Large Vacuum Rooms, A how-to in 10 easy steps.

[DMFan79]

With 4 normal pump placed in each corner, you get vacuum very quickly, unless the room is really huge.

The other solution, that has been wrote already, is to dig a room beyond a waterlock.

[Decius]

2 hours ago, LetMeSearch said:

The problem here isn't gas moving through the water itself, but the vapor pressure dropping as you pump out the atmosphere, resulting in the water itself boiling off and making an (if thin) cold steam atmosphere in the evacuated room. 

Sure, the water will boil off as the outside pressure blows it through the U-bend like a skin diver clearing their snorkel.

[Angpaur]

26 minutes ago, Decius said:

Sure, the water will boil off as the outside pressure blows it through the U-bend like a skin diver clearing their snorkel.

No. It's not about it. Water in vacuum has different boiling temperature - it will boil in a "room" temperature.

[Decius]

Just now, Angpaur said:

No. It's not about it. Water in vacuum has different boiling temperature - it will boil in a "room" temperature.

The surface of the water inside the vacuum is going to be ~30 ft or 10M (divided by the local constant acceleration in G, times the pressure outside in ATM) higher than the surface outside the vacuum. it will only boil down to that point before the outside pressure blows the contents of the pipe all over the room.

Water locks for vacuum use two different variations from physics; the fact that pressure/temperature/phase relationships aren't meaningfully implemented, and the fact that liquid pressure isn't implemented at all.

[Angpaur]

I was not clear - what @LetMeSearch wrote was about water boiling in vacuum at a low temperatures. But you are right - before the water has any chance to boil it will be pushed by outside pressure and vacuum will be gone.

[ruhrohraggy]

4 hours ago, Decius said:

The surface of the water inside the vacuum is going to be ~30 ft or 10M (divided by the local constant acceleration in G, times the pressure outside in ATM) higher than the surface outside the vacuum. it will only boil down to that point before the outside pressure blows the contents of the pipe all over the room.

Water locks for vacuum use two different variations from physics; the fact that pressure/temperature/phase relationships aren't meaningfully implemented, and the fact that liquid pressure isn't implemented at all.

For fun let's try some crudely drawn pictures and see if you might agree with them, for a real life scenario....

And yes, it's blatantly impractical... but not totally impossible. And yeah...the water would boil off into the room and maybe even desublimate as well...Slow-gas exchanges through the water would occur as well... But still! It's like, quasi possible.

(And there's no such thing as a perfect vacuum anyway)

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

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[avc15]

I find this very informative actually, and it makes sense. Most of my industrial builds involve vacuuming something or doing some kind of air ejection, but it hadn't occurred to me that small pumps would be both more efficient & therefore also faster (by building several) at low pressures.

 

Thanks for the post.

[ruhrohraggy]

16 minutes ago, avc15 said:

I find this very informative actually, and it makes sense. Most of my industrial builds involve vacuuming something or doing some kind of air ejection, but it hadn't occurred to me that small pumps would be both more efficient & therefore also faster (by building several) at low pressures.

 

Thanks for the post.

Thank you for the response. You hit the point of what I was getting at on the head.

And, though my initial post was done a bit tongue in cheek, sorta like, Billy Mayes style...It wasn't necessarily meant to be condescending to seasoned players. (I'm getting that sorta vibe from some of the responses...)

The goal was to show newer players as well, how you would go about getting to the end-point, in a step-by step, in-game sorta way.

And the guide ended up being a mix of 3 tutorials too, which is fun...A way to clear space fast with ladders, how you build water-locks in game, and how efficient and effective a bunch of mini pumps are at clearing a big room of gas down to a vacuum.

Three for the price of one! For only $19.99.

[JonnyMonroe]

By the time I need vacuum rooms I already have access to space and I can build them there. But even if I didn't, the pump doesn't take that long.

[ruhrohraggy]

 

 

9 hours ago, JonnyMonroe said:

By the time I need vacuum rooms I already have access to space and I can build them there. But even if I didn't, the pump doesn't take that long.

