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Algae Terrarium Experiment


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On 12/6/2018 at 8:18 PM, Neotuck said:

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) 

Something to remember, though: The polluted water bottles are 30c.  So if you don't move them, they'll slowly heat your base.

10 hours ago, Frater Bartmoss said:

Base for the Hateful Eight - I decided to seperate the actual oxygen needed for the base and that oxygen needed for the suits. The door to the terrarium chambers opens only if the water of polluted water is under a certain amount to reduce the workload:

I'm doing something similar.  Right now my terrariums are mostly automated.  I have a system that drops PW bottles into a room below the terrariums set with a pressure sensor.  My method is a little energy intensive right now, but:  PO2 is pumped into a side chamber with deoderizers.  After filtering, the air is pumped into my base.  Using bridges as a priority system, O2 from the algae room is added to the pipe as necessary.  If PO2 production drops too low, the O2 pressure in the algae room will drop below a threshold and open the doors, letting the dupes in to empty the algae terrariums.  With 9 dupes, the algae room only needs emptying once every 15 to 20 cycles or so.

 

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8 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Something to remember, though: The polluted water bottles are 30c.  So if you don't move them, they'll slowly heat your base.

I haven't considered this, at first I thought the temp was coming from the lamps but it does seem to slowly warm up, but if 30c is the limit that isn't so bad

here's a pic of my current colony's terrarium setup

20181209130713_1.thumb.jpg.12a6e614b7b4dcaf1ecb7a95ea37e0b8.jpg20181209130703_1.thumb.jpg.accd25d863710daaaf4fb21069c6cd7a.jpg

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Could someone explain the real pros of such a setup. I'm thinking of trying it, because it actually is very attractive, but I can't manage to put my finger on its usefulness.

The last screenshot shows 16 algae terrariums, which means 4.8kg/s of water, which I feel is insane. I mean, a map isn't even garanteed to give you that amount of water, in fact the average water one gets is actually certainly lower than that.

Considering this, how can this be a superior option to anything else in the game ? With that amount of water, one can get oxygen for 40 dupes and almost 4kW of power (minus the power cost of the setup, which generally is roughly the same, making it energy-free or even energy-positive) via electrolyzers. And about algae, I've always found myself with enough algae to last AT LEAST 250-300 cycles with 8 to 12 dupes, way enough time to setup electrolysers without any need to rush them.

So, anyone could enlighten me on how great this algae terrarium setup ? I really want to try it in my new playthrough, but I need to be convinced of its efficiency.

Thank you !

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13 minutes ago, qda said:

Could someone explain the real pros of such a setup. I'm thinking of trying it, because it actually is very attractive, but I can't manage to put my finger on its usefulness.

The last screenshot shows 16 algae terrariums, which means 4.8kg/s of water, which I feel is insane. I mean, a map isn't even garanteed to give you that amount of water, in fact the average water one gets is actually certainly lower than that.

Considering this, how can this be a superior option to anything else in the game ? With that amount of water, one can get oxygen for 40 dupes and almost 4kW of power (minus the power cost of the setup, which generally is roughly the same, making it energy-free or even energy-positive) via electrolyzers. And about algae, I've always found myself with enough algae to last AT LEAST 250-300 cycles with 8 to 12 dupes, way enough time to setup electrolysers without any need to rush them.

So, anyone could enlighten me on how great this algae terrarium setup ? I really want to try it in my new playthrough, but I need to be convinced of its efficiency.

Thank you !

most of the O2 comes from the PW bottles off gassing into the deodorizers below

the sensor is set to 2000g gas and will only activate the terrariums after pressure drops below that

in the picture above it's been 10 cycles since the last time the terrariums have been turned on and the pressure at the sensor averages at 2200g

so 4.8kg/s? perhaps on the first few cycles after it's built but once the pressure equalizes with the PW bottles it's WAAAAAY less than that 

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2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

most of the O2 comes from the PW bottles off gassing into the deodorizers below

the sensor is set to 2000g gas and will only activate the terrariums after pressure drops below that

in the picture above it's been 10 cycles since the last time the terrariums have been turned on and the pressure at the sensor averages at 2200g

so 4.8kg/s? perhaps on the first few cycles after it's built but once the pressure equalizes with the PW bottles it's WAAAAAY less than that 

Thanks for the reply !

Since I'm quite into numbers, would you have an estimation, even rough, of the actual water consumption ? Let's say they activate for a cycle every 10 cycles, the average flowrate needed would be around 500g/s, do I guess that right, or is it even less than that ?

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52 minutes ago, qda said:

Thanks for the reply !

Since I'm quite into numbers, would you have an estimation, even rough, of the actual water consumption ? Let's say they activate for a cycle every 10 cycles, the average flowrate needed would be around 500g/s, do I guess that right, or is it even less than that ?

it depends on how many dupes you have to breath as it activates only when pressure drops

so if the average dupe breaths 100g/s O2

with 300g/s water by calculating the O2 produced at 44g/s and PW created 290g/s > off gas into deodorizers at will create 261g/s O2

that's 44g/s O2 from the terrariums and 261g/s O2 from the deodorizers at 305g/s O2 total from 300g/s water (that's more water effective than electrolyzers!)

