The anti-SPOM: Power or Hydrogen from water

[Gurgel]

If you want to turn water into Hydrogen or power, things are a bit different from a SPOM. In particular, pumping that Oxygen takes far too much energy. Here is an optimized design for letting the Oxygen dissipate into space, while recovering the Hydrogen, which can then be turned into power.

This is based on 3 electrolyzers. Note that changing anything will likely decrease uptime and/or increase Hydrogen loss. I recommend using multiple units instead of trying to make this larger.

• Can take water at 95C without problem. Even a bit warmer is no problem. 
• Materials needed: Just regular ones, not even Steel is needed.
• Gets around 97% uptime and 100% Hydrogen efficiency. That translates to 2910g/sec H2O used and 326g/sec of Hydrogen produced.
• No Oxygen observed in the Hydrogen stream for > 100 cycles, hence output filter is optional.
• Power generation per unit is around 2050W, including pumping the water and an output filter.
• Building is 13x18 (HxW), and 2 tiles of Space exposure below, hence 15x18 per unit.
• Pressure sensor is set to 800g (needed to keep O2 out of the output during start-up), gas sensor is set to Hydrogen.
• Filter gate is set to 5 seconds.
• The valve on the right is not needed, I just use it to estimate flow.
• Can of course also use regular power wiring.

Regular view:

Automation view:

Liquid view:

Gas view after it has stabilized:

[psusi]

6 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Power generation per unit is around 2050W, including pumping the water and an output filter.

Sensor/shutoff filters take no power

[Neotuck]

28 minutes ago, psusi said:

Sensor/shutoff filters take no power

true, don't know why they require connection to an active power grid when they pull nothing

[Craigjw]

When I use this configuration of anti-spom, I like to add doors at the bottom in the case that the water supply doesn't dry up, which results in hydrogen leakage.  You have already found this from an earlier design, so I'm surprised that you didn't add them to this design also.  However, early game when Steel isn't available, I can certainly see the benefit in this approach.

For a permanently open setup like this, I'd be tempted to add a couple of backup storage tanks that release a minimum of water when the pressure drops too low, just to prevent hydrogen leakage at the bottom should water run dry.

Is there much loss of O2 through the mesh tiles?

What is the minimum flow of water required to sustain this without any hydrogen leakage?

3 hours ago, Neotuck said:

true, don't know why they require connection to an active power grid when they pull nothing

It's so that the dupes have the opportunity to electrocute themselves.

 

[Gurgel]

7 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

When I use this configuration of anti-spom, I like to add doors at the bottom in the case that the water supply doesn't dry up, which results in hydrogen leakage.  You have already found this from an earlier design, so I'm surprised that you didn't add them to this design also.  However, early game when Steel isn't available, I can certainly see the benefit in this approach.

I removed them as they are not needed if you have the water. If you cannot fully supply the water, replace the lowest row of drywall with doors and a pressure sensor. That will take some more optimization though to work well, and I have pretty close to 3x the water one of these needs on my current map and hence saw no need. The goal was to get maximum uptime to have minimum wasted electricity. Electrolyzers seem to pull full power even when running at 2/3 or 1/3 load.

8 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

What is the minimum flow of water required to sustain this without any hydrogen leakage?

I only ever tested with max or close to max. Max is 2910g/sec.

[DonDegow]

This looks unnecessary big and could be simplified further imo.

[Craigjw]

It can be shrunk significantly, however, you'd lose a lot of electrolyzer efficiency.  The overall height is required for the separation of gasses, if it were smaller in height, oxygen will pollute the hydrogen line.  From a previous build I now that using less height below the electroylzer, meant that hydrogen would escape from the bottom.

The electrolyzer spacing could be improved and perhaps 2 or 3 tiles width reduced without too much impact on efficiency though.

[Gurgel]

19 hours ago, DonDegow said:

This looks unnecessary big and could be simplified further imo.

Not from my observations. This is optimized for efficiency, not size.

16 hours ago, Craigjw said:

The electrolyzer spacing could be improved and perhaps 2 or 3 tiles width reduced without too much impact on efficiency though.

Not from my observations. However, I could obviously not try all options. So if you have a better one....

[Craigjw]

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Not from my observations. However, I could obviously not try all options. So if you have a better one....

The spacing of the electrolyzers is not uniform, which leads me to think that the spacing could be reduced slightly, however, I may be wrong in saying this, which  is why I say, perhaps and also included the mention on reduced efficiency if the spacing was reduced.

I could suggest changing the orientation of the electrolyzers and spacing them out more uniform perhaps, so that the spacing between each output of the electroylzer is uniform with respect to each other and the walls.  In your build, each electrolyzer has it's output on the right tile.  The left electroylzer is 3 tile from the wall, while the right electrolyzer is 1 tile away from the wall. There is also 4 tiles space between left electrolyzer pair and 5 tile space between the right electrolyzer pair.

