Gas filter using logic: 10W and 85 Refined Metal

[martosss]

Update: Look further down in the thread for an even cheaper version using 10W and 85-refined-metal

 

Behold - the logic gas filter:

This version uses 20W and 215 refined metal - 1 Buffer gate, 1 Not gate, 1 Gas pipe sensor, 2 Gas Auto shutoffs and some logic wires to hook them up. The crucial part - you need the Buffer gate to be set to 0.1 seconds. Otherwise it doesn't work.

Spoiler

Here is the logic circuitry:

Spoiler

And here is the filter in action. I am using it to filter hydrogen:

Spoiler

 

I'm currently trying to build a SPOM(I love that name ) for my 15 dupes at cycle 40(trying to accept all new dupes as soon as possible and not use any exploits(weezies, dripping, pressure vents with liquid, liquid doors, vacuum airlocks for isolation, sieve for cooling water ...).(I actually caused some dripping from spilled polluted water, but I can't stop it if it happens, the idea is not to use it intentionally).

• Also abyssalite is an OP isolator... but hey, you have to protect yourself from that heat somehow.
• I am also using CO2 for food storage and flooded containers for slime for the first time - this makes exploring the jungle so much easier!
• I am considering the use of the liquid cool box, as it produces enormous heat and requires a lot of energy, so it's not so glitchy as the other things.

However, I might consider just using 2 Electrolyzers and 4 pumps with this setup and forget the hassle of the SPOM.

Up to now i tend to die at around cycle 60-80 from the heat ... This time I used Aby-Isolation + reached the Antarctic pretty soon, so if i manage to use that logic setup successfully it might be "cool".

[martosss]

After reading some more of the forum I managed to dig out this 0W Mechanical filter thread. Nevertheless, the mechanical filter requires some more work to setup and it feels like both are suffering from throughput, because each filtered packed decreases the efficiency of the pump, so not allowing those filthy packets in the first place should be more efficient than coming up with smart ways to deal with them down the line. In that sense the SPOM using gas separation and no filter at all should be the best at output O2 amount + energy efficiency, given the electrolyzers work most of the time and gas pumps are logic-controlled to pump always at 500g.

[KittenIsAGeek]

You don't need the logic gates.  As long as your pipe doesn't back up, this works just fine:

Spoiler

The logic here is for controlling the electrolyzer and has nothing to do with gas flow.  All that is needed is the element sensor and the valve.

All you need is the element sensor and a valve.

[Lilalaunekuh]

Ok I gone done the same road as you guys:

Wanted to minimize the power usage for my electrolyzers and started with logic filtering

=> You can use just 1 shutoff valve and stop the gas flow by stopping the gas pump

(If you like I can share my overengeenered spom:

- big module with a vacuume inside which makes insulation inside very easy^^

- suitable for 25 duplicants

- can be build without heavy watt wire if you want to

- !uses ~450Kg of slush geyser water each cycle to keep my oxygen at 20°C! )

 

@KittenIsAGeek

4 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

All you need is the element sensor and a valve.

If I want to substitute a gas filter, I want the replacement to have the same properties like a gas filter:

- The filter will never send a gas into a wrong pipe

- The filter will just stop in case of a power shortage

- The filter should have no problem if either ouput is backed up

=> You can gurantee all these properties using less than 10W on average (not every package needs energy)

[KittenIsAGeek]

I have a similar build. I didn't try to conserve space -- rather, my requirements was consistent air temperature for 10 or so dupes.  It also isn't the best laid-out, but.. it works.  Two electrolyzers, 3 fans with logic to turn the system off when there's 20kg buffered.

[Denisetwin]

9 hours ago, martosss said:

Up to now i tend to die at around cycle 60-80 from the heat .

have you tried using vacuum walls to protect your base?  I love those!

Thanks for the ideas re: logic filter!

[martosss]

3 hours ago, Denisetwin said:

have you tried using vacuum walls to protect your base?

As I said in my original post -

13 hours ago, martosss said:

not use any exploits(... vacuum airlocks for isolation...)

However, I might try using such a hatch later on, not sure .. I've seen ppl go and explore the lava ... i guess there you need something like that in order not to overheat.

[Megouski]

1 hour ago, martosss said:

As I said in my original post -

However, I might try using such a hatch later on, not sure .. I've seen ppl go and explore the lava ... i guess there you need something like that in order not to overheat.

Not an exploit. Vacuum is exactly what you get if you remove matter/gas from a sealed space with machines in real life. Don't blame people for being clever and using basic game mechanics properly. Takes more work than normal but its worth the effort.

With that mentality we shouldn't use logic gates / sensors to fancy-pants our way out of using the tried and true 120w filter Klei gave us! We should report this heinous exploit right away.

Lucky for me, im not bound by such false morality and I like this and am going to use something like it, thanks for the ingenuity.

[martosss]

1 hour ago, Megouski said:

Not an exploit. Vacuum is exactly what you get if you remove matter/gas from a sealed space with machines in real life. Don't blame people for being clever and using basic game mechanics properly. Takes more work than normal but its worth the effort.

1) heat should be transfered through the metal edges of the door in the middle;

2) creating that vacuum should cost energy, otherwise it's unrealistic.

"remove with machines" ... so that door does it for free and you call that "no exploit" ? If you make a 1 tile space around your base and use a pump to suck all the gas in that space I'd call that fair - you're using a machine and paying the price in watts.

Of course, if we have to be real, then there should either be gravity or no gravity .. hanging tiles(except sand lol) vs falling materials and ppl also makes little sense, but ... I'm ok to accept that as the law of the oxygen universe. Hatches that make free vacuum on the other hand ... a bit too much. logic gates should probably also require electricity, right?

1 hour ago, Megouski said:

With that mentality we shouldn't use logic gates / sensors to fancy-pants our way out of using the tried and true 120w filter Klei gave us!

The gas filter requires less research and less materials(no refined metal), so it has a potential use case earlier in the game.

Of course, if you can avoid it until you have the proper research and use logic it's nicer. I'm trying to rush research, so at cycle 40 I have almost all research done. In that sense I am skipping the gas filter, yes. But Klei gave us logic gates and quite specific limitations on those, so I"m just trying to figure out how to use them best.

 

I also have an issue with the mechanical filter - in reality gas/liquid should split between 2 tubes equally(given that the tubes have equal throughput, same shape and surface resistance), not sit there and think "oh, wait, this bridge looks nicer, let's go there first". That argument and manual setting up makes the logic filter seem like a better choice.

 

[beowulf2010]

8 minutes ago, martosss said:

1) heat should be transfered through the metal edges of the door in the middle;

2) creating that vacuum should cost energy, otherwise it's unrealistic.

"remove with machines" ... so that door does it for free and you call that "no exploit" ? If you make a 1 tile space around your base and use a pump to suck all the gas in that space I'd call that fair - you're using a machine and paying the price in watts. 

Actually, vacuum walls are exactly what you say is acceptable. You build a 3 wide exterior wall around your base with the center of the 3 tiles empty and use a gas pump to create a vacuum between the inner and outer walls. 

You're confusing that with a triple door vacuum airlock that uses gas deleting to make the vacuum. 

[Skrivener]

13 minutes ago, martosss said:

I'm ok to accept that as the law of the oxygen universe.

I'm not going to tell you not to use your arbitrary cataloging of "exploits" as your own baseline, but I will say that it IS arbitrary. I think you might realize that your above statement accepts various "this isn't real" facets of the ONIverse just as you condemn others with no consistent rationale. I'm surprised no one mentioned wheezeworts - they're about as non-exploit as it gets but they're on your list (I assume that's what "wheezies" are .

regardless good luck with your challenge!

[martosss]

10 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Actually, vacuum walls are exactly what you say is acceptable. You build a 3 wide exterior wall around your base with the center of the 3 tiles empty and use a gas pump to create a vacuum between the inner and outer walls. 

You're confusing that with a triple door vacuum airlock that uses gas deleting to make the vacuum. 

yea I'd accept vacuum, if you create it in a realistic way. Even if you don't delete gases(close door 3, then 2, then 1, then open 2. That doesn't delete gas?), still that last step in opening 2 should cost you something? or it shouldn't be vacuum ... it should suck gases from the neighborhood, somehow(e.g. when closing 2, it traps a bit of gas between 1-2 and 2-3, so then when you open 2 again, there is ½ of the gas remaining that was trapped between doors).

11 minutes ago, Skrivener said:

I'm not going to tell you not to use your arbitrary cataloging of "exploits" as your own baseline, but I will say that it IS arbitrary.

It might be, there are so many unrealistic things that you have to put a line somewhere... I'm just trying to make it more realistic, so that if something is broken I take it as a challenge to overcome it, not exploit it to gain benefits from it.

13 minutes ago, Skrivener said:

I think you might realize that your above statement accepts various "this isn't real" facets of the ONIverse just as you condemn others with no consistent rationale.

I'm trying to come up with consistent rationale, it's just hard, given all the unrealistic mechanics.

