All the ways of cooling oxygen

This article will be of interest to novice players. In this article we will look at all the ways of cooling oxygen and we will consider some heat transfer issues in practical schemes.

The oxygen will be cooled to room temperature (+25ºC), not to -30ºC as in this article or -185ºC as in this one.

The order of schemes is from best to worst (imho).

Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier

 * Easy to find in ice biomes
 * No power consumption


 * Requires a tube of hydrogen
 * Only a limited amount of them in the world (unless you use mods)

Thermosensor < Temperature of your choosing (usually 26C)

Cool Slush Geyser

 * Almost no power consumption
 * Relatively easy to build
 * Capable of decent cooling
 * Heats the Cool Slush to a temperature that will not tear the outgoing Water Sieve pipe (when properly adjusted)


 * This version uses a squeezer, which some may mistake for a bug.
 * This version lacks automatic thermoregulation, which can cause problems at times when the geyser is "sleeping". It is possible to complete it yourself.


 * It does not work all the time (sleep/activity)

Part of the oxygen passes through the Geyser and part through the bypass. The valve setting adjusts the oxygen temperature at the outlet. I have 300gr/sec, for your geyser you may need a different value. It is worth adding a hydro sensor to the circuit.

Simplified version
Much easier than the previous one, but you have to take care that you have somewhere to drain the Cool Slush: Water Sieve, external squeezer, pool, Liquid Reservoir, etc. Otherwise the geyser will stagnate and not provide extra cooling.

Thermo Aquatuner

 * Can add a cooling water circuit, and can cool not only the oxygen, but also your entire base
 * Can be greatly controlled/adjustable


 * Consumes a lot of power
 * Cumbersome to build
 * Requires steel, plastic, etc.



Thermo Aquatuner + turbine has been discussed more than once, e.g. here. Thermosensor > Temperature of your choosing (usually 26C)

Wheezewort

 * Almost no power consumption
 * Relatively easy to build


 * Consumes phosphorite (less than 12kg/cycle)



To cool oxygen from 50ºC to room temperature, only 1.5 to 2 Wheezeworts can be used. Oxygen at 50ºC can easily be obtained if you build the electrolyser correctly (coil in the chamber with pumps).

Wheezewort (without automatics)


Same as the variant above, but requires the work of dupes. Uses 12kg of phosphorite, regardless of need. Can lead to overcooling of oxygen. A two-drop liquid lock is used (for thermal insulation). You can use any other type.

Ice in the door

 * Doesn't consume electrical power
 * Relatively easy to build
 * Pure water output


 * Snow and snow biomes are not on the maps: Verdante, Aridio, Oasisse


 * Dissipates ice (the supply is not limitless)



Setting:


 * Conveyor Rail Element Sensor - snow and ice
 * Buffer Gate - 2 sec.
 * Thermosensor < 26ºC
 * Hydrosensor > 50kg.

Provides decent cooling, but consumes ice and/or snow. Fortunately, ice does not consume quickly, and there is enough ice for several hundred cycles, and maybe more. In the test, I put about 5 tons of ice in the circuit.

Don't try to simplify the circuit:


 * Throwing ice into the pool (by Automatic dispenser, Conveyor chute, etc.)
 * Putting a storage bin at the bottom of the pool

Transferring heat from a bunch of resources is extremely inefficient. Only doors, as in this scheme.

Ice biome

 * Doesn't waste resources
 * Doesn't consume electricity


 * Snow and snow biomes are not on the maps: Verdante, Aridio, Oasisse


 * With an average/high volume of oxygen, the biome will melt sooner or later
 * A large volume of hydrogen must be filled



Find an ice biome that has 4...6 wild Wheezewort (the more the better). Siphon off the gas (usually carbon dioxide) by placing a pump at the very bottom of the biome. Fill biome with hydrogen (should be cold enough). Run a thermally insulated pipe up to the septage of the biome, and a radiator pipe in the septage itself. The scheme is simple (the valve is described in the Cool Slush Geyser scheme).

Performance of wild Wheezewort is 4 times less than with apatite feeding, but due to the large amount of ice in the biome, the scheme could well survive a thousand cycles.

Carbon Dioxide Vent

 * No power consumption
 * Easy to build


 * 1kg/sec of oxygen only cools to 48C


 * Can only cool a small amount of oxygen (less than 300gr/sec, which is barely enough for 3 dupes)

Enclose with thermocell, pour 2 layers of liquid: first - 50...200kg of crude oil; second - 3kg of water. You can add a gas pump with an atmospheric sensor to the scheme, if you plan to feed CO2 to the Slickster. Extremely inefficient, but requires no dupes, and for free. Can only be used in addition to other circuits.

Thermo Regulator

 * Easy to build


 * Consumes 720W of electrical power, all the time.
 * Much, much less efficient than a Thermo Aquatuner.
 * Requires external cooling (water pipe in the diagram)



Thermo regulators (TRs) require external cooling. To cool TRs, it is better to run a pipe with a Cool Slush or a pipe with gases ejected into space. But it is better to consider other schemes, and use this one as a temporary one.

