electrolyzer, time and output temperature

[storm6436]

On 7/28/2020 at 6:42 AM, Gurgel said:

Simplicity is never "pointless".

 As many times as you and I have disagreed on other topics, I certainly agree with this one. 

 Everything eventually boils down to economics and economy of effort is pretty easy to overlook, as are opportunity costs, when one is focusing on something to the degree where exclusion of related topics starts happening. 

 

Relevant to the OP: You can choose to separate gasses and cool them post-hoc, or not.  The savings are largely ignorable in the early/mid game, depending on what you're doing. 

As for me, the easiest, most simple design I came up with that "works" early in the game (and is easily modifiable as you get new tech/manufacturing) involves encasing a thermo nullifier in a H2 chamber that's directly connected to your electrolyzer chambers. The H2 can be split off to run the ATN and provide backup power amongst other options. Add a few places for WWs in the ATN H2 chamber and you can fiddle with output temps all you want. Tempshift plating certainly helps as well.  

 Worth noting, the WW assist makes it easier to use as a hot water sink until you have better temp control options (ie. steam gen chamber + aquatuner loops) 

 

Admittedly, my base model only runs 2 electrolyzers, but for ~20 dupes, it does what I need with minimal post-build fiddling once you dial it in.  Could probably expand it more when you need more H2/O2 but... usually by the time that starts being a concern, it's easier to build a second system elsewhere, which is largely what I did to do pre-chill for my LH/LOx plant. 

[Gurgel]

56 minutes ago, storm6436 said:

 As many times as you and I have disagreed on other topics, I certainly agree with this one. 

 Everything eventually boils down to economics and economy of effort is pretty easy to overlook, as are opportunity costs, when one is focusing on something to the degree where exclusion of related topics starts happening. 

That is the main killer: Complex solutions are much harder to handle and to evaluate in their effects and interactions. Usually hard enough that you overlook things, sometimes critically important things. I think most people struggle with this the most: The realization that everybody is limited and that doing complex solutions comes at the price of a forced reduction in understanding. The second thing is that coming up with simple solutions that work is much harder than coming up with complex solution that at least appear to be working.

 

[Steve8]

19 hours ago, storm6436 said:

 As for me, the easiest, most simple design I came up with that "works" early in the game (and is easily modifiable as you get new tech/manufacturing) involves encasing a thermo nullifier in a H2 chamber that's directly connected to your electrolyzer chambers. The H2 can be split off to run the ATN and provide backup power amongst other options. Add a few places for WWs in the ATN H2 chamber and you can fiddle with output temps all you want.

I do this too. But I run the oxygen pipes with a bit of radiant pipe through the chamber. That way you don't cool down the hydrogen that's being burned off anyways.

And it's not just for early game. The AETN works for hundreds of cycles when you're on a map with lots of reasonably cool water. And that's with up to 4 electrolyzers. When you have swamp and salt biomes around there is a huge amount of water you can electrolyze away without touching geysers for a long time. It's only when you put in hot water that it can't keep up anymore. And by that time you can easily build an aquatuner + steam turbine.

The hydrogen generators produce enough extra power (in addition to what you need for the electrolyzers and gas pumps) to run a water sieve, its water pump and still have enough hydrogen left over to run another generator now and then. A desalinator is probably too much though (I always use the PW so I haven't really tried)

For temperature adjustment you can build an airlock door under the AETN to turn it on and off.

[TheMule]

18 hours ago, storm6436 said:

As many times as you and I have disagreed on other topics, I certainly agree with this one. 

 Everything eventually boils down to economics and economy of effort is pretty easy to overlook, as are opportunity costs, when one is focusing on something to the degree where exclusion of related topics starts happening. 

I think the point here is that cooling O2 only adds zero complexity. Since abstract reasoning is hard, let's take a rodriguez design. Be it a full SPOM or not it's irrelevant here. Golden amalgam hydrogen generators are self cooling using the hydrogen they burn.

