Early O2 Farm (cycle 30)

[avc15]

I have also started using terrariums for oxygen. You know what's really cool about them? On a grand scale better than 80% of their output can be from off-gassing pwater, instead of algae. You can get WAY more than 44g/s of oxygen production from each terrarium after they've all dropped enough pwater. A few tons of algae can provide O2 for 20+ dupes and hundreds of cycles pretty easily.

It does force you to find a replenishable water supply earlier than usual, and it only works if your terrarium farm is kept below 1800g pressure everywhere (or the pwater won't gas). So basically if you want to use less algae, make it a forced air system.

Here's the version I'm playing around with right now. It's not perfect, but I won't have to switch to elecrolyzers until I want to free up some dupe labor. Doors on the right side - you need a way to restrict airflow from right to left, these are only closed 70% of the time but it helps. Automation - whenever pressure gets low the doors under my terrariums open (they don't need to be powered!) :

You just do have to be careful where you set up the pressure sensor, there is a problem putting it near the pumps, and a problem putting it farther to the right. As long as it cycles the doors closed again before your pumps are sending small packets, and cycles the doors open again before any pwater on the right side of the room stops gassing, you're golden.

Oh, and clay is a problem, since the deodorizers drop it 10kg at a time. Make sure any compactors you have for storing clay are set to priority 4. Otherwise you lose a ton of errands just on sweeping clay.

[The Plum Gate]

@avc15, @Neotuck, I was looking over the designs for future base planning - the lights can be turned off via automation ( when you open the doors ) this can save energy and reduce heat ( albeit slightly ). You just need a not gate off the door lines.

This doesn't really apply designs that temporarily drop stuff, it's just extra wiring unless you're going to disable the terrariums for a long period of time.

I've looked into using shine bugs instead, they're pretty low maintenance, corralling them is a no-go until after plastic though, so there's that much to bother with - they are still tempted by phosphorite laying around. but it wouldn't stop them from getting trapped in doors or wandering off, etc.

[Sasza22]

4 minutes ago, The Plum Gate said:

I've looked into using shine bugs instead, they're pretty low maintenance, corralling them is a no-go until after plastic though

You can corral shinebugs. I had one stuck in my mess hall and 2 in my relax room. None escaped for 600 cycles. Just make sure there isn`t a terrarium or deodorizers 2 tiles form the door so a dupe won`t stand there delivering stuff and shinebugs shouldn`t escape.

[avc15]

one other interesting thing: terrariums potentially delete way more heat than electrolyzers. The pwater they produce is at 30C, most of the oxygen they make comes from off-gassed pwater, so my terrarium farm is making oxygen at about 30C no matter how hot the water is that my dupes are filling them with. And the actual terrariums are off most of the time, so it really doesn't use up as much dupe labor as you'd think.

This approach is farm-friendly. You don't need to supply much cooling, at all, to keep your bristle farms going. As long as the water you're using for bristles is also below 30C.

[Neotuck]

Wow I wasn't expecting to get this many responses to this old thread, well here's an updated version I commonly use in the current update and usually I have it up by cycle 50 (no rush)

3 hours ago, avc15 said:

it only works if your terrarium farm is kept below 1800g pressure everywhere (or the pwater won't gas).

It's possible to go beyond 1.8kg if you have the bottles directly over the deodorizers (like in my picture) causing an off-gassing loop.  When the deodorizers suck up the PO2 they leave behind a tile of vacuum for an instant, that is long enough to allow the bottle to off-gas again which will then continue the loop allowing pressure to rise beyond the 1.8kg limit

1 hour ago, The Plum Gate said:

I was looking over the designs for future base planning - the lights can be turned off via automation ( when you open the doors ) this can save energy and reduce heat ( albeit slightly ). You just need a not gate off the door lines.

I like your idea, I already use a not gate to turn off the liquid pump, wouldn't take much to extend an automation wire up to the lamps

[avc15]

7 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

It's possible to go beyond 1.8kg if you have the bottles directly over the deodorizers (like in my picture) causing an off-gassing loop.  When the deodorizers suck up the PO2 they leave behind a tile of vacuum for an instant, that is long enough to allow the bottle to off-gas again which will then continue the loop allowing pressure to rise beyond the 1.8kg limit

That makes sense - very interesting. Do your bottles off-gas at a slower rate on average than if you pumped air away? There may be some ticks where they couldn't gas off and you might get a lower total PO2 production.

But even that wouldn't be a problem, making it open air is much preferable. Even if the offgassing is say 2/3 the rate of just being in a low pressure room, you will still make most of your air from water / not algae without needing to build a bunch of air systems & use all that power. Off gassing will still increase hyperbolically because gas rate is proportional to the mass of the bottle, and the terrariums will still spend less and less time turned on the longer you keep the room up & running.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, avc15 said:

That makes sense - very interesting. Do your bottles off-gas at a slower rate on average than if you pumped air away? There may be some ticks where they couldn't gas off and you might get a lower total PO2 production.

