Water purification automation?

[GoHereDoThis]

I'm trying to kill off the food poisoning germs in my water supply.  It seems like my dupes are getting sick of food poisoning all the time, much more than before, so I guess that's due to one of the more recent patches?

Anyway, I got a room with chlorine now and I have my liquid reservoir in it.  I'm trying to find a way to automate the process where if the water becomes germ-free, it gets pumped back into the system.  Basically, I have a holding tank for the liquid to sit in, then another tank that is connected to the system.  I can't seem to automate the process of moving clean water from the dirty tank to the clean tank.  I tried using a germ sensor but it seems like germs don't die when the water is inside the pipes, just in the reservoir so once the dirty water gets to the germ sensor, it basically sits there.... and just sits there.  I tried re-circulating the water back into the dirty tank but it seems that this resets the germ counter and the germs don't die off or do so very slowly, if at all.

Any ideas?

[Glassyfo]

14 minutes ago, GoHereDoThis said:

I'm trying to kill off the food poisoning germs in my water supply.  It seems like my dupes are getting sick of food poisoning all the time, much more than before, so I guess that's due to one of the more recent patches?

Anyway, I got a room with chlorine now and I have my liquid reservoir in it.  I'm trying to find a way to automate the process where if the water becomes germ-free, it gets pumped back into the system.  Basically, I have a holding tank for the liquid to sit in, then another tank that is connected to the system.  I can't seem to automate the process of moving clean water from the dirty tank to the clean tank.  I tried using a germ sensor but it seems like germs don't die when the water is inside the pipes, just in the reservoir so once the dirty water gets to the germ sensor, it basically sits there.... and just sits there.  I tried re-circulating the water back into the dirty tank but it seems that this resets the germ counter and the germs don't die off or do so very slowly, if at all.

Any ideas?

 This should work without automation.

[Assault Chicken]

2 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

I'm trying to kill off the food poisoning germs in my water supply.  It seems like my dupes are getting sick of food poisoning all the time, much more than before, so I guess that's due to one of the more recent patches?

Anyway, I got a room with chlorine now and I have my liquid reservoir in it.  I'm trying to find a way to automate the process where if the water becomes germ-free, it gets pumped back into the system.  Basically, I have a holding tank for the liquid to sit in, then another tank that is connected to the system.  I can't seem to automate the process of moving clean water from the dirty tank to the clean tank.  I tried using a germ sensor but it seems like germs don't die when the water is inside the pipes, just in the reservoir so once the dirty water gets to the germ sensor, it basically sits there.... and just sits there.  I tried re-circulating the water back into the dirty tank but it seems that this resets the germ counter and the germs don't die off or do so very slowly, if at all.

Any ideas?

I also had problems with food poisoning. In my case the germs came from compost piles processing polluted dirt from outhouses. My dupes thought ist was a good idea to use germy dirt to grow meal lice. Maybe you schuld check this too.

For most applications it is not necessary to kill germs in your water. But I don´t want my dupes to shower in germy water or use it to wash their hands.

So I tried to create a fail-save automated solution. It is not exactly simple, but i like it.

The Idea is to use 3 reservoirs (fill, desinfect, empty) and some logic to cycle through these states in the correct order. I came up with this: (4 reservoirs for symmetry reasons ) 

Pipes:

Spoiler

Automation:

Spoiler

The filter gates are needed so the logic doesn´t break on loading.

Using timers would be the easier way 

Edit: another Solution:

 

[beowulf2010]

I like the one Saturnus posted here:

There's a lot of good options though. 

[nakomaru]

Some options are more good than others. Three reservoirs, no automation, simple flow, 10kg/s, germ free.

[Neotuck]

An old build but still works

[Gurgel]

Forget about automation. Just place 5 tanks in Chlorine in series, that kills anything. And if you do this in connection with water sieves, place the tanks _before_ the sieve to get non-contaminated polluted dirt.

[GoHereDoThis]

20 hours ago, bleeter6 said:

This should work without automation.

Thanks but I don't see how that would work?  The fluid needs to sit in the reservoir for the germs to die off, the germs don't seem to die when just sitting in the pipes.

8 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Forget about automation. Just place 5 tanks in Chlorine in series, that kills anything. And if you do this in connection with water sieves, place the tanks _before_ the sieve to get non-contaminated polluted dirt.

Same as above.

