Problems with airlock designs

[Greybear]

So, I'm trying to design a vacuum based airlock, to block gases and temperature from passing... But I keep running into problems with the pumps inefficiency. I tried this design with 3 airlocks, but I still have a lot of problems with duplicants trying to enter and leave and task being canceled all the time... Anyone got ideas for making something more time efficient? Is water locks the only really viable option for high traffic airlocks?

[qda]

If you really want to avoid using waterlocks, I guess you can improve this setup by reducing the corridor size to 2x2, and putting in two mini gas pumps, one being bottoms up. You don't really need that atmo sensor, and with those two pumps, the room will be vacuumed in no time. If you don't have access to plastic yet, still reducing the room size to 2x2 will greatly reduce the vacuuming time.

[Greybear]

 

 

1

3 minutes ago, qda said:

You don't really need that atmo sensor

The atmo sensor makes sure the inner doors shut off, så no duplicant runs through while the room is filled with gas... And also activates the pump, but I guess that step is pointless.

[qda]

Having used a few times the 2x2 setup, vacuuming the room is so fast that I didn't feel the need to lock doors, and I've never seen gas slip to the wring side of the airlock with two mini pumps. I guess it could happen with a single big pump, but that would be extremely rare.

Do you avoid using waterlocks because of the wet debuff ? If so, you could use CO2 locks, which are also working wonders !

[Greybear]

 

 

1

3 minutes ago, qda said:

Having used a few times the 2x2 setup, vacuuming the room is so fast that I didn't feel the need to lock doors, and I've never seen gas slip to the wring side of the airlock with two mini pumps. I guess it could happen with a single big pump, but that would be extremely rare.

My own testing does not agree - just tried your design concept and it takes a couple of seconds to empty the room, and chlorine gas slipped through after a few uses. You probably don't have the same amount of traffic I do.

I avoid water locks because they don't block heat. I want to keep the temperatures at different levels. I also try to avoid them because they feel abusing the system. But I guess it's either water locks or waiting for transport tubes and sealing off the room.

[Nightinggale]

I once experimented with an airlock based on checkpoints rather than doors. It had 2 doors, both with access restriction to go left only. In front of each door I placed a checkpoint, which was controlled by an atmos sensor. This meant a dupe would enter, the entry would block, the dupe would wait at the checkpoint while the pressure lowered and then the dupe would exit. I learned that you don't have to use a vacuum. If you have say 1 kg/cell outside and open the door to max 2 g/cell, then air will flow in, not out.

It seemed to work just fine, but I didn't spend enough time to make a smooth control to make sure both doors wouldn't open at the same time. It would likely require a pressure plate sensor and memory to tell if there are dupes inside the airlock.

[andrakuz]

Delete the gases by crushing it with mechanized airlocks
that way no unwanted temperature and gasses leak through and it barely takes a second. 

[PhailRaptor]

19 hours ago, Greybear said:

I avoid water locks because they don't block heat. I want to keep the temperatures at different levels. I also try to avoid them because they feel abusing the system. But I guess it's either water locks or waiting for transport tubes and sealing off the room.

If temperature is your concern with liquid locks, just use 2 of them with vacuum between them.  Use Insulated Tiles, made from an insulating material, and your heat bleed will be insignificant.

[Prince Mandor]

If you insist on such type of design, do not use locked doors to stop Duplicants. Game have Duplicants Checkpoint exactly for this purpose.

Checkpoint don't cut dupes paths, but dupes stop at it and wait for green semaphore light. 

And yes, replace big pump with small pumps if you can fill entire area with pumps. Because large pump suck air out of cross pattern and as such, never take gases directly out of top right corner. As result, you must wait for gases to move and spread to pump them out and this is very long process, at micrograms level

Important. If you set checkpoint or closing doors in unbreathable area, make sure it is failsafe. For example, you can add buffer or filter to you logic, to make it passable in 10 seconds, no matter what. Dupe waiting in chlorine or vacuum for passage can suffocate

[SharraShimada]

Stack the airlocks. 3 in a row for example. Gas can always only flood the 2 outer ones. The middle one will get almost nothing at all, and a single pump can handle it perfectly. There is also no benefit from using small pumps. The big one has 500g/s at 240W, which make a value of 2.08g/W. The small gas pump has 60g/s at 50W, which makes 0,8g/W. So the big one is twice as effective per power unit. Given the same amount of power and time, the big one will clear your airlock in half the time, compared to the small pump. The only benefit of the small one would be, you can pump bottom and top at the same time, for the cost of double the power, but for the downside, gases gant mix. If there are 2 gases, and each small pump injects a different gas to the same pipe, it blocks every time. Of course you can do 2 seperate pipes for each pump. The choice is yours.

