What is the virtue of the miniaturized pumps?

[Jumpp]

I just did a test which shows that if you use a valve to reduce a full-sized pump to the same throughput as the smaller pump, it costs far less electricity to push an equivalent mass.

So the virtues of the smaller pump that I can see are:

1. They're smaller. Which might conceivably be useful.
2. They draw less max power, so you can operate more pumps on a circuit. This seems to me to be of purely theoretical value.

What am I missing? Why do these miniature pumps exist? Does anyone use them? If so, why?

[FutureJohny]

For added bonus they also stop pumping if the room reaches their melting temperature.

[yoakenashi]

I have found them very useful for pumping all gas from a room. When the air gets thin, a regular gas pump continues to draw 240w while pumping only small amounts of gas. You could pump more gas for the same 240w using 4 miniature pumps (4x60w).

Granted, this has a very limited use/application.

[Whispershade]

I use them to create disposable vacuums pumps for insulating heavy watt ports.

[Scorpio King]

1 hour ago, Whispershade said:

I use them to create disposable vacuums pumps for insulating heavy watt ports.

I use corner build trick for that.

[Whispershade]

14 minutes ago, Scorpio King said:

I use corner build trick for that.

Yeah, I imagine most people do. But I prefer the simplicity of build stages. I can just set it up all at once and then close it up. I don't have to keep revisiting it as dupes build it out the corner. And even though it amounts to the same thing, I prefer to leave in whole machines than have little bits of lose debris in places.

[Scorpio King]

@Whispershade

The red icon of "no gas" does not bother you?

It annoys me more than it should.

[tzionut]

I use them for cooling the natural gas produced by my nat gas vents for not damage the pump.

[Sevio]

5 hours ago, Scorpio King said:

I use corner build trick for that.

How do you get the debris out with a corner vacuum build if you make a vacuum insulated heavi watt bridge?

[Scorpio King]

1 minute ago, Sevio said:

How do you get the debris out with a corner vacuum build if you make a vacuum insulated heavi watt bridge?

If they pick it up right after deconstruction, but if its left there its there for good.

[BlueLance]

I use the pumps in areas that are confined but other than that I don't have a use for them.

[FutureJohny]

2 hours ago, Scorpio King said:

If they pick it up right after deconstruction, but if its left there its there for good.

They can access it from the top, but not the bottom. This makes horizontal heavy ports possible to clean, but not the vertical. Building and diging works from any side.

[Sevio]

18 minutes ago, FutureJohny said:

They can access it from the top, but not the bottom. This makes horizontal heavy ports possible to clean, but not the vertical. Building and diging works from any side.

Thank you, that's useful to know! I also just thought of something else, an auto sweeper could pull out the debris through the corner because they can go through corners at the bottom if placed perfectly diagonally.

On the original topic, the mini liquid pump doesn't have much use unless you're trying to do a magma pump trick without naphtha. I suppose it could be useful in an area where small amounts of liquid spill often to keep it from falling into your base or something.

I've found the mini gas pump useful in a vacuum airlock with two chambers, on the vacuum side. It's compact, allows you to have a small airlock chamber with a duplicant checkpoint in it and saves you power on keeping the vacuum side vacuum.

It's also much cheaper to run one of these in the late stage of vacuuming an area (pressure below 50 grams or so) and just as effective as a big pump.

[FutureJohny]

I use them on entrances to cold biomes. I feed my dupes on pepper bread from wild plants, so preserving them is important. My setup is outer biome - water lock - mini pump - mechanical airlock - cold biome.

Also before automation I had one running at the bottom of my base non-stop, with CO2 being filtered by mechanical filter.

[erso]

11 hours ago, Jumpp said:

2. They draw less max power, so you can operate more pumps on a circuit. This seems to me to be of purely theoretical value.

These pumps only make sense when one is forced to deal with small units. The efficiency is poor compared to the normal pumps.

energy consumption per gram:

Mini Liquid Pump: 60.0 J per 1000 g = 0.06 J/g
Liquid Pump: 240 J per 10000 g = 0.024 J/g

Mini Gas Pump: 60.0 J per 50 g = 1.2 J/g
Gas Pump: 240 J per 500.0 g = 0.48 J/g

[Sevio]

Aside from when one is forced to pump small amounts of liquid or gas, their compactness combined with a low throughput requirement can make it worth the tradeoff in power efficiency.

[Gurgel]

You are missing that less peak power draw is far from a "theoretical" advantage.

[Whispershade]

11 hours ago, Scorpio King said:

@Whispershade

The red icon of "no gas" does not bother you?

It annoys me more than it should.

I interpret the "no gas" icon as "thermal seal engaged!"

More seriously, I don't notice it when I'm not looking directly for it.

[Jumpp]

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

You are missing that less peak power draw is far from a "theoretical" advantage.

Awesome. Can you elaborate on that? With what sort of practical setup would this be a significant advantage? I just don't run enough pumps on the same circuit that this is something I even need to think about. But I expect that there might be certain later-game applications where it might be a big deal? Do you know of any?

[SchlauFuchs]

11 hours ago, tzionut said:

I use them for cooling the natural gas produced by my nat gas vents for not damage the pump.

Are you saying that the mini pumps have a higher melting point than a Gold Amalgamate pump?

[tzionut]

Quote

Are you saying that the mini pumps have a higher melting point than a Gold Amalgamate pump?

No. I use them like this:

[Jumpp]

I'm sure that'd work. Is it maybe over-engineered, though? I just put a single wheezewort right up next to the nat gas vent, confine the thing very tightly, and then use an atmo sensor to run the pump only when the gas pressure is over 3kg/tile. The vented gas is pretty hot, but it's added to an already-large volume of much-cooler gas so it doesn't damage the pump. You get the same output from the system, but there is a one-time cost since that system always leaves about 60kg of gas up in the room.

[FutureJohny]

2 hours ago, Jumpp said:

I'm sure that'd work. Is it maybe over-engineered, though? I just put a single wheezewort right up next to the nat gas vent, confine the thing very tightly, and then use an atmo sensor to run the pump only when the gas pressure is over 3kg/tile. The vented gas is pretty hot, but it's added to an already-large volume of much-cooler gas so it doesn't damage the pump. You get the same output from the system, but there is a one-time cost since that system always leaves about 60kg of gas up in the room.

I build room of about 60 tiles with one Wheeze for start and one next to Nat gen in above 3kg Hydrogen. When it gets to 40C and generator to -10C, I build the machinery and keep cooling only the generator.

I pipe the runoff water and CO2 through the vent room, keeping it cooled down to 20C in good build.

CO2 is skimmed or fed to slicksters and pWater id either sieved or sent to fert makers. If I use fert makers, I eventually build fertilizer cooker powered by glass forge and reuse the dirt.

Only one Wheeze is needed for about 3 generators. Although this does not cover heat from liquid pump and nat gas in the generator, so one more just to be on a safe side is recomended.

[greggbert]

I use them to drain airlocks like if I have a room full of chlorine or hydrogen that I occasionally have to go in and out of I'll create an "airlock" and use them to pump the escaped gas back into the room.

Also I use them to get rid of gases that will occasionally accumulate in places I don't want like natural gas in my mushroom farm.  Normally I would build a regular one, and deconstruct it when I'm done, but with the little ones it's not a big deal to leave it in there.