Central Air Conditioning

[StroamCR]

I've been using this setup since the Immune upgrade, but I realized that it hasn't really been shown anywhere else that I can find. Oxygen condensers using hydrogen-thermoregulator loops to purify polluted oxygen inspired me to try the same approach to create a kind of controlled central air conditioning system.

The idea here is to cool the oxygen being produced by a self-powering electrolyzer setup and then pump the cool oxygen out to the base. Since you can keep the oxygen output at a cool, constant temperature, you can also keep your base at a cool, constant temperature without any hassle, assuming you have an abyssalite heat wall surrounding your base. I was using wolframite airlocks as the heat-transfer surface, but you could also use refined metal tiles. Both the electrolyzer room and the thermoregulator room were surrounded by abyssalite tiles, of course.

I found with this design that with the thermo sensor set to 13C, the output oxygen would stay right around 19C, which kept my base at a nice temperate 23-25C. In the below screenshot you can also see my oxygen condenser and much warmer pepperplant farm and power plant to the left. The domestic part of the base is separated from the farm and power plant by an abyssalite heat wall.

[Lifegrow]

Just a little suggestion in case you wanted to make this smaller - if you removed one of your pumps from the hydrogen area, and one of your thermo regulators from your cooling chamber - then made your remaining thermo regulator toggle on/off in, say, 2 second bursts when needed - you could still process 1kg packets of hydrogen with a lot less space used. It'd still technically consume the same amount of power in the long run, but would make it a wee bit smaller

Also, consider using a vacuum pocket between rooms to control the temperature a little better - i.e 

This allows you to toggle the airlock open/closed which means you can enable/disable your cooling when needed. Would also reduce your power a little if your regulators aren't needed so often  

Welcome to the forums though bud - keep it up.

[Kabrute]

sand save on power consumption by using a combination of automation valve and manual valve, set the manual valve to something like 100 g/s to start with and set your automation valve to a temp regulator, both of these with a small bit of buffer pipe leading to the inlet of your thermo cooler, then fill the line slam full between thermocooler outlet and valves on a closed loop.  Feed into it with a bridge then can deconstruct bridge when its full.  Leave atleast 3 pipes of empty space between valves outlet and thermos inlet to adjust for micropacket dispersal, its a weird glitch with closed loops.  Anywho with this setup you can cut out the cost of pumping that hydrogen, just let the temp sensor turn the main valve on or off then the bleeder valve will start filling the gap line, once enough room clears on the backside the thermo will pass a full block.   Run abys between the thermo and your target cooling area and bam, you have an AC climate control loop installable in nearly any setup.

[chemie]

You are only using one pump for O2 from 2 electrolyzers?  Seems very inefficient.

[StroamCR]

6 hours ago, chemie said:

You are only using one pump for O2 from 2 electrolyzers?  Seems very inefficient.

The pump is indeed the bottleneck in the system. But, this base was only sustaining 4 dups, so only one pump was needed.

[QuQuasar]

This post got me looking at trying to make a compact, modular oxygen-and-cooling facility for larger scale bases.

 

The problem is, an electrolyser working at 100% produces a *lot* of oxygen, and by extension, a lot of heat. This particular facility works because it’s making use of a fraction of the total oxygen that could be produced by two electrolysers.

 

So, if we assume our goal is to extract all the O2 of a single electrolyser at a comfortable 20 degrees, doin’ the math, we get...

 

Specific heat capacity of O2:        1.005 (J/g)/K

Heat Differential:             50 K

O2 production of electrolyser:   888 g/s

Cooling capacity of a wheezewort in Hydrogen: 12000 J/s

 

Ergo:

Energy to cool oxygen output = (1.005 * 50) * 888 = 44622 J/s

... in wheezeworts = 44622 / 12000 = 3.7185 worts

 

Okay then. 4 worts per electrolyser is expensive, but manageable. But we’ve still got to transfer the heat from the oxygen to the worts.

 

This is where things get tricky. Thermoregulators reduce heat by 20 degrees, so our options are 10 degrees or 30. 30 is too hot, and cooling it that extra 10 degrees means shelling out for an extra wheezewort. Thermoregulators are also exceedingly power hungry: the slight excess from our self-powering oxygen conversion won’t cover even one of them.

 

Which leads us to passive methods of transferring heat. Except, these are their own bottleneck: it takes time for the heat to transfer from oxygen to a metal tile to hydrogen (I was so disappointed when I learned you can’t build tempshift plates behind tiles in the occupational update). It also requires a lot of space and surface area.

