Algae Terrarium Experiment

[KittenIsAGeek]

A while back I wrote up an example of using terrariums for polluted oxygen supply: 

Spoiler

 

Anyway, I decided to start a new game and see how they work as a primary oxygen source.  Here's what I found:

1. The changes to the terrariums have reduced dupe work time considerably.  They empty the PW quickly, and each terrarium will run for about two cycles on one load of algae.
2. Flooding still works beautifully.  However, dupes will not empty the PW unless they can stand on the same level as the terrarium.  So use enviro suits if you want to avoid wet feet.
3. The PW produced by the terrariums is germ-free (if the water used to irrigate them was). If you don't sieve the PW, you end up going through water very quickly.  Its roughly 7.5g/s of water for 1g/s of oxygen (an electrolyzer is 1.126g/s water per g of oxygen).  If you DO sieve the water, then the terrariums use a paltry 0.24g/s of water per g of oxygen making them almost 5 times more efficient than electrolyzers.  For algae use, they're about 1.5 times more efficient than deoxydizers.
4. The PW is around 26c.  The oxygen, however, is produced at the temperature of the terrariums. So if you move the  PW out of the base, they won't generate any heat.
5. The 10% efficiency buff from lights isn't worth the heat generation for an early base.  Once you've got some cooling, they're fine.
6. Unlike deoxidizers, they pushed oxygen into all corners of my base with no problems.  Just make sure you keep your oxygen generation somewhat close to what your dupes need, or you'll start popping eardrums.
7. No hydrogen.  This is probably the biggest drawback for using terrariums.  True, you don't have to burn power generating and distributing oxygen, but you also don't get any hydrogen.  As I move into mid- and late-game, I'll probably supplement my base's oxygen supply with electrolyzers simply so I can get some hydrogen.

Anyway, so far the terrariums have done well. I had to re-think some of my early base design strategies, but overall they do very well -- especially if you're starting a map that is low on resources.

Has anyone else experimented with using them as the primary oxygen supply?  What were your experiences?

Bonus SS:

Spoiler

Mid-game oxygen supply:

 

I had LOTS of water, so I didn't start filtering right away.. which turned out to be a mistake.

Yes, I'm filtering NOW, but.. 

 

[Neotuck]

I have posted before about using mech doors to disable terrariums to save on algae/water and avoid popped eardrums

while I can't keep them flooded this way, the extra dupe time needed to keep them watered is worth it as they seem to only be active half of each cycle

I let the PW off gas to deodorizers to supplement my O2 needs

I'm past cycle 400 with 12 dupes and I don't have any other O2 production except what's in the picture

have over 48 tons of algae (the 2 compactors in the picture are full) and I haven't even built a distiller yet 

[KittenIsAGeek]

12 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I have posted before about using mech doors to disable terrariums to save on algae/water and avoid popped eardrums

while I can't keep them flooded this way, the extra dupe time needed to keep them watered is worth it as they seem to only be active half of each cycle

I let the PW off gas to deodorizers to supplement my O2 needs

I'm past cycle 400 with 12 dupes and I don't have any other O2 production except what's in the picture

have over 48 tons of algae (the 2 compactors in the picture are full) and I haven't even built a distiller yet 

That's a good strategy.  I was thinking about setting up something similar, but decided not to this time.  Don't forget that you have a very large amount  of PW in those bottles -- if you ever start running low on water, that is.  And yes, its EXTREMELY efficient on the algae.  I haven't even finished off my starting biome's supply of algae and I'm closing in on cycle 100.  As a bonus for your method: TONS of clay for ceramics. =^.^=

[Neotuck]

Just now, KittenIsAGeek said:

As a bonus for your method: TONS of clay for ceramics. =^.^=

true, I have 4 kilns surrounded by wheezies running non stop

currently I have over 200 tons of ceramics 

I always laugh every time some one posts about ceramic production being a "bottleneck"

[beowulf2010]

I've been using a setup similar to Neotuck's for my last few bases and it's working amazingly well. 

12 terrariums shutting off at 1800g pressure and letting the polluted water bottles offgas is more than enough oxygen for 8 dupes plus keeping 8 exosuits topped off. 

Note: I did have some low pressure issues trying to fill all 8 from empty so start with only 3 or 4 and get those full before jumping up to 8.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Yeah, I supplemented my suits with deoxydizers during the early part of the game, but now they're no longer necessary.

[Neotuck]

I build gas reservoirs and fill them with O2 first before building my exosuit docks

This build is not far above my algae terrariums 

made a simple filter for removing any PO2 and CO2 that gets sucked in 

I currently have 10 exosuit docks connected to these reservoirs 

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, Neotuck said:

I build gas reservoirs and fill them with O2 first before building my exosuit docks

That's a good idea.  I've used gas reservoirs for maintaining pressure in O2 lines before, especially in combination with suits.

[Iriswaters]

I've never had a clay shortage, the idea seems weird..   I always end up feeding my excess clay to hatches.

[Craigjw]

7 hours ago, Neotuck said:

true, I have 4 kilns surrounded by wheezies running non stop

currently I have over 200 tons of ceramics 

I always laugh every time some one posts about ceramic production being a "bottleneck"

It's true, none of my air fresheners were working as I had no PO2 to filter, while at the same time, all the clay that I'd saved up to this time was probably used unnecessarily.  In short, the base was too clean for clay production to be effective.

[avilmask]

And algae doesn't become an issue any time close?

[Kabrute]

a large part of the air come from pwater offgassing and what does get used of the algae is converted at over 100%mass if lights are on.
it uses very little algae compared to other methods because its not mainly algae.

