Thermal Desalinator

Thermal Desalinator

Heats saline water into vapor to collect it as clean water. Produces brine as a byproduct. Not really efficient but does the job.

Construction	30 + 30
Workers	4
Electricity	400 KW
Maintenance	2.0 / 60
Footprint	11x4
Required Research	Thermal Desalination
Boost by Unity	Available
Designation	Water Extraction & Processing

The Thermal Desalinator is a machine which converts Seawater and either Steam (Super), Steam (High), Steam (Low), or Steam Depleted into Water and Brine. Due to the high fuel cost for making steam, Groundwater Pump is vastly more efficient if there is sufficient rainfall to replenish groundwater aquifers.

The Brine byproduct can be utilized in Electrolyzers to create Chlorine to treat Waste Water or in fed into Wastewater Treatment machines to convert Toxic Slurry into Slag. The Evaporation Pond and Evaporation Pond (Heated) can also process Brine into Salt. However due to the high fuel cost for making steam, the production of Salt from Seawater with the Evaporation Pond is several times more energy efficient.

Efficiency

The following table shows costs to produce a full Pipe III of water. This is net-water production, so 30 depleted steam desalinators will output 990 / 60 , but only 450 of that is "extra" that the desalinators made; the other 540 you would have gotten just from cooling the steam. "Energy use" is a combination of the electricity used directly by the desalinators, and the electricity that could have been produced from the steam. This assumes you're using Power Generator (Large) and you're using Low-pressure turbines instead of just venting it. "Net Workers" is total workers, but discounted for the number of cooling towers that the desalinators replace (mostly matters for depleted steam)

Costs per full Pipe-III ( 450 / 60 )

Desalination Recipe	# of desals.	Input Steam / 60	Energy Use (MW) ( -Equivalent)	Total Workers	Cooling Towers Replaced	Net Workers	/ 60
Steam (Super)	6.6	40	23.4 MW	26.7	0.4	24.2	13.3
Steam (High)	6.5	78.3	27.0 MW	26.1	0.8	21.2	13
Steam (Low)	8.3	200	24.1 MW	33.3	2.1	20.8	16.7
Steam Depleted	30	720	12.0 MW	120	7.5	75	60

Some factors that make comparing recipes tricky:

• 24 Units of Steam(Low) is worth 3MW mechanical, but 12 Steam(High) can potentially be 4.5MW Mechanical if you run it through both high and low pressure turbines. Therefore the Steam(High) recipe actually uses 50% more energy to make 8% more water.
• Every unit of steam becomes 0.75 water in a cooling tower for free, so the Steam Low and Steam Depleted recipes don't give you as much water as they seem to. For example, a thermal desalinator running on depleted steam appears to give you 33 / 60 , but we could have gotten 18 / 60 of that for free by running the depleted steam into a large cooling tower. Therefore, for the cost of 400KW and 4 workers, the net water production of that desalinator is actually only 15 / 60 . This also means that the low-steam recipe isn't quite as efficient as it seems, since it consumes more water in the steam it inputs, but it still uses about 10% less energy than high-steam.
• Using depleted steam costs about half the energy of the others, but it is important to note that all of that energy is electrical (the 400KW building power consumption), requiring an extra 12MW worth of electrical turbines/generators. Meanwhile the other recipes have most of their energy cost in the steam, so they will use more total fuel (coal/nuclear fuel/etc), but put less of a strain on the electrical grid.

Recipes

Below are all the recipes, which this building is capable of producing. Note, that some of them may be locked behind Research, and not immediately available in your game.

5

15

8

24

20 

60 

11

33

2

6

12

72

4

24

10 

60 

12

72

4

24

18

108

2

12

10 

60 

13

78

7

42

18

108

1

6

10 

60 

12

72

7

42