Pipe Cooler – Guide

The Pipe Cooler (Rohrkühler) is the counterpart of the pipe heater. It sits on a straight pipe just like the heater, but it cools instead of heating. Inside the housing is a small heat pump with a finned radiator and two fans. There are two devices: Pipe Cooler (Gas) and Pipe Cooler (Liquid). Both have their own 3D models, a control panel on top with a large display (five pages), LEDs and full IC10 control. Model labels, displays and device names appear in German or English, depending on the game language.

The pipe cooler cools the pipe. If you want to cool whole rooms, use Air Conditioning.

Overview#

Both only occupy the cell of the pipe they sit on. As everywhere in the game, power figures are shown in W, meaning energy per tick (0.5 s).

Requirements#

• Stationeers 0.2.6428, BepInEx 5.4.23.5, StationeersLaunchPad 1.0, see Installation
• Mod in the active mod pack
• Outside air of at least 6.3 kPa at the device. In vacuum the pipe cooler does not cool.

Building and recipes#

Both kits come from the Hydraulic Pipe Bender, tier 1:

That is the pipe heater recipe plus copper and steel for the radiator and compressor. The costs are in GameData/rohrkuehler.xml in the mod folder. You build it like the pipe heater: place the kit on a straight pipe, the gas cooler on a gas pipe, the liquid cooler on a liquid pipe.

Layout#

• The front is the pipe end. The two fans sit there in front of the fin block, with the name and the GAS or LIQUID type plate between them.
• The control panel is on top. You stand in front of the device and look down on it: two rows of LEDs at the back, the large display in the middle, the main switch and the SET - / + and PAGE < / > buttons at the front.
• On the sides at pipe height, seen from the front: power on the left (red ring), data on the right (green ring). The connections are in the same places as on the pipe heater.

How it works#

• Each tick it removes up to 1000 J from the pipe network. The game shows that as 1000 W, as much as the pipe heater heats.
• The removed heat plus the power it uses goes as heat into the air at the device, about 2000 W at full power. Nothing disappears. If the cooler stands in a closed room, it heats that room.
• Power draw: 10 W idle, up to 1000 W while cooling. Shortly before the target it runs at part load and needs correspondingly less. Without power it does not cool.
• The pipe cooler is fireproof. It does not catch fire on Venus either.

Lift factor#

If the pipe is colder than the outside air, the heat has to go "uphill". Cooling power then drops linearly, to 10% at a 150 K difference. A pipe that is warmer than the air is cooled at full power.

The power draw does not drop with it: at full load it still uses up to 1000 W. Uphill, every joule costs more power.

Outside pressure rule#

The radiator needs air. Below 6.3 kPa outside pressure (Armstrong limit) the cooler stops, the NO AIR LED lights up orange and display page 3 shows the pressure in orange. So the cooler belongs in a room with an atmosphere or outside on a planet with air. The limit can be changed with MinAussendruckKPa.

The pipe has to be filled as well: above the Armstrong limit, or for a liquid pipe, with liquid in it. Otherwise it reports "pipe empty".

Thermostat#

• It cools down to the target temperature (default 20 °C) and starts again as soon as the pipe is 0.5 K above it. It never cools below the target.
• Adjustable with SET - and + in steps of 1 °C, via IC10 through Setting in Kelvin. The allowed range is -200 to 1000 °C.

Gas and liquid#

• Gas: if you cool a gas below its condensation point, you get liquid in the gas pipe.
• Liquid: liquids have a large heat capacity, so a single cooler takes its time. Several coolers on one network add up. Water freezes below 0 °C.

Controls#

When you look at it, the tooltip shows state, target, pipe, power and outside air, from behind or from the side too.

LEDs#

The two fans at the front spin while cooling, faster under more load.

Display pages#

The display has five pages, switched with PAGE. Page 1 uses large text, the others show a title and the page number at the top.

State colours on page 1: blue = cooling, green = target reached, orange = off or no air, red = pipe empty or no power.

IC10#

Both devices share the same LogicTypes and addresses.

In the memory table, writable addresses are marked (W).

clr resets the statistics: energy removed and operating hours.

Example: set the target and show the pipe temperature#

The cooler is named "Kuehler" (cooler), an LED Display (Small) "Rohr" (pipe). The chip sets the target to 15 °C and shows the pipe temperature in °C: green in normal operation, red on a fault.

# Pipe cooler: target 15 C, show pipe temperature
define KUEHLER -683765736   # Pipe Cooler (Gas)
define ANZEIGE -815193061   # LED Display (Small)
define ZIEL 288.15          # 15 C target temperature
define CELSIUSOFFSET 273.15 # Kelvin to Celsius
define GRUEN 2              # Color.Green
define ROT 4                # Color.Red
alias temp r0
alias fehler r1
alias farbe r2
start:
yield
sbn KUEHLER HASH("Kuehler") Setting ZIEL
lbn temp KUEHLER HASH("Kuehler") Temperature 0
sub temp temp CELSIUSOFFSET
lbn fehler KUEHLER HASH("Kuehler") Error 0
select farbe fehler ROT GRUEN
sbn ANZEIGE HASH("Rohr") Setting temp
sbn ANZEIGE HASH("Rohr") Color farbe
j start

Console commands#

Open the console with F3. reset only works on the host or server, or in single player.

Configuration#

File: BepInEx\config\dominik1199.rohrkuehler.cfg, or through the mod settings in LaunchPad. Changes apply immediately.

Multiplayer#

New devices: the server and all players need the mod. The server does the calculations, the players receive the display values. See Multiplayer.

Known limitations#

• No outside air, no cooling. In vacuum it stays at NO AIR.
• The heat ends up in the air at the device. In a closed room it gets warmer there. In that case put the cooler outside or cool the room with Air Conditioning.
• 1000 W is not much for liquids. For large amounts, put several coolers on the network or raise KuehlleistungJeTakt.
• The colder the pipe compared with the air, the weaker the cooler. From a 135 K difference on, 10% remain.

Troubleshooting#