specific tags. I can try and open up a fair amount of possibilities, but it wouldn't be in that format.

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