Compact, efficient repeatable oxygen generator unit

[Storm Engineer]

Just another design I felt like sharing. This is my oxygen generation unit. I call it a unit because you can place any number of these in a row and they will tile (the Blueprints addon comes really handy). It uses electrolyzers, but it also has a fallback system with an algae deoxidizer (now "oxygen diffuser") that kicks in if pressure in the room falls low, meaning the electrolyzer is not running.

While it uses the double element sensor + shutoff filtering to filter hydrogen with full precision, I also positioned the pumps above and below, so one pump will always pump oxygen and the other will pick up all the hydrogen for simply more efficient gas packets inside the pipes.

Each unit has its own on/off switch that toggles the electrolyzers and pumps. However, the bottom pump will turn on regardless if the fallback circuit is activated. Normal power consumption is 620W per unit, potential maximum if backup circuit and main circuit are on the same time is 740W, meaning that a single coal generator with a battery as buffer can about keep one unit going in normal mode in a pinch. With a hydrogen generator added, a single coal generator can keep two units running indefinitely.

Here is a single unit built:

The element filters are set to Hydrogen, the atmo-sensor to Below 500g, and the oxygen diffuser to 9 priority so they keep them fully stocked in an emergency.

Electrolyzers, diffusers, pumps and shutoffs need to be made of gold amalgam, as the room can get quite hot. Electric wiring and all the automation other than shutoffs can be made from lead.

Here are two units in action, with some slight modifications: I added a secondary water input, removed bits meant for tiling with neighboring units on the edge, and installed an override switch on the right, that enables the diffusers regardless of pressure. The hydrogen output pipes are merged and run into a hydrogen generator.

P.s.: Ignore the unusual colors. It's a mod that colors buildings based on their material so it's easier to see what is made of what.

[blash365]

Things i noticed:

• It is not space efficient.
• It would be more efficient with 1 additional electrolizer + 1 pump (3 pumps (1h/2o2) = 2 electrolizers
• Does it have a clogging prevention? Otherwise packets might go into the wrong vent
• How is it tileable when you are already using the full (actually half) of the vent capacity. Would love to see a tiled example with global venting
• Why is there water on the floor?
• Is the airlock airtight? What happens when different gas enters the room?
• Is the electrolizer able to run at 100% efficiency?
• What is your approach to the temperature of the output?

 

 

[psusi]

I also was wondering why there is water on the floor and that it is rather wasteful of space.  It also won't be able to run the electrolyzer at more than 56% duty cycle, which means you need to devote even more space to these modules. I don't think the oxygen spreader really adds anything of value either.

And why the OR gate on the bottom pump?  If the module is switched off, why would you want to force the pump to run anyhow if the pressure is low?  It looks to me like this thing isn't going to maintain a state like you picture, but instead both pumps will run all the time and suck out all of the hydrogen, lower the oxygen pressure, and the only way you don't draw a vaccum is because the oxygen spreader will be running most of the time, burning through your algae.

[Storm Engineer]

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• It is not space efficient.

How so? It wasn't easy to fit all the gas piping and automation into a 4 wide space!

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• It would be more efficient with 1 additional electrolizer + 1 pump (3 pumps (1h/2o2) = 2 electrolizers

An electrolyzer creates 1000g of gas (112 hydrogen and 888 oxygen) per second and a pump takes 500g of a gas per sec, so you need at least twice as many pumps as electrolyzers to pick up all the gas (in practice a little more if you want the electrolyzers to run uniterrupted, because how they can only pick up one type at a time.)

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• Does it have a clogging prevention? Otherwise packets might go into the wrong vent

The double element sensor+shutoff design filters one gas at 100% precision, and is unable to clog up as long as the output pipes are not full. Whenever an output pipe is full and the gas has nowhere to go, it will circulate within the filter loop indefinitely until the output pipe has space.