But even that wouldn't be a problem, making it open air is much preferable. Even if the offgassing is say 2/3 the rate of just being in a low pressure room, you will still make most of your air from water / not algae. Off gassing will still increase hyperbolically because gas rate is proportional to the mass of the bottle, and the terrariums will still spend less and less time turned on the longer you keep the room up & running.

I usually "jump start" my O2 farm by building reservoirs first before building terrariums, filling them with PW, then deconstructing them so the bottles fall on the deodorizers

In my first attempt I built and filled 8 reservoirs, this became a mistake as they bottles off gassed so fast that my dupe's ears started popping from too much oxygen.  I was playing on max difficulty at the time so this killed my whole colony .....oops 

from now on I just fill 3 to keep things safe

[K_Lark]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

It's possible to go beyond 1.8kg if you have the bottles directly over the deodorizers (like in my picture) causing an off-gassing loop.  When the deodorizers suck up the PO2 they leave behind a tile of vacuum for an instant, that is long enough to allow the bottle to off-gas again which will then continue the loop allowing pressure to rise beyond the 1.8kg limit

I like your idea, I already use a not gate to turn off the liquid pump, wouldn't take much to extend an automation wire up to the lamps

How do you keep the water topped off? do you do it manually? 

[The Plum Gate]

I find the plumber and a line of water pipe could put a bottle on the ground anywhere you like. The problem is any PW/bottle emptier pits you might have need to be dealt with to keep the bottle on the floor ( you've probably already done this though ).

The sooner you get a plumber, the sooner you can draw out a line of bottles anywhere you like given a pump and a source ( preferably something without germs in it  -  there's a reservoir and chlorine immersion trick for that.

I just noticed that the liquid reservoir can be submerged, so the storage compaction factor is excellent, I've been putting my tanks in my holding ponds - helps handle the large volume of extra water produced by some geysers. But I stray from the topic..

3 minutes ago, K_Lark said:

How do you keep the water topped off? do you do it manually? 

it looks like there's a pipe outlet for that purpose, it could be metered according to the useage. I imagine it's a manual operation topping off the tank, the drip feeding is enough to keep them happy - that's a large body of water in circulation, so it will take a while before there needs to be looked at.

[Neotuck]

41 minutes ago, K_Lark said:

How do you keep the water topped off? do you do it manually? 

the average need for water is less than 60kg per cycle per dupe (about the same needed to water 3 bristles)

this can be done manually or with automation

[avc15]

Here's my new version  based off neotuck's layout but I'm just showing some ways you can automate the liquid delivery & control.

Yeah I've found that only some of the PH20 bottles off gas. Cycling the doors will cause a pressure transient and then different bottles will be off gassing. So there is an unlikely possibility of getting a pressure "excursion" several cycles after you get one bad moment of RNG. But it's not a huge problem, you can just sweep a couple bottles if it ever happens.

I didn't used to think much of terrariums because they hog so much dupe labor. But if you leave them running, and let bottles build up on the floor, your dupes will spend less and less time on the terrariums until they seem to just be off almost all the time, and take almost no labor at all.

Liquid valves are set to 3000g/s, just enough to barely exceed the needs of all 16 terrariums when on. If the doors are open we shut off the pump and water flowing in from outside. If that level sensor at the top of the tank goes above 100kg the liquid shutoff shuts and we start recirculating water from the bottom tank. Because liquid will come from an inline output port first, flow only circulates if water level is above 100kg - otherwise water comes in from outside. The pump gets shut off if the doors open. (in the below screenshot, doors just cycled open)

Took a little bit to come up with a control logic that works. Both those pressure sensors at the corners are set to "on below 2200g" - high enough to keep my whole base bright blue but low enough to keep eardrums from popping when dupes run by those deodorizers. But it also needs debounce logic or we're wasting power. The two filters right below their pressure sensors debounce opening, the last filter in line debounces closing. They're all set to 60 seconds. So basically, the thing can't change state more often than once every 60 seconds, and it's biased towards staying open (terrariums off).

There's also an emergency shutoff switch for the whole thing on the bottom left. And, when the terrariums are off my recirc pump stops running, and the lights shut off.

[beowulf2010]

4 minutes ago, avc15 said:

Took a little bit to come up with a control logic that works. Both those pressure sensors at the corners are set to "on below 2200g" - high enough to keep my whole base bright blue but low enough to keep eardrums from popping when dupes run by those deodorizers. But it also needs debounce logic or we're wasting power. The two filters right below their pressure sensors debounce opening, the last filter in line debounces closing. They're both set to 20 seconds. So basically, the thing can't change state more often than once every 60 seconds, and it's biased towards staying open (terrariums off). 

Suggestion for slight improvement: You can eliminate 2 of the 3 Not gates by changing the vertical Filter to a Buffer gate and adding an Automation Bridge over the doors. The only Not gate needed is the one leading to the lights/pump.

