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Building a better SPOM


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To put quite simply, I have grown to take a fondness of the following basic SPOM design with the general idea taken between the forums and youtubers.  However, I am aware of many of the simpler design's limitations, namely, it's output of only ~280kg of oxygen per day - a little shy of being able to support five normal dupes.  So I began a quest to come up with a better SPOM, without searching for a ready made solution.  
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Knowing that one of the main limitations in a SPOM comes from overpressure on the electrolyzer, I decided to come up with a way to deal with that.  Having learned from youtube that wheezewarts create a low pressure zone at their base during their cooling effect, I figured I would make use of this to develop a SPOM with a bit more output.

After a number of failures to that measure, most of which while they increased oxygen output, (some up to enough to support seven dupes)  either ended up damaging the generator regularly, or failed in the "self powered" qualification.  My first success, using a semi-open tower configuration, utilizes a good bit of automation, however it is capable of outputting 360kg of oxygen per cycle on average - or enough for six regular dupes.  Which certainly would make me consider it a worthwhile upgrade.  

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The AND gates at the top are hooked up to three atmo sensors set to above 1kg air pressure, and the elemental sensor is there to guarantee that only hydrogen gets through to the generator.  The valve next to it is set to 100grams - what will run the generator, but prevents the gas pump from depressurizing the cap of the bell to where the base won't continue to reliably capture hydrogen from the main chamber.  

As we work down, we see our input piping looped to provide temperature regulation to the whole bell, both the structures and for the output air - for this I'm using granite.  Radiant pipes would be more effective of course, but granite is something that is abundant and almost as good, while being far cheaper, so it seems a more realistic choice for something of this nature.  To further heat transfer, the electrolyzer is surrounded by airflow tiles.  

Finally, the lower gas pump is hooked up to two atmo sensors, again both at 1kg air pressure, so that it only runs when there's any risk of the electrolyzer overpressurizing.  Most of the time they'll both be active, but I figure it's best to save power where possible.   

However, while it's peak pressure is around 380kg / cycle, this design does noticeably decrease in effectiveness as air pressure increases - at around 1500g of oxygen pressure, it's pressure drops to 300kg / cycle, only enough for five dupes.  And at 2kg of oxygen pressure, it's back down on par with the smaller SPOM - the limitation herein being the single pump design.  

So, the solution I figured, was go big or go home, brute force the problem, and come up with a dual electrolyzer design based on the hydrogen corner design. 
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.  (the wheezewarts in this case are simply to cool down the output air to ~20-25*c)
In this case, it is producing a steady average of 825kg of oxygen per cycle, on a dual-standard wire circuit.  The gas valve is set to 250 grams, and the atmo sensor is set to 1kg pressure.  

If however, you use conductive wire to run everything on a single 2kw circuit, you get more up-time per cycle, averaging about 890kg of oxygen per cycle - 450kg per electrolyzer, which is better than the tower design, and more than three times the oxygen output of the basic electrolyzer design - supporting up to fifteen dupes at maximum, assuming one has divers lungs, or at least a few hold their breath for part of the day.  

This is just my tidbit of experimentation, if there's something better out there, I'd be interested in reading up about it.  I'm considering seeing if I can build another bell-tower style design with three electrolyzers and five oxygen output pumps, (since the corner hydrogen trap method probably won't work as well I'm guessing) but I haven't gotten around to testing that yet.  

 


Of course, I haven't done overly extensive searching of the forums to see if this has already been done, I hadn't seen anything quite along this venue, mostly older things when I searched, so if all this is old news I apologize.  
 

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I like the thought and effort you have put into this :) I honestly don't know how many dupes my oxygen set up is able to handle all I know is that it generates more power with more dupes consuming the oxygen.

I also created a thread for builds if you want to repost this in there, hopefully the thread will be kept alive allowing new and old players alike to see your build!

Also I would not say it is old news, you are using things people know about in a ways that works for you, you are happy with it, and that is what matters, you are also open to suggestions which is a great thing. 

Does your build ever have a back-up of hydrogen? This would reduce the efficiency.

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Recenly I was testing some various electrolyzer builds to get the most efficient one, wihout using any exploits.

This is what I ended up with:

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It produces 525kg of oxygen while still being self powered. This set up can easly support 2 hydrogen generators. There is even some overproduction of hydrogen so a third generator is possible. In my real colony I implemented this build with 3 generators and still from time to time I'm getting excess hydrogen, which I need to store.

Lower pump always contain oxygen so no filtering is needed, while the upper one needs to be filtered. To avoid additional power consumption I'm using filter based on element sensor and a gas shutoff.

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36 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

It produces 525kg of oxygen while still being self powered. This set up can easly support 2 hydrogen generators. There is even some overproduction of hydrogen so a third generator is possible. In my real colony I implemented this build with 3 generators and still from time to time I'm getting excess hydrogen, which I need to store.