It consists of a loop of two element sensor+shutoff pairs in a chain, and a bridge to set the direction of the loop. To make sure it works you input into the filter loop via a bridge that attaches between the output of the direction setting bridge and the the first element sensor. Because the gas never stops moving and because of how timing works in the game, the only gas that is able to enter a shutoff is the gas that has triggered the element sensor right before the shutoff.

Simplified example:

In the above example the gas loop goes clockwise. Input into the filter loop is through the bridge on the right. Both element sensors are set to the same element, but one negated so everything that is my selected element leaves through the bottom shutoff and everything that is _not_ my selected element leaves through the left.

This design is incapable of error, it cannot send my selected element into the negated shutoff and cannot send the wrong element into the filtered shutoff.

I'm using this in my above design, just in a much more compact layout.

Now, this only filters the hydrogen so my hydrogen generator won't break. The other pipe gets everything that is not hydrogen. That's OK, since my dupes literally never enter this room except to fill up the backup diffusers but that should only happen in an emergency when the main system is inoperable, so if a tiny amount of other gases get into my base then what? No big deal. I have another filter on the pipe feeding my atmo suit docks however, so those can only get oxygen and anything else is dumped into the wild with a high pressure vent.

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• How is it tileable when you are already using the full (actually half) of the vent capacity. Would love to see a tiled example with global venting

I don't understand what you mean. You can copy-paste this side by side, as everything, gas tubes, automation, machines etc. is fitted into a 4 by 10 area, with power and automation wires lining up where they need to, without overlapping where they shouldn't.

On the top I merged the outputs of the hydrogen filters since two electrolyzers combined still don't produce as much hydrogen as to clog up a single pipe. On the bottom each oxygen filter has its own separate output pipe.

You can expand your generation with one electrolyzer at a time as your colony grows.

The pipes merging on the top are the hydrogen output pipes and the pipes going towards the bottom-left corner are the individual oxygen output pipes.

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• Why is there water on the floor?

Because I didn't mop up? *doh* I have deconstructed my previous setup to build this one so there is water and debris on the floor from the deconstruction.

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• Is the airlock airtight? What happens when different gas enters the room?

It's a vacuum airlock to create thermal insulation, as otherwise airlocks, being made of metal, leak heat like crazy. The center airlock destroys gases creating vacuum. If dupes pass through, depending in air pressure there is a small chance of gases from the outside getting in, but dupes never need to enter that room once built and cleaned up, and if a little other gas gets in it will sorted into the not-hydrogen pipe where I can filter it out with another loop if I want to.

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• Is the electrolizer able to run at 100% efficiency?

Not 100%, but as far as I observed they more or less operate constantly. But due to the numbers in gas created and how pipes work you can't have 100% efficiency in a small system, either you have too many pumps and they are inefficient or to few and the electrolyzer sometimes stops.

My goal here was to create something that is
 - compact
 - Relatively efficient
 - Easy to expand as my colony grows

It was never meant to be perfect.

40 minutes ago, blash365 said:

• What is your approach to the temperature of the output?

For now I simply run it through a room cooled by wheezeworts, which is good enough to keep the oxygen roughly around 25 Celsius.

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

I also was wondering why there is water on the floor

Geez, why is everybody so obsessed with the water? I just didn't mop it up yet...

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

and that it is rather wasteful of space.

Once again, how so? Feel free to show me how do you fit all that piping and automation into a smaller space in a way that it's still accessible for repairs and can me modularly tiled to expand it.

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

It also won't be able to run the electrolyzer at more than 56% duty cycle

What?! Where did you get that number from??? Because let me tell you it runs almost constantly when the pipes are not backed up.

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

which means you need to devote even more space to these modules.

???

33 minutes ago, psusi said:

I don't think the oxygen spreader really adds anything of value either.

Why not? They will keep oxygen flowing if there is no water, for example, which can happen when your geysers have long downtimes and you use the water for several different purposes.

[blash365]

6 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

How so? It wasn't easy to fit all the gas piping and automation into a 4 wide space!