My thoughts:

1) cooling with input water is a very lucky thing, in my book. Most water sources are 95C (tamed steam vents, water geysers, salt water geysers). Cold water can be found around in quantities (ocean, polluted water in swamp biomes, melting frozen biomes), and may last for 1000s cycles, but it's finite. Among the geysers, only the polluted water variants are cold;

2) ok, let's say you do have cold water.... it's only a matter of where you place your radiant pipes. It can be at the electrolyzers level or at the bottom of the O2 chamber. There's virtually zero difference in complexity. If you place it at the bottom, you're cooling down only the oxygen, instead of both gasses. Yeah I have chosen a rodriguez because O2 is at the bottom. And yeah there's no insulation but given how poorly heat transfers downwards, hot hydrogen is going to stay hot at the top, cold oxygen cold at the bottom. 

3) if you do have 95C water, use insulated piping for it of course. Use a gas loop with radiant pipes (again at the bottom layer only), or even liquid pipes full of coolant if you let the water for electrolyzers in from the sides to cool down the oxygen.

[impyre]

I'm on cycle 350 on my current base, and it's only just starting to get where cooling is required (or things like farms stop working). So really, it's not required until later. I also generally set up my oxygen generators in distributed areas throughout my base in the early game, so I don't have to mess with it. When I later switch to a centralized system, I set up cooling and ventilation. In my opinion, it's easier if you wait until you can build the final product... so there's less to have to move/deconstruct. Of course, on hotter maps, this may not be as much an option. Using cold biomes can extend the amount of time before you need to worry about a long-term cooling solution... cool your base, or cool your atmosphere... or do both.

[storm6436]

21 hours ago, TheMule said:

I think the point here is that cooling O2 only adds zero complexity. Since abstract reasoning is hard, let's take a rodriguez design. Be it a full SPOM or not it's irrelevant here. Golden amalgam hydrogen generators are self cooling using the hydrogen they burn.

My thoughts:

1) cooling with input water is a very lucky thing, in my book. Most water sources are 95C (tamed steam vents, water geysers, salt water geysers). Cold water can be found around in quantities (ocean, polluted water in swamp biomes, melting frozen biomes), and may last for 1000s cycles, but it's finite. Among the geysers, only the polluted water variants are cold;

2) ok, let's say you do have cold water.... it's only a matter of where you place your radiant pipes. It can be at the electrolyzers level or at the bottom of the O2 chamber. There's virtually zero difference in complexity. If you place it at the bottom, you're cooling down only the oxygen, instead of both gasses. Yeah I have chosen a rodriguez because O2 is at the bottom. And yeah there's no insulation but given how poorly heat transfers downwards, hot hydrogen is going to stay hot at the top, cold oxygen cold at the bottom. 

3) if you do have 95C water, use insulated piping for it of course. Use a gas loop with radiant pipes (again at the bottom layer only), or even liquid pipes full of coolant if you let the water for electrolyzers in from the sides to cool down the oxygen.

 Yep.  With my design, I usually include enough extra space in the H2 chamber for WWs (usually 2-3 tiles on either side) that once I replace the walls connecting to the electrolysis chambers and toss in tempshift plates, the problem I almost always have is that output air is too cold Easier to adjust the number of worts with an eye towards long-term equilibrium temp.

  On a lark, I did leave the chamber run amok on one game to see what that long-term equilibrium temp would get to eventually with too many WWs..  Figured since I was feeding geyser water in, it couldn't be super low... and when the ATN shut off due to low temp, well, that answered that question.   And also put the idea in my head of using a similar design for LOx/LH pre-production. 

 In terms of efficiency, I'm paying the electrical cost of the electrolizers no matter what so no change there.  I already mount one more pump than most consider wise to ensure max H2 output and that the unit doesn't back up provided the air handler side doesn't back up... there's no real way to separate the H2 with as small a footprint as I have without making the vent piping a speghetti mess.   I figure being able to do all that without tuners etc is efficient enough.