What should I do with extra oxygen ( I need hydrogen from electrolyzers for hydrogen generators )

[Maxposting]

So I have my base and I have way too much oxygen so I am asking if i should just yeet like 20% of the oxygen to space so that way I can produce hydrogen for my generators without the electrolyzers getting stuck with over-oxygenation.

Is this plan a big waste?

[Xenologist]

You can feed it to the longhaired slicksters for meat or decor and then heat up remaining excess then vent it to space

[Gus Smedstad]

This is not a good way to get power. Late game, players sometimes run into this when generating hydrogen for rockets, but if you're just going to burn it for power? Don't. Instead, just let your electrolyzers shut down when they hit pressure max.

Think of it this way: you have to run a minimum of 600 watts to service an eletrolyzer: the electrolyzer itself, and two gas pumps (since the output is 1 kg/s total). You get enough hydrogen to run 1.3 hydrogen generators, for a total of 1000 watts. You're losing 60% of that just on upkeep. The math's slightly better if you use Engineering Tuneups, but really, hydrogen is a supplement, not a primary power source.

For a Terra map, the usual power progression is hamster wheels -> coal generators -> natural gas geyser feeding 2-3 natural gas generators -> petroleum generators.

Once you get to the oil biome, you can easily generate 6-9 kw of power from oil if you're using tuneups. That will tide you over for a long time, and represents 12+ electrolyzer / hydrogen generator setups.

[Coolthulhu]

Depends on your water surplus.

If you can afford to burn 1kg of water for just about 100g of net hydrogen, it's fine to waste the oxygen.

If you aren't doing the sustainable achievement, it's probably better to feed this water to oil wells and burn the petroleum. The only time when hydrogen would win otherwise is when you have a lot of excess water, but are heavily labor-starved and can't spare dupes for the wells and refineries.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I kinda agree with @Gus Smedstad and @Coolthulhu.  In my current base, I'm running primarily on hydrogen power, as I'm heading toward the renewable goal.  However, my electrolyzers only run as long as I still need oxygen.  I understand where you're coming from, @__IvoCZE__.  The problem is: If hydrogen is my fuel, how do I get more of it?

Currently I have two power supplies for my base: Dupe power and hydrogen power.  Because my hydrogen is limited by my oxygen production, more dupes means more hydrogen.  It also means more dupes for manual labor.  With 7 dupes, I can run a hydrogen generator almost continually.  My electrolyzer setup will support 10 dupes before I need to build a second production module.  3 dupes on hamster wheels provide 1200 watts, but its inconvenient to have them ALWAYS on the wheels, so I came up with a compromise.

Spoiler

In the upper left is my base's hydrogen power generator.  It is regularly tuned up, so provides 1200 watts.  The wheels are connected through an inverted transformer connected to a battery.  When the dupes run on the wheel, it charges the battery, but limits the power to the grid to 1kw.  This has the dual benefit of ensuring that my dupes get kicked off to see other tasks AND letting me use the wheels away from my heavi-watt power core.

So lets run some numbers.  Currently I have 7 dupes.  They're breathing about 700g/s of O2.  Because my hydrogen supply is limited by my oxygen consumption, that means that I'm producing, on average 88g/s of hydrogen.  Since a hydrogen generator uses 100g/s of hydrogen, that gives my generator an 88% up-time.  Assuming that the generator is always tuned up (it isn't), that means I can only produce 1060 watts of power continually.

Adding to that, the three hamster wheels setup can provide a continual 1kw of power for the measly cost of 3 dupes being unavailable for anything else.  My food supply is close to its limit with 3 dupes, but I can easily expand it and support more dupes.  If I gain three more dupes, that will make my oxygen supply room run continually, giving me 126g/s of hydrogen.  At that point I can run one generator continually and another with 26% up-time.  But it also means that I can build another hamster wheel room.  By training 3 more dupes, I can increase my power production 170% to 3500 watts under continual load.  

I can't tell you what's best for your base, but for my current base design, I can increase my H2 production by accepting more dupes from my Printing Pod.  

[Mojo Filter]

4 hours ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

...without the electrolyzers getting stuck with over-oxygenation.

In addition to the other suggestions, you can potentially produce oxylite or liquify your excess oxygen. Failing that, you could build a high pressure storage chamber with door compressors or some other mechanism.

[bobucles]

The fastest way to use oxygen is to get more dupes! A couple of mouth breathers will vacuum up all the excess.

If you don't need a material, just space it. There's always more electrolyzer oxygen where it came from.

[avc15]

4 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

This is not a good way to get power. Late game, players sometimes run into this when generating hydrogen for rockets, but if you're just going to burn it for power? Don't. Instead, just let your electrolyzers shut down when they hit pressure max.

Think of it this way: you have to run a minimum of 600 watts to service an eletrolyzer: the electrolyzer itself, and two gas pumps (since the output is 1 kg/s total). You get enough hydrogen to run 1.3 hydrogen generators, for a total of 1000 watts. You're losing 60% of that just on upkeep. The math's slightly better if you use Engineering Tuneups, but really, hydrogen is a supplement, not a primary power source.

To turn this on its head, use a more purpose-built design. Think of an open air setup that vents the O2 to space. This setup needs much less support to run:

- one gas pump at 25% uptime per electrolyzer, for 60w. *only pumps hydrogen in full 500g packets*

- one water pump at 10% uptime per electrolyzer, for 24w.

- Automate pressure controls properly, should not take any power but keeps your electrolyzer at full output for(edit) 120w.

- Total 204w of support power.

- Output: 112g/s H2 * 800 J / 100 g H2 ~~ 900W, net ~700W

~ Multiply by a sliding scale factor for tuneups, somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 (call it 1.4) ~ 1250W per electrolyzer, netting around (edit) 1050W per electrolyzer on average. (addition is hard)

 

(this design I'm describing is why I consider H2 generation a bit over-tuned, it's extremely compact and simple, very scalable especially since the addition of saltwater geysers)

---

To the OP: use gas layering to sieve off *just* the hydrogen and vent everything else directly to space. You'll have to reduce O2 outflow to space to keep some pressure in your electrolysis room or your gas layering will break. There are a lot of different ways to do that.

You can use the O2 in space to provide a little cooling to your space machinery. There are some threads about that explain ways to use drywall & some spare gas/liquid for cooling in space.