When writing, I thought the free space to the left was part of the "tile".

6 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

An electrolyzer creates 1000g of gas (112 hydrogen and 888 oxygen) per second and a pump takes 500g of a gas per sec, so you need at least twice as many pumps as electrolyzers to pick up all the gas (in practice a little more if you want the electrolyzers to run uniterrupted, because how they can only pick up one type at a time.)

You might be correct. Especially given your filter loop. Still i think you need a different setup to keep the electrolizer running constantly.

 

6 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

The double element sensor+shutoff design filters one gas at 100% precision, and is unable to clog up as long as the output pipes are not full. Whenever an output pipe is full and the gas has nowhere to go, it will circulate within the filter loop indefinitely until the output pipe has space.

Thanks for that. Greatly appreciated!

 

[Storm Engineer]

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

When writing, I thought the free space to the left was part of the "tile".

Ohhh! I see it now. My bad! That empty space is there because the room is built for two units. XD My apologies for not being clear on that.

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

You might be correct. Especially given your filter loop. Still i think you need a different setup to keep the electrolizer running constantly.

Yeah, for that you would need slightly more than 1 pump per electrolyzer, but I can't be bothered to do the math.
 Probably something like 11 pumps per 5 electrolyzer or similar. But then there is also the fact that gases need to move around, the electrolyzer shots off when local pressure around it gets too high, etc.

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

Thanks for that. Greatly appreciated!

Welcome. I'm actually surprised, I thought everyone knows that design. It's around since the shutoffs were added, no idea who came up with it first. The actual "Gas filter" building is unreliable and if one pipe clogs up it just sends everything the other way, but this solution is foolproof. And of course works the exact same with liquids.

You could also use thermal sensors instead of element sensors to achieve specific temperatures, eg. keep something running through a heater/cooler room in a circle and use this filtering to let packets that are hot/cool enough to leave the circle, or combine the two to create gas/liquid within a precise temperature range.

[psusi]

37 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

Once again, how so? Feel free to show me how do you fit all that piping and automation into a smaller space in a way that it's still accessible for repairs and can me modularly tiled to expand it.

Instead of putting each electrolyzer in its own room with 2 pumps, just put two or 4 of them in one room with a mechanical filter and one gas pump can take all of the hydrogen.  And you don't need all of the sensors and shutoffs to filter.  See my mini version of the Rodriguez spom here, and the full size version in the OP:

My mini version takes up 10 x 12 for 2 electrolyzers.  I guess that is actually the same space as yours, but mine includes the two hydrogen generators.  The original only needs 14 x 12 though and gets 4 electrolyzers in there and 3 hydrogen generators.  Also you need additional space at the end for the triple airlock for entry.

37 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

What?! Where did you get that number from??? Because let me tell you it runs almost constantly when the pipes are not backed up.

I was thinking that you had the pumps regulated to maintain a layer of hydrogen at the top so 99% of the time only the bottom pump would grab oxygen, limiting you to only 500g/s of oxygen.  I see now it doesn't and so the hydrogen is just going to all get sucked out and even the upper pump will mostly pump oxygen.

37 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

Why not? They will keep oxygen flowing if there is no water, for example, which can happen when your geysers have long downtimes and you use the water for several different purposes.

Generally I make sure to maximize what I get out of the geyser while it is active and store it to use when it's dormant.  Also once I switch to electrolyzers I like to keep my algae for breeding pacu.  In an emergency you can still fire up an oxygen spreader temporarily and just not worry too much about the heat.  It doesn't need to be in the electrolyzer room.

 

18 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

Welcome. I'm actually surprised, I thought everyone knows that design. It's around since the shutoffs were added, no idea who came up with it first. The actual "Gas filter" building is unreliable and if one pipe clogs up it just sends everything the other way, but this solution is foolproof. And of course works the exact same with liquids.

