Improved SPOM, saving hydrogen and prevent overpressure

[Z0366]

Self Powered Oxygen Module is a great design, the only problem is that it delibrately waste the extra hydrogen power generated so that the pressure in the module does not build up. I have modified it to use the store the extra power as hydrogen and use it when needed ( for wheezewort or power) and only waste the extra of extra. It takes more space, but is also maintenance free thanks to piping priority system.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/951857579303356281/88A0443FE4DF41FD513DEBE140D932C16AF6705D

The only thing that needs explanation is piping so I have shown it above. The key here is the way bridge is connected.
1.The hydrogen is firstly fed to the container, then back to the SPOM hydrogen generator.
2. if the SPOM generator is not working ( controlled by the smart battery), it will feed it to the hydrogen generator on the right to power your base.
3.If that one is also idle, the hydrogen is stored in the container.
4. If the container is also full, then the pipe line will divert the extra hydrogen to the generator on the left top, which is ONLY connected to a non-smart battery to waste the hydrogen so the SPOM does not over pressure.

By doing so I have always got full tank (actually I have 3 spom and 6 containers of hydrogen) of hydrogen, which I use for drecko ranch and wheeze cooling room ( 1 time usage), and at end game use it for hydrogen engine ( the actual usage)

Note: You can delete the right top generator if your goal is to save hydrogen. But the top left generator is needed to prevent overpressure.

[hegemontree]

Neat design.  Really nice use of pipe priority allowing you to avoid needing automation.

Edit: The top left generator could be replaced by a door compressor or liquid on vent infinite compression setup.

[Yunru]

SPOM? Bah!

 

The inferiority of the SPOM aside, I'm not sure I understand the problem you're addressing? What power is being wasted?

[Craigjw]

I don't see how this is any different from any of the other myriad of spom designs.

Besides this, you still aren't addressing the issue of minor packets of  a) O2 getting into your Hydrogen generators b) Hydrogen being pumped into your air supply.  While this doesn't happen often, it still happens on occasion and will annoy you after a few hundred cycles when it suddenly fails, or you have to start filtering the Hydrogen from your base, or your space suit dock starts breaking randomly.

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 hours ago, Craigjw said:

I don't see how this is any different from any of the other myriad of spom designs.

Besides this, you still aren't addressing the issue of minor packets of  a) O2 getting into your Hydrogen generators b) Hydrogen being pumped into your air supply.  While this doesn't happen often, it still happens on occasion and will annoy you after a few hundred cycles when it suddenly fails, or you have to start filtering the Hydrogen from your base, or your space suit dock starts breaking randomly.

I think the OP is assuming that anyone building it will add in their own style of filtration wherever it makes sense to them.  For example, mine is a little confusing (built the feedback loop after the fact), but it works.  I'll also point out that mine is a tad bit over built.

Spoiler

The valve-bridge combos filter the gas passively.  Anything that isn't O2 gets sent into the H2 line and vice-versa.  To prime the system, vent the air to vacuum (if there's anything other than oxygen or hydrogen in there), then turn the fans off and run the electrolyzers until they stop due to pressure. Turn on oxygen fans (set as mentioned below) and run the system until there is only hydrogen above the electrolyzers.

The gas element sensor on the far right is set to "Oxygen."  If it turns on, its because the O2 tank is full.  This turns off the electrolyzers for 30 seconds (buffer gate), but it could be set much shorter.  Basically it keeps the gasses from backing up.  There isn't one on the hydrogen (yet) because I've been using it to power my base.

Temperature sensors are set to 18c.  Hydrogen fan atmo sensor is set to "above 800" and the O2 fans sensors are set to "above 1000."

The whole thing is cooled by a slush geyser.  The outflow from cooling goes through a water sieve and into a tank.  Also was making refined metals using water as a coolant, so the outflow from that is going into the tank as well.  Due to bridge priorities, if the tank runs dry, a pump in a water pool kicks in to keep the electrolyzers happy.

The top of the power line goes to a pump in water.  This could be done with regular wire, but the max draw is 1340 watts with this current design.  This circuit is completely isolated from the grid -- I hooked it up to a hamster wheel to get the process started.

