Electrolyzer(Self-Powering Oxygen Module) + Gas compression room

[OxCD]

Just now, Neotuck said:

With electrolyzers, usually I build 10 in a large room so I can get 1kg/s for liquid hydrogen production

Ok I get your point. You were mentionning "SPOM" as not a good way for hydrogen rockets, I get "Electrolyzer". So I was wondering how you were creating hydrogen... We weren't talking on the same channel ^^

[Neotuck]

Just now, OxCD said:

Ok I get your point. You were mentionning "SPOM" as not a good way for hydrogen rockets, I get "Electrolyzer". So I was wondering how you were creating hydrogen... We weren't talking on the same channel ^^

yes a SPOM uses most of the hydrogen for generators making it a "Self Powered" Oxygen Machine so there's very little hydrogen left over for rockets

@Lifegrow once called the the SPOM a noob trap for this very reason but that's a little harsh

unless there's a hydrogen vent on the map, I never build hydrogen generators

[KittenIsAGeek]

7 hours ago, Neotuck said:

unless there's a hydrogen vent on the map, I never build hydrogen generators

Its a good plan.  I generally build a hydrogen generator, but its for emergency power.  Only kicks on when power is down to 20% or lower.  I've only had it kick on during early base development, before I gain access to crude oil or natural gas.

[Nightinggale]

7 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Self Powered

a noob trap

I find the concept of self powered setups to be silly. They often become very complex and very expensive. In this case it would use up all your hydrogen and preserve your natural gas, possibly even letting the gas vent over pressure because you spend time on SPOM instead of a proper gas storage. Once you look blindly at a tiny part of your base while ignoring the rest you often end up with something, which might be ok for the part you look at, but overall it's a bad solution. There are cases where you use the waste heat for steam turbines, but if you only get 20% back you didn't manage to make it self powered. Is that a bad design? No, it's a good design because 20% is better than nothing and the price of doing so is to get rid of some heat you had to get rid of anyway meaning there is no sideeffect.

Hydrogen is very valuable because it can power rockets and the thermo nullifier. On top of that the thermal properties makes it the best suited gas for temperature control. You need a lot of it before you can consider just burning it. The hydrogen generator seems like it can easily be viewed as a trap you will regret using, though I wouldn't say that I would never use it. It could be something like manual generators; your last resort to get the power up and running when all batteries have drained.

[Yunru]

19 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

It could be something like manual generators; your last resort

You mean you don't have a workforce tirelessly running in wheels all day to power your base?

Huh, must just be me

[Nightinggale]

30 minutes ago, Yunru said:

You mean you don't have a workforce tirelessly running in wheels all day to power your base?

Huh, must just be me

It's actually not a bad idea to use manual power for quite a while. The thing is using manual power will train your dupes and it won't make you hunger for either tech or fuel. I was however thinking of when I'm that far into the game that there are multiple natural gas generators running and is controlled by automation. As I wrote recently if I have enough generators I might need manual generators to restart from a power failure like a manual generator to power a gas pump to start the gas generators. That's what I meant with "last resort".

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

I find the concept of self powered setups to be silly. They often become very complex and very expensive.

Originally the SPOM design came about because:

1. Pre-rocket ONI didn't really have another use for hydrogen (other than cooling rooms)
2. Many individuals were posting about the difficulty of keeping electrolyzers running due to the power-hungry nature of gas pumps and air filters.

The first SPOM highlighted how to use electrolyzers to produce cool oxygen, get rid of the "useless" hydrogen, and run even if the rest of your power grid was failing.  It also pre-dates the fixes to algae terrariums (and off-gassing) that make them much more useful alternatives in current base designs.

Granted, many people were using designs that accomplished all of that long before someone wrote up the first SPOM article, but catchy names stick and so that's what everyone remembers.   Does anyone remember this little gem?

Spoiler

 

[Saturnus]

On 12/05/2019 at 11:54 AM, OxCD said:

The "is" and "isn't" do not exist with element sensor, unfortunately. That's why I use a lot the NOT gate.

Well, you don't "need" the NOT gate. You just change the layout.

See these perform the exact same function. One uses a NOT gate. The other doesn't.

 

[OxCD]

15 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Well, you don't "need" the NOT gate. You just change the layout.

See these perform the exact same function. One uses a NOT gate. The other doesn't.

 

Spot on... My remarks were driven by the other gas sensor.

Then my brain was busy jumbling anything & everything. My bad, your layout is as obvious as undeniable. I'm even using it like this on my main save (I'm catching up as much as I can ).

[Nightinggale]

19 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

See these perform the exact same function. One uses a NOT gate. The other doesn't.

They aren't 100% identical though. There is a difference in what they do when the power is off. I think this into my design and do stuff like "all water goes to chlorine room if there is no power", which prevents germy water to enter the clean water supply. Same with temperature and boiling protection etc.

[Saturnus]

5 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

They aren't 100% identical though. There is a difference in what they do when the power is off. I think this into my design and do stuff like "all water goes to chlorine room if there is no power", which prevents germy water to enter the clean water supply. Same with temperature and boiling protection etc.

If there's a risk of power failure to such an extent that you need to incorporate it into your design, might I suggest using a mechanical filter instead.

[OxCD]

11 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

They aren't 100% identical though. There is a difference in what they do when the power is off. I think this into my design and do stuff like "all water goes to chlorine room if there is no power", which prevents germy water to enter the clean water supply. Same with temperature and boiling protection etc.