I haven't used one of those in ages because of the power draw, but I seem to remember nothing flowed if they had no power.  It is the sensor/shutoff that has the problem of gas flowing one way when power goes out.  Err, wait, you said if one pipe backs up, not if the power goes out.  I don't remember ever seeing that either but I probably just made sure nothing ever backed up anyhow.

[Craigjw]

Here's my solution, it has 100% electrolyzer up time 100% of the time and Free O2 removal, Any excess O2 that I don't want is just vented into space as waste, for free.  It has power free filtering too!

It is important that you set the pressure sensors correctly, otherwise, an imbalance of pressures between the O2 & Hydrogen happens close to the electrolyzer and cross gas contamination happens, which will require resetting the gases.

Electrolyzer pressure sensors are set at 15000kg

Hydrogen pressure sensors are set at 14000kg

O2 pump pressure sensors are set at 7000kg

Doors to space pressure sensors are set at 10000kg

All gas valves are set to 0.1g/s

To prime this, make sure the whole area is a vacuum and use a canister emptier to place O2 at the top section and Hydrogen at the bottom, then switch on the water supply/electrolyzers.

Each of the Electrolyzers have a total of 90kg of oil and 24kg of petrol, ie 2x45kg of oil & 2x12kg petrol.

Everything is made from gold amalgam, doors are made from iron.

It has no water at the moment, as I diverted it for something else.  There are also only 4 active O2 pumps active, as I don't need any more than this, as it's being used for LOX production and only need 2kg/s for this.

This has been running for hundreds of cycles without issue.

[psusi]

16 hours ago, Craigjw said:

Electrolyzer pressure sensors are set at 15000kg

Hydrogen pressure sensors are set at 14000kg

O2 pump pressure sensors are set at 7000kg

Doors to space pressure sensors are set at 10000kg

Fixed that for you

[Storm Engineer]

23 hours ago, psusi said:

Instead of putting each electrolyzer in its own room with 2 pumps, just put two or 4 of them in one room

That's exactly what I did. I guess nobody had the patience to read down to the part of my post where I show that I have TWO modules in that room. The first screenshots show one module in a room built for two. The idea is that I start with one module and I can keep adding more later on demand, like this:

That's why I point out that it's tileable. Also each module is independent with its own turnoff switch just because I'm a control freak.

Quote

with a mechanical filter and one gas pump can take all of the hydrogen.

You still need at least 2 pumps per electrolyzer if you want everything to run constantly because they create 1000g/s gas and a pump can take 500g/s.

Also, mechanical filters are not foolproof. Element sensor filters are. There is no way my hydrogen generator can ever take anything other than hydrogen, even if I reconstruct the room and gases are mixing all over the place.

Quote

 And you don't need all of the sensors and shutoffs to filter. See my mini version of the Rodriguez spom here, and the full size version in the OP:

On the other hand
 - You use an extra pump, and consume more power
 - You use a pressure sensor so you still use automation, plus that is not foolproof. My filters are.
 - My room is fully accessible to dupes without deconstructing anything or building extra ladders, which was a design goal for me.
 - I can rebuild the room, change parts, do whatever and it doesn't matter if outside gases get in there, they will be filtered out with 100% precision.

Don't get me wrong, your design is nice, if you don't care about any of the above, and don't mind that if you touch the room you need to shot it down or your hydrogen generators start taking whatever gas happens to float around as you tear down walls. It's a simple, "build and forget" (once you initially removed everything from the room that is not hydrogen or oxygen, that is) design that does its job. But I prefer the versatility and foolproofness of my approach. It's a matter of taste.

P.s.: What the **** does "SPOM" mean? Everyone uses the term but nobody explains what it is and Google didn't help me either.
 

Quote

The original only needs 14 x 12 though and gets 4 electrolyzers in there and 3 hydrogen generators. 

But that's not right. 4 electrolyzers = 4000g/s of gas, 7 pumps = 3500g/s of gas. And the ratio of hydrogen and oxygen is 1 to 8, not 1 to 6. Those electrolyzers will stop all the time due to overpressure.

