Ice and water

On Mars water is ice. An ice crusher turns it into something drinkable – and a pipe outside turns it back into ice on a cold night. The chip takes care of both.

The ice crusher#

StructureIceCrusher takes in ice via the chute and melts it. What is released goes out separately:

• gases into the gas output
• liquids like water into the liquid output

Setting is a temperature here: the crusher warms the melt to this value before it outputs it. If its content is colder than Setting, it heats with 1,000 J per tick; output only happens once the content is warmer than Setting − 1 K. It cannot cool. On the dial you set 120 to 320 K, the default is 288.15 K. With On you switch it, Activate it sets itself as soon as ice has been drawn in. Its inside withstands up to 1,200 atmospheres; once it is that full, it draws in no more ice.

According to the game data, water ice delivers 20 mol of water and 5 mol of nitrogen per piece – the nitrogen ends up in the gas output.

Water in tanks#

The small liquid tank holds 6,000 litres. It has no logic of its own any more, so a liquid pipe analyzer (StructureLiquidPipeAnalyzer) sits on its line. Its VolumeOfLiquid tells how many litres of liquid are in the network. The crusher runs until the tank is almost full and only starts again clearly below that – a hysteresis:

slt tmp litres FULL
and crush crush tmp
slt tmp litres REFILL
or crush crush tmp

Preventing freezing#

Water freezes at 273.15 K, polluted water already at 276.15 K. Mars nights are around 220 K. A tank or a pipe outside cools down, and frozen water no longer flows. A pipe heater for liquid (StructureLiquidPipeHeater) on the line keeps it warm. According to its device data it puts 1,000 J per tick into the pipe.

The second hysteresis: heat below 5 °C, stop above 15 °C.

If the analyzer is missing, both readings are NaN. Crusher and heater switch off – pumping water blindly into a tank the chip cannot see would be worse than a break.