[Prince Mandor]

2 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Stack the airlocks. 3 in a row for example. Gas can always only flood the 2 outer ones. The middle one will get almost nothing at all, and a single pump can handle it perfectly. There is also no benefit from using small pumps. The big one has 500g/s at 240W, which make a value of 2.08g/W. The small gas pump has 60g/s at 50W, which makes 0,8g/W. So the big one is twice as effective per power unit. Given the same amount of power and time, the big one will clear your airlock in half the time, compared to the small pump. The only benefit of the small one would be, you can pump bottom and top at the same time, for the cost of double the power, but for the downside, gases gant mix. If there are 2 gases, and each small pump injects a different gas to the same pipe, it blocks every time. Of course you can do 2 seperate pipes for each pump. The choice is yours.

Doesn't work -- two or more doors in a row start working as gas pump, pumping gas as they closes.

Benefit of using small pumps tremendous. It doesn' t matter how much big pump can pump. It just pump 10 grams, after that 1 gram, after that 100 microgram etc. So it pumps for dozen of ticks, just because it cannot take gas directly from it top right corner. Small pumps do same thing in a tick or two, just because they fill entire area and do not need to wait for gas spreading

[Prince Mandor]

21 hours ago, Greybear said:

My own testing does not agree - just tried your design concept and it takes a couple of seconds to empty the room, and chlorine gas slipped through after a few uses. You probably don't have the same amount of traffic I do.

I avoid water locks because they don't block heat. I want to keep the temperatures at different levels. I also try to avoid them because they feel abusing the system. But I guess it's either water locks or waiting for transport tubes and sealing off the room.

Okay, I spend some time in experiments, and here it is

 

You needs two small pumps in 2x2 room to pump out gases quickly

You need two powered doors to open/close as quick as possible

You need two weight plates, to detect "is door open?", they set to "Below 10 kg", so they became ON if door is open and weight nothing, and became OFF if door closed and weight 200 kg.

Buttons joined together (so called electrical OR), so if any of it detects open door, automation wire became green

If any of doors open, we must stop traffic through area for some seconds, to allow pumps do their work. As result, we need NOT gate to make signal OFF, and needs filter gate to keep it OFF for some seconds, this signal connects to two checkpoints.

Spoiler

Settings on filter gate depends on gas pressure. you need about 7 seconds delay under normal pressure, and a lot more if one side overpressurized. You can experiment with it to be sure pumps done their work before next group of duplicants allowed

And you need one cell between checkpoint and door, so duplicants doesn't open door, while awaiting passage.

This may work with big pump too, it just need appropriate delay on filter

And it doesn't break pathfinding in any way, just make each passage longer by 7 seconds, if duplicant came just after another.

All duplicants, who needs passage, stack together at checkpoint and go through as one group, so this doesn't became "7 seconds per duplicant"

BUT! If your duplicants doesn't wear Atmo Suits all this is meaningless. They breath out CO2 regularly, so without Atmo Suits you cannot make zone clean from some CO2. And don't even think about Flatulent dupes.

[OxCD]

On 15/06/2019 at 6:09 AM, andrakuz said:

Delete the gases by crushing it with mechanized airlocks
that way no unwanted temperature and gasses leak through and it barely takes a second. 

Gases will move alongside your dup. There will always be some gas where your dup is, so you'll be in trouble to crush those gases without... flatten your guy.

[metallichydra]

if you dont like water-based airlocks, you could try making a oil-based waterlock.

[DaveSatx]

i got frustrated with the non-"water" lock options (oil,petro etc) and the debuffs so started beelining to a stable of glossies.
 

then when i wanted to make something that would normally require a waterlock i build in a tube access instead

 

[Nativel]

Not sure, but does open airlock have thermal conductivity? If it's not, why don't you just place more airlock inside your system, than gases will flow out instantly.Care about gase loss? then place couple more airlocks in the bottom so when your midle stack of airlocks will close up buttom stack of airlock will be open then button will close and middle will open and there will be vavuum. no? You need this design alive or have enough imagination?

[Nightinggale]

35 minutes ago, Nativel said:

Not sure, but does open airlock have thermal conductivity?

