Inefffective electrolyzer

[Anduril]

Hi,

I know we have some problems with electrolyzers - already dig some related posts but for me it looks like either I'm doing something wrong or they are really highly ineffective. Simply calculation shows that I barely hit 1:5 ratio. I used 'house' configuration with 5 electrlyzers - still needed algae deoxydizers.

Moved then to configuration on attached screen capture (and disabled algae deoxydizers). Oxygen generated by three electrolyzers  in theory should give 888g x 3 x 600 = 1598 400g = ~1600kg. My oxygen net is 324kg/cycle which translates to 1:5 ratio (324/1600 = 0.2). This is still average value.

The rightmost electrolyzer is the most effective (I would say 3:1 when compared to leftmost one) - most probably due to local oxygen concentration. Rightmost has at the bottom of airflow tile around ~1100g while leftmost ~1400g. 3:1 comes from observation - hydrogen  transfer.

Do you have any idea what to change to get at least 1:2 oxygen generation ratio (even don't think about value close to 1:1 )

 

@Klei, can we have any improvement to electrolyzer in near future? I'm not sure if I will get any answer here - maybe wrong forum but anyway just asking.

[Saturnus]

Aren't they using power and water, and producing heat corresponding the output though? Seems so to me so it's really just a question of putting down more. Annoying, sure, but not the end of the world

[Ciderblock]

I think you will get better hydrogen performance if you raise the electrolyzers up by one tile (since then hydrogen is released directly into hydrogen and oxygen directly into oxygen).

That said, your oxygen has to go somewhere, otherwise it will overpressurize the electrolyzers. You have 10 dupes. Dupes each take 100 g/s, or 60 kg/cycle, so your drain of oxygen is 600 kg/cycle. Without constantly opening new areas, you can't continue to get past that. You will also not even get that high if your dupes spend a lot of time in dig sites instead of in the base.

That doesn't quite resolve your 1:5 ratio (that alone would predict 3:8 instead). I would say that you're doing two things wrong. One is having a fairly large space but putting your electrolyzers close together. Spreading them out will improve performance. In particular, for a reasonably sized, nearly square base you can probably put one of those electrolyzer+pump "modules" in each corner and keep a good population of dupes running. If you really have more dupes than that, then you should probably start thinking about powered ventilation. (At that point you should have air conditioning running anyway, so powered ventilation isn't much additional loss).

The other is thinking in terms of performance per electrolyzer in the first place. Electrolyzers, once constructed (and assuming they are constructed to avoid gas deletion), have a fixed cost per tick of activity. So you just need however many you need, and metal is abundant, so it shouldn't really be a problem to make lots of them.

[trukogre]

"I guess that this is Oil Upgrade, so dupes each take 200 g/s,"

According to a recent bugfix update, that was a display error, and the dupes are and always were breathing in only 100g/sec

[Ciderblock]

1 minute ago, trukogre said:

"I guess that this is Oil Upgrade, so dupes each take 200 g/s,"

According to a recent bugfix update, that was a display error, and the dupes are and always were breathing in only 100g/sec

Thanks, I'll edit accordingly.

[Anduril]

The size of the base doesn't matter if net oxygen generation is positive - size only affects filling rate.

But anyway thanks - I will rise electrolyzers by one tile first and check ratio. spreading around a base is another option but then pipes configuration will be awful. Other option is to spread electrolyzers only and collect hydrogen at top of base. Still most probably have to have.

How many electrolyzers have you at this stage of game with 10 dupes?

[Saturnus]

5 minutes ago, Anduril said:

How many electrolyzers have you at this stage of game with 10 dupes?

About same ratio, currently have 6 with 18 dupes but they don't run all the time and air pressure is close to max at all times. It's actually intentional that I don't run them constantly as it makes cooling quite manageable. 

[Ciderblock]

2 hours ago, Anduril said:

The size of the base doesn't matter if net oxygen generation is positive - size only affects filling rate.

It does matter because it affects how fast the oxygen arrives to your dupes, which affects how fast it can escape from a neighborhood of the electrolyzers. Your electrolyzers can run faster if your dupes stay closer to them (or to their vents, if you're pumping oxygen around).

Mathematically you can imagine a 1D diffusion problem: at equilibrium you have a linear profile, whose y-intercept is the max gas pressure and whose slope is given by the rate oxygen is depleted at the other side divided by the diffusion coefficient. This can only remain nonnegative, as it of course must, if the sink is closer than the max gas pressure divided by the negative of the slope. The principle is exactly the same for 2D continuous diffusion; the principle is similar for ONI's discrete model of diffusion.

2 hours ago, Anduril said:

But anyway thanks - I will rise electrolyzers by one tile first and check ratio. spreading around a base is another option but then pipes configuration will be awful. Other option is to spread electrolyzers only and collect hydrogen at top of base. Still most probably have to have.

