Gas Turbine
Departmental Head
Chief Engineer
Summary
The gas turbine is an alternative way to produce power on the station, and is typically exclusive to Atmospheric Technician. It produces power by burning plasma, becoming more efficient the faster it spins, and producing more power the more plasma is being burned.
The turbine is build from a compressor and generator. The compressor burns gas inside it and converts a portion of the burn mix's heat into kinetic energy, while the turbine converts a portion of the compressor's kinetic energy into electrical energy.
How To Set Up the Turbine
Tools you need
- Rapid Pipe Dispenser
- Wrench
- Multitool
Start Up Procedure
- Open the panel on the compressor with a screwdriver and use a multitool
on it - Use the multitool on the console
- Turn the turbine on by pressing the button labeled "offline"
- Inject mix to chamber
- Ignite Mix
- Allow turbine to heat up to a few thousand K
- Cut off mix input and vent inlet chamber to space
- Start injecting the mix again without igniting(don't forget to turn the igniter off)
Burn Mix
The burn mix can be composed of any gasses that can burn or otherwise react to produce heat. These include N2O Plasma and Oxygen. The purpose of the mix is double: It is both the source of energy for the turbine and its coolant. As such controlling the flow rate and ratios of the gasses in the mix is paramount. Running either lean or rich can help reduce the turbine temperature, while running closer to stochiometric ratio will give more power, provided you don't overheat and the turbine runs fast enough to completely burn the gas.
A stable flowrate and composition of the mixture is the key to a stable turbine. The more stable your gasmix and it's delivery, the closer you can come to the damage threshold temperature
It is also recommended to reclaim the output of the turbine using a scrubber then cool and filter it so whatever unreacted gasses can be used again.
A good starting point is a very lean mix, like 15% Plasma and 85% Oxygen. It is by no means ideal, but should give a large safety margin while also keeping the turbine hot enough to maintain the burn.
SMES
The turbine has an SMES near it which both stores and regulates the output for use in the grid. Simply maximize the input and set the output depending on what other power sources are connected to the grid.
Operating characteristics
RPM Behaviour
The compressor's RPM is now a function of its kinetic energy, which it gains as a portion of the thermal energy of the gas it burns
- The compressor has a moment of inertia of 300 kg/m^2
- The compressor gains kinetic energy proprotional to the thermal energy of the gas being burned.
- This is multiplied by:
- (compression_ratio / max_compression_ratio) ^ 0.9
- gas_temp / (gas_temp + 7500)
- (8 + avg_part_rating) / 12
- (compressor_pressure / outlet_pressure + compressor_pressure)
- (bearing_damage/max_bearing_damage) ^ 3
Power Generation
The turbine consumes 10% of the compressors kinetic energy each process cycle, and the component rating on the turbine increases the portion of the consumed kinetic energy that is then turned into electrical energy, ranging from 66% to 100%
Bearing Damage
The bearings of the turbine will get damaged when working at too high a temperature, increasing friction, reducing thermal efficiency and eventually failing. Failures at higher RPM can cause an explosion.
- Bearings take damage starting at 30,000K.
- Damage to the bearings lowers this threshold down to 18,000K depending on how damaged they are
- The damage increases in proportion to the square root of the temperature above the threshold and the RPM.
- If the bearings fail while the compressor is above 15,000 rpm the compressor and turbine will explode.
- Bearing damage can be repaired by opening the panel of the compressor and using a welder.
Turbine Go GRRRRRRRRRRR
Things near the turbine intake get sucked in. Mobs get gibbed and other things get shredded the same way as they would by a devastating explosion
- Grinding any object deals 1/10 max_bearing_damage damage to the bearings
- All mobs get gibbed
- Vox produce kentucky fried vox when ground
- Drask produce a bar of soap when ground
- IPCs produce a sheet of titanium when ground
- Diona produce a salad when ground
- Magboots prevent you from getting sucked in
Tips
- The turbine is more efficient at higher RPM, if you have a hard time starting it, turn it off and wait for a couple minutes for the inlet chamber to fill
- You want to suck in as much gas as you can and increase it's pressure as much as possible when it burns in the turbine, so a cool mix will generally work better
The turbine can still work on hot gasses, though keeping the bearings cool will be a lot harder - Injectors are a good alternative to vents when trying to generate a high pressure.
- More gas generally means more power and also more power for a given temperature.
- Upgrading the turbine will help you convert the turbine's kinetic energy to electrical energy more efficiently, while upgrading the compressor will reduce friction, which reduces heat generation and allows running at a higher RPM
- You can get boards and parts from RnD to build more turbines