Tempshift Plate

 * No power consumption
 * Very easy to build


 * Snow and snow biomes are not on the maps: Verdante, Aridio, Oasisse


 * Dissipates ice (the supply is not limitless)

Build a "tub" of metal and Mesh Tile in the desired location, such as under/over a farm. Build a Tempshift Plate of ice/snow. It will melt immediately and cool the air around it for a few cycles. A completely lazy (worst) option is to build a Tempshift Plate just in the desired room, wait a couple of cycles and wipe out the water.

Ice-E Fan

 * No power consumption
 * Easy to build


 * Snow and snow biomes are not on the maps: Verdante, Aridio, Oasisse


 * Uses up ice (the supply of ice is not unlimited)
 * Requires the work of dupes



Build it near the location you need to cool. An automaton is needed to set the temperature hysteresis (the temperature difference between turning the mechanism on and off), so that the dupes can't overcool the base by wasting ice reserves, and not run to the mechanism every minute. Left thermosensor > 30ºC, right thermosensor < 20ºC (you may have other values).

I don't understand why they invented it... There is one difference from the Tempshift Plate option - thermal stabilization. Otherwise, the method is as bad as it gets.

Thermometer
In the left part of the circuit I assembled a simple temperature gauge. It can be placed in temperature demanding rooms, for example in farms (Sleet Wheat, Molten Slickster, etc.). For a Bristle Blossom farm (its temperature range is 5-30ºC) its settings are as follows:


 * top-left sensor (displayed on the first, lower indicator Pixel Pack in blue) less than 6ºC, further counterclockwise,
 * the second, blue color <10ºС,
 * the third one, light red >25ºC,
 * the fourth, red >29ºC.



So one look is enough to know that something has gone wrong. Less than 10C glows light blue, less than 6C glows blue, etc. Nothing glows, everything is normal.

And my favorite piece of advice - keep it simple, don't overcomplicate the circuit. Otherwise it will be like the picture on the right.

Coolants
Different circuits have different heat exchanger fills: crude oil, petroleum, water, etc. Recently, metal tile heat exchangers have become popular. It's worth finding out which is better.

From left to right, 99ºC water passed through the pipe, facing it 0ºC water. In the upper chamber - crude oil, in the middle - water, in the bottom - copper tiles. All at t 20ºC.

Outlet temperature:



Crude oil is slightly better than water (by 0.2ºC), thermal tile is better than crude oil by 2ºC. Regardless, I will continue to use crude oil in heat exchangers. First, there is usually more Crude oil/Petroleum than pure metal; second, the diagrams look better this way. You can cost heat exchangers out of whatever you are more comfortable with.

Turbine fluid
From the first comparison we can conclude: only crude oil should be poured under the turbine (and other gears)? Not really. The turbine will be flooded if the crude oil under it will be more than 50kg (not immediately, so after loading the save). At the same time, the turbine is working fine, with water under it up to 330kg. In the screenshot, the turbine with water heated only to 99.4º C, and with oil to 99.9º C (both working at the limit).

Water pipes
It would seem that thermium has the best transmission, then aluminum, then gold, etc. It's not that simple. Heat transfer is very different for plumbing, venting, and tile. And to relate kDTU/s to the real output temperature of the circuit is not easy. Besides, thermium is a space material, and not all asteroids have aluminum.

Therefore the simplest circuits were assembled: From left to right, 99ºC water is pumped, through pipes of different materials. The water in the channel is 0ºC. At the output of the circuit (after the second ball of water):



Conclusion: Thermium and aluminum are close, the other materials are significantly worse and almost equal to each other.

Ventilation pipes
From left to right - hydrogen, 500ºC. The water in the channel is 0ºC. Temperature after blocking the grids (a few tens of seconds):





The conclusion is not unambiguous. The scheme is extreme (500ºC of heat-capacious gas - hydrogen). Under normal conditions, you probably have enough copper ore. As a last resort, you can build a bigger heat exchanger.

Doors
In the "Ice in the Door" scheme (and not only) the question arises: which door to use? You need to find a balance between the thermal conductivity of the door and its heat capacity. In this scheme - oxygen in the chambers 70ºC, ice in the doors: 20kg, -25ºC. The faster and lower the door cooled, the better:



Conclusion: the favorite is wolframite (especially in high-temperature circuits). For others, gold alloy is sufficient.

Questions asked on reddit
Question: What's the benefit to filling the ice biome with hydrogen...?

Answer: The Wheezewort cools the gas that passes through it by 5C. If it is hydrogen it will cool by: 2.4 (SHC) x 5C x 1000gr/sec = 12000 DTU/s. If oxygen, 2.4 times worse (SHC oxygen = 1.005)