13 hours ago, Neotuck said:

An old build but still works

Can you explain more how this works?  From what I see, the fluid will just keep exiting the reservoir then will cycle through the lower pipes back into the reservoir, trouble is this seems to slow down the killing process compared to just having the reservoir hold the fluid until germ-free?  Or does having that door under the reservoir (disabling the reservoir) do anything special?

[Glassyfo]

56 minutes ago, GoHereDoThis said:

Thanks but I don't see how that would work?  The fluid needs to sit in the reservoir for the germs to die off, the germs don't seem to die when just sitting in the pipes.

See the bridge in red? It loops back into the first reservoir unless new water comes in. That keeps the liquid cycling through the reservoirs and disinfecting. If you need a longer disinfection time just add more reservoirs to lengthen the time spent in a reservoir.

[nakomaru]

You may think the 10kg/s builds that don't use automation don't work, but they do. Because fractions.

[GoHereDoThis]

18 hours ago, bleeter6 said:

See the bridge in red? It loops back into the first reservoir unless new water comes in. That keeps the liquid cycling through the reservoirs and disinfecting. If you need a longer disinfection time just add more reservoirs to lengthen the time spent in a reservoir.

I see now, thanks!  But like I said, it seems the cycling the liquid slows down the killing process; I'd prefer a non-cycling solution if there is one.

 

11 hours ago, nakomaru said:

You may think the 10kg/s builds that don't use automation don't work, but they do. Because fractions.

What do you mean?

[nakomaru]

53 minutes ago, GoHereDoThis said:

What do you mean?

1. 10kg of germy water enters 5T of uncontaminated water.
2. 0.2% of that water enters the second 5T reservoir of water.
3. 0.2% of that water enters the third 5T reservoir of water.
4. 0.2% of that water is your output.

Taking smaller and smaller portions of contaminated water means that at some point the fraction is too small to contain any germs in 10kg. It's decontamination by homeopathy.

[Gurgel]

23 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

Thanks but I don't see how that would work?  The fluid needs to sit in the reservoir for the germs to die off, the germs don't seem to die when just sitting in the pipes.

It does not need to "sit", but there has to be fluid in the tanks. The way you solve that is by having outflow a bit lower than inflow. In doubt, just put a valve at the output that limits flow to 9kg/s. 

[Craigjw]

For 10kg/s use a valve on the output and on the input, use a pipe sensor in between 2 pipe bridges to detect a full tank, which opens the valve when the tanks are full.  Takes ages to fill though.

[Yunru]

7 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

But like I said, it seems the cycling the liquid slows down the killing process; I'd prefer a non-cycling solution if there is one.

Have you tried them? 

Because at least mine works in real time. 

(If you're super germy you could set up two in parallel and only have one active for half the day.)

[Enzium]

This is something I created a while ago, it has 100% uptime. The germ sensors are set to >1 germ and the filters are set too 200s I believe.

[Neotuck]

On 11/30/2019 at 12:13 PM, GoHereDoThis said:

Can you explain more how this works?  From what I see, the fluid will just keep exiting the reservoir then will cycle through the lower pipes back into the reservoir, trouble is this seems to slow down the killing process compared to just having the reservoir hold the fluid until germ-free?  Or does having that door under the reservoir (disabling the reservoir) do anything special?

The reservoir is sitting on a mech door, when the door is open the building is disabled so fluid can't exit.  The top germ sensor opens the door when detecting germs.  The BUFFER gate prevents the door from closing for 140 seconds, more than enough time to kill all germs in the tank.  

The bottom germ sensor detects any germs that might have survived and loop them back to the tank

[Gurgel]

I literally just use this, and it works entirely fine for maximally contaminated pwater (5M germs). Even at full 9.5kg/sec flow, tank 4 has no germs left. Tank 5 is just for additional safety. (There are two chains, the pipe view has just the upper one.)

 

[GoHereDoThis]

Thanks guys!  Playing around with this setup for now and I've got a very clean base at the moment, no slimelung, no food poisoning, so all is great!  I lucked out on a new map where there was a spot where I could set up some tanks straight away and got to clean water really quickly.

[psusi]

I went with the 4 reservoirs @Gurgel suggested for cleaning my pwater vent and it worked great.  For the bathroom overflow though, I just used a single reservoir with a germ sensor to feed back to the reservoir.  The trick with the feedback seems to be that you need to use a valve to choke the feedback flow a bit.  I've also now set up a two gas reservoir room to clean my infectious polluted oxygen vent.