I've been running my base (so far) exclusively on Hydrogen.  Sometimes this tank fills almost full.  If it runs empty, hamster wheels unlock.

Anyway, I've been using this design (more or less) for over a year.  It provides oxygen for 10 dupes regular dupes (adjust accordingly if you have mouth breathers or diver's lung) because it will continually produce 1000kg/s of O2.  Once built, it never needs servicing. 

However, lately I've been using this design for my early bases:

Spoiler

Its been more or less self-regulating for about 93 cycles at this point.  When I first built it, I had 4 dupes.  Now I've got 7. I don't think it will support 8, as I've finally started losing pressure.  However, this produces a LOT of clay, so makes insulated ceramic easy.

[Neotuck]

Any one consider making a hydrogen farm for late game rockets?  Would be interesting to see what builds people come up with on turning water into liquid hydrogen and LOX

[chemie]

54 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Any one consider making a hydrogen farm for late game rockets?  Would be interesting to see what builds people come up with on turning water into liquid hydrogen and LOX

just more spoms with oxygen venting when lox tank is full

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Any one consider making a hydrogen farm for late game rockets?  Would be interesting to see what builds people come up with on turning water into liquid hydrogen and LOX

Yeah, my build (shown above) works great for that.  You have clean outputs that can run directly into LH2 and LOX machines.

41 minutes ago, chemie said:

just more spoms with oxygen venting when lox tank is full

Well, kinda.  I pipe my excess O2 into my base.  Since the base's O2 supply is regulated, this works just fine.  It scales back production based on how much excess I have.

[Nitroturtle]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Any one consider making a hydrogen farm for late game rockets?  Would be interesting to see what builds people come up with on turning water into liquid hydrogen and LOX

Here's my setup from my last base.  It produced more than enough hydrogen to keep two rockets running non-stop to close planets.  Ignore the fact that there's no gas in the collection chambers, I was in the process of moving the whole setup when I gave up on the base.  Water valves are set to 500g/s.  I had it setup to only run when I had excess solar power, so it was basically free other than water.

Spoiler

 

[Z0366]

14 hours ago, Craigjw said:

I don't see how this is any different from any of the other myriad of spom designs.

Besides this, you still aren't addressing the issue of minor packets of  a) O2 getting into your Hydrogen generators b) Hydrogen being pumped into your air supply.  While this doesn't happen often, it still happens on occasion and will annoy you after a few hundred cycles when it suddenly fails, or you have to start filtering the Hydrogen from your base, or your space suit dock starts breaking randomly.

It is actually interesting that Oxygen never gets in. The fact that the two gas pump at the bottom working near 100% keeps drawing out oxygen so non can pass the wall to the gas pump at the top. To be 100% sure it is best to firstly vacumize the room, then fill it with hydrogen, then initiate operation.

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Any one consider making a hydrogen farm for late game rockets?  Would be interesting to see what builds people come up with on turning water into liquid hydrogen and LOX

It is a pain in the ass. I have a liquid oxygen production room with two electrolyzer inside(right against the wall with insulated water pipe) and  pump the left over hydrogen to another liquid hydrogen room. But the production is sooo slow I still have all 3 of my rockets running on petrolum.

58 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said:

Here's my setup from my last base.  It produced more than enough hydrogen to keep two rockets running non-stop to close planets.  Ignore the fact that there's no gas in the collection chambers, I was in the process of moving the whole setup when I gave up on the base.  Water valves are set to 500g/s.  I had it setup to only run when I had excess solar power, so it was basically free other than water.

  Hide contents

 

Beautiful design! I left my electrolyzer in the O2 liquidation room  to save some pump power. They have to be surrounded by air-flow tile and against the wall to prevent water freezing. The room is also itself the container of LOX for rockets. However I don't seem to have enough hydrogen to support my rockets. It may be because 2 cargo bays are too heavy?

14 hours ago, Yunru said:

SPOM? Bah!

 

The inferiority of the SPOM aside, I'm not sure I understand the problem you're addressing? What power is being wasted?

It is to use the power leftover by the SPOM. about 300W/s. However, it cannot be directly saved as battery on the main power grid, which in case of high power demand will bring the SPOM to stop. Furthermore, SPOM is itself about 720W so connecting it to the main grid can cause wire overload.

