Power from water (compact, clean, and efficient)

[captjet23]

There seems to have been a lot of debate lately about generating enough power from water to sustain a full circuit. Personally, it seemed to be the holy grail of power sources since it required the least amount of resources to create and maintain. After spending days scouring the forums and working on my own prototypes, I have completed my final design. 

 

This circuit generates more power than it uses, so you end up with a net positive charge on your batteries over time. I haven't done any calculations for how much excess this produces, but it seems to charge the battery bank rather quickly. I have been working to mass produce this in a real game, and have come up with the following design: 

The bottom atmo sens are set to 1200, and the top ones are set to 1600. 

I will probably end up moving the generators and batteries once I expand more. I would be happy to answer any questions as best I can.

 

 

[QuQuasar]

It can be further optimized by removing the gas filter. A single tile 'lip', as shown here, can prevent any oxygen from reaching the upper pump without the need for a gas filter.

[blash365]

I am using a similar design. How did you address the heat production of your unit? Where do you use your produced oxygen? It is fairly hot and can overheat your base.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

11 minutes ago, blash365 said:

I am using a similar design. How did you address the heat production of your unit? Where do you use your produced oxygen? It is fairly hot and can overheat your base.

I feed hot oxygen to exosuit station. If you exhaust hot oxygen to your base, you should find some methods to cool oxygen. Wheezewort is a good choice. Or you can use aquatuner and regulator to transfer heat from oxygen to hydrogen, and then consume hydrogen in generator.

[habuky]

40 minutes ago, R9MX4 said:

I feed hot oxygen to exosuit station. If you exhaust hot oxygen to your base, you should find some methods to cool oxygen. Wheezewort is a good choice. Or you can use aquatuner and regulator to transfer heat from oxygen to hydrogen, and then consume hydrogen in generator.

I have seen my exosuit stations heating up when feed with hot oxygen from the electrolyzers.Don't you experience that as well?

Similarity I saw my washing basins getting slightly hotter when feed with water from the geyser... 

 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

6 minutes ago, habuky said:

I have seen my exosuit stations heating up when feed with hot oxygen from the electrolyzers.Don't you experience that as well?

Similarity I saw my washing basins getting slightly hotter when feed with water from the geyser... 

Contained oxygen will heat up exosuit station, but cooling a station is easier than cooling all the oxygen it consumed.

[captjet23]

2 hours ago, blash365 said:

I am using a similar design. How did you address the heat production of your unit? Where do you use your produced oxygen? It is fairly hot and can overheat your base.

I make all my oxygen in a cold biome, so the heat production is minimized. I am working on a nullifier setup to cool it all once the electros start overpowering the natural cooling of the biome. Actually oxygen overproduction is my primary problem at the moment. I'm looking into ways to get rid of it, but the only way the game really gives you is dupes, and I don't want to end up with 20+ dupes for performance reasons. I have been considering using nullifiers to cool the oxygen to liquid and then store it all in one big reservoir, but I don't know if that would really help my problem. 

7 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

It can be further optimized by removing the gas filter. A single tile 'lip', as shown here, can prevent any oxygen from reaching the upper pump without the need for a gas filter.

I tried this method,but I found it too bulky for my tastes. Sure it might remove the need for the filter, but it doesn't actually supply any more power, and I like to keep my stuff as compact as possible.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've found with a closed base, the amount of hydrogen produced scales with the number of dupes.  Until I hit around 11 dupes, I don't produce enough hydrogen to run a generator full time.  So, for early base designs, I pump the hydrogen into a holding room.  Another pump in the room transfers the hydrogen to the generator.  The generator only runs periodically:

1) Atmo sensor turns fan on when "over 1k" of hydrogen is present near the fan. Or 500g or whatever you like.  Simple and will keep batteries charged, but generally wastes excess hydrogen.

2) A timer automation circuit.  Figure out how long it takes your batteries to drain to roughly half, then figure out how long it takes to charge them back to full.  Works decently on an isolated circuit, but will need updating as your oxygen needs increase.

3) Pressure switch on dupe wheel.  When batteries are low, dupes hop on the hamster wheel and the generator turns on.  You'll quickly get a surplus of hydrogen as it will only be used when batteries need to be charged.  However, it does require dupe interaction.

4) Set up a 'low battery' detector as outlined in other threads.  More complicated to get set up, but no more dupes on hamster wheels.  

Methods 3 and 4 generally give me a surplus of hydrogen no matter how many dupes are in my base, even when I set up a water cooling system.  Once the primary pool was cold, a single hydrogen generator can run the entire system.  Option 2 was too involved and the constant updating every time I added a dupe made me scrap the idea.  Option 4 also required some adjusting, but I might try it again in my next base.

[Logicsol]

7 hours ago, captjet23 said:

 

I tried this method,but I found it too bulky for my tastes. Sure it might remove the need for the filter, but it doesn't actually supply any more power, and I like to keep my stuff as compact as possible.

The net power gain should be 240 to 480 kw higher, due to eliminating both the filter and the extra hydrolyzer. Your oxygen pumps can't keep up with 2 hydrolyzers, so it's not needed.

