Automatic Morb Slimelung cleaner

[ICKA]

Many players tend to be afraid of using morbs as a polluted oxygen source, since they create polluted o2 with slimelung already in it. Using automation I've found a way to force germs to move the way you want them to, then remove them. Here's the setup:

The morbs are located in the bottom left, placed in 400kg of water per tile. I tried using smaller amounts but that just deleted the water. The water makes the morb produce more polluted o2 than they normally would, since they do not register any gas pressure. The polluted o2 travels up and to the right, going through plastic ladders. Germs have a tendency to go to the bottom left corner in enclosed/partially enclosed systems, this combined with the ability of plastic to slow down the progression of germs (plastic does not kill germs as some people think) we can slow down the travel speed of the germs significantly. Now for the automated part:

The most important part of this is the pulser (the two BUFFER gates and the NOT gate located on top). This lets you send an on signal for a certain length of time, and then an off signal for a certain length of time. I got the design from CynicalBusiness. The timing on this isn't too important, so long as it's done every few seconds. Don't make it too fast or it can delete gas. I have mine set to 3s on both. The reason why the doors should be pulsed is to help with sending the germs downward. The doors open and close forcing the gas (and some of the germs) to move, eventually most of the germs from the ladders will go below and concentrate in the bottom left. Theoretically you could leave the top doors open until it's needed, but the germs would spread to the right.  The next important part is the clock sensor and it's attached components. This is the part that kills the germs. Once per cycle for 1% of a cycle the clock sensor will be on. The clock sensor is hooked up to a NOT gate which leads into an AND gate with the pulser. The NOT gate makes the clock sensor send out on signals for 99% of a cycle, then for 1% of a cycle (this is 6 seconds) it will send out off signals. When this happens the AND gate will send out an off signal to the top doors, closing them. Hooked up to the left of the clock sensor is a FILTER gate leading into a NOT gate. This makes it so that once 3s have passed after the clock activates the bottom doors close and the the germy polluted o2 is deleted. Then the system loops again once 3 more seconds pass.

Here are some before and after pictures of the germs:

 

I've ran this for more than 30 cycles and the germs have not passed the 4th tile into the deletion area. I hope people find this useful!

Edit: Plastic doesn't slow the progression of airborne germs like I thought. 

 

[Coolthulhu]

3 hours ago, ICKA said:

ability of plastic to slow down the progression of germs (plastic does not kill germs as some people think) we can slow down the travel speed of the germs significantly.

Haven't seen anyone show that there is any effect of plastic ladders on germs. Nothing in ladder code indicates it affects germs in any unusual way, other than sharing some of the germs with dupes climbing them.

[PhailRaptor]

1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

Haven't seen anyone show that there is any effect of plastic ladders on germs. Nothing in ladder code indicates it affects germs in any unusual way, other than sharing some of the germs with dupes climbing them.

What about the Germs code?  It's likely related to viral reproduction rates, which are based on materials.  Ergo, Plastic.

[BlueLance]

Well regardless of whether plastic does or does not affect the germs the setup in the OP does seem to be keeping them to the side, Can we get a temperature overlay?

[Coolthulhu]

2 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

What about the Germs code?  It's likely related to viral reproduction rates, which are based on materials.  Ergo, Plastic.

Now you "only" need to show that there is an exchange of germs between gases and ladders.

[BlueLance]

1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

Now you "only" need to show that there is an exchange of germs between gases and ladders.

Thats a fair point, there is no actual exchanges between solid, liquid or gasses. I forgot about that.

[Saturnus]

I'm not sure how it is relevant if ladders do or do not slow down or affect germs in any way?

Just because the OP erroneously concluded that the ladders in some way helped doesn't mean that the set up doesn't work.

Granted, it's an extremely inefficient way to deal with the problem compared to cooling or heating the polluted oxygen to get rid off slime lung instead but at least it works. 

[clickrush]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I'm not sure how it is relevant if ladders do or do not slow down or affect germs in any way?

Just because the OP erroneously concluded that the ladders in some way helped doesn't mean that the set up doesn't work.

Granted, it's an extremely inefficient way to deal with the problem compared to cooling or heating the polluted oxygen to get rid off slime lung instead but at least it works. 

Is it though? Door watt consumption is very limited and as I understood it only the four top doors are regularly opening and closing every few seconds. If you'd but the buffer on 4s that would be 120W energy consumption.

A hydrogen cooling loop needs much more than that. You need: Worts (limited ressource), pump the initial hydrogen, constantly pump the hdyrogen through 1-x regulators. Granted as soon as you cooled the gas down initially your consumption goes down. And you actually make pure O2 with this instead of germ free PO2.

[Saturnus]

11 minutes ago, clickrush said:

Is it though?

You not getting the efficiency I'm talking about then. I'm talking about you are deleting a bunch of PO2 just to get rid of germs when it could have been pumped to one of the hydrogen crystal cooler areas and get deleted of germs pretty much cost free. To delete germs in 500g/s of PO2 with the hydrogen crystal cooler costs about 0.08Js worth of hydrogen.

Btw, you don't need to liquefy the PO2 to make it germ free. Cooling it to just -10C will do it. 

[ICKA]

I specifically wanted to see if I could remove the germs from polluted o2 without heat treatment. Since the project I plan on using this for is likely to have slicksters in it and I was also just curious if it was possible without heat treatment. It is wasteful but it works, and if need be the efficiency can be improved by making the deletion chamber 3 doors long instead. 2 doors might work but if something goes wrong the germs would easily spread out of the deletion chamber area.

If you could also make the clock activate once per 2 cycles that would also greatly improve the efficiency, I might work on an improved design later.

Edit: Also yeah, I was wrong about the plastic ladders.

[Saturnus]

14 minutes ago, ICKA said:

If you could also make the clock activate once per 2 cycles that would also greatly improve the efficiency.

I get that you wanted to do it without heat treatment. I applaud it. My first comment above was merely mentioning that while other posters discussed if the plastic ladders helped or not, I couldn't really see if it mattered. You achieved your goal. And although not the most efficient way of doing it. It certainly works.

It's not a problem to have something work every other cycle... or any number of cycles really. If just every other then a simple flip-flop will do. If more cycles needs to pass you need a binary counter as discussed in this thread

 

[Whispershade]

2 hours ago, clickrush said:

A hydrogen cooling loop needs much more than that. You need: Worts (limited ressource), pump the initial hydrogen, constantly pump the hdyrogen through 1-x regulators.

You don't need wheezeworts for cooling even prior to the new crystal cooler machine. It has been entirely possible to cool an abundance of thermo regulators with polluted water from generators/carbon skimmers. I haven't been using wheezeworts in my base to any large degree since the Outbreak update when a number of world generator builds didn't have wheezeworts in them at all. My last colony has 11 hydrogen radiators cooled by thermo regulators, not one was cooled by wheezeworts.

[ICKA]

Here's the new and improved version: 

Also here's the temperature overlay:

The deletion chamber has been shortened to be only 3 doors wide and the deletion mechanism only activates once every four cycles. The temperature slowly stabilized to about 114 F or 45.56C. It's lower in this picture because I stuck a wheezewort in there for a bit.

Thanks to @Saturnus for the help!