[Yunru]

10 minutes ago, Z0366 said:

IIt is to use the power leftover by the SPOM. about 300W/s. However, it cannot be directly saved as battery on the main power grid

Why not? You just run the hydrogen through the SPOM's Hydrogen Generator (automated via Smart Battery) and then on to Hydrogen Generators hooked up to your main base.

[FiannaTiger]

14 hours ago, Craigjw said:

I don't see how this is any different from any of the other myriad of spom designs.

Besides this, you still aren't addressing the issue of minor packets of  a) O2 getting into your Hydrogen generators b) Hydrogen being pumped into your air supply.  While this doesn't happen often, it still happens on occasion and will annoy you after a few hundred cycles when it suddenly fails, or you have to start filtering the Hydrogen from your base, or your space suit dock starts breaking randomly.

I use this little beauty and unless a dupe goes in there after the initial purge of mixed gases I've never had a wrong packet go to the wrong pump with the atmo sensor at 750g.  That's running with a few backup/shutdown automation (not shown here) for over 1200 cycles.

[Z0366]

Just now, Yunru said:

Why not? You just run the hydrogen through the SPOM's Hydrogen Generator (automated via Smart Battery) and then on to Hydrogen Generators hooked up to your main base.

I did that. Then what happens in low power demand the second generator will go idle too, so hydrogen pressure build up in pipe then in the SPOM chamber resulting in insufficient Oxygen production, I was busy expanding my space  base until the main base started suffocating then I obsorved this problem.

2 minutes ago, FiannaTiger said:

I use this little beauty and unless a dupe goes in there after the initial purge of mixed gases I've never had a wrong packet go to the wrong pump with the atmo sensor at 750g.  That's running with a few backup/shutdown automation (not shown here) for over 1200 cycles.

Electrolyzer on 100% efficiency produce 888g O2/s, 1 gas pump pump 500g/s. So either the electrolyzer stop from time to time, or O2 is sucked by the top pump, no other possibilities.

14 hours ago, Craigjw said:

I don't see how this is any different from any of the other myriad of spom designs.

Besides this, you still aren't addressing the issue of minor packets of  a) O2 getting into your Hydrogen generators b) Hydrogen being pumped into your air supply.  While this doesn't happen often, it still happens on occasion and will annoy you after a few hundred cycles when it suddenly fails, or you have to start filtering the Hydrogen from your base, or your space suit dock starts breaking randomly.

Although O2 does not go into generator, It does happen from time to time hydrogen will get vented into base though.

[FiannaTiger]

4 minutes ago, Z0366 said:

I did that. Then what happens in low power demand the second generator will go idle too, so hydrogen pressure build up in pipe then in the SPOM chamber resulting in insufficient Oxygen production, I was busy expanding my space  base until the main base started suffocating then I observed this problem.

Electrolyzer on 100% efficiency produce 888g O2/s, 1 gas pump pump 500g/s. So either the electrolyzer stop from time to time, or O2 is sucked by the top pump, no other possibilities.

I don't think it's 100% efficient since the electrolyzer has some areas blocked by the door and wall.  I do know that even with 3 pumps (2 air and the water pump) it produces more Hydrogen that is needed to run, it never mixes Hydrogen or Oxygen in the pipes, and with most maps you will have more than enough clean water from cool steam vents to be less than 100% efficient with your water.

[Z0366]

2 minutes ago, FiannaTiger said:

I don't think it's 100% efficient since the electrolyzer has some areas blocked by the door and wall.  I do know that even with 3 pumps (2 air and the water pump) it produces more Hydrogen that is needed to run, it never mixes Hydrogen or Oxygen in the pipes, and with most maps you will have more than enough clean water from cool steam vents to be less than 100% efficient with your water.

It's not about efficiency of water. It is always 100% efficient. No water will 'vanish', it's just whether the SPOM does produce the amount you think it does. In this case, if mixing of gas does not happen (which I doubt because O2 pressure is surely building up to push the hydrogen, then the SPOM is running 500/888 =56% of the time and produce 500g/s oxygen for your base and 62g/s Hydrogen

[Yunru]

2 minutes ago, Z0366 said:

if mixing of gas does not happen (which I doubt because O2 pressure is surely building up to push the hydrogen

Mixing of gas can't occur specifically because the hydrogen gets pushed up.

