ethanol Ethanol Fuel Production and CO2

[Chthonicone]

The ethanol fuel production line with one generator and 4 distilleries produces 1.16668 kg/s of CO2, which is immense. To put it in perspective, this is the CO2 production of 583.34 dupes, and requires 36 tamed slicksters to consume it all. It also can be done with 480 watts of power with 4 carbon skimmers running full time. Unless you make the whole area around it airflow, it will quickly pressurize the area to 5 kg, and that will keep rising, requiring pressure suits to even access your power center.

This is crazy, when if you think about it, you're almost required to spend the 480 watts which brings the net power before tune up down to 560 watts only, for that much setup! (2kW from the generator - 960 for the distilleries - 480 for the scrubbers = 560 W)

2 Coal generators on the other hand produce 0.04 kg/s of CO2, the same amount as 20 dupes. and they produce 600 W.

Is it really intended that Ethanol be such a trap for new players, to flood their base with CO2 and prevent O2 production from over-pressurization of CO2? I've seen so many new players on Twitch jump into it, and either kill their base, or nearly kill their bases on CO2. Heck, I nearly did that once before I ran the numbers.

The wood burner falls into the same problem, but to a lesser extent, simply because most players don't stick with them for long.

[Dosephshih]

It is a trap for new player, but I think it is easy to solve when people play at the second or third build.

And I miss the water sieve to take into account too, need to deduct 120w further. But if you tune up the generator, you still get 1.44kW gain.

[Chthonicone]

15 minutes ago, Dosephshih said:

It is a trap for new player, but I think it is easy to solve when people play at the second or third build.

And I miss the water sieve to take into account too, need to deduct 120w further. But if you tune up the generator, you still get 1.44kW gain.

That all depends on how you use the water.

If you use it as polluted water, no need for a sieve. Possible uses: Trees, peppers, thimble reeds, Steam, Fertilizer, Gulp fishes.

This is why I don't include the sieve, because it's optional.

Edit: Also, you aren't using the sieve constantly, only 15% of it's output, so 18 Watts

[Promethien]

It requires heavy engineering but if you use wild trees (easy) its a bit of free water and loads of dirt. Enough dirt to keep a bunch of coal generators through sage hatches going which is easy and produces meat. In exchange for a heavy set up and a good bit of space dedicated its a set up that exchanges a bunch of dupe labor for power, dirt and water. 

[PhailRaptor]

2 hours ago, Chthonicone said:

Is it really intended that Ethanol be such a trap for new players, to flood their base with CO2 and prevent O2 production from over-pressurization of CO2?

Except it's not a noob trap.  It is an advanced concept that requires forethought and a minimum level of existing infrastructure.  You also can't just slap it down and ignore it -- you have to be creative with how you process the waste products to make it worthwhile.  Which, yes, includes that huge volume of CO2.

The simple fact that you can create all that waste, and deal with it, while coming out ahead by 200+ W is already a big benefit.  And it's slightly more efficient as you add more "units" to the complex.  You only need 1 Liquid Pump, for example, to deal with the Polluted Water output of 13.333... PetroGens.  The Water Sieve can process 5 kg/s of Polluted Water, but you only produce 4 kg/s from the 4 Skimmers.  Stacking your Ethanol Distillers and your Arbor Tree farm, you can collect the Polluted Dirt and Lumber, respectively, with only a single Sweeper Arm and Conveyor Loader each, using Doors for flooring that open once a day for 1% or 2% each cycle.

[kerosene]

Vent it into space.

[Xuhybrid]

You'd need 100 carbon skimmers to deal with it all. I think that's the point they're making.

[Majestix]

Search the forums. This topic has already been discussed to death on here.

[storm6436]

Yeah.  Topic beaten like a dead horse, even.  Not with a stick, but a dumptruck.  It's not a trap, you just have to stop and ask yourself what you're about before you go chucking trees and CO2 everywhere.  Even with domestic trees the cycle can be made water positive in the right configuration, provided you have a computer capable of handling 36 slicksters on top of everything else you had before.

[OxCD]

 

[TLW]

13 hours ago, Chthonicone said:

1.16668 kg/s of CO2

About the only sensible ways to deal with this are either 1. compress it and forget about it (until the game crashes at least) or 2. vent it into space or 3. door-pump it into oblivion. Note that all of these consume no power... although they do throw off the usual calculations for ethanol efficiency.

Bonus points if you use it as a heat sump first.

 

I've been working on a petrol generator room in my current game that's kept at ~140C. PW flashes to steam (and dirt); steam goes to steam turbines with some automation to only feed water back into the room if steam pressure is too low; CO2 gets door-pumped into oblivion. Works surprisingly well all things considered... though it's rather fiddly to set up because you want steam on top and CO2 at the bottom, but PW falls down.

 

I've been half-tempted to build a base that avoids pipes for the most part. With (unpowered) door compressors and/or Escher waterfalls most things that produce non-piped fluids (gas or liquid) can be moved around for free - and once you get transit tubes you can route through them no problem (although you can't run things too hot or you are in for a bad time.)

[avc15]

I use the co2 as the heat sink for my smokestack cooler and vent it to space. Actually I've settled on an ethanol power plant as the single best source of exhaust material to pump heat into, in the mid game anyway. Once you get your hands on a few tons of niobium, there are better options.

There will be plenty of CO2 left to feed to slicksters once I get to the point of ranching them, as well.

Not quite ready to share the current build as it's somewhat challenging to get the geometry & automation quite right. In other words my present build isn't organized enough for my own aesthetics yet. But, simply put, the goal is to freeze oassise using only power plant exhaust as a mechanism for removing heat from the asteroid. No intentional use of temp reset bugs.

