Wow, electrolyzers 100% energy efficient

[ravalox]

Been playing this game for years and just now discover this little tidbit.  Unless my test apparatus is wrong, regardless of throughput, an electrolyzer's energy consumption is entirely based on water mass.  So many other equipment has some form of inefficiency, I naturally assumed an electrolyzer had as well.  I wish the aquatuner was as efficient.

[Neotuck]

The "inefficiency" comes from air pressure.  A lot of water and energy can get wasted if the electrolyzer is interrupted due to overpressure

[Ntr1cate]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

The "inefficiency" comes from air pressure.  A lot of water and energy can get wasted if the electrolyzer is interrupted due to overpressure

If i am not mistaken, he's saying the electricity useage scales with the input/output (if the electrolyzer uses 33% of the water to produce 33% of the output, then the electricity used will also be 33% too)

[ravalox]

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6 hours ago, Zerohayven said:

If i am not mistaken, he's saying the electricity useage scales with the input/output (if the electrolyzer uses 33% of the water to produce 33% of the output, then the electricity used will also be 33% too)

Exactly.  Early on, I saw how easily pumps for example could waste nearly twice as much energy without buffering the sensor (especially before reservoirs were added).  I hated seeing anything less than the 1000g in the electrolyzer info card.  As it turns out, it's completely irrelevant with respect to energy consumed.  In hindsight, I suppose it was more for the player to gauge how much O2 was being generated rather than efficiency.

[Saturnus]

Apart from a few edge cases where small amounts of air is being deleted due to improper deisgn, I don't think anyone has ever claimed the power efficiency of electrolyzers was ever affected by setup. It was always a question of uptime and filtering efficiency.

[ravalox]

Since I rarely sandbox designs, my first concern is power draw and my surprise is due to this deviation in equipment.  Irrelevant of setup, why would one think an electrolyzer is 100% efficient while all others are not?  I think it's somewhat a red herring to have explicitly provided this information in the hover card if I am not to take action to improve upon it.

 

[Saturnus]

Klei is not really good at writing in-game information correctly or even remotely up-to-date

Almost all machines only use power when actively doing something. In fact by a little extraploation you could say that is the case for all machines that use power.

However, aquatuners and thermoregulators use the same amount of power regardless of how large the packets they extract heat energy from are. Refrigerators use the same amount of power and are equally fast regardless of how many types of food and/or medicine it contains. So if you want maximum power efficiency of fridges you fill them with as many different kinds of food/medicine as you can.

[Nebbie]

Electrolyzers also, at most temperatures, delete loads of heat just by the fact that water stores a lot more heat per mass than hydrogen and oxygen gases.

[Neotuck]

5 hours ago, Nebbie said:

Electrolyzers also, at most temperatures, delete loads of heat just by the fact that water stores a lot more heat per mass than hydrogen and oxygen gases.

That's only if the water is above 70C

[Moonshade]

On 6/22/2022 at 3:15 AM, Neotuck said:

That's only if the water is above 70C

i think he meant thermal energy since he's talking about stores of heat per mass. and that's a bit wonky for sure. Thermal capacity for water is 4/(DTU/g*dT) and in it's solid form ice it's 2.05 whereas oxygen is 1.005 and hydrogen is 2.4 due to the way the water splits the (hydrogen&oxygen) (112&888) average thermal capacity is 1.16124. Due to these numbers thermal energy deleted regardless of the intake temperature. In it's most favourable form -2C you still lose (2.05-1.16)*270  DTU/g thermal energy

you're right if we'd be talking about perceived heat though.

[Neotuck]

5 hours ago, Moonshade said:

Thermal capacity for water is 4/(DTU/g*dT) and in it's solid form ice it's 2.05 whereas oxygen is 1.005 and hydrogen is 2.4 due to the way the water splits the (hydrogen&oxygen) (112&888) average thermal capacity is 1.16124. Due to these numbers thermal energy deleted regardless of the intake temperature. In it's most favourable form -2C you still lose (2.05-1.16)*270  DTU/g thermal energy

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. . . . . . what?

5 hours ago, Moonshade said:

you're right if we'd be talking about perceived heat though.

Well if it generates more heat than it deletes then what's the point unless the water is over 70C?

This is why most players tap cool steam vents for electrolyzers

[Moonshade]

 

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Well if it generates more heat than it deletes then what's the point unless the water is over 70C?

ehh? electrolysers delete thermal energy regardless of temperature of the water.

well lets take it simpler.
1 kg of water at 0C
has the equivalent amount of energy as
1 kg Hydrogen at 0C (approx.)
which has the equivalent amount of energy as
1 Kg Oxygen at around 270C (approx. rounded down.)

well in ONI physics, would have no clue about real world ones.

thermal energy, and temperatures are not the same thing.

[Neotuck]

16 minutes ago, Moonshade said:

ehh? electrolysers delete thermal energy regardless of temperature of the water.

Oh I see your point.  But you missed mine, and the meme was meant as a joke

Yes thermal energy is being deleted but @Nebbie said "deletes loads of heat" Perhaps I misspoke on my response? I didn't mean to imply thermal energy wasn't being deleted with cold water, only that it would be pointless given that both the oxygen and hydrogen is emitted at a set temperature of 70C

 

[Saturnus]

3 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Oh I see your point.  But you missed mine, and the meme was meant as a joke

Yes thermal energy is being deleted but @Nebbie said "deletes loads of heat" Perhaps I misspoke on my response? I didn't mean to imply thermal energy wasn't being deleted with cold water, only that it would be pointless given that both the oxygen and hydrogen is emitted at a set temperature of 70C

Indeed. If you have water below 70C for example from sieved polluted water from a slime biome that you intend to use for electrolysis, you might as well use the temperature delta between it's current temperature and the minimum output temp of electrolysers to cool something else down, the most common example being an early metal refinery setup basically for for free.