 

That’s as far as I got last night: power hungry thermoregulators or large, passive cooling facilities. I’ve since had a few interesting idea’s...

 

1.       The hydrogen comes out of the electrolyser at a constant 70 degrees, and is then fed into the hydrogen generator. Since the gas is destroyed along with any heat it contains, this gas could actually be used as coolant medium for a machine running at 100+ degrees, like a thermoregulator or even the hydrogen generator itself.

2.       From what I understand, heat transfer rate between gasses and solids is usually bottlenecked by the density of the gas. If we use doors to super-compress both the oxygen and the hydrogen, it might be possible to passively extract the heat from it with a much smaller surface area.

3.       The other option, rather than using wheezeworts, is to put the heat into a different coolant medium: for example, to pre-heat polluted water for boiling. But I haven’t come up with any designs that don’t consume power or stop working if the polluted water supply dries up yet.

 

Still working on it.

[Saturnus]

35 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

This is where things get tricky. Thermoregulators reduce heat by 20 degrees

Actually it's 14C.

[QuQuasar]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

Actually it's 14C.

Ah, that explains some of the confusing results I was getting during debug mode testing. I was already steering clear of thermo-regulators: just another reason to seek a passive solution.
             
I'm not at home right now, but I've mocked up a design concept that should fit in a 17x8 rectangular envelope without generator/battery containment or a 21x8 envelop with generator/battery containment. If supercompressing the oxygen really does allow me to transfer enough heat, the cooling room will be a neat extension to the 7x8 self-powered electrolyzer setup I've been using.

 

(Edit) Optimizing the concept now, it might be possible to condense the abysallite envelope to 15x8, maybe even 14x8, which is insane. 13x8 would require sacrificing insulation on the exit.
             
I'll share the designs as soon as I've had a chance to work out which of them actually work, if any.

[SkunkMaster]

My impression of thermoregulators and thermoaquatuners is that you use them to move heat. For cooling you use the weezes and the AETN.

 

It's usually kinda difficult to build big builds around weezes or AETNs, mostly because the cooling effect is strongest with hydrogen.

 

So, you wanna cool water, there are two ways. Either you use heat deletion from polluted water -> fertilizers, or you make hydrogen rooms with weezes and/or AETNs. And then you use the thermoregulators to move the heat to wherever your heat deletion system is standing.

 

Example: 

[Lacost]

9 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

1.       The hydrogen comes out of the electrolyser at a constant 70 degrees, and is then fed into the hydrogen generator. Since the gas is destroyed along with any heat it contains, this gas could actually be used as coolant medium for a machine running at 100+ degrees, like a thermoregulator or even the hydrogen generator itself.

 

This will be the idea you should follow for best results. Just place 3 Thermo Regulators in a room where you vent your fresh hydrogen in on one side and have a gas pump on the opposit side. The hydrogen has to pass the Regulators, heats up and then gets pumped into hydrogen generators to be destroyed. There is no need for Wheezeworts or other cooling methods.

 

Given that your base is more limited on cooling methods than on energy generation, the higher energy cost of Thermo Regulators is to be preferred over spending 4 Wheezeworts per Electrolyzer.

 

A 4th method would be using Electrolyzer oxygen to fill up exosuit stations. The stations will heat up in the process since the hot oxygen is stored in them but your Dupes won't mind breathing 70°C oxygen. This is only suitable for a 100% exosuit colony though.

[QuQuasar]

Welp. I tried my idea's out.

 

[Parusoid]

On 11/02/2018 at 7:56 AM, StroamCR said:

I've been using this setup since the Immune upgrade, but I realized that it hasn't really been shown anywhere else that I can find. Oxygen condensers using hydrogen-thermoregulator loops to purify polluted oxygen inspired me to try the same approach to create a kind of controlled central air conditioning system.

The idea here is to cool the oxygen being produced by a self-powering electrolyzer setup and then pump the cool oxygen out to the base. Since you can keep the oxygen output at a cool, constant temperature, you can also keep your base at a cool, constant temperature without any hassle, assuming you have an abyssalite heat wall surrounding your base. I was using wolframite airlocks as the heat-transfer surface, but you could also use refined metal tiles. Both the electrolyzer room and the thermoregulator room were surrounded by abyssalite tiles, of course.

