Fun Project: Compact CO2 Storage and Processing Tank

[GuyPerfect]

I'm a reasonably new player, clocking a mere... <checks>... 88 hours in the game, so there's a ton I've yet to experiment with. I'm at the point now where I'm just starting to play around with gases, necessitated by the fact that all of the biomes surrounding the starting area are filled with noxious fumes. The recent introduction of the High Pressure Gas Vent couldn't have come at a better time, since you can use it to really cram a fair amount of gas into a closed chamber (up to 20kg/tile).

Additionally, I decided to try my hand at making a standard grid for my base. I settled on 12 tiles wide per platform, with three full tiles of space in between them. I like these dimensions because they're large enough for my most common constructs, and close enough that I can guide a Hatch around to a holding pen fairly easily (Coal Generator dealie). I had reservations about whether a single-tile-thick floor could hold a 10x3 body of water, and it absolutely can, so I think I've found a keeper...

The first gas chamber (of the non-lethal sort) I put together was a holding tank for my carbon dioxide. Since a man like me is still mainly concerned with keeping the Duplicants alive, the easiest way to introduce more oxygen is to reduce the total gas pressure in the environment. And the easiest way I can think to do that is to pump some of it into a high-pressure tank. So why not that carbon dioxide that I'm too lazy to use for farming?

With a top and bottom of 12 tiles and a 3-tile gap between floors, I'm effectively left with a 10x3-tile area to build in to satisfy all of the needs of my project. There needs to be a gas intake that accepts gas from some other source (like a pump in a high-CO2 region), a Gas Filter to separate only the carbon dioxide for containment, and an outlet for all the other gases. But that's not all! As long as I have the carbon dioxide contained, I may as well stick a Carbon Skimmer in there too, in case I decide to use it later. I know what you're thinking: that doesn't sound too hard to fit into that little space. But I wanted to maximize the utility of the storage tank, so I set some restrictions for myself:

1. The entire contraption must fit within the prescribed 12x3 tile space.
2. The storage area needs to be as large as possible; using the full 10x3 space is preferred.
3. The Gas Pump and Carbon Skimmer must be placed in the center of the box to minimize the time to total evacuation.
4. All inputs and outputs need to be accessible from both above as well as beneath the storage tank.
5. The bounding tile structure must not be used as piping overflow. The only gas/liquid pipes that can be accessed from the outside are for input and output.
6. All output machinery inside the box must be controllable via Switches to determine when to output.
7. The entire exterior of the box must be wired up with live power, where possible (the incorporation of Switches makes it impossible to be 100% live).

The inputs and outputs are as follows:

1. Input: Any gas
2. Output: All gases except Carbon Dioxide
3. Output (Switched): Carbon Dioxide
4. Input: Water
5. Output (Switched): Polluted Water

So that's two liquid pipes and three gas pipes accessible from the top and bottom. A template of the tank's layout looks like this:

     

Once it's hooked up, the Gas Pump can be turned on to fully evacuate all of the gas out of the chamber, leaving a total vacuum and a clean storage area.

So that's the challenge. Fill that up with pipes and wires in such a way that it satisfies all of the requirements (remember, only wires can be added to the tile border). Can you figure it out? Give this problem a try, and when you're ready, keep reading the post for the solution...

My own personal solution is as follows, but before you look at it, see what you can come up with:

Spoiler

The constituent layers of the storage tank are Ventilation, Plumbing and Power. The inputs and outputs have the following designation:

Liquid Pipes:

• Left: Water intake
• Right: Polluted Water output

Gas Pipes:

• Right: All gas intake
• Left: Carbon Dioxide output
• Middle: Everything else output

     

When everything is installed, here's how it looks:

     

So how was it? Did you find a simple, compact solution to get all this functionality out of the given box? Ever since I built this and put it into use, I've bee having a lot of fun with it. I set up a similar vacuum-sealed Polluted Water bin for it to empty into when it gets full, and am looking forward to harvesting Chlorine and Hydrogen from the next biome over.

I can already tell I'll use this tech for all of my fluid storage tanks. All-in-all, this game keeps getting more and more interesting.

[Lifegrow]

A nice little fun project for you/the community there buddy, good work  

You may want to investigate the benefits of liquefying your CO2 (if you don't plan on feeding it to slicksters!), as it creates a much, muuuuuch better ratio of storage:space, when you consider that liquid CO2 can stack to 2000kg per tile.

Honestly I rarely invest power into CO2 handling, unless I require polluted water. Turning it to liquid/solid with wheezeworts is just so convenient and what's more - it's free! 

This is a somewhat over-kill solution from a recent stream. Comfortably maintained an input of 1kg/sec of CO2.