So you need about 98.4g/s water per dupe for this build, multiply that by how many dupes you have for your answer

Sand and/or regolith for the deodorizers is the bigger bottleneck you'll run into with this build, you'll need about 140g/s per dupe

on the plus side you'll get plenty of clay for ceramics and/or feeding hatches :D

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5 hours ago, qda said:

The last screenshot shows 16 algae terrariums, which means 4.8kg/s of water, which I feel is insane. I mean, a map isn't even garanteed to give you that amount of water, in fact the average water one gets is actually certainly lower than that.

The amount of water does, at first, appear quite high.  However, that is before you consider that it also outputs polluted water.  There are two ways to take advantage of this:

  1. Sieve the PW back into clean water, in which case your terrariums produce 4.14g of O2 per g of water.  Compare with the electrolyzer that produces 0.888g of O2 per g of water.  That's 4.66 times more O2 per g of water than an electrolyzer.
  2. Let the PW off-gas into PO2 and deoderize it into clean O2.  Polluted water in bottles converts at a 1-1 ratio to PO2.  So its better than an electrolyzer, but not as good as filtering it into clean water.  HOWEVER, there are some advantages to this method.  First, no power is necessary to produce your O2. Second, you get TONS of clay, so later you can go crazy spamming ceramic tiles if you want.  Third, it doesn't use any algae -- other than what's necessary while running your algae terrariums enough to produce the polluted water bottles. So, if you're on an algae-sparse map, this is a good idea.

So, while it may appear to require a lot of water, algae terrariums are actually extremely efficient with your water.

And yeah, everything @Neotuck said as well.

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Well, thanks to you it seemed pretty solid and I gave it a try :

AT_experiment.thumb.png.8c11734a4d927fa7cf2142c9dbbdddc0.png

Although it only ran for 10 cycles and still consumed much more water than my usual zero consumption until electrolysers, it feels pretty good and ATs were disabled at least 2 thirds of the time, probably more than that.

I didn't put much thinking into it and mainly copy pasted ideas but I replaced your filter gate by buffer gates, to avoid ATs being triggered by random packets of CO2 with a mass less than the sensor treshold. Now I just have to sit and watch the algae miracle happen.

Thanks !

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9 minutes ago, qda said:

Although it only ran for 10 cycles and still consumed much more water than my usual zero consumption until electrolysers, it feels pretty good and ATs were disabled at least 2 thirds of the time, probably more than that.

Looks good.  After about 10 cycles is where it really starts to shine -- you should have enough bottles of polluted water now that your terrariums will be disabled most of the time.  Not to mention its fantastically easy in survival to get it up and running.  Here's a SS of the one I'm currently using in my survival base:

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.68f98dc928e1d49d34ecf84fab289541.png

Thermal:

image.thumb.png.db8bd883972cffef5ca48e034e31b9a2.png

 

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2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

@KittenIsAGeek

Here's an updated version of my build as I tried to add water dripping to save on dupe time

20181212063114_1.thumb.jpg.69731d5afd084014c7c23505b4b3dd89.jpg

 

Yeah, using PW off-gassing, though, my dupes almost never need to visit the terrariums anymore.  How do you test if you need to add more water?  I mean, not that they're using a lot, but... Eventually they'll need more water.

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2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Yeah, using PW off-gassing, though, my dupes almost never need to visit the terrariums anymore.  How do you test if you need to add more water?  I mean, not that they're using a lot, but... Eventually they'll need more water.

my main water supply is underneath and I pipe extra whenever I need it.  Eventually I'm going to drip extra water in from a bathroom loop

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The algae terrariums system is amazing, i'm up to almost cycle 300+ and have 40t+ of algae and still some water, been using bathroom water as soon as it is available and haven't had any oxygen problems. I just build an electrolyzer with steam geyser just to feed exo suits since heat doesn't matter. Never bother using oxygen deoxydizers anymore, they are a waste of algae

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@KittenIsAGeek and @Neotuck, your Terrarium posts over the last few weeks have been some of my favorite reads. Here's the other fun post to read.

Spoiler

 

So I built a colony with one of these terrarium farms, and had fun. Sand was then the thing I'd have to do a dig run for periodically (never algae, rather sand). 

This got me thinking.  If the PO2 bottles are the key to oxygen generation, then why not just go straight there and skip the terrarium completely. For that matter, why not skip the deodorizer too. Just make sure that no slimelung ever enters the base period (double water seal with vacuum between),, and PO2 is just as breathable as O2, and can even be pumped into exosuit stations. Quickest way I know of to bottle the stuff is to fill a bunch of metal refineries, and then deconstruct, reconstruct (or use the "Empty Storage" option, but that's to much clicking).   

