Power Positive Automation Free O2

[DuckBoy]

While I doubt any pros will be impressed by this, here is my favorite electrolyzer set up so far. 

 

Goals were: 

• Power Positive (Though you need ~2 to run the water pump itself)
• All oxygen must get pumped (so you can put this construction anywhere)
• Electrolyzer must pump at full speed

Notes:

• Hole above top pump is unnecessary, but you can add an atmo there later to slightly increase efficiency. 
• Don't put hole below bottom gas pump, 1 microgram of carbon dioxide will almost inevitably sneak in during construction and screw up any automation placed there. 
• If you pump in any polluted water, you'll have to destroy walls and mop - it will disable bottom pump. 
• If you don't use all the oxygen fast enough, vents will block and system will stop. 
• Manual and Hydrogen generators can be placed anywhere, but you'll need the manual generator to start initially and to restart in event of drought.  Feel free to dump into a power plant for massive energy boost. 

Energy savings come from vertical alignment of the gas pumps.  Bottom pump will only ever pump oxygen.  Top pump will pump a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen.  Thus only top pump needs an air filter. 

For reasons unclear to me, 3 of these are able to sustain my base of ~60 dupes without issue, which is odd considering I thought each electrolyzer would only support 8-9 dupes.  Perhaps dupe oxygen requirements were lowered since I last played. 

[Argelle]

I'm no expert at all, so your deign is very appealling to me!

One question, how do you deal with heat with your setup?

I do struggle for this (see file attached)

 

 

[DuckBoy]

I generally build the system out of gold, and keep it far away/insulated from the farms.  Even if your input water is straight out of a geyser, I don't see it melting a gold electrolyzer.  The O2 will significantly heat the base relative to what you get out of an algae system, but that only matters to the farms, dupes don't seem to care as yet, though admittedly I've been running this off of 40 degree water from a sieve. 

My farms are sealed with insulated tiles and filled with carbon dioxide, so the heat from the O2 never actually stops plant growth.  Plant death is the only heat death I've hit so far, and this avoids it.  I'm currently around cycle 300 with 60 dupes and 1000000+ kCal of mushrooms on this base. 

I've found using wheezeworts in mixed gas environments like the one in your picture tends to make some of the gases disappear, which might muck with your efficiency.  They'll also be less efficient cooling if they're not cooling gas at max pressure and if they're not in hydrogen.  I think your central ones are at max pressure since you only have 1 gas pump for the electrolyzer, but they might eat some oxygen or hydrogen. 

[Argelle]

Thanks for all the tips.

I was asking about your set up as indeed I have too hot water coming in (37°9) hence hot oxygene, and a very ineficient system. But it took me 203 cycles to find my very first geyser (please, no laught !). I will now have a water source at last, and ways to get my base to the next step!

[DuckBoy]

Congrats on finding your geyser, my map has natural gas and steam within 10 tiles of the neutronium at the top of the map.  I didn't find the steam one until cycle 260. 

[PhailRaptor]

If memory serves, the Oxygen and Hydrogen created by the Electrolyzer have a fixed output temperature of 70 C.  It doesn't actually matter what temperature the input water is.

[Lacost]

1 hour ago, DuckBoy said:

The O2 will significantly heat the base relative to what you get out of an algae system, but that only matters to the farms, dupes don't seem to care as yet, though admittedly I've been running this off of 40 degree water from a sieve.

Algae Deoxydizers will only produce 30°C hot oxygen, while Electrolysers produce 70°C oxygen. Without a working cooling system you will kill your base with heat. This cannot happen with algae systems.

 

1 hour ago, Argelle said:

I was asking about your set up as indeed I have too hot water coming in (37°9) hence hot oxygene

The input water temperature does not effect the outcoming oxygen temperature. It is hardcoded to be always 70°C even if you put in 90°C hot water.

 

On the designs:

You usually don't need gas filters to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. There are some designs on the forums that can show you such systems. This will save you 120W of energy.

[QuQuasar]

7 hours ago, Lacost said:

You usually don't need gas filters to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. There are some designs on the forums that can show you such systems. This will save you 120W of energy.

Those designs do generally require automation though, so that's a point in the powered filter methods favor. I also like how compact you can make a system like this.

 

A 10x9 envelope is the smallest cooled O2 producer I've ever made, and it's completely standalone, which is glorious.

The temperature of the oxygen packets is a wee bit variable, though: ultimately they'll average out at a nice cool temperature, but right now they're alternating between 8 degrees and 60. Naively forking the output pipe could result in one section of your base overheating while another freezes.  

(Edit) Once it's had a chance to stabilize the O2 comes out at a much more consistant temperature, so don't worry too much about that.

[Albreo]

I have this still under improvement. It can sustain an entire base of 6 dupes, totally automate, hand build by dupes.

This one was leave to run for 10 cycles with no other O2 or power generator, very stable. Excess hydrogen was used to produce output electricity. O2 and H2 will not mix on their own if you don't know this set up already. Actually, 1 battery is enough. In this set up, I have two water pumps one to pump water for 2 electrolyzers and another to water my berry. As to why I did not hook this up directly to my main grid because I have been develop this under the mind set of a stand alone O2 generator. The result, it's too efficient. You can pretty much use excess H2 to play with something else.

The temperature is not that bad consider it run at full power (excess O2 go straight to void), nothing a few wheezeworths can't fix.

Produce O2 constantly at 600 Kg/cycle

Produce excess energy approximately 100 kj/cycle

[Mariilyn]

This is also my favorite method. I recently updated the oxygen modules in my main base (got the filter idea after reading the SPOM MKII post somehow) and builded a bunch of these near one of the geysers. In this base they are all hooked up on the main electrical grid though, but the H2 it produce supply a couple of generators and 2 thermo-nullifiers. The modules do not work full time since I only have 24 dupes but I send oxygen from there in many areas of the map.

The temperature inside seems to stay around 60C to 70C. For now the oxygen is simply cooled at the output vents with some wheezeworts. It is definitely a work in progress, especially the ventilation piping.