Why is CO2 to O2 conversion rate of wild oxyferns around 4-5x and not 50x?

[Xilexio]

My recent experiment with a fully sustainable base with wild plants and no external input failed because my wild oxyferns didn't perform as expected. According to in-game tooltip, the mass of O2 it produces is 49.9x the mass of CO2 it consumes (or maybe 50x, assuming the game just does not show enough digits after decimal).

I made a few experiments in which I filled a chamber with oxyferns in different configurations and filled it with 0.5 kg/tile of CO2. After all CO2 except for one packet below 25g (minimum oxyfern pressure), I had only around 2.1-2.8kg/tile of O2. The configurations I tried were 5 oxyferns and 5x5 of free space, a chamber with the same size but with one empty space between oxyferns, and these two chambers with a layer of water to remove a small layer of CO2 at the bottom that was forming due to oxyferns taking CO2 from their upper tile.

The results above are similar to results in other tries and configurations. By the way, the speed of conversion was significantly faster when there was free space between oxyferns, and cases with lower ceiling but free space between oxyferns produced worse results.

Now, if no mass was destroyed and the conversion rate was 50x, there should be 10kg/tile of O2 with more than half of CO2 left over (25kg/tile if there was no pressure limit). So some mass has been deleted. I checked that oxyfern moves away a packet of CO2 before introducing O2 to the environment by looking at the pressure of CO2 starting from 0.5kg/tile right after the first packet of O2 was produced.

The total mass of CO2 above is 4493.6kg, when it started with 4500kg. There is 7.8g of O2. My guess is that some CO2 is deleted when it is moved away from the position of the newly created O2 packet.

Still, I'd like to use wild oxyferns to convert CO2 into O2 with roughly the same ratio as in their tooltip. Does anyone know a design that can circumvent the problem of mass deletion without producing extra CO2 (the only source of it being duplicants)?

[MarcinW]

Normally plants takes C (Carbon) from CO2 to add it to its own mass (leaves and branches) and emits pure Oxygen. This is how nature works.

[JRup]

1 hour ago, Xilexio said:

Does anyone know a design that can circumvent the problem of mass deletion without producing extra CO2 (the only source of it being duplicants)?

This is an example of my very small oxyfern ranch:

Pressure is kept slightly below the rest of the base to ensure CO2 pooling.

If you can guarantee only oxygen and CO2 will be in the environment then surrounding the upper tile of the oxyfern as shown will show great results. This is because the required gas separation is forcefully provided.

Harold and Ada are responsible for the nat-gas...

[Pedro_L]

1 hour ago, MarcinW said:

Normally plants takes C (Carbon) from CO2 to add it to its own mass (leaves and branches) and emits pure Oxygen. This is how nature works.

That is not how the game works tho

[Xilexio]

20 minutes ago, JRup said:

If you can guarantee only oxygen and CO2 will be in the environment then surrounding the upper tile of the oxyfern as shown will show great results. This is because the required gas separation is forcefully provided.

Thank you for sharing your design. What keeps the oxygen from going into lower tile of the oxyfern if the pressure there is lower?

Lovely sporechid right next to oxygen source there.

[JRup]

31 minutes ago, Xilexio said:

What keeps the oxygen from going into lower tile of the oxyfern if the pressure there is lower?

It's a combination of 1 element per tile and the fact that once the gases have settled by their respective buoyancy they won't do a vertical exchange.

31 minutes ago, Xilexio said:

Lovely sporechid right next to oxygen source there.

The buddy bud next to it is staring at it intently.

[Xilexio]

Thank you, @JRup. I experimented with that design and made a small contraption to test it.

It changed 0.5kg/tile of CO2 into roughly 25kg/tile of O2, i.e., the convertion rate I was looking for. This solves the problem completely at the cost of some additional space required above and below oxyferns. Also, it worked even with rather high spikes of CO2 pressure, so the design should work even with minor pressure issues.