For small to medium size rooms...it's not that long no (I was obviously over-exaggerating with my initial word choice)...but what about for larger rooms?

I ran a test on a medium sized room for fun...

Here are the results :

Single normal pump :                                                                     6x Minipumps :

Time to vacuum ~ 8 cycles.                                                              Time To vacuum ~ 2 cycles

Power used per day = 151.7 kJ                                                         Power used per day 190.6 kJ

Total power used = 1213.kJ                                                               Total power used = 381.2 kJ

Resulted in colony lost.                                                                      Did not result in colony lost.

 

Still quite a difference...takes 4x longer for a single pump on a room this size.

 

Photographic logs : (I started both systems at the end of cycle one in the same exact room)

Standard Pump

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Mini-Pump (I forgot to take an initial picture -_-)

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

I would also say there is a bit of a difference between the vacuum of space, and a vacuum you create underground for design purposes...just some food for thought :

A space vacuum will constantly remove gas.

A vacuum you create will not.

A space vacuum will require backing tiles to stop the effect of gas loss, say...for a hydrogen condenser or something (backing tiles will also store and transfer heat)

A space vacuum requires bunker tiles to protect from meteors, and can be quite the distance from your base...

A vacuum you create can be placed wherever you want it

[storm6436]

On 11/21/2018 at 2:40 PM, ruhrohraggy said:

As a physicist, this game should bug you in it's entirety.

As a mechanical engineer, I just work with the rules I'm given, and try to make something useful.

And a liquid lock in real life is not totally infeasible. Gas transfer through water is a slow process. If you had a room cut off by a pool of water and pumped all the gas out, it would take a very long time for it to refill, especially if you waited until the dissolved o2 in the water also came out of solution, and you pumped that out as well.

Eh, most of the physics implementation is more amusing than anything else to me.  Does present some interesting things to think about.

 

 The problem with water locks is that the boiling point of a liquid is air pressure dependent so any of the water exposed to your new vacuum room would begin to boil off and fill said vacuum with water vapor.   Ultimately it wouldn't work without some very specific circumstances as the pressure differential would also act on the water itself, slurping it up into your vacuum space and most probably presenting a channel for atmosphere to pass to the vacuum.

[ruhrohraggy]

16 hours ago, storm6436 said:

Eh, most of the physics implementation is more amusing than anything else to me.  Does present some interesting things to think about.

 

 The problem with water locks is that the boiling point of a liquid is air pressure dependent so any of the water exposed to your new vacuum room would begin to boil off and fill said vacuum with water vapor.   Ultimately it wouldn't work without some very specific circumstances as the pressure differential would also act on the water itself, slurping it up into your vacuum space and most probably presenting a channel for atmosphere to pass to the vacuum.

Yeah, I covered this problem. Even drew some pictures. I'm aware. A liquid lock with water would not work very well...but you could get close. You might be able to get better results using a liquid with higher specific gravity, with a much higher boiling point...Your liquid column wouldn't need to be as high, and you'd get a lower rate of boiling. But in real life, we use airlocks, because we're not quite as stupid as dupes are.

In a perfect vacuum, even the material you used to build the walls, metal / concrete / whatever, would sublimate and lose atoms into the room. Astronauts on the ISS talk about a funny burnt / metallic smell upon taking their gear off after a space-walk. They attribute this to the surrounding metal lightly sublimating into the room when there's a vacuum. (Could also be the sun roasting the outside of their suit...but who knows really...)

This is why there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Particles like to fill space. Weird how that works eh?

[Craigjw]

This conversation is all just a lot of hot air....

[storm6436]

7 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Yeah, I covered this problem. Even drew some pictures. I'm aware. A liquid lock with water would not work very well...but you could get close. You might be able to get better results using a liquid with higher specific gravity, with a much higher boiling point...Your liquid column wouldn't need to be as high, and you'd get a lower rate of boiling. But in real life, we use airlocks, because we're not quite as stupid as dupes are.

In a perfect vacuum, even the material you used to build the walls, metal / concrete / whatever, would sublimate and lose atoms into the room. Astronauts on the ISS talk about a funny burnt / metallic smell upon taking their gear off after a space-walk. They attribute this to the surrounding metal lightly sublimating into the room when there's a vacuum. (Could also be the sun roasting the outside of their suit...but who knows really...)