The pipe configuration isn't that bad. Keep in mind you are already oversaturating a hydrogen generator at 10 dupes (at equilibrium 1 hydrogen generator=8 dupes). So you could, for example, hook the left side pumps to one generator and the right side pumps to another. Then the issue is more about power grid layout, but that's always a difficulty.

2 hours ago, Anduril said:

How many electrolyzers have you at this stage of game with 10 dupes?

About 3, maybe 4? But I keep my base a lot more compact than yours at this stage. Again the issue is more about transport than production.

[Anduril]

The  main problem (looking from 1D/2D diffusion perspective & size of the base) with electrolyzers is the non-linearity caused by max gas pressure. If it is unlimited then size of base doesn't matter. However it looks like 'max gas pressure' for electrolyzer is rather small value. Assuming 2000g then after 3 sec without diffusion it is oversaturated and stops to produce oxygen.

Anyway - got a bit better result 1:4 .. 1:3 =(0.32) with raised electrolyzers by one tile. Slightly better result with electrolyzers spread around base + hydrogen at the top of base. Still ratio is bad but as I understand we have to live with current implementation until is fixed (or maybe never).

Thanks for help.

[Whispershade]

 

What ratio are you talking about? Electrolyzers to dupes or oxygen to hydrogen?

You can easily furnish 10  dupes with two electrolyzers.

I run the following configuration for electrolyzers. It is self-reliant until I develop a more sophisticated energy infrastructure, at which point I start running the oxygen pipe through 3 thermoregulators in a series to bring the temp down to about 28c. So the oxygen gets used to cool the dupe livable spaces.  In the example pictures the wire dropping down from the wire overlay just goes to a couple of exosuit docks because they're super low maintenance.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Ciderblock]

13 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

What ratio are you talking about? Electrolyzers to dupes or oxygen to hydrogen?

Anduril was talking about the fraction of the time that the electrolyzer runs.

As for your pictures, this works if you're pumping oxygen. This is desirable when you start doing air conditioning, but in the meantime it's easier to use them in open air configuration for power reasons. Pumping oxygen is quite power-intensive (an extra 48W per dupe).

[Whispershade]

1 minute ago, Ciderblock said:

Anduril was talking about the fraction of the time that the electrolyzer runs.

Ahh, I'm not sure I understand the need to maximize uptime on electrolyzers. I don't even pay attention to it. But seeing as I can saturate ever larger areas with just two electrolyzers for 10 dupes, I guess it is at least better than 5/9.

[Ciderblock]

1 minute ago, Whispershade said:

Ahh, I'm not sure I understand the need to maximize uptime on electrolyzers. I don't even pay attention to it. But seeing as I can saturate ever larger areas with just two electrolyzers for 10 dupes, I guess it is at least better than 5/9.

I agree: barring a scarcity of metal, you just make however many you need and it's no big deal. The performance doesn't even affect the power usage (assuming your pumps are on Atmo Switches).

[manu_x32]

Hey guys, I`ve never been able to make electrowheeze work properly or at least output oxygen at a decent rate and temperature.  But so many of you seem to use it, are you guys getting good temperature output out of your setups?

I tend to prefer using this kind of setup, which is similar but cooled by a water radiator instead of wheezeworths.  You kind of need to have water <= 25C for this to work well, but you can do this very early game without having to go get those weezeworths that are pretty far away.

What are your thoughts?  What are the reasons for preferring the weezeworth version?

Spoiler

 

[Reaniel]

11 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

Hey guys, I`ve never been able to make electrowheeze work properly or at least output oxygen at a decent rate and temperature.  But so many of you seem to use it, are you guys getting good temperature output out of your setups?

I tend to just not care about the the "hot" oxygen temperature of electrolyzer because I know I'd be transitioning to a liquidfier eventually.  If I really need temperature control in my base, I can just plug in a few fridge and forget about it.

It really just comes down to personal preference.  Using liquid pipes to cool air is very effective, but one problem I see is that you just don't have that much "cold" water to use.

[manu_x32]

1 minute ago, Reaniel said:

I tend to just not care about the the "hot" oxygen temperature of electrolyzer because I know I'd be transitioning to a liquidfier eventually.  If I really need temperature control in my base, I can just plug in a few fridge and forget about it.

It really just comes down to personal preference.  Using liquid pipes to cool air is very effective, but one problem I see is that you just don't have that much "cold" water to use.

Good points. Exploiting the fridge bug.   I never got to liquefying in a real game, so I never really looked at it this way.   I usually tend to try to find ways of cooling geyser water on the  cheap (ice biome cooling room, wheeze water fall, etc..., so I always have cool water, but maybe doing all this is not the best option.  Are you liquefying even before finding a steam geyser? Initial one with Hydrogen radiator I guess?

[Reaniel]

It's hard to say if it's a bug or intended change.  I personally don't see any reason for it to change into the current mechanism in the first place to be honest.  But since they've changed it so that it'd cool the surroundings, might as well just plug it in.