5c131428b0d2e_Screenshotfrom2018-12-1318-48-54.thumb.png.56304427adf369119a6ab5d44a0608b3.png

The nice thing is that you can dump entire PW reservoirs into these, and then let the bottles fall to the ground. They always stop off gassing at 1800g, so no pressure issues.  If it's too hot in the base, then send a few rounds of water in from a cool slush geyer. You could stock enough water up that you could last 10000 cycles, and never have to worry about oxygen/pressure again. 

It does look kinda gross to watch your dupes live in a PO2 swamp, but they are just as happy. 

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8 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

This got me thinking.  If the PO2 bottles are the key to oxygen generation, then why not just go straight there and skip the terrarium completely. For that matter, why not skip the deodorizer too. Just make sure that no slimelung ever enters the base period (double water seal with vacuum between),, and PO2 is just as breathable as O2, and can even be pumped into exosuit stations. Quickest way I know of to bottle the stuff is to fill a bunch of metal refineries, and then deconstruct, reconstruct (or use the "Empty Storage" option, but that's to much clicking).   

This is a great idea, but there's one huge drawback: The instant your dupes carry any slime into your biome, you're in trouble.  With O2, slimelung will die out before it causes a big problem.  Unfortunately, with polluted O2, it'll spread like wildfire.  My recommendation would be to contain the PO2 and put deoderizers anywhere the PO2 can escape.

Here's a look at my current algae farm.  For the first time in about 20 cycles my terrariums are producing O2 because I just filled up 4 atmo suit docks.  Otherwise, this is pretty much a PO2 -> O2 production facility. ... and on that note, I've got far too much clay now.  :)

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.8102ccaa1d545e527114e61cb82c9fb1.png

 

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1 minute ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I wasn't really complaining, but yeah.  I don't have to worry about ceramics at all anymore.  Some clay for ceramics, some clay for coal to fire the ceramics.. 

...and enough coal left over to fuel enough generators that you don't need to rush for NG or petro ;)

23 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

 Sand was then the thing I'd have to do a dig run for periodically

still a lot easier to find or produce than algae or water ;)

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2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

The instant your dupes carry any slime into your biome, you're in trouble.  With O2, slimelung will die out before it causes a big problem.  Unfortunately, with polluted O2, it'll spread like wildfire.  My recommendation would be to contain the PO2 and put deoderizers anywhere the PO2 can escape.

Yep.  I planned for this by making back to back waterlocks (the unbreakable jump over kind) with a vacuum seal between, and no plans to ever have any route go through the base, nor put any kind of storage container in the base itself. No PO2 in, no PO2 out. For that matter, nothing gets in, nothing gets out. 

It was all going great until one dupe contracted slimelung (tried clearing out a slime biome fast). His first cough was the end for everyone.... It was a mess. I reloaded the game to just before he got sick, locked him out of the base for several days, built him a medbed in an adjacent biome, built him his own latrine, and brought him personalized food to the vacuum sealed space leading into the base.  He was in the leper colony on the outskirts of town. Problem though, 8 other dupes joined him over the course of the next 5 cycles....  We pulled through with one dupe on medbay duty, one on farm duty, and one running errands (9 sick, 3 hovering at 10-30% health). By the end of the infection we had a fully functioning leper colony full of pure clean O2, right next to the PO2 filled swamp called home. Makes me want to be the guy in the leper colony. 

Spoiler

5c1343db134fa_Screenshotfrom2018-12-1322-46-00.thumb.png.abf7f3d0a3b0e5817b2364bda3c42de9.png

My leper colony is in the south east corner. A door to the right of the fridge will keep those sick slimelungers locked out of our glorious PO2 ridden adode. 

Sometimes when I look at my base and think what they're living in, I want to vomit....

Currently almost all of my PO2 in the base is full of 4K-8K+ food poisoning germs (I'm using my sewage to off gas). There are a few stray bits of non polluted PO2, which should all be contaminated in another 10 cycles or so. Once I can get the entire base full of food poisoned PO2, then slimelung germs won't be a problem, as a tile can't have both types of germs. I never thought I'd see myself begging to have lots of food poisoning germs.  Food poisoning in the air never hurt a dupe. :) 

 

3 hours ago, Neotuck said:

still a lot easier to find or produce than algae or water

Absolutely true.  All I'd have to do is dig out one little blocked in area and get another 50 tons or so of sand. Changed the game though to be looking for sand pockets, instead of algae pockets. Finding 5000kg in one tile, as opposed to 100kg or so from a tile, is way easier. And I can't complain about having extra clay with the deodorizer method. 

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@mathmanicanThat's quite the adventure!  Glad you worked it all out.  In my terrarium base I'm up to 10 dupes and at cycle 100, I'm still on the water from the starter biome.  And that's with 4 reeds and a dozen bristle blooms.  

I do have a question though.. with all that food poisoning flying around, I'm guessing you're avoiding things like water coolers?

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