This is why there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Particles like to fill space. Weird how that works eh?

Yeah, I hadn't read the rest of the thread yet when I posted that.  What's terribly funny is that even if you magically made a space with absolutely zero real particles for an appreciable volume, you'd still have virtual particles to pop in and out.  That said, even the interstellar void between stars still has a smidge of hydrogen here and there.

[Saturnus]

On 21/11/2018 at 9:40 PM, ruhrohraggy said:

As a physicist, this game should bug you in it's entirety.

As a mechanical engineer, I just work with the rules I'm given, and try to make something useful.

Exactly. I don't see why people, especially educated people, have a problem with the in-game physics. The desire for any relation to real world physics is nonsense. One of the first principles in the scientific method is to compare observations with theory. If repeatable observations and experiments contradict your hypothesis then the hypothesis is wrong, and you have to adjust that. It is not the in-game physics that is wrong. It's your inability to come up with a theoretical framework that matches repeatable observations.

I'm also an engineer. And as that, I like you, I have a much more pragmatic approach. I work with the rules as they are. And I build experiments to find those rules by observation and measurement. Naturally, I could look into the code and get much of the information from there but I consider that cheating myself of the fun of building contraptions to test hypothesises. 

[ruhrohraggy]

21 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

 Naturally, I could look into the code and get much of the information from there but I consider that cheating myself of the fun of building contraptions to test hypothesises. 

Well...It's a game...That's the point. If you can find rules to bend / exploit, then I say exploit them...If we knew how to bend / break the rules of the universe in real life to our advantage, you bet we'd be doing it...

If someone feels that it's cheap and detracts from their experience, then they shouldn't...

I personally think coding is boring. (to me at least) I never liked any of my programming classes...Would never go as far as to dip into the coding either...yuck.

Most of the time I even try to stay away from doing any math...If it can be avoided. Though, sometimes it can't be helped.

I did a metric butt-load of math (even some trig! oh boy!...) only once for an ONI problem...and that's because I knew learning / working out the automation would be a royal pain...So I had to make sure I'd be justified in the endeavor before committing...I think I even made a graph...and plotted 2 related data sets, just to confirm the theory. (Pulsing 6 scanners saves a metric ass-ton of power if you're using solar)

But yes! Building systems and observing is much more fun, that's for sure.

[ishakaru]

@ruhrohraggy Sorry for not replying before. Unless I'm mistaken on something, digging out a [insert resource tile other than slime] creates a vacuum tile in its place just like deconstructing a tile. 

So with that thought:

1) pick your place

2.1) dig to the holes and fill them and the dig path 

2.2)build the border, water lock

3)hollow out the middle accessing a only through a water lock(robo miners may be of help).

[beowulf2010]

7 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I'm also an engineer. And as that, I like you, I have a much more pragmatic approach. I work with the rules as they are.

And then you find ways to break the heck out of the rules. 

[Saturnus]

7 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

And then you find ways to break the heck out of the rules. 

Just like we do in real life. If you find something that is more efficient than the traditional method of doing it, you exploit the crap out of it.

[beowulf2010]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Just like we do in real life. If you find something that is more efficient than the traditional method of doing it, you exploit the crap out of it.

This is why I always look forward to topics you, Neotuck, Lifegrow, etc start. I may not use some of the shenanigans you guys find, but I love learning how to use them. 

[ruhrohraggy]

7 hours ago, ishakaru said:

@ruhrohraggy Sorry for not replying before. Unless I'm mistaken on something, digging out a [insert resource tile other than slime] creates a vacuum tile in its place just like deconstructing a tile. 

So with that thought:

1) pick your place

2.1) dig to the holes and fill them and the dig path 

2.2)build the border, water lock

3)hollow out the middle accessing a only through a water lock(robo miners may be of help).

That absolutely works, but it has limitations. Gas producing tiles are a no-go, not just slime; bleach stone and potentially polluted ice, off-gas as well . Also, any gaps you'd have to fill in etc... etc...that and it's just too tedious imo.