And no, it's more of a later game thing for me, usually around cycle 150~200 depending on whether I rush it or not.  However, I have yet to run into real problem with hot base due to electrolyzer.  It usually doesn't take until maybe cycle 150 when my mealwood farm starts experiencing temperature problem, and it's not a problem for me to get maybe a wheezewort or 2 in my base before that happens, which is enough to offset it in my experience.

Now, with the change in fridge mechanics, I don't even have to bother with the ice biome unless I really have to.  With dupes seemingly much easier to get hypothermia now in OI, I'm even more reluctant to be anywhere near that place if it isn't because of the wolframite.

[manu_x32]

@Reaniel

Would you mind sharing a snapshot of your typical electro-fridge setup.    I`m curious on the elctro setup and where you put the fridges, quantity, etc...

[Lifegrow]

Hot oxygen is never a problem I worry about - just build more electrolyzers than you need, and allow them to run intermittently to self-cool. Throw a few wheezeworts into the mix, and then regulate your base temperature with lamps. Easy as that. Not that it matters a jot, but they're fed straight from a geyser and my base runs at 16-20 degrees. I've now started oxygenating the asteroid with surplus oxygen to kill off all the slimelung in the rock (hence the outside of the base on the right side being somewhat oxygenated.

Example from my current experimental base :

This idea of efficiency is somewhat lost on me though as I build big, if I miss a few grams of hydrogen it really doesn't matter - i'm more concerned about sufficient oxygen. If I want hydrogen, I either skim it off my generator line, or build a remote electrolyzer nearer the task.

 

[Reaniel]

46 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

@Reaniel

Would you mind sharing a snapshot of your typical electro-fridge setup.    I`m curious on the elctro setup and where you put the fridges, quantity, etc...

I don't even have a specific setup.  My electrolyzers are free standing (collecting hydrogen at the top of the base), and I just place powered fridge on the sides of my farm levels.

As soon as I got my liquifier up and running, I'd just turn the electrolyzers off unless I need hydrogen.

[manu_x32]

@Lifegrow

Wow, thanks a ton Lifegrow, really awesome to see this, one image is really worth a thousand words, learning so much from this. 

Didn't know that type of open setup could still really be used without overheating and causing hydrogen floating in your base type problems. 

Fed straight from a geyser... just to be sure, input water temp doesn't change the oxygen output temp of electrolyzers, right?  I remember seeing some vids or threads where it was saying that it is, but then reading the opposite somewhere else.

 

[manu_x32]

12 minutes ago, Reaniel said:

I don't even have a specific setup.  My electrolyzers are free standing (collecting hydrogen at the top of the base), and I just place powered fridge on the sides of my farm levels.

As soon as I got my liquifier up and running, I'd just turn the electrolyzers off unless I need hydrogen.

Nice, so a little bit like Lifegrow above I guess. I'm gonna go try that guys, thanks so much!

[Lifegrow]

Just now, manu_x32 said:

@Lifegrow

Wow, thanks a ton Lifegrow, really awesome to see this, one image is really worth a thousand words, learning so much from this. 

Didn't know that type of open setup could still really be used without overheating and causing hydrogen floating in your base type problems. 

Fed straight from a geyser... just to be sure, input water temp doesn't change the oxygen output temp of electrolyzers, right?  I remember seeing some vids or threads where it was saying that it is, but then reading the opposite somewhere else.

 

You're more than welcome. If oxygen is your primary focus, don't worry about letting them over-pressurise, it means you have lots of oxygen, meanwhile your machines are cooling down  

Input temp matters not an iota - just remember to use abyssalite for your pipes bringing it in of course  

[manu_x32]

3 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

You're more than welcome. If oxygen is your primary focus, don't worry about letting them over-pressurise, it means you have lots of oxygen, meanwhile your machines are cooling down  

Input temp matters not an iota - just remember to use abyssalite for your pipes bringing it in of course  

Love your use of showers at the top to spread fridge coolness.  And your japanase style bedrooms with lamp heating look awesome!  Are those enough to prevent loud sleepers from disturbing the neighbors?

 

[Whispershade]

7 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

@Lifegrow

Wow, thanks a ton Lifegrow, really awesome to see this, one image is really worth a thousand words, learning so much from this. 

Didn't know that type of open setup could still really be used without overheating and causing hydrogen floating in your base type problems. 

Fed straight from a geyser... just to be sure, input water temp doesn't change the oxygen output temp of electrolyzers, right?  I remember seeing some vids or threads where it was saying that it is, but then reading the opposite somewhere else.

 

The output gas of Electrolyzers is always 70c regardless of the water you pump into them. This means that outside of creating hotspots letting them cool doesn't change the equation in terms of heat put into the asteroid.

I personally like to lock them up in abyssalite rooms and let them get to max temp, because then I can perfectly predict the temperature of the oyxgen I'm pumping around my base. But there are a number of ways to handle the problem.