• I'd accept floating tiles since if you suppose the world is 3D they might be kept there by some other material in the 3rd axis(which we don't see? ).
• I'd also accept fix temperature output as it's supposedly due fixing and it could be treated as a heat battle challenge, although you shouldn't use it to cool things down(I'm accepting that with a grudge though).
• I guess we should be allowed to use the AETN, since it's given to us and requires some kind of resource, although very little.
• Not sure if wheezies(yes, the heat-eating plants) should be used, they don't require any resource(just like the manual airlock vacuum), but delete heat nevertheless - see my rationale there ? Free lunch - unrealistic.
• I still haven't reached so far as to explore all the possible critter resources, although I've thrown a peek and it seems acceptable - you give them something and they give you something back ... it's not a free lunch.
• I'd also accept geysers, as they could be viewed as renewable energy-of-a-sort - geysers gathering underground rain () water that's been heated by the meteor' core ()... or natural gas ... or what not.

 

It's sad that people have these huge bases but they can't play at least a bit realistically and craft a plastic high pressure vent instead of using cheap liquid exploits or cool down a bit more the entrance instead of putting glitchy gas-eating-vacuum-creating hatches

[KittenIsAGeek]

Wow. Where to start on this.. oh my.

If you want to play this as a reality simulator, that's fine.. but don't make the rest of us.  This is a game. It should be fun.  Some things work like reality.  Some things (AETN) definitely do not.  I'm a little concerned that you think its sad that people play the game in the way they want to play it.  

When I was little and I got a new Lego set, the first thing I would do is stick the instructions in a box and forget about them.  I didn't care about how the pieces were supposed to fit.  I wanted to see how they might possibly fit.  I play ONI the same way.  Why can't I use a metal door as an intermittent heat conductor?  High pressure vents are great, but sometimes you need a one-way valve -- which can be made by partially submerging a vent.  

If you want innovation without using things contrary to their original design, then stop using your cell-phone's smart charger.  It intentionally abuses an inductor, causing em feedback -- to increase or decrease voltage.  You should go back to the hot and heavy designs of 15 years ago where they properly used a transformer for such a task.

 

I get that you want a reality simulator.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But please, don't complain about how we're playing ours.  I'd rather play "what if..." and see where my imagination takes me.

[BlueLance]

I seen a message with someone saying it would fail if it backs up, but it would also fail if the power is off for any moment of time, suddenly all the gass would just go out the first vent, it wouldnt be a big train smash as only three packets of gas will make it to the next valve before being stopped.

[martosss]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

but don't make the rest of us.

I'm not making anyone do anything here, I'm just sharing a possible design of a gas filter that uses logic and less power than a conventional one.

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I'm a little concerned that you think its sad that people play the game in the way they want to play it.

Everyone is free to play it the way they want to - that's why we have sandbox and debug mode - you can play lego with dupes. Don't get me wrong, I also like finding exploits or workarounds that optimize things, I just like to challenge myself, and playing without those exploits is certainly a worthy challenge which makes the game much harder and more interesting, just like not playing in sandbox/debug mode.

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

If you want innovation without using things contrary to their original design, then stop using your cell-phone's smart charger.  It intentionally abuses an inductor, causing em feedback -- to increase or decrease voltage.  You should go back to the hot and heavy designs of 15 years ago where they properly used a transformer for such a task.

I'd say the original design had a flaw that could be optimized and the smart charger did exactly that? Yet you still use power to charge your phone and the charger emits heat in the process that depends on the amount of Wattage transmitted to the phone, right? Also, it doesn't emit always the same amount of heat regardless if it charges your phone by 1% or 90%. See where I'm going with this?

BTW I managed to make a 90% efficient SPOM (90% efficiency at O2 and Power generation 90%), self powered with ~400W(25% out of 1.6kW) excess energy(even more if you count the water pump that it also powers), so I'll probably ditch the filter altogether, since it degrades the efficiency - both in power terms(20W consumption + garbage packets wasting pump cycles) and in O2 generation.

2 hours ago, BlueLance said:

I seen a message with someone saying it would fail if it backs up, but it would also fail if the power is off for any moment of time, suddenly all the gass would just go out the first vent, it wouldnt be a big train smash as only three packets of gas will make it to the next valve before being stopped.

Power failure has 3 theoretically possible cases:

1. stop gas flow completely - behavior of 120W gas filter. I don't want this in ANY case - it stops your workflow;
2. send everything in pipe "Aspartame"(whatever "Aspartame" means in your case );
3. send everything in pipe "Berry".

My current filter achieves (2) - it sends everything in the right into the H2 Generators.

You can achieve (3) by switching the pipes and the gas being filtered, so it covers that option too.(isn't that sweet?)

