Electrolizer designs

[Kabrute]

I'm using this one electrolizer to provide 90% of my O2 needs, its own power AND the central "survival" core of my base.
those backup manual genes haven't been used in more than 10 cycles and then only because I installed the overflow line without a feedback buffer first which resulted in rolling brownouts

I know its not cooling itself or anything, but how else can I improve it?

[Kuirem]

Use a Gas Filter? My head hurt just looking at that thing 

More seriously: would you mind sharing a screenshot with the input/output hidden (ALT + S) in Ventilation overlay? The middle part is impossible to read.

[Kabrute]

use filters to prime valve loops, set valves to 2 g/s

electrolizer goes full blast, makes a ton of heat but I'm pullin straight off a geyser so its not making much heat

thanks to that viewing mode I noticed this....

purely graphical but o.O

[Kabrute]

Hpower.yaml

[Kasuha]

2 hours ago, Kabrute said:

I know its not cooling itself or anything, but how else can I improve it?

Electrolyzer at "full blast" is not helping anything. Two electrolyzers that are over pressure half the time use exactly as much water and power and generate exactly as much oxygen as one electrolyzer running constantly, except you don't need to make arrangements necessary to keep them running at "full blast".

If you use auto-separation of gases, you get better yield of hydrogen,  you won't need all the gas filtering machinery around it, and you'll be able to pressure-control your pumps to only scoop full 500 g packets, saving power.

[Yoma_Nosme]

I like the mechanical filter! Very nicely done! Do the electrolyzers over pressure? If not maybe add a atmo sensor for the pumps to lower the power consumption a little bit. 

[Oozinator]

I like my perlator more ^^

 

[Kabrute]

excess hydrogen was causing the upper pumps line to back up leading to over-pressure.  Since adding the loop and over-dump it hasn't backed up. As is the gene the runs just this package spends as much time off as on thanks to automation, this combined with the electro putting out more than a gene can drink per second is what lets me feed a second gene at a constant.  Me not running everything at once in my base is leading to excesses there hence the need for the further overflow.  Outbound O2 packets from the filter vary in size between 998 and 500 with the majority being over 800g.

the idea is to never have a "blocked pipe" state at the pumps unless I just don't need O2 and to that end it is working.  Will need to scale up to a second one if I plan to increase my population.

[Kuirem]

30 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

Electrolyzer at "full blast" is not helping anything. Two electrolyzers that are over pressure half the time use exactly as much water and power and generate exactly as much oxygen as one electrolyzer running constantly, except you don't need to make arrangements necessary to keep them running at "full blast".

If you use auto-separation of gases, you get better yield of hydrogen,  you won't need all the gas filtering machinery around it, and you'll be able to pressure-control your pumps to only scoop full 500 g packets, saving power.

Do you have a design with two electrolyzers to share?

[Kasuha]

1 minute ago, Kuirem said:

Do you have a design with two electrolyzers to share?

You can make any number of these units you want, their total use of power and water will always be proportional to how much oxygen you draw from them.

An improvement preventing them going off balance would be to disable the oxygen pump if hydrogen is over pressure. That's adding one AND and one NOT gate to the automation which is now trivial. That then prevents them ever getting their layers mixed up and pumps drawing wrong element after initial settling period. You could get the oxygen production halted if the hydrogen pipe fills up, but usually it's not hard to get rid of excess hydrogen.

[onlineous]

If you are talking about efficiency, it would prefer using the automatic separation of hydrogen and oxygen, that way you only have to pump away the hydrogen.

I prefer making my base a big 'open' concave dome with my electrolyzers at the top and a automatic separation system above that.

[Kasuha]

2 hours ago, onlineous said:

I prefer making my base a big 'open' concave dome with my electrolyzers at the top and a automatic separation system above that.

That used to be a good idea until electrolyzers started producing gases at 70 C. Of course you can put a few Wheezeworts below your dome but it gets a bit demanding to control as you rarely hit just the sweet spot where the base will hold pleasant temperature constantly, plus you still usually want to send oxygen to lower levels at sufficient pressure and feed your exosuit docks. 

[Oozinator]

I use in my actual map, the good old dome design. I suck and store oxygen, to produce a decent amount of usable hydrogen.
No temperature problems included ^^

[onlineous]

1 hour ago, Kasuha said:

That used to be a good idea until electrolyzers started producing gases at 70 C. Of course you can put a few Wheezeworts below your dome but it gets a bit demanding to control as you rarely hit just the sweet spot where the base will hold pleasant temperature constantly, plus you still usually want to send oxygen to lower levels at sufficient pressure and feed your exosuit docks. 

True, but I've found a nice way to deal with the heat. I made a crude painting from it. 

The black circle represents my base.

1. Hydrogen

2. Electrolyzers

3. Abbysalite pipe constantly cycling petroleum (in my case around 2 kilograms per second).

4. Big tank with petroleum (different coolant is of course possible as well). The pipe radiator in the tank is made of tungsten, equalizing the temperature in the pipe and the tank.

5. The green squares are pipes made of granite. Temperature switches control liquid shutoff valves.

This system allows me to keep my base temperature below certain thresholds and once setup there is no maintenance at all.

Of course you still need a way to cool the tank. I do it with wheezeworts and the liquid oxygen from my polluted oxygen --> oxygen plant, but there are of course several ways to do this.

[Kasuha]

18 minutes ago, onlineous said:

True, but I've found a nice way to deal with the heat. I made a crude painting from it. 

Well, it certainly works. Personally I prefer cooling the air, I like the base better without pipes.

[onlineous]

Just now, Kasuha said:

Well, it certainly works. Personally I prefer cooling the air, I like the base better without pipes.

I agree, I run the cooling pipes through walls as much as possible. I used to cool the air with weezeworts, but that is quite finicky, whereas this system runs without any interaction for hundreds of cycles, as long as you manage to keep the tank cool.