If you could show step-by-step pictures or a video of creating the exact same room I made in the manner you described, in a similar location, I would be quite interested in seeing it. (No sarcasm, I really would be interested...)

Honestly, doing it this way is super cheap, and super quick. 300 plastic for 6 pumps, 360 watts. You could have a single dupe on a hamster-wheel power it.

Anyway, by the time you even need a vacuum room like this, you should be swimming in plastic and power. My current play-through is on cycle 621. I have 34t of nat gas, 28t of hydrogen, 252t of coal and 63.2t of plastic at my disposal.

I posted this because I have done many 1000+ cycle runs, and haven't once thought to use mini-pumps in this way. I was always wondering what a good use for them would be...And this is definitely a good use for them. Then I figured, maybe... other people hadn't realized it either...so then...I shared.

Now, the reason I haven't ever thought of using them this way, was because I had never needed a vacuum room. Now that there's super-coolant, and rockets that need liquid hydrogen, vacuum rooms are quite valuable tools to improve the efficiency of a gas condensing system. More specifically, vacuum rooms that do not have backing tiles that store and transfer heat when gas is present.

[ishakaru]

3 minutes ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Gas producing tiles are a no-go. Any gaps you'd have to fill in etc... etc...that and it's just too tedious imo.

I was mostly providing another option. If you can choose a spot with out gas producing tiles(or remove them in the process) and only have to fill in a few holes while finishing every other build task, it could be faster from start to finish. It eliminates the need to build/remove so much scaffolding inside.

 

But like I said in my first post: in the slime biome your method is much faster.

 

[Sigma Cypher]

If there is a pressure difference across a liquid-lock IRL, the liquid would be drawn into the low-pressure side until the lock were broken or pressure equalized.  That's why god gave us sewer vents, otherwise the water in your water trap would be drawn into the sewer pipe every time you flushed a toilet or ran the dishwasher (the velocity of the water in the sewer line causes a decrease in pressure there).  

Can I have my pocket-protector back now please?

The OP mentioned this in another post as a teaser and I'm really delighted with the small pump idea and other suggestions in this thread. I believe @Neotuck is not suggesting the corner method for vacuum building.  He says build the water seal first then fill the room with tiles and then (he doesn't say this but implies it) remove them any way you like, since the water seal keeps the vacuum, not the corner access trick.   

This makes me think you could do this even more quickly by tiling the room behind the water lock with something big like gas canisters, then deconstruct them LIFO.

[ruhrohraggy]

On 11/20/2018 at 6:13 PM, Craigjw said:

This is the method I use and seems to be the most effective, although, I could be wrong...

I gave this an honest go for a little while...And it made me want to quit playing. I was that upset at having to click all those evenly spaced ladders in, every time I wanted to clear space.

I've not felt strongly enough to post negative feedback, until trying this out. My words here are incredibly mild compared to the emotions trying to dig this way elicited. You sir have the patience of a saint....or something.

[Craigjw]

1 hour ago, ruhrohraggy said:

I gave this an honest go for a little while...And it made me want to quit playing. I was that upset at having to click all those evenly spaced ladders in, every time I wanted to clear space.

I've not felt strongly enough to post negative feedback, until trying this out. My words here are incredibly mild compared to the emotions trying to dig this way elicited. You sir have the patience of a saint....or something.

I don't endlessly click each ladder, you are doing it completely wrong, I drag out the rows of ladders, then I drag out a cancel command to clear the columns of non-ladder spaces, then I select the areas for digging.  admittedly, I might miss click a cancel command and have to replace a few ladders, but this is the only single clicking I do.  I tend to use the cursor keys to navigate the drag, as my mouse coordination isn't that straight.

I find that having the ladders set to a higher priority to the digging helps stop dupes getting stranded, however, that isn't always the case, they are stupid and sometimes there is nothing that can be done other than let them drown in their own stupidity.  

Large volumes can be dug out quite efficiently this way without the need for hundreds of clicks.

This took me literally less than a minute to: