How to cool my oxygen production area

[code90]

Hello, 

Im a first time poster long time lurker, so ... hi !

Im a noob at this game so keep that in mind (even tho i've played it in the past a bit and I've been playing like crazy for the past couple of weeks, this game is just awesome!) 

Long story short, I've the following setup for my oxygen production (first time using this btw, saw a few guides about this on youtube):

https://imgur.com/Q18J66K   (sorry, i couldnt figure out how to post an image here, so link it is)

 

It works fine, i make enough oxygen for my colony and i am able to cool the oxygen quite well for my needs.

The problem is that the temperatures in and around the oxygen production "facility" is rising too much i think. Its already at 44°C.

My first thought was to use wheezeworts to cool everything there but that involves rebuilding the whole thing to make room for wheezeworts which ultimately wouldnt be a major issue but I dont have any more wheezeworts. The first cold biome only had 6 of them which I use for cooling the oxygen going to my base. I am still searching for another cold biome.

 

What should I do in this case? 

Any help would be awesome!

Thanks

[psusi]

5 minutes ago, code90 said:

(sorry, i couldnt figure out how to post an image here, so link it is)

Look at the bottom of the window where it says "drag files here to attach, or choose files..."

6 minutes ago, code90 said:

The problem is that the temperatures in and around the oxygen production "facility" is rising too much i think. Its already at 44°C.

Duh, you only made one floor out of insulated tile.  Insulate the rest.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

If you search for SPOM, you'll find many threads that discuss this particular problem.   Some solutions include piping the gas through a pool that is kept at the temperature you want the gas.  Other solutions are using wheezewarts in hydrogen to keep the production area cool.  Some are combinations.

The issue that you're dealing with is that electrolyzers produce hot O2 and hydrogen, and they will max out at around the temperature they're producing at.

[crypticorb]

8 minutes ago, code90 said:

Long story short, I've the following setup for my oxygen production (first time using this btw, saw a few guides about this on youtube):

https://imgur.com/Q18J66K   (sorry, i couldnt figure out how to post an image here, so link it is)

 

It works fine, i make enough oxygen for my colony and i am able to cool the oxygen quite well for my needs.

The problem is that the temperatures in and around the oxygen production "facility" is rising too much i think. Its already at 44°C.

My first thought was to use wheezeworts to cool everything there but that involves rebuilding the whole thing to make room for wheezeworts which ultimately wouldnt be a major issue but I dont have any more wheezeworts. The first cold biome only had 6 of them which I use for cooling the oxygen going to my base. I am still searching for another cold biome.

It doesn't matter what temperature the hydrogen or the oxygen production facility is, as the 40^oC gas it produces will keep itself cool, all you need is to cool the oxygen for the base.

If you have access to an ice biome, you have access to wolframite and lots of ice/snow, and you should have radiant gas pipes.

My early game method is to core out a single ice biome for the wolframite, wheezeworts, and all the ice I can find. What you should do is build a snaking radiator of radiant wolframite pipes through a box of cool water. You can pump water from a hot geyser and dump your ice in a box inside it. As the gas passes through the water, it'll be perfectly cooled to be used for your farms or base.

Ice in a storage compactor will take a huge amount of time to melt, so I'd make an open top with mesh tiles and build ice sculptures over the pool, which will melt very quickly.

 

 

[CherryHavoc]

There is also the thermo nullifier which you should hopefully be able to find hiding somewhere in an ice biome on your map. When you pump hydrogen into it it gets super cold. I usually build my oxygen production around one of these. It's especially handy as oxygen production creates hydrogen as a side product. Depending on where the nullifier/water is you may have to create some really long pipes, but it's definitely worth it.

I'm currently pumping oxygen into my base at -96C thanks to this method. Fortunately the machines in my base are creating enough heat to keep my base at a reasonable temperature despite that.

[code90]

2 minutes ago, CherryHavoc said:

There is also the thermo nullifier which you should hopefully be able to find hiding somewhere in an ice biome on your map. When you pump hydrogen into it it gets super cold. I usually build my oxygen production around one of these. It's especially handy as oxygen production creates hydrogen as a side product. Depending on where the nullifier/water is you may have to create some really long pipes, but it's definitely worth it.

I'm currently pumping oxygen into my base at -96C thanks to this method. Fortunately the machines in my base are creating enough heat to keep my base at a reasonable temperature despite that.