I found with this design that with the thermo sensor set to 13C, the output oxygen would stay right around 19C, which kept my base at a nice temperate 23-25C. In the below screenshot you can also see my oxygen condenser and much warmer pepperplant farm and power plant to the left. The domestic part of the base is separated from the farm and power plant by an abyssalite heat wall.

Can you explain exactly how it works? Pictures are just not enough to follow the 'path of packet'. 

And how is hydrogen from the electrolyzers entering the top  pink chamber since it's closed off with the mechanized doors? 

[Kabrute]

Based on their desciriptions its not passing hydrogen to the top room, just looping from the pump to the cooler and back, transfering heat to the room with the thermotuner in it.

[PhailRaptor]

18 hours ago, Parusoid said:

And how is hydrogen from the electrolyzers entering the top  pink chamber since it's closed off with the mechanized doors? 

It doesn't, and it's not supposed to either.

That room and, specifically, those doors, are being used as a heat exchanger.  The lower room is where the freshly produced O2 and H2 are being created by the Electrolyzers.  While the O2 is perfectly breathable, it is pretty warm.  More than double the temperature where Berries will Stifle, stopping their growth.  Also dangerously close to the melting point of Plastic, if you are using any.  So filling your base with that is probably not the best idea.

To deal with this, a 2 room system has been setup, making use of Thermoregulators and Wheezeworts.  The upper room was prefilled with Hydrogen, because Hydrogen has both a high Specific Heat Capacity (how much heat it can store per unit volume) and a high Thermal Conductivity (how fast it will accept or give away the heat it has).  The doors, being made of metal, will also have a high Thermal Conductivity.  This means that heat from the fresh H2 will easily be transferred from the lower room to the upper room.

The upper room is half of a closed system with the room on the right.  As the Hydrogen in the upper room heats up, it will trigger the Thermal Sensor, which in turn will activate the Gas Pumps, sending the now heated Hydrogen from the upper room to the right room.  The Hydrogen will be passed through the Thermoregulators in that room, removing the heat from it and dispersing it into the surroundings.  This room is also filled with Hydrogen, in order to maximize the effect of the Wheezeworts.  The Wheezeworts work a lot like Thermoregulators, but instead of displacing the heat, they delete it.  Which is what allows this system to work.

[Parusoid]

7 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

It doesn't, and it's not supposed to either.

That room and, specifically, those doors, are being used as a heat exchanger.  The lower room is where the freshly produced O2 and H2 are being created by the Electrolyzers.  While the O2 is perfectly breathable, it is pretty warm.  More than double the temperature where Berries will Stifle, stopping their growth.  Also dangerously close to the melting point of Plastic, if you are using any.  So filling your base with that is probably not the best idea.

To deal with this, a 2 room system has been setup, making use of Thermoregulators and Wheezeworts.  The upper room was prefilled with Hydrogen, because Hydrogen has both a high Specific Heat Capacity (how much heat it can store per unit volume) and a high Thermal Conductivity (how fast it will accept or give away the heat it has).  The doors, being made of metal, will also have a high Thermal Conductivity.  This means that heat from the fresh H2 will easily be transferred from the lower room to the upper room.

The upper room is half of a closed system with the room on the right.  As the Hydrogen in the upper room heats up, it will trigger the Thermal Sensor, which in turn will activate the Gas Pumps, sending the now heated Hydrogen from the upper room to the right room.  The Hydrogen will be passed through the Thermoregulators in that room, removing the heat from it and dispersing it into the surroundings.  This room is also filled with Hydrogen, in order to maximize the effect of the Wheezeworts.  The Wheezeworts work a lot like Thermoregulators, but instead of displacing the heat, they delete it.  Which is what allows this system to work.

That's very informative. One... two more things.

Is placing one pump for hydrogen higher and pump for oxygen lower a guarantee that those gases wont mix at any point?

The point of this is to cool the oxygen. Is it cooled just by being next to the hydrogen or does it have to touch the part of the setup where mechanized door are (wchich seems hard, since oxygen is heavier and sinks under)?

[PhailRaptor]

5 hours ago, Parusoid said:

Is placing one pump for hydrogen higher and pump for oxygen lower a guarantee that those gases wont mix at any point?

For the most part, yes.  Where you "draw the line" is going to depend on the comparison in rates between new production from the Electrolyzers and the export from the Gas Pump(s).  Room size is also relevant, because of pressure variance.

It's only possible due to two of the mechanical rules of ONI.  First, any single tile can only contain a single fluid (gas or liquid) substance at a time.  So if a tile has Hydrogen in it, it can't also have Oxygen.  Similarly, if it has H2O in it, it can't also have P-H2O.  Or Oxygen.  Second, gases sort vertically based on their relative masses.  Hydrogen is the lightest gas that exists in the game, and as such will always be found at the top of an enclosed space.  Oxygen is heavier, so it will fall below the Hydrogen.  The combination of these two mechanical rules allows a system like this to work.

5 hours ago, Parusoid said:

The point of this is to cool the oxygen. Is it cooled just by being next to the hydrogen or does it have to touch the part of the setup where mechanized door are (wchich seems hard, since oxygen is heavier and sinks under)?

Yes, that is a bit of an inefficiency with this system.  Ideally, you'd put the Hydrogen exchange chamber on the bottom, with the doors making contact with the Oxygen instead of the freshly made Hydrogen.  However, Hydrogen is still Hydrogen.  It is still transferring from the fresh Hydrogen to the Oxygen.  But it's not as efficient because it's not only a longer distance, but also an additional step in the process.

That said, I would assume that is an artifact of how this particular build was put together.  Likely, to pre-fill the cooling part of the system with Hydrogen, some of those doors were set to "open", letting the Hydrogen flow up into it, then when the pressure in that area stabilized and had pushed out most or all of the Oxygen, the doors were closed.

[Parusoid]

On 12.02.2018 at 10:17 AM, SkunkMaster said:

AETN

whats that

[SkunkMaster]

41 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

whats that

Oh sorry,  Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier 

[Quigleyer]

On 2/12/2018 at 1:38 AM, Lacost said:

This will be the idea you should follow for best results. Just place 3 Thermo Regulators in a room where you vent your fresh hydrogen in on one side and have a gas pump on the opposit side. The hydrogen has to pass the Regulators, heats up and then gets pumped into hydrogen generators to be destroyed. There is no need for Wheezeworts or other cooling methods.

 

Are you certain this works?  It sounds like you are and I would really like to do this.  You wouldn't happen to have a screenshot of your setup would you?  I have the general idea, but I'm not entirely sure of the suction range of a gas pump.

This would be very ideal for me, thank you for the idea.

[Lutzkhie]

i dont wanna make a new post, this is just a quick question for those professionals here in ONI forum

if i directly supply oxygen from oxydizer to the exo suits will it bother the dupes due to high temps or not? because if not it might be an exploit if yes then no biggie

[PhailRaptor]

11 minutes ago, Lutzkhie said:

i dont wanna make a new post, this is just a quick question for those professionals here in ONI forum

if i directly supply oxygen from oxydizer to the exo suits will it bother the dupes due to high temps or not? because if not it might be an exploit if yes then no biggie

My understanding is that Dupes don't actually care what the temperature of the Oxygen they are breathing is.  When they are reacting to temperature, it is to their environmental surroundings, not specifically what they are breathing in.  So, by extension, they don't care at all what temperature the air in the Exosuit's tank is.

Doing it this way will cause the Exosuit Dock itself to heat up, though, which will in turn radiate that heat to the area surrounding it.

[SkunkMaster]

8 hours ago, Quigleyer said:

Are you certain this works?  It sounds like you are and I would really like to do this.  You wouldn't happen to have a screenshot of your setup would you?  I have the general idea, but I'm not entirely sure of the suction range of a gas pump.

This would be very ideal for me, thank you for the idea.

Yes that works, it's called heat deletion and is a part of the game. You can do this in several places, like for instance polluted water -> water siev / fertilizer, or oil -> petroleum etc etc... every time you have something that gets processed basically. 

[TheScaryOne]

14 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Doing it this way will cause the Exosuit Dock itself to heat up, though, which will in turn radiate that heat to the area surrounding it.

I pump in A/C and the exosuit docks still heat up from going down into the oil biome.

[Quigleyer]

11 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

Yes that works, it's called heat deletion and is a part of the game. You can do this in several places, like for instance polluted water -> water siev / fertilizer, or oil -> petroleum etc etc... every time you have something that gets processed basically. 

I understand the heat deletion part, I'm more interested in moving the gases around a room while still maintaining enough pressure to absorb the heat from the thermo regulator.  I might be misunderstanding but from your post it appears that you're absorbing the heat and moving the gas at the same time, am I correct in that?  

[Asteru]

Would it be beneficial to put thermal shift plates between the hydrogen area up top and oxygen/hydrogen generation area below it to help balance out the temp? OR am i not understanding the intent of the shift plates?