[FiannaTiger]

Are you saying that the electrolyzer is not running and stopping?  I've not see the animation stop ever.  The only thing that doesn't run all the time is the top left pump for hydrogen, it kicks on and off.

[Z0366]

 

8 minutes ago, FiannaTiger said:

Are you saying that the electrolyzer is not running and stopping?  I've not see the animation stop ever.  The only thing that doesn't run all the time is the top left pump for hydrogen, it kicks on and off.

Did a quick debug test . The room is dug out from solid so it initiatedfrom vacuum. After 2 cycles it wrong packets and over pressure happened.

10 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Mixing of gas can't occur specifically because the hydrogen gets pushed up.

 

Check the screenshot of a debug test I just did. It can happen because Hydrogen pressure is too low that it can only hold 1 grid after a while so oxygen hi pressure will push over.

[FiannaTiger]

That was setting the atmo to 750g?

[Z0366]

5 minutes ago, FiannaTiger said:

That was setting the atmo to 750g?

It is. Here you see the picture again.

7 minutes ago, FiannaTiger said:

That was setting the atmo to 750g?

Venting hydrogen into base is kind of a less problem than the otherway round, So I would suggest you to use 2 pumps to pump oxygen with another atmosensor, they dont really use more power per O2 created.

[FiannaTiger]

I believe you just that's just strange as I've never encountered the issue.  I wonder if the door make any difference vs a wall.  After looking at my set up I have 2 things different than your test.  The doors into the SPOM and I have one more tile in the corner instead of the gap by the mesh tile.   There is a lot more other stuff outside of the SPOM but that's for shutting it down with the O2 back up and storing some hydrogen and such, but the SPOM itself is the same (save for the doors and 1 tile).

 

[Nitroturtle]

It's pretty well established that the design shown above can be used to passively filter hydrogen if primed properly.  You may need a filter initially as hydrogen fills the upper chamber, but after that it won't be an issue.

[brucemo]

That works and doesn't mix gases. The only caveat is that if you let hydrogen back up, it goes out the oxygen line. It's easy to avoid that though.

There is no reason that a water breakdown system has to self-power and so I set mine up so that it runs on other power if that's available. There is no reason to burn hydrogen when you have solar available.

[Z0366]

1 hour ago, brucemo said:

That works and doesn't mix gases. The only caveat is that if you let hydrogen back up, it goes out the oxygen line. It's easy to avoid that though.

There is no reason that a water breakdown system has to self-power and so I set mine up so that it runs on other power if that's available. There is no reason to burn hydrogen when you have solar available.

Gosh, this is really clever trick to use the game mechanism where gas mixing does not happen in one grid! Although building it does look like quite a pain!

[brucemo]

5 hours ago, Z0366 said:

Gosh, this is really clever trick to use the game mechanism where gas mixing does not happen in one grid! Although building it does look like quite a pain!

It's not a pain at all, it's about the same as the other one.

 

By "other one" I mean that one.

I'm guessing you are talking about initializing the mechanical filter. It's easy and if you aren't an expert on how pipe mechanics work it will teach you a lot. His tutorial is simple and works.

One problem it has is that if you pipe hot water in it tends to run pretty hot.

The problem with the mechanical filter is that it expects hydrogen packets to be < 1 kg. This will be true if the hydrogen line is not backed up, but if it is backed up, hydrogen will get into the oxygen line.

In both cases it's something of a pain to set up the cooling chamber early game, because you don't have the high pressure gas vent. The other SPOM is a bit better in this regard because the vent is at the bottom.

The electrolyzer chamber in the mechanical filter version is easier because once you've trapped a hydrogen bubble and built the loop, you can just build the rest and turn it on. The hydrogen line can't get other gases in it, all the hydrogen will all go into the hydrogen line, and if you have CO2 or something else in there it will blow out of the oxygen line in a couple of seconds.

I started using this one after the zillionth time repairing an exo suit bay because hydrogen got into the oxygen line.

Another thing I enjoy about this one is that it's split into two halves internally. I build the top part and put the hydrogen power generator somewhere else.