Automated Algae Terrariums

[jtomkinson90]

As of a recent patch, algae terrariums now produce 290.33 g/s of polluted water as a byproduct of oxygen production. So, I thought I'd have a bash at ditching the trusty old S.P.O.M. (Self Powered Oxygen Production), and set about designing a Suitably Pongy Oxygen Production system instead.

Here's what I came up with:

A total of fifteen terrariums produce 660 g/s of O2 - enough to meet the needs of six duplicants, with a little breathing room of 60 g/s surplus. Delivery is disabled for the terrariums. Interestingly, this stops duplicants from delivering water, but not algae. Through automation, the supply of water is withheld when the base is sufficiently pressurised, thus capping unnecessary production. I have built a small septic tank, replete with bottle emptiers, for quick disposal of effluent. The system can be further automated by fitting two auto sweepers to deliver algae to the terrariums. Wheezies can also be added to keep the base's population wriggling meal lice comfortable.

PROs

• Oxygen is outputted at a balmy temperature of 30C, as opposed to 70C from an electrolyser.
• Massive potential for heat deletion through a water sieve, due to the high rate of water > bogwater cycling.
• Fully automated, will only produce O2 as needed. Excellent in-base solution for small habitats, with no need for ventilation pipping.
• Provides some CO2 removal for free.

CONs

• Duplicants are required to plunger the terrariums when their inventory is full of polluted water, which then needs to be ferried to a bottle emptier.
• Requires robust water logistics system before being setup.
• Bottled bogwater that is not quickly disposed of will begin to exhale polluted oxygen. Deoderisers are advised if your duplicants are particularly shiftless creatures.
• High sand consumption if using sieve to cycle water.

Here are the full figures for a six person, fifteen terrarium setup:
- 450 g/s OR 270 kg/cycle of algae consumed.
- 4.5 kg/s OR 2.7 tonnes/cycle of water consumed.
- 5 g/s OR 45 kg/cycle of carbon dioxide potentially consumed.
- 660 g/s OR 396 kg/cycle of oxygen produced.
- 4.355 kg/s OR 2613 kg/cycle of polluted water produced.

In effect, if the resulting polluted water is cycled back to water, the colony will consume 87 kg/cycle of water and 270 kg/cycle of algae (though, empirically, this seems wrong, as I've barely noticed any algae being consumed).

Here's the automation view:



The hydro sensors on the floor underneath the liquid vents are set to activate if below 15kg. The atmo pressure sensors next to the liquid shutoffs are set to below 1300g, and then feed into a filter gate that is set to 10 seconds (this prevents the system being tricked into turning on by any errant non-O2 gasses). Both of these inputs feed into an AND gate that turns the system on. Thus, if the automation is active, the liquid shutoffs will allow water to drip onto the platform from the vents. The water flows towards the middle of the platform, and the terrariums slurp it up as they are water starved. They will then turn on. When the air pressure reaches a satisfactory level, or there is a build up of water on the platform (which when the system is stable does not happen) the system turns off, and the algae terrariums quickly run out of stockpiled water.

After running for over seventy cycles, it's maintained a steady air pressure without any hiccups.

Is it better than electrolysers? I don't believe it is. It was however an awful lot of fun trying something different, and it certainly works. I encourage you all to give it a go. I'd love to hear your comments as to how it might be refined / torn up, chucked in the bin, and done far better!

[Coolthulhu]

I see potential improvements:

• Use sweepers to feed algae
• Use sweepers to move pwater bottles to nearby bottle emptiers
• Use mesh tiles to make dupes less likely to step in water (currently they must go through that little puddle with hydro sensor). Or have remover dupes wear suits.

It still won't beat electrolyzers due to labor costs of removing water bottles, but could be an OK heat sink at just the right temperature to still be able to grow starting zone plants.

[Heinermann]

9 hours ago, jtomkinson90 said:

• Duplicants are required to plunger the terrariums when their inventory is full of polluted water, which then needs to be ferried to a bottle emptier.
• Requires robust water logistics system before being setup.
• Bottled bogwater that is not quickly disposed of will begin to exhale polluted oxygen. Deoderisers are advised if your duplicants are particularly shiftless creatures.
• High sand consumption if using sieve to cycle water.

Why not just intentionally leave the bottles and let the deodorizers convert it into more O2? Then it's less work, more O2. Forget the sieve. Alternatively you can put doors under the terrariums which eat the bottles at night if you don't care for them at all.

[PhailRaptor]

10 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

• Use sweepers to move pwater bottles to nearby bottle emptiers

Are Sweepers able to do that?  I thought they weren't...

[Coolthulhu]

1 minute ago, PhailRaptor said:

Are Sweepers able to do that?  I thought they weren't...

I didn't test it, could be impossible. Still, sounds like a good thing to try, since bottle moving takes a lot of dupe time with terrariums.

[AngryKeyring]

When I tried to get sweepers to move a bottle to an emptier, they didn't touch it. Was just after the change to Terrarium however, not sure if its been changed since.

[jtomkinson90]

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

I see potential improvements:

• Use sweepers to feed algae
• Use sweepers to move pwater bottles to nearby bottle emptiers
• Use mesh tiles to make dupes less likely to step in water (currently they must go through that little puddle with hydro sensor). Or have remover dupes wear suits.

It still won't beat electrolyzers due to labor costs of removing water bottles, but could be an OK heat sink at just the right temperature to still be able to grow starting zone plants.