[avilmask]

Ah, now I see, what's the catch. terrariums are used as a tool to bottle up pH2O, not actually make O2. And then you use bottled up pH2O to generate pO2 without effort, and clean it with deodorizer.

[beowulf2010]

12 hours ago, avilmask said:

Ah, now I see, what's the catch. terrariums are used as a tool to bottle up pH2O, not actually make O2. And then you use bottled up pH2O to generate pO2 without effort, and clean it with deodorizer.

The catch? Dupe time to empty the terrariums and possibly refill them depending on if you automate the terrariums for pressure control like Neotuck or flood them to auto water as Kitten demonstrated. Also a bit of power for lights. 

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, beowulf2010 said:

The catch? Dupe time to empty the terrariums

have you seen how fast dupes empty those?

[KittenIsAGeek]

Even if you're not saving up the PW bottles and ONLY using the terrariums to generate your oxygen, its the most efficient method in the game.  For example, if you sieve the PW back into water for your terrariums (thus skipping the polluted O2 bit), then it uses 1/5th the water compared to an electrolyzer and 2/3rds the algae compared to a deoxydizer.

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

have you seen how fast dupes empty those?

Yep. I didn't mean to imply there was a significant tine cost, was just enumerating the "catch" for the terrariums.

[goatt]

19 hours ago, Neotuck said:

have you seen how fast dupes empty those?

how fast? And how many terrariums did you have

[Neotuck]

26 minutes ago, goatt said:

how fast? And how many terrariums did you have

only a second, and I have 12

[beowulf2010]

27 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

only a second, and I have 12

Yep. It's not much more time than dropping off clean water. Though if they want to make it longer, I wouldn't mind it too much as long as it was no more than half the time it takes to plunge out an outhouse. 

[goatt]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

only a second, and I have 12

i remember one dupe requires 4 terrariums' O2 production. but you have 12 for 12 dupes?

[Neotuck]

18 minutes ago, goatt said:

i remember one dupe requires 4 terrariums' O2 production. but you have 12 for 12 dupes?

It's 3 terrariums

also most of my O2 comes from PO2 bottles + deodorizers 

[goatt]

3 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

It's 3 terrariums

also most of my O2 comes from PO2 bottles + deodorizers 

i c, thx for explaining. One more question, I haven't really used terrariums, does O2 produces that way have same temp as input water?

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, goatt said:

i c, thx for explaining. One more question, I haven't really used terrariums, does O2 produces that way have same temp as input water?

It doesn't generate heat so the O2 is the same temp as the terrarium itself

but the short answer is "yes" as the terrarium will equalize temperature with it's contents (Water, PW, and Algae) 

[DemainaNyx]

You can combine both Neotuck's and Kitten's designs (if you have extra space) and automate it.  You can forego the wall/ceiling part of the terrarium room, I just had really high pressure in my base and didn't want to turn off everything else to make sure this worked.  Additionally, you can make the terrarium part of the build much smaller so you use multiple lights but only one sweeper, I just started building without really thinking about that.

This was all done in sandbox for the images, so reducing the ceiling height and such would make it much easier for dupes to build. 

Automation looks insane mostly for clarity sake.  You can fit it all within the room but it's a lot of crossing cables, so I thought this would be easier to understand by not doing that.  Plus it's much easier to feed the door cables in from the side instead of feeding them down through the other wires.

Automation explained

Spoiler

Left most loop counts the button presses.  When the dupe enters the room it primes the system by activating the Memory Toggle and the Filter.  The Filter takes a few seconds before activating the AND gate, preventing the dupe from activating the system while they are still inside the room.  When the dupe moves to leave the room, the press the button again, completing the AND gate and triggering the Buffer which waits a few seconds before resetting the Memory toggle and activating the system.

Next we hit an AND gate,which was originally there to prevent it from activating the system when the lower button is already pressed.  This and the NOT right below it can be removed and instead you can simply replace this by locking the door when the top row of doors are open using a NOT gate (I didn't want to re-wire).

After that, we reset a Memory Toggle which flips a NOT gate that starts the main part of automation (top right-ish in screenshot). 

The top Filter-Memory loop has enough time for the mechanical doors to open and close without power (5s each).  Memory Toggle is used to open the doors and close the doors using 2 active signals from the Filters so that everything runs in a sequence.  The output of the Memory is connected to a bunch of OR gates.  The goal is that the top row of doors will open if the main system activates them (this Memory toggle), OR the lower button is pressed, OR the pressure in the room is above 1500.

A bottom Filter-Memory loop does the same for the bottom row of mechanical doors but this row only open when the main system activates them.  The bottom Filter-Memory loop then activates our initial Memory Toggle, flipping the whole system off (everything goes from green to red except this Memory Toggle's output (see image above) and now it's waiting for the dupe to enter the room again when the terrariums need emptying.

Additionally, in the center of the image there is a liquid shutoff.  That is controlled when the liquid pressure is below 500 AND when the top row of doors are NOT open.

Lastly we have the bottom button.  It's purpose is to prevent the system from creating more polluted water than needed.  If the water bottles exceed a certain weight, it will open the doors to prevent the terrariums from using more algae/water and instead focus on letting the polluted water bottles off gas.

 

The down side is the top room automation really only works with shipping due to how the system is triggered, if dupes are delivering the algae, they will set it off.  One way around this is to make a system that dumps the bottles using the air pressure and the filter-memory loops until you can produce the things for shipping and then swap.  Then again you may have dupes inside when the system activates.  I believe dupes walk on open doors like  hatches/morbs do, so it should be fine. 

You can also just forego all my automation and just let the air pressure gauge and filter-memory loops be the thing that dumps your bottled water.  That would work too.