A good design all in all.  Space electrolyzers have been a staple in most of my games, but when they nerfed backing tiles behind mesh tiles, I dismissed this type of design thinking that the vacuum underneath the electrolyzer in the mesh tiles would break it completely, which led me to using an overpressure mechanic for a space electrolyzer, which some believe to be a bit too exploity. 

Damn Klei for nerfing backing tiles!

[Gurgel]

41 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

The spacing of the electrolyzers is not uniform, which leads me to think that the spacing could be reduced slightly, however, I may be wrong in saying this, which  is why I say, perhaps and also included the mention on reduced efficiency if the spacing was reduced.

You are welcome to try to beat the 97% uptime and 100% H2 effectiveness I get. The apparent asymmetry is there for a reason as is the spacing.

[KittenIsAGeek]

IDK.. I use three gas pumps with two electrolyzers and a liquid pump.  With 6 to 10 dupes, I produce enough hydrogen to produce their oxygen and run my base.  I've got 3 maps with Super Sustainable around cycle 150.  I supplement with hamster wheel power when I begin industrializing, and in my current map I still haven't started using fossil fuels.  I've got 3 steam turbines now, four hydrogen generators, and 4 hamster wheels. 

In my observation, there are some key factors that make it work.  Clearly @Gurgel will get more useable power out of his setup than I will as he isn't operating two gas pumps continually, but I much prefer piping the oxygen where I need it.

1. Engineering stations aren't necessary if you want self powering, but they're crucial if you want power for use in the rest of your base.
2. Don't waste power.  Only run the generators when you need to charge batteries.  Sure, you can run 1.2 hydrogen generators continuously with the oxygen breathed by 9 dupes, but if you're not using smart batteries, you're wasting power.
3. Separate the hydrogen from the oxygen by position, rather than using a powered filter.  Even though you can also filter using a valve-bridge feedback loop, your pumps will be much more efficient if they only pump full packets when they're running.

Anyway, here's a pic of my current setup. 

The hydrogen pressure sensor is set at "above 1000."  They oxygen pressure sensors are set to "above 500."  

As Gurgle stated above, spacing is crucial.  You need enough space for the oxygen and hydrogen to separate naturally, but not so much space that hydrogen can't occasionally touch the top of the electrolyzers.  You also want to make sure that your hydrogen gas pump is ONLY in hydrogen and can never pull oxygen.

Spoiler

This is in a new area of my base that doesn't have any dupe activity beyond building it.  It currently only provides oxygen for three atmo suits and has only been running for 15 cycles or so.

The turbine hasn't fired up yet (the water is only up to about 60c) even though my cooling pool is at 18c.  The hydrogen generator on top powers everything but the aquatuner.  The turbine and secondary hydrogen generator are connected to the aquatuner and will be connected to the main grid shortly.  As you can tell by the hydrogen room, I'm producing enough hydrogen to run everything, including cooling the oxygen, and still have quite a bit of surplus -- and this is just from producing oxygen to fill a gas reservior and three atmo suit docks.

Note on temps: You'll want to use gold amalgam or aluminum ore for the electrolyzers and gas pumps in the production room if you're not doing any cooling.  If the room is completely insulated, it will reach steady state around 80c with 95c water.

The liquid coolant cycles in a reservoir unless the cooling pool rises above 18c.  The aquatuner kicks on when the coolant is warmer than 6.9c, but that's because I don't think I adjusted the liquid pipe thermo sensor after building it.  The steam turbine kicks on when the steam temperature is over 150c, and the battery needs charging.  The secondary hydrogen generator kicks on when the battery charge drops below 20% so the turbine will have priority once the steam is up to temp.

The turbines and generators aren't all in the same room because I was playing around with things and built a step at a time.  Yes, its a mess.  Anyway.

The POINT is that its not difficult to get a lot of extra power out of electrolyzing oxygen. 

 

When producing a very steady 1000g/s of oxygen, this provides a respectable 126g/s of hydrogen.  When operating at capacity, the average power draw is about 720 watts once you've reached steady-state on your cooling pool.  I don't feel like mathing up the fraction that the aquatuner runs, nor am I going to run the calculations on the fraction that your electrolyzers aren't running.  Anyway, a tuned up hydrogen generator produces 1200 watts.  Burning all the hydrogen produced will give about 1512 watts, leaving 792 watts of surplus power for use in your base. That is also without taking into consideration the steam turbine.

An un-tuned hydrogen generator produces 800 watts.  Using electrolysis to produce (and cool!) the oxygen for my base gives me the equivalent power of running an un-tuned hydrogen generator continually.