Lower pump always contain oxygen so no filtering is needed, while the upper one needs to be filtered. To avoid additional power consumption I'm using filter based on element sensor and a gas shutoff.

I dont mean this rudely, but how are you able to power two gens from an electrolyzer? It only produce somthing like 118g/s.

The only way i can understand this is if the pumps are not running constantly as this would conserve energy. If so then heck the design works a treat. Lovely use of the in pipe gas sensor as well. 

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My two cents about the SPOM in general: I never build these. I build electrolyzer setups (electrolyzer, 3 pumps, pressure based filtering, oxygen cooling) and part of my hydrogen just happens to get consumed by my hydrogen generators in my power plant. I don't see the appeal of mangling together oxygen/hydrogen production with power production into a single module. Those are two different issues in my eyes. The only application for this would be in a decentralized power network, which I'am not a fan of.

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15 minutes ago, clickrush said:

My two cents about the SPOM in general: I never build these. I build electrolyzer setups (electrolyzer, 3 pumps, pressure based filtering, oxygen cooling) and part of my hydrogen just happens to get consumed by my hydrogen generators in my power plant. I don't see the appeal of mangling together oxygen/hydrogen production with power production into a single module. Those are two different issues in my eyes. The only application for this would be in a decentralized power network, which I'am not a fan of.

SPOM doesn't mean isolation of power circuits. It just means that oxygen production build needs to produce more power then it consumes.

People are isolating SPOM builds to make sure that in case of power blackout your oxygen generation will continue. Makes sense to protect this way a vital parts of your colony.

In my real build the design, I showed, is powering 3 hydrogen generators located in my central power plant, which is connected to centralized power grid. It would be such a shame to not take oportunity of potential 3600W more (if tune-up perk is applied to generators) ;)

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10 minutes ago, clickrush said:

My two cents about the SPOM in general: I never build these. I build electrolyzer setups (electrolyzer, 3 pumps, pressure based filtering, oxygen cooling) and part of my hydrogen just happens to get consumed by my hydrogen generators in my power plant. I don't see the appeal of mangling together oxygen/hydrogen production with power production into a single module. Those are two different issues in my eyes. The only application for this would be in a decentralized power network, which I'am not a fan of.

The hydrogen gets pumped off to be used for power, and the oxygen gets pumped off to be breathed by your dupes.

So it is the same issue, making use of an electrolyzer, you have a product and a by-product. Your product is used by dupes, and your by-product is used as power. Whether your power for the system is built into the module as above, or 20 tiles away (Like mine) it is the same thing in the end. Just not modular. My electrolyzer set-up, quite literally runs my entire base, providing excess oxygen (Which stops the electrolyzers making more) and hydrogen which powers everything inside my base. So to me my power and oxygen are the same thing. 

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2 hours ago, Angpaur said:

Recenly I was testing some various electrolyzer builds to get the most efficient one, wihout using any exploits.

Your pumps are constantly on, pulling packets less than maximum 500g, so you have some more work to do if you want 'most efficient one'.

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Just now, Grimgaw said:

Your pumps are constantly on, pulling packets less than maximum 500g, so you have some more work to do if you want 'most efficient one'.

Sorry, forgot to mention that I was looking for most efficient one in oxygen production. In case of power I just wanted it to be self-powered, so to make more power than it consumes. Any other set up I tried, which was focused on power preservation was more than half less effective in oxygen production. The mechanical filter from famous SPOM build lets save power and pump only full packets and produce lots of additional power, but oxygen generation was only around 220kg per cycle. So I was not satisfied.

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Just now, Grimgaw said:

Electrolyzer is 100% efficient at oxygen production. If you need more oxygen add more electrolyzers.

OK, looks like I really need to be more specific.. Oh well...

I was looking for most efficient oxygen per cycle production build. All other builds I tried never even reached 400kg per cycle. This build is generating 525 kg per cycle. Apparently electrolyzer doesn't work 100% all the time - from time to time a maximum pressure message appears on it and for a brief moment they stop working. The set up I build prevents this as much as possible, so that is why per whole cycle it produces so much oxygen.

Maybe it can even be improved a bit - I never tried to build some airflow tiles around electrolyzer, maybe it will help to avoid max pressure problem.

I will try it later when back from work.

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9 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

I was looking for most efficient oxygen per cycle production build.

Electrolyzer produces set amount of oxygen per amount of water/energy. If you have a target oxygen amount you'd like, and your electrolyzer is struggling with over pressure you add more electrolyzers. You won't squeeze more oxygen than 888g/s per 1kg of water per 120W of power no matter how hard you try.

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8 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

Maybe it can even be improved a bit - I never tried to build some airflow tiles around electrolyzer, maybe it will help to avoid max pressure problem.