They don't, but the gas or liquid in them will transfer heat. This is why an open airlock with vacuum in it will be a perfect thermal seal.

[Straikkeri]

This might be off-topic a tad depending on what your goal here is. If your goal is to make a functional airlock that 100% prevents gasses from passing from one side to the other, then I can't help you. On the other hand if you're trying to prevent harmful gases from spreading from their designated location then you might consider a different approach altogether. 

I'm in favour of gravity and pressure locking elements. In your example picture, you are entering a chlorine filled room from the side. Consider making the entry point in the ceiling of the room. In the room above the chlorine chamber, place an element sensor and a pressure sensor tied together with and AND-gate. Place said sensors right above to the (mesh)door to the chlorine chamber. Tie that and gate to a gas shutoff that is piping oxygen in to the room above your chlorine chamber.  

Set values to the sensors accordingly. The logic should dictate, that if the pressure is below X, AND the element is oxygen, allow more oxygen in, where X is the pressure that pushes the chlorine down the doorway. Obviously the oxygen filled room above the chlorine room needs to be otherwise closed and enterable only through a heavy door, to maintain pressure. 

This is trivial to set up, but a ***** to maintain mainly because you need to maintain the pressures. If your oxygen generation for instance coughs up and the oxygen pressure drops, the chlorine will rise up to the upper room.  If you have stable oxygen generation and the chlorine cannot leak out any other way, then this is a stable way to gravity and pressure lock gasses. You will never get leakage. 

NOTE: Obviously this would be a bad idea to try with a room with a high-pressure vent. But then you don't need high pressure vent to sterilise storage or grow balm lily. 

[Xuhybrid]

I have everyone in exosuits going through liquid locks. It solves all exploration problems and keeps areas sealed perfectly.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 6/16/2019 at 5:00 AM, Prince Mandor said:

Okay, I spend some time in experiments, and here it is

I really like your design.  I may work with it and change a few things, but your initial concept is fantastic.  Great work.

[cblack]

Since it doesn't look like anyone else has mentioned this, you can avoid the wet debuff by making your water (or really any liquid) lock 3 high, with the extra "height" going down (into the floor).  Dupes will jump over the gap which avoids the debuff, unless this has been patched recently.

[Prince Mandor]

 

7 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I really like your design.  I may work with it and change a few things, but your initial concept is fantastic.  Great work.

 Thank you for kind words.

But as far as I can imagine, simple waterlock is always better. So, improvement of this design is just two drops of viscogel, (it was added to game specifically for this purpose). Or old stile water lock before cosmic material. We cannot realistically improve Visco-Gel lock

[Sevio]

@Greybear I messed around with non-liquid airlocks a while back, perhaps the images in my post from several patches past can still be of some use:

It didn't get much response at the time sadly, but it is nice to see another non-liquid airlock design a few posts up now

I haven't tested the airlock design in this thread but the one I designed back then was meant for maintaining a vacuum room, so that might be useful if the simpler one here doesn't do that well.

[KittenIsAGeek]

7 hours ago, Sevio said:

@Greybear I messed around with non-liquid airlocks a while back, perhaps the images in my post from several patches past can still be of some use:

It didn't get much response at the time sadly, but it is nice to see another non-liquid airlock design a few posts up now

I haven't tested the airlock design in this thread but the one I designed back then was meant for maintaining a vacuum room, so that might be useful if the simpler one here doesn't do that well.

I use this particular type of airlock to allow dupe travel through an insulated zone.  The vacuum in the center means no heat transfers.

I don't do the three- or four-deep version because its unnecessary with atmo suits.

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I don't do the three- or four-deep version because its unnecessary with atmo suits.

As long as the dupes never carry something that off gasses through that section, you'll be fine. If you ever decide to take slime/oxylite/bleachstone/etc. through the locks, and they drop it on the water itself, then your lock disappears. Oof.

• The 3 or 4 deep versions both protect you from when the dupes drop something (provided the bottom layer contains enough liquid to stop offgassing.
• The 4 deep version makes the dupes "jump" the lock, which means you don't need the atmosuit station to avoid getting wet (so the dupes essentially move like a liquid bridge and teleport from tile to tile....). They will also never drop anything in the lock with the 4 deep version. 
• None of the options above will guarantee that a dupe won't drop something in the middle vacuum room...  So eventually the dupes will break your vacuum seal if you are not careful.  They gotta take their break exactly when they're supposed to. Who cares if dropping what they are carrying destroys the entire base.   #DupeBrainsFTW