Quote

Also you need additional space at the end for the triple airlock for entry.

I don't "need".
 I could remove the redundancy diffusers and just wall it up like yours. But I simply prefer if every room is accessible in case I want to change anything or maintenance is needed for whatever reason. Walled up stuff is a real pain in the ass if you need to change/repair anything.

Quote

I was thinking that you had the pumps regulated to maintain a layer of hydrogen at the top so 99% of the time only the bottom pump would grab oxygen, limiting you to only 500g/s of oxygen.  I see now it doesn't and so the hydrogen is just going to all get sucked out and even the upper pump will mostly pump oxygen.

Not needed. The bottom pumps will pump oxygen at full efficiency creating 500g packets while the top one will pick up either oxygen, which then gets merged with the 500g packet coming from the bottom pump into a 1000g packet, or it picks up hydrogen sometimes, which then slips in between two oxygen packets. And the 100% foolproof filtering means this is absolutely fine.

As such I have an almost continuous flow of 1000g oxygen packets, as you can see on the screenshot:

Quote

Generally I make sure to maximize what I get out of the geyser while it is active and store it to use when it's dormant.

I store the geyser water itself instead. This is especially better because a liquid reservoir is only 2 x 3 for 5,000kg of water (meaning 4,440kg of oxygen, or 740kg of oxygen per tile) while a gas reservoir is 5 x 3 for 150k of oxygen (meaning 10kg of oxygen per tile)

Quote

Also once I switch to electrolyzers I like to keep my algae for breeding pacu.  In an emergency you can still fire up an oxygen spreader temporarily

But that's exactly what I do. The diffuser ONLY kicks in if the pressure in the room gets very low, which can only happen of the electrolyzers are not producing anything.

Quote

It doesn't need to be in the electrolyzer room.

But it doesn't need to be outside either. Plus, this way it still runs through my cooling room.

Quote

I haven't used one of those in ages because of the power draw, but I seem to remember nothing flowed if they had no power.

The shutoffs won't open if they have no power.

But if they have no power then the electrolyzers and pumps don't have either so it doesn't matter. And they only consume 10W per shutoff (as opposed to the 120W of the actual "gas filter" building, which is not even foolproof)

 

 

 

21 hours ago, Craigjw said:

Here's my solution, it has 100% electrolyzer up time 100% of the time and Free O2 removal, Any excess O2 that I don't want is just vented into space as waste, for free.

So... we are talking about small, scaleable oxygen generation for our dupes to breath...

You post a monster hydrogen factory that vents oxygen into space.

Dude...

 

[psusi]

4 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

Also, mechanical filters are not foolproof. Element sensor filters are. There is no way my hydrogen generator can ever take anything other than hydrogen, even if I reconstruct the room and gases are mixing all over the place.

They are foolproof once primed and the room sealed.

5 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

You use an extra pump, and consume more power

No?  There is another pump so the peak load on the wire can be higher, but the total average use is the same because they are moving the same volume of gas.  In fact, the average use may be lower with mine since you never have a pump grab small packets of mixed gas.

6 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

 - My room is fully accessible to dupes without deconstructing anything or building extra ladders, which was a design goal for me.
 - I can rebuild the room, change parts, do whatever and it doesn't matter if outside gases get in there, they will be filtered out with 100% precision.

True... I guess that's just not something I care at all about.  Once the system is up and running I don't ever want to have to touch it again.

7 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

P.s.: What the **** does "SPOM" mean? Everyone uses the term but nobody explains what it is and Google didn't help me either.

Self Powered Oxygen Module.  Very old concept on the forums of using an electrolyzer and mechanical separation to avoid wasting power on a gas filter so your hydrogen generator makes more power than the system requires.

11 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

But that's not right. 4 electrolyzers = 4000g/s of gas, 7 pumps = 3500g/s of gas. And the ratio of hydrogen and oxygen is 1 to 8, not 1 to 6. Those electrolyzers will stop all the time due to overpressure.