I have 2 of those in the cold biome i've found.

 

Its not THAT far, i could make the pipes. I have thought about using the nullifiers but i have no idea how to actually do it. Could you share a design on how to incorporate the nullifier into my oxygen production without melting the biome from the heat produced by the oxygen production facilities?

[CherryHavoc]

2 minutes ago, code90 said:

I have 2 of those in the cold biome i've found.

 

Its not THAT far, i could make the pipes. I have thought about using the nullifiers but i have no idea how to actually do it. Could you share a design on how to incorporate the nullifier into my oxygen production without melting the biome from the heat produced by the oxygen production facilities?

Unfortunately I'm not at home right now to take a screenshot, but I basically build a chamber around the nullifier out of insulated tile which should prevent the worst of the heat getting out. Electrolysers go at the bottom of the chamber, gas pumps and filters at the top, so any gases have to pass by the cold nullifier before getting pumped out.

The filter sends the hydrogen to the nullifier and a hydrogen power generator (as the nullifier doesn't actually need that much hydrogen and the whole system backs up if you don't have something else to consume the hydrogen). Everything else gets pumped into my base.

[code90]

1 minute ago, CherryHavoc said:

Unfortunately I'm not at home right now to take a screenshot, but I basically build a chamber around the nullifier out of insulated tile which should prevent the worst of the heat getting out. Electrolysers go at the bottom of the chamber, gas pumps and filters at the top, so any gases have to pass by the cold nullifier before getting pumped out.

The filter sends the hydrogen to the nullifier and a hydrogen power generator (as the nullifier doesn't actually need that much hydrogen and the whole system backs up if you don't have something else to consume the hydrogen). Everything else gets pumped into my base.

Ok, ill experiment with this and see how it goes.

 

When you (or anyone else for that mater)  have a change to make a screenshot with your setups, please do

[Segato]

Welcome @code90

I havent tested this solution but looks easy to implement:
 

 

[crypticorb]

7 minutes ago, Segato said:

Welcome @code90

I havent tested this solution but looks easy to implement:
 

 

That looks familiar.

You can use this with radiator pipes in the water to cool the oxygen to the base, OR use an AETN in that space, filling the room with hydrogen. You'll already have a handy source of hydrogen to fill the room close at hand, and power the AETN.

[SackMaggie]

2 hours ago, code90 said:

(sorry, i couldnt figure out how to post an image here, so link it is)

Or just press "Print screen"(or PRTSC) button on your keyboard and then ctrl+v in the forum its very fast and easy method. 

[Cipupec2]

3 hours ago, code90 said:

The problem is that the temperatures in and around the oxygen production "facility" is rising too much i think. Its already at 44°C.My first thought was to use wheezeworts to cool everything there but that involves rebuilding the whole thing to make room for wheezeworts which ultimately wouldnt be a major issue but I dont have any more wheezeworts. The first cold biome only had 6 of them which I use for cooling the oxygen going to my base. I am still searching for another cold biome.

The temperature will keep rising until it stabilize at little above the output temp of the Electrolyzer. Which isn't a problem if you built your pump and electrolizer out of gold amalga (raise its overheat temp to 125c). Simply make sure to:

1. Wall off the oxygen production area with insulated (igneous rock) tiles (or add airlock for bonus points to maintain access and avoid heat escaping through the door)
2. Use insulated pipes to your hydrogen generator and your cooling chambers. 
3. Fill your wheezworth cooling chamber with hydrogen, it has 4 times the heat capacity of oxygen! (you should have spare ~2 wheezies after that) 
4. Place at least one more wheezwort in the middle too cool off the power plants (you don't need two ladders) and outside to bring it more comfortable place.  
5. Possibly take a piss? if you base is close by, you can use the water sieve ability to delete heat and pipe through your sewage trough the >40c temp areas just as you do with oxygen cooling rooms. 

 

3 hours ago, code90 said:

Long story short, I've the following setup for my oxygen production (first time using this btw, saw a few guides about this on youtube):https://imgur.com/Q18J66K   (sorry, i couldnt figure out how to post an image here, so link it is)

Great early build but in the long term you might want to update that cooling chamber, it is a rely problematic and hard to scale/control.   

[onlineous]

To be honest: I never really got the SPOM hype. 

To me it always sounded like: 'look at me, I can waste 80% of the hydrogen power my base makes, awesome!!'.