1) Autosweepers to feed algae are definitely an improvement. My setup was designed to a width of sixteen tiles, so that two autosweepers would be able to service all fifteen terrariums, whilst also accessing a single central algae storage/convey receptacle.

2) Unfortunately, as is listed above, the auto-sweepers seem entirely indifferent to the bottled polluted water. That may very well have changed in the Cosmic Preview, and I shall certainly be testing it in sandbox mode when the upgrade releases fully.

3) That little puddle is a nightmare! Atmo suits would definitely be an idea if you weren't concerned about space. I was trying to build as compact a central habitat as possible, with all heavy machinery and other systems outside of the base.

I think that it would be possible to have the bottle emptiers slightly closer to the terrariums, and have them empty into a tank that sits directly below. It would have to be separated by a lip, to prevent water from the vents from dribbling in. Would save some dupe time.

Cheers for your suggestions, and to everyone else for your comments so far.

4 hours ago, Heinermann said:

Why not just intentionally leave the bottles and let the deodorizers convert it into more O2? Then it's less work, more O2. Forget the sieve. Alternatively you can put doors under the terrariums which eat the bottles at night if you don't care for them at all.

When I first set up the system, I hadn't quite finished my main septic tank outside the base. Over the course of about twenty cycles, I wound up with a good fifty tonnes worth of polluted water just sat in bottles on that main platform, with nowhere to put them. I'm not sure what the conversion rate of polluted water to polluted oxygen is, but I imagine it would take an awfully long time to let fifty tonnes naturally evaporate.

It did indeed supplement my oxygen production, but it wound up over-pressurising my base, as the deoderisers don't stop when air pressure reaches a certain air level. It completely overrode my automation setup. A few dupes had to sit on the naughty step after having temper tantrums over their popped eardrums.

I definitely want to try deoderisers as a main oxygen source at some point, though. Thanks for the inspiration!

[SackMaggie]

You can use liquid valve instead of those automation stuff and build them under coal generator.

If you plan on 24/7 operate time.

[KittenIsAGeek]

This is a nifty idea.  I've used terrariums in a limited scope since the change. I may try doing this near the surface where sand is unlimited and temperatures are weird.

[Albryant]

Terrariums suck water up off the floor?  I thought you had to deliver water to them...

[clickrush]

2 minutes ago, Albryant said:

Terrariums suck water up off the floor?  I thought you had to deliver water to them...

Both works.

[Albryant]

Well, now it finally makes sense when people were talking about dealing with wet feet with terrariums.  I was so confused on how that could possibly happen.

[leoroy]

I just learn it too... since when is it like that? I've never read anything saying this in the past hmmm...

[Moggles]

1 hour ago, leoroy said:

I just learn it too... since when is it like that? I've never read anything saying this in the past hmmm...

For at least a year I'd estimate. It's not documented in the UI afaik so it's not common knowledge.

[leoroy]

Nice to know! I wonder how someone discovered this haha.

[Flydo]

14 hours ago, Heinermann said:

Why not just intentionally leave the bottles and let the deodorizers convert it into more O2? Then it's less work, more O2. Forget the sieve. Alternatively you can put doors under the terrariums which eat the bottles at night if you don't care for them at all.

And you can use autosweeper to move the clay made by the deodorizer to create ceramic or stok it

2 hours ago, leoroy said:

Nice to know! I wonder how someone discovered this haha.

I remember that i saw it in the first live twitch stream presentation

[Coolthulhu]

16 hours ago, jtomkinson90 said:

I'm not sure what the conversion rate of polluted water to polluted oxygen is, but I imagine it would take an awfully long time to let fifty tonnes naturally evaporate.

Conversion rate is 1:1, with evaporation per tick increasing with square root of mass. At low mass, evaporation slows down below that (chance to evaporate per tick drops noticeably below 100%). Liquids never evaporate completely, unlike slime.

Bottled pwater dropping from terrariums doesn't stack on drop, similarly to outhouse pdirt or compost fertilizer. This means that it evaporates faster than the square root rule would suggest. Both resources do get restacked with identical ones on the same tile on game load, though.

I don't have the exact numbers on me, but I recall 20t globs evaporating at 80g/s, so 200kg ones should evaporate at roughly 8g/s. This would mean that the bottles should outproduce the terrarium itself after 4 empties, assuming low enough gas pressure, dupes not taking the bottles away, and no save+load. With save+load, it would take ~13 empties for bottles to match the terrarium.

Since the times scale down with low mass, you shouldn't expect to ever evaporate 100% of it, but evaporating 80% of it and unbottling the remains would work just fine.

[Miravlix]

This seems to work differently in cosmos.

 

My dupes has to operate the terrariums to extract bottles.

[chemie]

Don't deoxidizers make more oxygen for same algae and not require water, dup labor, but cost same electricity as the sieve?

[avc15]

51 minutes ago, chemie said:

Don't deoxidizers make more oxygen for same algae and not require water, dup labor, but cost same electricity as the sieve?

Because of the light bonus terrariums get more oxygen per unit algae. You ALSO get more pwater than the water you put in. Been this way since I think since occupational update?

Yeah electrical use is comparable if you're going to sieve the pwater but they end up providing extra water. So, you know ~~

At a significant cost though if you're trying to make them your base's mainstay for O2 production like this (the PO2 offgassing, stress debuffs, labor costs, all real downsides)

I still tend to use terrariums to access remote areas of the asteroid far from my base when I don't want to build a power line all the way out there and I'm just trying to make a path temporarily habitable.

@jtomkinson90 very interesting design, I like it. Thanks!