True, they won't run 100% and so you end up with only 3000 g/s of oxygen.  Still, 3 of your modules takes up 14 x 12 space and the 3 oxygen pipes will each only have 888 g/s.  And you need more space for the hydrogen generators.  I guess that isn't so bad, I'm just saying that you are giving up space savings that can be had with economies of scale ( 2x or 4x electrolyzers ) in favor of a copy/paste module that scales.

20 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

I store the geyser water itself instead

Obviously...

21 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

But that's exactly what I do. The diffuser ONLY kicks in if the pressure in the room gets very low, which can only happen of the electrolyzers are not producing anything.

Yes, but I meant it doesn't need to be automated.

23 minutes ago, Storm Engineer said:

But if they have no power then the electrolyzers and pumps don't have either so it doesn't matter. And they only consume 10W per shutoff (as opposed to the 120W of the actual "gas filter" building, which is not even foolproof)

They actually don't consume the 10 W.  It doesn't matter that the pumps won't have power either; any gas already in the pipe will flow past the unpowered shutoff, which is why you need to be careful with how you plumb the filter or a loss of power can send things the wrong way.  The way you have yours setup it is fine.

 

[Craigjw]

A mechanical filter will fail if the output pipe becomes full, it will force the wrong gas into the filter.

The mechanical filters that I setup are foolproof, as flow can't backlog and break them, as I have infinite storage on the other end of the pipes.

[psusi]

22 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

A mechanical filter will fail if the output pipe becomes full, it will force the wrong gas into the filter.

Say what now?

 

[Craigjw]

The version of mechanical filter that I used in my O2 factory will fail if the output becomes blocked.  Simple mechanical filters that use a sensor to flip a valve fail when there is a power outage or if the output pipe becomes blocked.

For this reason, it's simpler and easier to just use a normal filter because they work no matter what and don't have the overhead when mechanical filter fails.

After building hundreds mechanical filters and fixed all the issues they can cause, you'll understand what I mean.

For these reasons, I placed infinite storage on the output of my mechanical filters, to prevent these failure conditions.

[Angpaur]

On 12.12.2019 at 8:12 PM, Storm Engineer said:

But due to the numbers in gas created and how pipes work you can't have 100% efficiency in a small system

But you can:

Not my design. Few months ago I saw it either here, reddit or steam discussions. Tried to find the original poster but I can't.

[Craigjw]

The design I use is small and that has 100% efficiency too.

[Angpaur]

Yeah, but it uses liquids exploit and not everybody is willing to go that way. And I'm fine with the exploit to use it in cases when non exploity way is just a chore, like in storing gases. But in case I can do something without exploits I try to use it that way.

[psusi]

6 hours ago, Craigjw said:

The version of mechanical filter that I used in my O2 factory will fail if the output becomes blocked.  Simple mechanical filters that use a sensor to flip a valve fail when there is a power outage or if the output pipe becomes blocked.

I wouldn't call that "failing".. it just lets both things go the overflow route when the selected one can not be extracted.  You just have to set up your system so that the thing you care about is extracted and it's fine if some goes the other way.

[Storm Engineer]

23 hours ago, psusi said:

They are foolproof once primed and the room sealed.

Are they really? Because I sometimes see gases do weird random things, especially after loading a save. Is there really no way a pocket of oxygen somehow makes its way to the hydrogen pump?

23 hours ago, psusi said:

No?  There is another pump so the peak load on the wire can be higher, but the total average use is the same because they are moving the same volume of gas.

Only if they are always moving full 500g packets, thought I guess that's why you have pressure sensors.

23 hours ago, psusi said:

  In fact, the average use may be lower with mine since you never have a pump grab small packets of mixed gas.

Hmm, you have a point I think.

23 hours ago, psusi said:

Self Powered Oxygen Module.  Very old concept on the forums of using an electrolyzer and mechanical separation to avoid wasting power on a gas filter so your hydrogen generator makes more power than the system requires.