Mine goes Atmo Sensor (>2,000) to Filter (10 seconds, smooth out bumps) to Buffer (60 seconds, keep system off) to the doors. The lights and pump are fed by a Not gate connected to the Buffer's output. 

I can grab a screen shot later if you'd like. 

[avc15]

8 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Suggestion for slight improvement: You can eliminate 2 of the 3 Not gates by changing the vertical Filter to a Buffer gate and adding an Automation Bridge over the doors. The only Not gate needed is the one leading to the lights/pump.

Good point, I used the not gate to eliminate the need for an AND at the emergency shutoff switch (turns that logic to OR). Just kind of my personal preference there.

Also it's debouncing but still not really mechanically bi-stable. Most times the terrariums turn on they will run for exactly 60 seconds and then doors open again, meaning it wasted most of the power that went into moving water. That's happening because when we sense <2200g of O2 pressure for >60 seconds the doors shut, causing a pressure transient that makes for a stable pressure above 2200g again, and doors open after 60 seconds. So, it will need an SR latch.

[Yunru]

Automation's easy. I just use a clock (to briefly drop bottles every morning) and two pressure sensors with a memory gate.

If the pressure's above 2.5k, the terrariums turn off until the pressure's below 1.5k.

[beowulf2010]

1 minute ago, avc15 said:

Good point, I used the not gate to eliminate the need for an AND at the emergency shutoff switch (turns that logic to OR). Just kind of my personal preference there.

Also it's debouncing but still not really mechanically bi-stable. Most times the terrariums turn on they will run for exactly 60 seconds and then doors open again, meaning it wasted most of the power that went into moving water. That's happening because when we sense <2200g of O2 pressure for >60 seconds the doors shut, causing a pressure transient that makes for a stable pressure above 2200g again. So, it will need another pair of sensors and an SR latch.

No worries. I'd rather "waste" power instead of construction materials so that the direction I lean towards. 

I should have said, "Suggestion to save yourself a 50ish kg of Refined Metal." 

[Grimgaw]

If we're using a liquid pump, why bother with terrariums and not just deconstruct few reservoirs?

[avc15]

3 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

If we're using a liquid pump, why bother with terrariums and not just deconstruct few reservoirs?

You need a way to automate pressure regulation. If you're just manually putting bottles on the floor, you have to micro manage that for your whole game. Terrarium represents a way to put just the exact amount of pwater on the ground that you need.

You can "seed" it like neotuck suggested by deconstructing a few reservoirs, but you want a slight bit too little to start out with.

[Tab1]

Question: If hot water is directly fed to the terrariums from the sieve which is 40C would it heat up the oxygen produced by them or do they output oxygen at fixed temp?

[Yunru]

Do we really need the terrariums?

Couldn't we have a pitcher pump, a bottle emptier, a pressure plate, and some doors, such that a dupe bottles PH2O, carries it across some doors, has a door cut off their pathing, dropping the bottle into a separate section?

Completely algae and power free, but more dupe time investment and requires some automation.

[Grimgaw]

2 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Do we really need the terrariums?

Couldn't we have a pitcher pump, a bottle emptier, a pressure plate, and some doors, such that a dupe bottles PH2O, carries it across some doors, has a door cut off their pathing, dropping the bottle into a separate section?

Completely algae and power free, but more dupe time investment and requires some automation.

Someone made just this on this forums, search for it.

[Yunru]

2 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Someone made just this on this forums, search for it.

Hmmmm... No. They didn't.

They made a torture device, not an oxygen source.

[Neotuck]

21 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Do we really need the terrariums?

Couldn't we have a pitcher pump, a bottle emptier, a pressure plate, and some doors, such that a dupe bottles PH2O, carries it across some doors, has a door cut off their pathing, dropping the bottle into a separate section?

Completely algae and power free, but more dupe time investment and requires some automation.

 

18 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Someone made just this on this forums, search for it.

 

15 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Hmmmm... No. They didn't.

They made a torture device, not an oxygen source.

are you guys talking about this?

 

[Frater Bartmoss]

My base in cycle 700+ with 6 algae terrariums. Its a cheap "all in one" solution and started around cycle 20 as I remember right:

Doors will be closed if pressure is < 1200 + water get pumped - you know the drill. 5 deoxidizer are enough, clay will be transported to the hatches yadda, yadda

Its so cheap, that I can run the base with my actual algae a few hundred cycles more. Oxygen for my suits are produced by a single spom...

All the polluted water produced by shower and toilets are eaten by the plants - no recycling needed. I cant imagine to start a new base without algae terrariums anymore

 

 

 

[Tab1]

2 hours ago, Tab1 said:

Question: If hot water is directly fed to the terrariums from the sieve which is 40C would it heat up the oxygen produced by them or do they output oxygen at fixed temp?

Any answers plz?

[Neotuck]

3 minutes ago, Tab1 said:

Any answers plz?

Sorry didn't see the question

The output is fixed but the terrariums will heat up or cool down depending what temperature the algae/water is.  And that temperature will transfer to the surrounding oxygen.