To be honest there isnt much you can do per say to make it more efficient. At 100% capacity it will produce 1kg of gasses, 500g is removed below and 500 above. So the only way your efficiency could be lost is is a packet of hydrogen destroys a packet of oxygen, or vice versa.

Adding another pump underneath would help pull the oxygen down which might help you destroy less packets, but ad the cost of more energy and you would need to set up atmo switches.

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22 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Electrolyzer produces set amount of oxygen per amount of water/energy. If you have a target oxygen amount you'd like, and your electrolyzer is struggling with over pressure you add more electrolyzers. You won't squeeze more oxygen than 888g/s per 1kg of water per 120W of power no matter how hard you try.

I'm sorry but I really don't get what is your point. 

Do you think i'm trying to make more oxygen than it is contained in water I'm sending to electrolyzer? I can do the math - I know that maximum possible from one electrolyzer is 0,888kg * 600 s = 532,8kg per cycle

I'm trying to make a one only electrolyzer build, which will be as close as possible to this number. Look at the first post. OP mentiones that his first set up only produces ~280kg of oxygen per cycle. I managed to come very close to maximum of 532,8kg.

So what is your point here?

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Adding to what Grimjaw said, As a personal goal squeezing out as much as possible from one electrolyzer per second is great. But if you get the same amount using two electrolyzers it is the same thing in the end, except it uses more space etc.

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19 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Adding to what Grimjaw said, As a personal goal squeezing out as much as possible from one electrolyzer per second is great. But if you get the same amount using two electrolyzers it is the same thing in the end, except it uses more space etc.

It will also use 2 times more water and additional 120W of power.

I want the most efficient solution, not the one that will yeld me some given amount of oxygen.

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16 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

It will also use 2 times more water and additional 240W of power.

Fun and true fact: over pressurized electrolyzer doesn't use water nor energy.

 

48 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Electrolyzer is 100% efficient at oxygen production.

 

31 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Electrolyzer produces set amount of oxygen per amount of water/energy.

In case you missed it.

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If electrolyzer is 100% efficient at oxygen production than how you explain the fact that OP first build was producing 280kg per cycle of maximum possible 532,8kg for one electrolyzer ? How come?

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2 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

If electrolyzer is 100% efficient at oxygen production than how you explain the fact that OP first build was producing 280kg per cycle of maximum possible 532,8kg for one electrolyzer ? How come?

It just uses less water and less energy, because overpressure stops it from time to time

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6 minutes ago, Prince Mandor said:

It just uses less water and less energy, because overpressure stops it from time to time

Exactly!

So to get close to maximum possible yeld from one electrolyzer the overpressure problem needs to be solved somehow. And I presented you a build that is doing so with a low power consumption and a surplus of power, which makes it self powered.

So again, what we are really discussing here? Because I'm a bit confused.

Are there any better one electrolyzer only builds, which can do the same? By better I mean consuming less power, producing maximum amount of 532,8kg of oxygen.

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32 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

It will also use 2 times more water and additional 120W of power.

It wouldn't. If you have 1, 2 or 10, the room will still overpressurize at 1800/2000 (I cant rememebr which) per tile.

  • 1 would run for 20 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 2400W of electricity
  • 2 would run for 10 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 2400W of electricity
  • 10 would run for 2 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 2400W of electricity

So, That is less energy and water per electrolyzer because the cost to create the 20kg will be the same. The only time it would cost more energy is if you had more than 10 because a liquid pump can only pump 10kg at a time.

You are mixing up efficiency per cycle and efficiency per second. Per second it does not matter how many electrolyzers you are using, it will always provide the same amount of gas, use the same amount of liquid and energy (Some gas may be deleted)

Efficiency per cycle is all about how much oxygen you can produce in one cycle. 

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Just now, BlueLance said:

It wouldn't. If you have 1, 2 or 10, the room will still overpressurize at 1800/2000 (I cant rememebr which) per tile.

  • 1 would run for 20 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 1200W of electricity
  • 2 would run for 10 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 1200W of electricity
  • 10 would run for 2 seconds to give you 20kg of gas, Thats 20kg of water, and 1200W of electricity

So, That is less energy and water per electrolyzer because the cost to create the 20kg will be the same. The only time it would cost more energy is if you had more than 10 because a liquid pump can only pump 10kg at a time.

But what is the point of doing such builds if one electrolyzer is enough?

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7 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

But what is the point of doing such builds if one electrolyzer is enough?

Well, efficiency.

If I only have one pump pumping hydrogen from the ceiling of my base, I spend just 240 W in addition to four electrolyzers set in my base. If you add two more pumps you will spend additional 480 W, what's the purpose of this? Does it really matter for you, one, four or six electrolyzers produce exactly enough oxygen to fill base?

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