Power failure should not be an option in this game ^^

[Nightinggale]

Somehow I feel like people missed my point. What I pointed out is that " exact same function" isn't true because I could provide an example of where they will not be the same functional result.

I then mentioned two examples where I planned for this. Common to both are that in each case I had two choices for design, both cost the same in terms of metals and space. You could also optimize for low power usage by making the shutoff valve trigger on the least used branch. There is a potential to save 10 W.

Since this is written on the forum as advice for other players, I will point out that the two solutions doesn't provide 100% the same result. It's then up to the player to decide if the (usually minor) differences matter in the setup the user has.

[Saturnus]

44 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

You could also optimize for low power usage by making the shutoff valve trigger on the least used branch. There is a potential to save 10 W.

Shut off valves do not use power. At all. They only need to be connected to power, and the 10W counts as load on wire for determining overloads. However, they don't actually consume any power.

[Nightinggale]

9 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Shut off valves do not use power. At all. They only need to be connected to power, and the 10W counts as load on wire for determining overloads. However, they don't actually consume any power.

Looks like a bug to me, but nice to know. I just did a test where it was supposed to drain 200W from a battery and indeed the battery drained at the same rate with or without valves, as in the internal runoff only. I redid the same experiment with a small transformer and indeed it kept having 1000 J. Interestingly it produces 1 kDTU when charged even if there is no power input. This means free energy. Just build one out of steel, use it to make steam and run a steam turbine. You will get around 1 W for each transformer

This is actually useful knowledge because it means you can charge a transformer and then disconnect the input and you have power for the shutoff valves, which stays even if your power generation dies. The only thing which can go wrong is overload (more than 100 valves) or the wire is torn down or melted. This makes the loss of power consideration even less of an issue.

 

[Denisetwin]

On 5/12/2019 at 7:20 AM, Neotuck said:

With electrolyzers, usually I build 10 in a large room so I can get 1kg/s for liquid hydrogen production

@Neotuck

Can you share a screen print of this?  Do you set them up horizontally so that each one's top stays in hydrogen?  I'm trying to picture this.

Usually my SPOM makes more extra hydrogen than can ever use, but something changed and this playthrough it does not. I do have more water than I could ever use though, so your idea would be great in my current base.

 

[Neotuck]

12 hours ago, Denisetwin said:

@Neotuck

Can you share a screen print of this?  Do you set them up horizontally so that each one's top stays in hydrogen?  I'm trying to picture this.

Usually my SPOM makes more extra hydrogen than can ever use, but something changed and this playthrough it does not. I do have more water than I could ever use though, so your idea would be great in my current base.

I submerge them in a mix of oil and water to prevent over-pressurizing

I don't have a screenshot of my last game but here's one I made in debug to give you an idea of how it works

[OxCD]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

I submerge them in a mix of oil and water to prevent over-pressurizing

I don't have a screenshot of my last game but here's one I made in debug to give you an idea of how it works

Ah. You're glitching electrolyzer's pressure sensor. 

[mathmanican]

15 hours ago, OxCD said:

Ah. You're glitching electrolyzer's pressure sensor.

Everyone draws a line somewhere at what "exploit" to use. We now know at least one side of where @Neotuck draws that line.  

If you want 1kg/s, then use gaseous matter conversion. Just convert the oxygen produced to hydrogen and use a single electrolyzer.  Takes a lot less space. 

Spoiler

If you want 10kg/s, then liquid duplication will be your friend, coupled with gaseous matter conversion.  Here are some links. 

Or just open Sandbox and paint in your wanted H2.... I draw the line at that one (in survival). 

 

 

[Saturnus]

But many people fail to recognize the oxygen is not a waste product of hydrogen production for rocket fuel because hydrogen rockets have very limited use as they're vastly inefficient and mainly useful for initial exploration. The vast majority of actual space flights for farming space will be with petroleum rockets... with LOX.

[Denisetwin]

@mathmanican  I used this one "gaseous matter conversion" in my last base to convert an overly aggressive chlorine geyser into an oxygen geyser.  

My line is really I don't use debug or sandbox.  Otherwise if the game allows it and I want to build something using it, I do.  I really love the pitcher pump cooling, I always cool down a pool of oil just because it makes me laugh to see oil in bright blue.  This base has two slush with two cool steam right next to each other and another slush further up and a hot water next to an oil well down below.  Water is all over and honestly I'm running out of places to put it, my whole base is so cold the buddy buds stopped growing.  I thought it would be neat to work on turning some of it into hydrogen.

[OxCD]

22 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

But many people fail to recognize the oxygen is not a waste product of hydrogen production for rocket fuel because hydrogen rockets have very limited use as they're vastly inefficient and mainly useful for initial exploration. The vast majority of actual space flights for farming space will be with petroleum rockets... with LOX.

Good to hear. It does fit me, and applies to me, as I'm actually building a big setup for 3x (petroleum+LOX) and 2x (hydrogen+LOX)

[Abt9]

Oh, petroleum's better than LH? Sounds a bit ridiculous, why is it like that?

[mathmanican]

4 hours ago, Denisetwin said:

I really love the pitcher pump cooling

FYI. This one is tagged as fixed and should be gone with the update. Fingers are crossed they got it.