 

 

[Mathgeekburch]

14 hours ago, Chthonicone said:

Is it really intended that Ethanol be such a trap for new players,

What you see as a trap for new players, I see is a resource that can be used.

The massive amounts of CO2 becomes a positive if you are consuming large amounts of CO2.  I like using slicksters to produce oil/petrol; under the highest efficiency conditions, only half of my CO2 mass gets turned into petrol.

Meaning that if I wanted to supply a petrol generator 24/7 (mostly for the water), I'd need 2,400 kg of CO2 a day; or about 4 kg/s of CO2.

Sure that is 120 tamed happy slicksters that I need to supply 1 petrol gen.  But I don't find it too much a hassle to build 16 slickster ranches in a 45x45 area; where the slicksters are limited to a 3 tile wide balcony (as otherwise the pathing lag would be large); and then have overflow tank with over 600 tame glum slicksters providing another petrol generator's worth of petrol.

So I now I am consuming 4,800 kg of CO2 a day.  That is pretty hard to produce without an ethanol industry (size 24 ethanol distilers, 6 ethanol petrol generators, and the 2 petrol generators running on slickster pee).


Besides, I like using domesticated arbor trees instead of wild. And domesticated arbor trees are water negative without the CO2 being turned into petrol.  Alternatively I could turn the pdirt from the distillers into pwater using pufts and algae distillers; but I don't like dealing with pufts and I like using the Pdirt on pokeshells and sage hatches.  



 

[Dosephshih]

On 2019/9/15 at 1:31 PM, Chthonicone said:

Edit: Also, you aren't using the sieve constantly, only 15% of it's output, so 18 Watts

Um... 1.2 kg/s of CO2, which need 4 carbon skimmer in operation, and 4 kg/s of water, which is 80% of the full power of water sieve.

i think my design is a little bit wasting power, but I put the water in close loop with water sieve, and just forget it.

i am thinking to ranch slicker but I don’t want to waste too much dupe time to do that may be.

[Zarquan]

1 minute ago, Dosephshih said:

i am thinking to ranch slicker but I don’t want to waste too much dupe time to do that may be.

You don't have to.  Untended slicksters are a great source of food and they deal with the CO2 and give you precious petroleum.  I currently have over 500 in my one tile slickster pen.

[Dosephshih]

21 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

You don't have to.  Untended slicksters are a great source of food and they deal with the CO2 and give you precious petroleum.  I currently have over 500 in my one tile slickster pen.

Wow, I never think of this, I thought it would cost lot of dupe time and lag the game, thank you so much!

[MorsDux]

Noob trap at a non default asteroid? 

[Ketmol]

22 hours ago, kerosene said:

Vent it into space.

yep. I always place the whole powerplant room bordering space meaning it is possible to vent without even the use of pumps.

On most maps it is pretty easy to dig right up to space very early on PLUS, if you are on a map that lacks gold there are 1600kg of steel waiting for you up there to solve pumping hot oil pre steel production without the use of some trickery and hassle. 

[Tobruk]

On 15/09/2019 at 6:28 AM, Chthonicone said:

one generator and 4 distilleries produces 1.16668 kg/s of CO2

I just vent it into space and cool my equipment there as well.

[Chthonicone]

3 hours ago, Dosephshih said:

Um... 1.2 kg/s of CO2, which need 4 carbon skimmer in operation, and 4 kg/s of water, which is 80% of the full power of water sieve.

i think my design is a little bit wasting power, but I put the water in close loop with water sieve, and just forget it.

i am thinking to ranch slicker but I don’t want to waste too much dupe time to do that may be.

Yeah, I forgot about the scrubbers as well when I suggested that. My mistake.

 

2 hours ago, MorsDux said:

Noob trap at a non default asteroid? 

Do you know how many noobs I see jump right into the harder asteroids because they want to learn by failing?

On one hand, if you had to unlock the asteroids, this wouldn't be such a problem, on the other hand most unlock systems are very grindy. Maybe you unlock asteroids by reaching them with a rocket. That might be ok.

3 hours ago, Zarquan said:

You don't have to.  Untended slicksters are a great source of food and they deal with the CO2 and give you precious petroleum.  I currently have over 500 in my one tile slickster pen.

Slicksters are my favorite critter, and you sir are a monster. D:< Give them the comfort they deserve, in a heated multi-tiered apartment building with floors that allow their oil to fall down into a reservoir, while suited butlers come through and take care of their every need. Nothing short of the best for my slicksters!

[SuperCoolAnt]

On 16.09.2019 at 9:51 AM, Zarquan said:

You don't have to.  Untended slicksters are a great source of food and they deal with the CO2 and give you precious petroleum.  I currently have over 500 in my one tile slickster pen.

What is "one tile slickster pen" ???

[Zakery]

You not need to do something with this CO2 - just store it and not care. Waterlock and automated lamber supply - and you no need to enter dupes to high pressyre area (or use suits). 

Later it can be useful  to feed sliksters or produse polluted water, but anyway it not a problem

[Zarquan]

On 9/25/2019 at 8:53 AM, SuperCoolAnt said:

What is "one tile slickster pen" ???

I made some modifications later in the post and if you want to build it, I recommend picking a later version.  The idea is that the slicksters can only be in one tile.  If you don't give them the ability to move, then they don't appear to cause as much lag. 

If you make the room they are in 12 tiles, then they won't be confined and can lay eggs.  The eggs fall in to a pneumatic door, which means they are out of the room, so they do not get the cramped debuff and can lay eggs.  The slickster larvae can swim up the crude oil and petroleum (assuming the tiles have enough mass), so they join the other slicksters when they hatch.  This means that not only do they consume CO2, but they also are self sustaining and produce a ton of meat.  I have one off these in my base and now I have over a million kcals of barbecue stored up.

Just make sure that the size of the room is 12 tiles so that they can lay eggs.