You might want to block gas flow to protect equipment (say you're cooling gas X and power failure will cause overheating and a tsunami\heat stroke in your base). My filter can't do that currently. However, you can vent the gas in the other direction by default and thus prevent this case from happening.

[SlowMaybe]

Doesn't gas shufoff prevent gas from flowing through without power?

The 2 shutoff would block the gas without power.

[BlueLance]

1 minute ago, SlowMaybe said:

Doesn't gas shufoff prevent gas from flowing through without power?

Yes it prevents gas/liquid passing through it. But if you have a trailing pipe that is connected to the input the gas/liquid will suddenly start going to that instead

[martosss]

Oh crap you're right! LOL, so my filter needs an addition to handle power failure - a 3rd pipe with a vent where all the stuff will be going ... or it just stops flowing like in the normal filter case. Actually, this remark makes me consider doing an improved version that will work only with 10W - removing one of the shutoffs. That will solve the power issue, since the 2nd pipe will have no valve + it will make the whole filter much cheaper than 375 metal. OK, Stay tuned, I'll tinker with it and post the results in a bit. My main goal has been to make a SPOM so the filter is just something I figured out in the process.

[martosss]

OK, here's a much simpler and cheaper version, 10W of power, after trying, it turns out the logic gate is useless, so I removed that too and it still works flawlessly. That leaves you at 10W + 85 refined metal to filter 1 type of gas. Here's the blueprint:

As you can see, I'm filtering Hydrogen, so when Hydrogen appears, the valve opens and Hydrogen goes right and down to the generators. When O2 is added, the valve is disabled and O2 goes up to the vent(make sure it's not over-pressurized or that the pipe is long enough to hold the excess gas.

Here's the filter in action:

Spoiler

Also tested in case of power failure - everything goes up to the vent.

You could implement the opposite power-failure effect - put the vent so that it points up and choose to filter oxygen. Then Hydrogen will go right(together with other stuff like CO2 or polluted oxygen, so be careful there!), but this time in case of power failure everything will flow to the right, continuing to power up the generators, even with potential damage.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Another way you can prevent the power failure event is to use your powered filter to set up a manual filter.  Then remove the components that require power.   You can also set up a feedback loop to handle the event where your vent (or generator) backs up.

 

[Cilya]

These are nice ideas. In case of a chain of filters (a gas sorter), the loopback can be done from the end of the filter to the beginning, before allowing flow to enter the loop. This way, when power is down, the gases just loop, and the input pipe stays blocked.

 

[martosss]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Another way you can prevent the power failure event is to use your powered filter to set up a manual filter.  Then remove the components that require power.   You can also set up a feedback loop to handle the event where your vent (or generator) backs up.

 

As I said above, my main goal is a SPOM, which shouldn't use any filters at all if you're striving for efficiency. Here is my variant -

As you can see, I've currently short-circuited the filter with 1 bridge, so that I don't spend that extra 10W on each gas packet. Now that I think about it, it's not that much - 2-3 kW/cycle if the top pump is efficient, and yet, you can use that power elsewhere. Same thing for the Oxygen pumps - adding a filter to transfer potential gas packets up to the generators will probably cost me more energy than I get from it, so I'll just let that Hydrogen slide outside and fly somewhere ... a few kg is not that problematic, besides, once the SPOM works it won't output more, so you should be safe.

21 minutes ago, Cilya said:

These are nice ideas. In case of a chain of filters (a gas sorter), the loopback can be done from the end of the filter to the beginning, before allowing flow to enter the loop. This way, when power is down, the gases just loop, and the input pipe stays blocked.

 

It definitely is, I just saw a video of 1 guy using a chain of 5-6 120W filters to sort gases ... that means if he uses this setup he'll decrease his energy use on that system 12 fold

[Cilya]

1 hour ago, martosss said:

It definitely is, I just saw a video of 1 guy using a chain of 5-6 120W filters to sort gases ... that means if he uses this setup he'll decrease his energy use on that system 12 fold

I believe it wouldn't be a factor that high : each packet filtered doesn't enter the next electrical filter and thus the electrical consumption decrease for each subsequent filter. If the order of filter is chose wisely, the power consumption shouldn't be too high. Am I mistaken ?

[martosss]

well, each packet filtered costs 120W, if you use my filter you pay 10W, so each use is exactly 12 times cheaper Of course if he optimizes his system(which he probably did) he could use even less if he sorts the most used gas first(e.g. hydrogen or CO2). But simply switching to my filter will save him exactly 12 fold of electricity on that system.

[Cilya]

Oh, the gas shutoff only consumes electricity when there is gas going through it ?