Editing Guide to the Supermatter (section)

== Cold gas, a glowy crystal, some lasers, and you: A deeper dive into the Supermatter Engine ==

'''Note: This extension assumes you have SOME knowledge of Atmospherics, it will be relatively verbose, but even so, some idea on Atmospherics may be required to understand the things being said. Furthermore, this is very rambly, but useful information will be given throughout. If you just want the conclusion on a whole lot of theory, skim read the bulk of it but pay attention at the end.'''

=== A horror story of pumps and hot gas ===

First things first. Gas does not work like you think it does. Pipes do not clog, period. Filters clog, pumps clog, scrubbers clog, vents clog (depending on settings), pipes, however, do not. There is no upper limit on the pressure of pipes, however, there is an upper limit on what pressure pumps, filters, and scrubbers can get into pipes. This may sound similar, but it has large consequences.

[[File:Supermatterboxnew_pipenet.png|650px|right]]

To the right you'll find an image used earlier in this guide, but, it is updated to show the separate pipenetworks the roundstart Supermatter has on Box station. In Atmospherics, gas is always everywhere in a pipe, instantly. If there is a pipe connected to another pipe, without anything in between, then at any one moment the amount of gas in them will be the same, the pressure will be the same, the temperature will be the same. What is referred to here as a pipenetwork is simply all connected pipes that do not have a device of sorts between them (valves and heat exchange pipes not counting).

But dear Mr. Guide Writer, why does this matter, at all? Why show me just how many pipenetworks exist in the round start setup, what does it matter? The essence of the answer lies in two things, pumps, filters, and mixers do not efficiently pump connected pipenetworks at all, and the fact that gas is always evenly spread through a pipenetwork, without direction to it.

Let's start with the first thing, pumps. All types of pumps (not filters and mixers and the like) have 200L volume in the small bit of pipe before them, and 200L in the small bit of pipe after them. As such, a volume pump pumps all the gas that is in that node to the other side of the pump, per second (the maximum pump rate for volume pumps is 200L/s). As such, if a pipe network has 2000L of volume, connected to a volume pump that is pumping at its max rate, it will pump 1/10th of all gas in the network, per second. However, you also have to take into account that it's always 1/10th of the gas that is in the pipes, as such, pumps will pump less moles of gas per second as there is less and less gas in the network before the pump. That... doesn't sound too amazing anymore, does it? But wait, there's ANOTHER reason why pumps are poor practice.

Pumps have an upper-pressure limit, same for filters and mixers. For the gas pump, and the others, the pressure limit is plain to see, 4500 kPa. However, the volume pump also has a pressure limit, rated at 9000 kPa. Scrubbers in fact also have a pressure limit, sitting around 5200 kPa. Gas pumps, filters, and mixers are especially poor, as their pumping slows down the closer they get to their pressure limit. What does this mean for the Supermatter, especially in case of delamination? Well, the room is probably on fire, so, the gas is very much so expanded and pressurized. First, the scrubbers work their butt off to get to their pressure limit, the gas is hot, so that doesn't take very much. While this happens, a gas pump takes the tiny amount of moles in the pipenetwork the scrubbers are connected to and shoves a small amount of it into the pipenetwork beyond it. Slowing down even further, as the gas is so hot it easily reaches the pressure limit. This then reaches the filter, which again tries to pump the small amount of moles beyond it, with another case of pressure limit slowness and the fact, not all gas is available for pumping at any moment. And so on and so on, add to this the fact that the Supermatter produces plasma and oxygen, which are reacting with each other and burning in the pipes, likely pushing the pressure above the limits of what the pumps can handle and... well you got the point right? This is what people refer to as clogged pipes, extremely slowly circulating gas, caused by how gas and pumps work.

Well, that all sounded horrid, how can we prevent this?

=== How removing pumps made me a billionaire ===

The title gives it away, really. You want to replace most pumps you can find with either straight pipes, or with valves to allow for easier modification and changing where the gas goes on the fly. ESPECIALLY THE FILTER NEEDS TO EITHER BE REMOVED OR UTILISED PROPERLY IN THE CASE OF A DELAMINATION OR WHEN OPTIMISING. Now, to explain why this is the proper option in most cases. As I mentioned before, gas in a network is always, always evenly spread through all connected pipes, it's always the same ratio of gasses, it's always the same temperature. An added tidbit, pipes do not actually leak even when there are open spaces for pipes, 4-way manifolds do not spill all gas in them when gas is added to them. With these two bits of knowledge combined, you can make the cooling loop nearly sabotage immune. If you went ahead and replaced the pumps with open valves, or with pipes, there's always a great deal of gas in the heat exchanging pipes, in space. This means that the whole pipenetwork is constantly being cooled down, as it's connected directly to pipes that are heat exchanging with space. If somebody tries to lazily sabotage by removing a single heat exchanging pipe, it doesn't matter, as all the other pipes are still connected to the rest of the network. The gas that was in the heat exchanger pipe that was unwrenched is lost, but that's also a very small loss because the volume of the pipenetwork is rather large. 

The second biggest benefit, and most relevant to active delaminations, by replacing some pumps and filters you increase the volume by a lot, and you constantly cool down the pipenetwork. Both of these things mean that the scrubbers work a lot faster, as the gas will cool down faster, lowering the pressure, and the volume is larger, also lowering pressure. This means that overall, the scrubbers will scrub much faster, and the big bad hot gas is quickly removed from the chamber.

Lastly, though only vaguely related, keep your vents on internal 0, not on external 5000. Vents do not actually have a pressure limit at all. They can continue to add pressure constantly, however, they do work faster if the chamber they are connected to is lower pressure, and the gas they're pumping is cold, but this is always true. Essentially, vents pump a static amount of pressure when they're at maximum speed. If nothing very, very strange is happening, the gas that the vents are attempting to pump in is colder than what is in the chamber, as it already went through the cooling part of the pipes. As such, having the vents on internal 0, and with it, always pumping the hardest they can, they are adding gas that is colder than what is currently in the chamber itself. This contributes to the cooling down of the chamber, and as such, works to stop the delamination progress faster. External 5000 suffers from the same issues as a pump does, vents will completely stop pumping in gas when the room it is trying to pump into is 5000 kPa or above, which happens fairly quickly in a small room that is white hot. So remember, internal 0, unless there is too much gas in the room (see singularity delamination).

=== Breaking the laws of thermodynamics and a final word ===

Freezers. That is all. Freezers are magical machines that break the laws of thermodynamics by even existing and work to extremely quickly heat or cool gas to the temperature they are set at. They are much, much quicker than space could ever hope to be when upgraded, and even colder. Space, at its coldest, is about 26K. Freezers can go as low as 2.7K when fully upgraded, and are much quicker at cooling. A word of warning, however. Freezers will attempt to change the temperature of the gas that is in them to the temperature it is set at, this seems obvious, but that also means it can heat gas. As space is around 26K, and unupgraded freezers only go to 73.15K, I strongly advise you to not use unupgraded freezers, they will actually actively increase the temperature of your gasses.

If you somehow read through all that, I very strongly applaud you, and I applaud you on likely becoming an engineer that is a few times less clueless. Despite all the things you now may know, there is a lot to experiment with, and lots of ways left to mess up in spectacular ways. Try to keep learning more and more as you go, and good luck in your attempts to not blow up the station.

[[Category:Guides]]