Ah yes, thank you! I know the concept, I have just never seen the abbreviation before.

23 hours ago, psusi said:

True, they won't run 100% and so you end up with only 3000 g/s of oxygen.  Still, 3 of your modules takes up 14 x 12 space and the 3 oxygen pipes will each only have 888 g/s.

True.

23 hours ago, psusi said:

They actually don't consume the 10 W.

Really? Is this a bug?

23 hours ago, psusi said:

It doesn't matter that the pumps won't have power either; any gas already in the pipe will flow past the unpowered shutoff

Which is why both exists from the filter loop have a shutoff on them, so gases stay in the loop until they can leave through an open shutoff.

 

So as for overall conclusion, I think I've learned a bunch form debating with you and others, so thank you everyone for the feedback! I hope I didn't sound too defensive.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, Storm Engineer said:

Are they really? Because I sometimes see gases do weird random things, especially after loading a save. Is there really no way a pocket of oxygen somehow makes its way to the hydrogen pump?

I've never had it happen unless the pressure sensors are set wrong.

2 hours ago, Storm Engineer said:

Only if they are always moving full 500g packets, thought I guess that's why you have pressure sensors.

Right, with a tradditional spom you use pressure sensors to ensure that there is always enough hydrogen on top for the hydrogen pump, and enough oxygen on the bottom for the oxygen pumps, and they never get the wrong gas or small packets.  In my most recent build I posted earlier, I left out the pressure sensors for the oxygen and instead relied on valves to restrict the oxygen output to less than the output of the electrolyzers so that too much oxygen can't get sucked out.

2 hours ago, Storm Engineer said:

Really? Is this a bug?

Dunno but it has always been like that and at this point, isn't likely to change.

 

[Craigjw]

9 hours ago, Angpaur said:

Yeah, but it uses liquids exploit and not everybody is willing to go that way. And I'm fine with the exploit to use it in cases when non exploity way is just a chore, like in storing gases. But in case I can do something without exploits I try to use it that way.

I wouldn't call it an exploit, I'd call it a feature.  The one gas per tile rule is part of the game rules/physics and not a bug, therefore this is not an exploit.  You can term it an exploit if you like, but you are missing out on a ton of really cool things to build. 

How can you say in one hand that you'll use infinite gas storage, but won't use an infinite gas storage electrolyzer as both these things use the same principle of one gas per tile.

This is an old argument. Everyone has their own play style.

[Angpaur]

OK. You go and believe that you are not exploiting in unintended way a game limitation of one element per tile. It's not a problem for me since it is a single player game and you can play whatever you want. If you post build that some people can consider exploity, then they will decide if they want to go that way or not and you should respect that.

6 hours ago, Craigjw said:

How can you say in one hand that you'll use infinite gas storage, but won't use an infinite gas storage electrolyzer as both these things use the same principle of one gas per tile.

I already explained that in my previous post. Do you want me to explain again? But I'm afraid I will be able to only quote myself, because there is not much to add.

[psusi]

19 hours ago, Craigjw said:

The one gas per tile rule is part of the game rules/physics and not a bug, therefore this is not an exploit. 

One element ( gas or liquid, not solid ) per tile is a rule.  It is also a rule that a gas vent has a max pressure.  You are exploiting the conflict between the two rules to overcome the second.  It may be a bug that isn't ever going to be fixed, but clearly you are violating one rule of the game by exploiting its conflict with another.

[Storm Engineer]

I would say that a vent not getting over-pressurized in an otherwise high pressure room is definitely not intended behavior.

I actually got scrwed over by this, when a small pocket of some gas got itself stuck on top of an oxygen vent in my base. I was just wondering WTF happened to my atmo suit docks not getting enough oxygen when the pipes should be backed up... only to find that this one went in the corner of my base was perpetually outputting while my base had over 7kg of oxygen per tile...

I'll definitely call this a bug.

[Ixenzo]

Bugs don't exist. Unintended features do.