In reality, a well setup oxygen system can produce way more power than it needs. For me a good oxygen system:

1. Does not require pumping of oxygen.
2. Cools the oxygen to a comfortable level.
3. Does not cool hydrogen
4. Does not cool oxygen that does not need to be cooled.
5. Produces as much power as possible.

My bases always look egg-shaped.

Hydrogen automatically floats to the top and is separated through mechanical filtering. Carbon dioxide sinks to the bottom and is removed by the carbon scrubbers.

The system is cooled by a cooling loop which runs through a hydrogen filled room full of wheezeworts. The cooling loop is made of insulated material, the yellow loops are fed by temperature controlled shut-off valves. The blue boxes are the electrolyzers. I sensorcontrol the hydrogen to populate the upper part of the base (pink waveline): there I keep warm buildings like the hydrogen generators and some batteries (purple lines). The heat they produce is destroyed when the hydrogen generators consume the hydrogen.

Systems like these produce a nice chunk of power for your base!

[fredhp]

7 minutes ago, onlineous said:

To be honest: I never really got the SPOM hype. 

To me it always sounded like: 'look at me, I can waste 80% of the hydrogen power my base makes, awesome!!'.

In reality, a well setup oxygen system can produce way more power than it needs. For me a good oxygen system:

1. Does not require pumping of oxygen.
2. Cools the oxygen to a comfortable level.
3. Does not cool hydrogen
4. Does not cool oxygen that does not need to be cooled.
5. Produces as much power as possible.

My bases always look egg-shaped.

Hydrogen automatically floats to the top and is separated through mechanical filtering. Carbon dioxide sinks to the bottom and is removed by the carbon scrubbers.

The system is cooled by a cooling loop which runs through a hydrogen filled room full of wheezeworts. The cooling loop is made of insulated material, the yellow loops are fed by temperature controlled shut-off valves. The blue boxes are the electrolyzers. I sensorcontrol the hydrogen to populate the upper part of the base (pink waveline): there I keep warm buildings like the hydrogen generators and some batteries (purple lines). The heat they produce is destroyed when the hydrogen generators consume the hydrogen.

Systems like these produce a nice chunk of power for your base!

What i do is a triangle shaped top, with electrolyzers at the bottom with some wheezeworts near it... but, your 'egg' design seems much more effective! I'll try this "egg" design in my next base - it seems easyer to keep the base cool too.

My bases always end with a mess of radiant pipes with cool water to keep base cool... with your, design, teorically, just need to cool the space bellow electrolyzers! Nice!  

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

29 minutes ago, onlineous said:

To be honest: I never really got the SPOM hype. 

To me it always sounded like: 'look at me, I can waste 80% of the hydrogen power my base makes, awesome!!'.

In reality, a well setup oxygen system can produce way more power than it needs. For me a good oxygen system:

1. Does not require pumping of oxygen.
2. Cools the oxygen to a comfortable level.
3. Does not cool hydrogen
4. Does not cool oxygen that does not need to be cooled.
5. Produces as much power as possible.

My bases always look egg-shaped.

Hydrogen automatically floats to the top and is separated through mechanical filtering. Carbon dioxide sinks to the bottom and is removed by the carbon scrubbers.

The system is cooled by a cooling loop which runs through a hydrogen filled room full of wheezeworts. The cooling loop is made of insulated material, the yellow loops are fed by temperature controlled shut-off valves. The blue boxes are the electrolyzers. I sensorcontrol the hydrogen to populate the upper part of the base (pink waveline): there I keep warm buildings like the hydrogen generators and some batteries (purple lines). The heat they produce is destroyed when the hydrogen generators consume the hydrogen.

Systems like these produce a nice chunk of power for your base!

I used to do systems like these. I stopped using it due 2 disadvantages:

-The heat is less controllable and therefore requires more cooling then you would need in a confined system

-The electrolyzers would periodically stop running due continueing overpressurizing (the oxygen does not decent fast enough). This ultimately resulted in a lot of my rooms nearer the bottom having way less oxygen, even though I built airflow tiles around in good strategic places.

So I resorted to AETN cooled builds. Yes, that's more power hungry (more pumps needed plus you hand off some of the hydrogen to the AETN) and requires more set up, but it works very well and the oxygen gets so much cooled down you can use it to cool other stuff as well. Plus the cooling solution is the most power efficient in the game.