 

Gurgel's build is great for producing power and this isn't a post against it. His design focuses on hydrogen production; it does a very good job of that.  Mine is geared towards 1000g/s of continual oxygen production.  This post is simply to show that there's a lot of flexibility in getting extra power out of the electrolyzers. 

[Crimsontide]

@KittenIsAGeek

Each electrolyzer can saturate 2 gas pumps and using a double bridge filter the whole system (2 pumps + 1 electrolzyer in a single closed room) can have 100% up time, zero loss of either gas, and no risk of gas mixing.  If you watch closely the pumps will always hit 500g/s on average.  From time to time you'll get smaller than 500g packets of H2, but the following packet of O2 will always be > 500g and make up the difference.  It seems pumps have a small internal buffer that keeps them running at 100% even in multi-element scenarios.

The only thing is that it seems you must build it vertically, horizontally causes hydrogen deletion (I have no idea why).

[Angpaur]

5 hours ago, Crimsontide said:

The only thing is that it seems you must build it vertically, horizontally causes hydrogen deletion (I have no idea why).

Vertical 2 pump build also deletes hydrogen. Not much (4.3% in the best case, but can be also 8.5% in case of some builds) but still some of it gets deleted.

[DonDegow]

@Gurgel I like your confidence in your system but I have a few flaws in mind.

What happens when your batteries are full and the system stops consuming hydrogen?

Spoiler

You keep filling the room with hydrogen and consuming water at first that's great, it's simply a hydrogen battery; at some point though H2 max pressure stops the electrolyzers until it vents to space, losing on your 100% H2 efficiency and wasting water. This scenario doesn't seem realist? Let's assume you have solar power, on a good day you won't need any water converted to power, unbalancing your system.

One solution is having doors that stop the venting either when battery full or almost no O2 in room.

Resource consumption efficiency is very important I agree but efficiency should also consider build size, materials cost, build complexity/time, dupe time (obviously none there) etc.

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, DonDegow said:

@Gurgel I like your confidence in your system but I have a few flaws in mind.

What happens when your batteries are full and the system stops consuming hydrogen?

This is obviously designed as permanent on. It has a lengthy start-up cycle (never measured it, but may be more than one cycle), hence it is not really suitable for on/off operation.

4 hours ago, DonDegow said:

Resource consumption efficiency is very important I agree but efficiency should also consider build size, materials cost, build complexity/time, dupe time (obviously none there) etc.

Obviously, you need to optimize for one thing in any kind of optimized build. Otherwise you get a "compromise" build, not an optimized one.

[KittenIsAGeek]

15 hours ago, Crimsontide said:

@KittenIsAGeek

Each electrolyzer can saturate 2 gas pumps and using a double bridge filter the whole system (2 pumps + 1 electrolzyer in a single closed room) can have 100% up time, zero loss of either gas, and no risk of gas mixing.  If you watch closely the pumps will always hit 500g/s on average.  From time to time you'll get smaller than 500g packets of H2, but the following packet of O2 will always be > 500g and make up the difference.  It seems pumps have a small internal buffer that keeps them running at 100% even in multi-element scenarios.

The only thing is that it seems you must build it vertically, horizontally causes hydrogen deletion (I have no idea why).

This must have been a recent change.  I ran tests a while back and pumping mixed gas always reduced the power efficiency of the pumps.

9 hours ago, Gurgel said:

This is obviously designed as permanent on. It has a lengthy start-up cycle (never measured it, but may be more than one cycle), hence it is not really suitable for on/off operation.

Some small design changes could improve your system's reliability.  There's nothing wrong with 'designed for continual use,' but its been my experience that something always goes wrong at some point.  For example, you could have a hydrogen gas sensor somewhere in the room that disables the electrolyzers when it goes active.  That would detect the case that you're generating more hydrogen than you're using.  Somewhere below it, where it would always be in oxygen, you can have a gas pressure sensor.  This would detect the case that you're not producing enough oxygen for whatever reasons and either turn the electrolyzers back on or shut doors to seal off the room. 

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Some small design changes could improve your system's reliability.  There's nothing wrong with 'designed for continual use,' but its been my experience that something always goes wrong at some point.  For example, you could have a hydrogen gas sensor somewhere in the room that disables the electrolyzers when it goes active.  That would detect the case that you're generating more hydrogen than you're using.  Somewhere below it, where it would always be in oxygen, you can have a gas pressure sensor.  This would detect the case that you're not producing enough oxygen for whatever reasons and either turn the electrolyzers back on or shut doors to seal off the room. 

I agree and these sensors (Hydrogen and pressure) are there. You should not get any Oxygen in the output on start-up and shut-down. I just tested this only 2 or 3 times though, so no firm assurances. But if you shut down and start-up, efficiency likely goes to hell.