Compact, 10 kg/s, plastic-free, chlorine water decontamination chamber

[The_Licia]

After my quick google searches on this topic and only finding solutions that didn't support the full water flow, had an excessive and messy automation, occupied a lot of space and/or used many water shutoffs, I decided to do my own take on this problem and came up with this.

This system will accept a 10 kg/s input of contaminated water and output it germ-free, and requires no maintenance.

The system

Automation

Plumbing

Wiring

 

Setup

The only thing you might need to adjust is that only a single memory toggle must be sending a green signal. If more than one is sending green, connect an active signal switch to a memory toggle's reset port to turn it red, then disconnect it from the system

Explanation

For the lower third of the automation, just understand that when the door closes, the tank is allowed to empty, and the buffer is there to ensure that the door won't close until 120 seconds have passed, by which time the chlorine will have killed all the germs inside the tank.

The upper third is there just to ensure that when there is no water input, the liquid shutoffs won't open, so they won't waste precious 10W.

The middle third is the harder one to understand. The principle behind it is that when a tank gets full, it will "pass the turn" to the next tank. This can be achieved by using memory toggles: tank sends red signal, which becomes green after passing through the NOT gate. This signal activates the R input of the memory toggle above the tank, setting its output to red, and also activates the S input of the memory toggle above the next tank, setting its output to green. Since each tank's memory toggle is connected to its liquid shutoff, what this does is close the first tank's input and open the next one's. This has been set up to be a cycle, so tank 1 gets full, then tank 2 gets full, then tank 3 gets full. By the time tank 3 gets full, tank 1 will already be empty, so the system can process a full 10 kg/s input of water.

[Yunru]

Oof, that's a lot of automation. 

[sheaker]

Do you need 10kg/s? I am using very similar design but not 10kg/s. Rather more like 3.5 kg/s but it should be still enough to tame infected polluted water geyser. My design is using only two tanks. No liquid vents and no power source required (except liquid pump for infected water). Automation is pretty similar. If You would use another water tank on door instead of liquid valve my design would be 1/3 of Yours.

 

[Technoincubus]

Just linking three reservoirs in a chlorine with ZERO automation will still bring adequate results. Why make it 10000 times more complex?

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, Technoincubus said:

Just linking three reservoirs in a chlorine with ZERO automation will still bring adequate results. Why make it 10000 times more complex?

It's kinda automated, what with the feedback loop, just mechanically instead of digitally. 

[Nxf7]

On 2/28/2021 at 6:04 AM, The_Licia said:

After my quick google searches on this topic and only finding solutions that didn't support the full water flow

Really well done. Don't mind the haters when they are rude and can't explain why they don't like it.

You may or may not prefer this build. It's simpler but you "lose" 10-15t of p-water depending on if you use 2 or 3 reservoirs. Since it doesn't mention full flow or 10kg/s, nobody can blame you for not finding this in search results.

 

[Soulwind]

4 reservoirs sequentially. 1 cycle timer and 2 not gates.  That's all you need.

[EricS]

6 hours ago, Nxf7 said:

Really well done. Don't mind the haters when they are rude and can't explain why they don't like it.

You may or may not prefer this build. It's simpler but you "lose" 10-15t of p-water depending on if you use 2 or 3 reservoirs. Since it doesn't mention full flow or 10kg/s, nobody can blame you for not finding this in search results.

 

 

I like the design, and it's actually my favorite design for situations in which it works and you have no shortage of water to keep it primed with.  However, it breaks HORRIBLY if you mix polluted and unpolluted water sources.  The problem comes from the fact that tanks that contain two types of liquid will have an output that alternates between these two liquids.  That in turn means that if you have one type of liquid that is in the minority, it goes through the tanks MUCH faster than normal, to the point that you can get liquid out of it that is almost as contaminated as what went in.

 

So if you prime this with polluted water then feed some contaminated unpolluted water into it, you'll almost immediately get contaminated unpolluted water out of it.  Worse, if you prime it with unpolluted water, the first time you feed polluted water into it, you almost immediately get polluted water out of it.  I gave up on a few play throughs until I figured out what was happening and why, because it always worked when I tested it in sandbox mode.

 

I'd point that out in that thread, but I don't get the option to reply there.  I'm assuming that's because it's an old thread.

 

[sakura_sk]

2 hours ago, EricS said:

it breaks HORRIBLY if you mix polluted and unpolluted water sources.

Why would you mix polluted water and unpolluted water ? You usually would need decontamination to one of them (e.g. polluted water from a geyser). Bathrooms can either have germy polluted water or water. You choose the one that doesn't breaks your system.

[Yunru]

4 hours ago, EricS said:

I'd point that out in that thread, but I don't get the option to reply there.  I'm assuming that's because it's an old thread.

Yeah, blame the archiving system. It's also why searching in house is pretty much useless, and even Google's fiddly. 

 

I had thought about a megathread, but I'm lazy enough that I'd probably still need content less posts to keep it open. 

[babba]

[EricS]

On 2/28/2021 at 10:45 PM, sakura_sk said:

Why would you mix polluted water and unpolluted water ? You usually would need decontamination to one of them (e.g. polluted water from a geyser). Bathrooms can either have germy polluted water or water. You choose the one that doesn't breaks your system.

 

Mostly because I tend to set this up before I have pipe germ sensors and I have a tendency to suck up any water on the map by dumping it into my sewer processing system, just in case there are germs that I overlooked.  I've even dumped contaminated crude oil into this setup if there's not enough to make it worth setting up a separate decon tank for crude oil.  Kind of new to the game so I'm overly paranoid about germs.

 

[sakura_sk]

9 minutes ago, EricS said:

Mostly because I tend to set this up before I have pipe germ sensors and I have a tendency to suck up any water on the map by dumping it into my sewer processing system, just in case there are germs that I overlooked.  I've even dumped contaminated crude oil into this setup if there's not enough to make it worth setting up a separate decon tank for crude oil.  Kind of new to the game so I'm overly paranoid about germs.

Every liquid in one tank...? 

That's why filters exist  

[beeper]

On 2/28/2021 at 6:34 PM, Soulwind said:

4 reservoirs sequentially. 1 cycle timer and 2 not gates.  That's all you need.

Can you post a picture? It seems like there must be a shutoff/door someplace, otherwise why have the automation. If everything is in sequence and sometimes things don't flow, how do you get 10kg/s?

[EricS]

4 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Every liquid in one tank...? 

That's why filters exist  

You can filter first, and then have multiple cleaning tanks for those that might potentially be contaminated, or you can filter after they come out of the cleaning tanks.  I tend to do the latter because I'm playing with the DLC so space isn't unlimited, though now that I'm playing terra starts less, I'm considering shifting because trying to set up my central water processing to also handle polluted water or brine coming in below 0c is kind of annoying.

 

Also, you asked why, you didn't ask for a good reason to do it.  

 

I mostly pointed this out in case anyone else is seeing this problem as well.