[crypticorb]

41 minutes ago, onlineous said:

To be honest: I never really got the SPOM hype. 

To me it always sounded like: 'look at me, I can waste 80% of the hydrogen power my base makes, awesome!!'.

In reality, a well setup oxygen system can produce way more power than it needs. For me a good oxygen system:

1. Does not require pumping of oxygen.
2. Cools the oxygen to a comfortable level.
3. Does not cool hydrogen
4. Does not cool oxygen that does not need to be cooled.
5. Produces as much power as possible.

My bases always look egg-shaped.

Hydrogen automatically floats to the top and is separated through mechanical filtering. Carbon dioxide sinks to the bottom and is removed by the carbon scrubbers.

The system is cooled by a cooling loop which runs through a hydrogen filled room full of wheezeworts. The cooling loop is made of insulated material, the yellow loops are fed by temperature controlled shut-off valves. The blue boxes are the electrolyzers. I sensorcontrol the hydrogen to populate the upper part of the base (pink waveline): there I keep warm buildings like the hydrogen generators and some batteries (purple lines). The heat they produce is destroyed when the hydrogen generators consume the hydrogen.

Systems like these produce a nice chunk of power for your base!

The SPOM came about because it was a fairly easy to understand and build bolt-on design for anyone struggling with oxygen production.

Some designs can produce more power than they use, but the simple solution to that is to have the hydrogen generator away from the SPOM connected directly to the heavi-watt backbone of your power core.

I prefer pumping the oxygen because it's easier to temperature control while in a radiant/insulated pipe, and far more effective at equal distribution. Your system has merits and benifits that mine does not, though. Can you share a screenshot or a save file?

[onlineous]

8 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

I used to do systems like these. I stopped using it due 2 disadvantages:

-The heat is less controllable and therefore requires more cooling then you would need in a confined system

-The electrolyzers would periodically stop running due continueing overpressurizing (the oxygen does not decent fast enough). This ultimately resulted in a lot of my rooms nearer the bottom having way less oxygen, even though I built airflow tiles around in good strategic places.

So I resorted to AETN cooled builds. Yes, that's more power hungry (more pumps needed plus you hand off some of the hydrogen to the AETN) and requires more set up, but it works very well and the oxygen gets so much cooled down you can use it to cool other stuff as well. Plus the cooling solution is the most power efficient in the game.

The electrolyzers overpressurize a lot, but four is more than I would need anyway so I don't consider it a problem.

I actually have a quite 'wide' egg and at the bottom (just above the carbon scrubbers the pressure is around 1400 g.

There is not much heat buildup in the base (if there is any at all), the bottom of the base is around 30 degrees, but it's hard to say how much of that is due to the environment (I don't have enough ceramic to seal everything off yet) and how much comes from my oxygen production.

I might expand the cooling loop a bit in the future, but until now (around cycle 1000) it has not been necessary yet.

 

8 hours ago, crypticorb said:

The SPOM came about because it was a fairly easy to understand and build bolt-on design for anyone struggling with oxygen production.

Some designs can produce more power than they use, but the simple solution to that is to have the hydrogen generator away from the SPOM connected directly to the heavi-watt backbone of your power core.

I prefer pumping the oxygen because it's easier to temperature control while in a radiant/insulated pipe, and far more effective at equal distribution. Your system has merits and benifits that mine does not, though. Can you share a screenshot or a save file?

Does this help? It's actually quite a simple system. The only downside I see at the moment is that the pumps for the exosuit docks are below the cooling loop, that oxygen doesn't need cooling of course. However, 6 wheezeworts produce way more cooling than needed anyway, so currently I don't care too much about that.

[Cipupec2]

9 hours ago, onlineous said:

To be honest: I never really got the SPOM hype. 

Because people find it exciting to figuring out and tweak a foolproof design for your main life support system? Such electrolizer setups tend to be very optimized and are very flexible, if you want you can even put one top of your base.

 

9 hours ago, onlineous said:

My bases always look egg-shaped.

I think that most people who like organized bases use a variation of that early on.

 

8 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

I used to do systems like these. I stopped using it due 2 disadvantages:

-The heat is less controllable and therefore requires more cooling then you would need in a confined system

-The electrolyzers would periodically stop running due continueing overpressurizing (the oxygen does not decent fast enough). This ultimately resulted in a lot of my rooms nearer the bottom having way less oxygen, even though I built airflow tiles around in good strategic places.

So I resorted to AETN cooled builds. Yes, that's more power hungry (more pumps needed plus you hand off some of the hydrogen to the AETN) and requires more set up, but it works very well and the oxygen gets so much cooled down you can use it to cool other stuff as well. Plus the cooling solution is the most power efficient in the game.

Indeed.

[Yoma_Nosme]

I would like to mention that you can build your electrolyzer close to an ice biome and detour the oxygen pipes thru it(make them radiant inside the biome).

This cools your oxygen and melts some water and ph2o that you can fill in the tank of the Spom setup above, it's already pretty cold so you don't have to waste energy to prime the Spom with cool water.

When your Spom is ready to go just deconstruct the pipes that went thru the ice biome and everything is fine. Cheers

Edit. Usually when I do this I then put the aquatuner that keeps cooling my Spom tank, in the pool of water, inside the ice biome( so everything is close)

[Cipupec2]

This what I ended up with. It still need some tweaking, any suggestions would be welcome:

The coal generators arem't part of the build, they are there for backup in case I fuckup and need to cold start the whole system.

EDIT:
Ventilation overlay:

Spoiler

Plumbing Overlay:

Spoiler

* The setup can handle a lot of water, more that than annually produced on most map but its useful to get rid of all the extra water accumulated from gaysers since early game, and later only works to capacity.
* Use very hot water input over >90c (I don't waste cooling on geysers) that why the buffer is in vacuum to avoid heat transfer.  
* Cools only the oxygen and only for the base while hydrogen and air for exosuits remain as is.  
* I am planing to replace the aquatuner with AETN cooling once I get enough insulator material.

[GrindThisGame]

My wasteful setup using nullifiers and gas filters. Electrolyzers (1 per two gas pumps). Gas pumps goes to filters and filter out hydrogen which goes to hydrogen generators and the nullifers. Pumps/electrolyzers are beside the nullifer to keep everything cold. You can seal the nullifer room and add hydrogen to help cooling. Metal tile or tungsten between gas pump room and the nullifer. It wastes power with filters and cools hydrogen which doesn't need cooling.

 

[Xheotris]

Man, y'all are missing the point. Don't cool or insulate your oxygen modules. Instead, use them to cool your steam geysers. The area around an uninsulated electrolyzer always trends to 70° . The area around a geyser trends to 110°. If you put a gold amalgam oxygen module in the same thermal box as your geyser, the geyser steam can condense off of your oxygen module's outer wall, and the 90° water gets immediately processed, without travel leakage, deleting a maximal amount of heat. Then, later, you can run the oxygen past a couple of wheezeworts to make it livable.

[Cipupec2]

@Xheotris, That is a smart and efficient strategy particularly post abyssalite nerf. And in my early games, when I was obsessed with excess heat, that's exactly what I was aiming for, but since then I figured out how to remove heat from the system I much prefer building my large central facility where I use power tune up (which is the only thing here that need dup interaction).

[onlineous]

1 hour ago, Xheotris said:

Man, y'all are missing the point. Don't cool or insulate your oxygen modules. Instead, use them to cool your steam geysers. The area around an uninsulated electrolyzer always trends to 70° . The area around a geyser trends to 110°. If you put a gold amalgam oxygen module in the same thermal box as your geyser, the geyser steam can condense off of your oxygen module's outer wall, and the 90° water gets immediately processed, without travel leakage, deleting a maximal amount of heat. Then, later, you can run the oxygen past a couple of wheezeworts to make it livable.

That's a cool strategy. I would only route the hydrogen ducts and the oxygen duct supplying the exosuit docks through the geyser condensation area though.

[Xheotris]

1 hour ago, onlineous said:

That's a cool strategy. I would only route the hydrogen ducts and the oxygen duct supplying the exosuit docks through the geyser condensation area though.

Why though? The module itself provides a lot of thermal mass, and the heat differential is highest right out of the electrolyzer. It doesn't take much to cool the oxygen back down later.

 

Edit: What I mean by thermal mass, is that the tiles of the oxygen module act as a sort of thermal battery. They're going to heat up to 70, no matter what. When the geyser is active, they heat up further, but slowly. Then, when the geyser is idle, they cool back down to 70 from whatever temperature they reached. This offsets the weak heat capacity of oxygen by spreading it out over time. The output oxygen will only heat up by a few degrees, and the total heat difference is easily dealt with.