Your design if running to full capacity will create 1600kw of power but utilizes 2400kw at max draw. While up to 720kw of that won't be used all the time, that still leaves you with at best a 400kw generation.

 

QQ's design if doubled would grant the same 1600kw max generation, but have a max draw of only 1920. While the bottem end power usage is still the same (1200kw) it will spend less time runing about 1600w, meaning more overall power.

Which is especially important because neither design will give you 100% uptime on the hydrogen generators. In practice you usually need about 1.5 hydrolyzers per generator, but every additional hydrolyzer needs an extra 480kw of draw to handle it's oxygen production.

 

While I hear you on bulkiness, this is only one tile wider per section with the same height.

[Terzsian]

1 hour ago, Logicsol said:

While I hear you on bulkiness

This version is the most compact you can get. 100 kj/cycle surplus power, 500 kg oxygen/cycle.

[Logicsol]

2 minutes ago, Terzsian said:

This version is the most compact you can get. 100 kj/cycle surplus power, 500 kg oxygen/cycle.

Yeah this would let you do the same As QQ's while only taking 63 total tiles for the hydro room. Doubled that would be only 117 tiles if they share a wall.

Compared to the OP's design which uses only 60 for a single room, but is using 120 tiles for both because it's separated. I'm not counting the ladder, but if I did it would rise to 130 for the OPs design.

 

That would make this more power, space and resource efficient

 

For reference, QQ's design uses 80 tiles for a single, or 150 tiles for a double..

[Oozinator]

49 minutes ago, Terzsian said:

This version is the most compact .

..but my perlator is much "cooler"

[QuQuasar]

I decided to see if my design would work without the buffer space.

 

Turns out? Nope.

 

It does however work fine with less buffer space, allowing me to just barely edge out Terzsian's design with 5x6 interior.

 

(And if I wanted to be a smartass, I could also shave 3 tiles off the oxygen chamber)

 

For the record I don't take credit for this design, it's based on an adjusted version of my own attempt at implementing something I saw in a brothgar video, who in turn based it on designs from elsewhere on these forums.

 

In fact, I think by reducing it's size I've actually brought it closer to the original.

[The Flying Fox]

4 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

In fact, I think by reducing it's size I've actually brought it closer to the original.

Pretty much.  

 

The modern designs pretty much stem from what @Kasuha came up with in this research thread some months back and was refined from that.  Technically, you can get it to work without the buffer space you mention, but getting it to stabilize and stay that way it a pain.  So yeah, having the electrolyzer lowered a tile makes it much easier to setup and keep running without issue.

[Terzsian]

On 1/21/2018 at 12:56 AM, QuQuasar said:

And if I wanted to be a smartass, I could also shave 3 tiles off the oxygen chamber

According to my testing all buffer spaces are required to maintain the most efficient running without or with the least possible "overpressurization" time. If you don't have those buffer spaces in the O2 chamber gas build up in the tiles around the electrolyzer is more likely. It is still self-powering.

Yeah, I also used brothgar's designs, who used kasuha's.

My initial project focused on using door pumps to pull the O2, but that does not work that efficiently because door pumps cannot move as much gas as pumps can and the electrolyzer tend to overpress much more often.

On 1/21/2018 at 12:46 AM, Oozinator said:

but my perlator is much "cooler

That is absolutely true

[Munkel]

1 Electolyzer puts out 1kg/s gas (888 g/s O2 and 112 g/s H2). 3 Gas pumps would be overkill, because each of them draws 0.5kg/s. So instead of 3 pumps go with 2 pumps and one gas filter (saves you 120 W). Put the Pumps and the electrolyzer next to each other in an enclosed space without any buffer space. The filter and generator have to be outside. It will take a really really long time until the room gets overpressurized with H2  since the generator uses up to 100 g/s, while the electrolyzer prdouces 112 g/s.

[Oozinator]

58 minutes ago, Terzsian said:

That is absolutely true

[Terzsian]

This will not create the most efficient setup because of the gas mechanics of the game. 888 g/s of O2 is almost twice as the capacity of a gas pump. You have to focus on O2. O2 and H2 wants to go to separate places within your setup. If you cannot constantly keep the O2 amount in the tiles around your electrolyzer under a certain amount the setup's efficiency will suffer. Ofcourse you can do it your way, but that will never ever be a 94% efficient setup. But I will test it :).

25 minutes ago, Munkel said:

1 Electolyzer puts out 1kg/s gas (888 g/s O2 and 112 g/s H2). 3 Gas pumps would be overkill, because each of them draws 0.5kg/s. So instead of 3 pumps go with 2 pumps and one gas filter (saves you 120 W). Put the Pumps and the electrolyzer next to each other in an enclosed space without any buffer space. The filter and generator have to be outside. It will take a really really long time until the room gets overpressurized with H2  since the generator uses up to 100 g/s, while the electrolyzer prdouces 112 g/s.

 

7 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Yeah. Cooler and "cooler".

But TBH, temperature was never a focus point for me regarding my setup.

[Munkel]

2 minutes ago, Terzsian said:

This will not create the most efficient setup because of the gas mechanics of the game. 888 g/s of O2 is almost twice as the capacity of a gas pump. You have to focus on O2. O2 and H2 wants to go to separate places within your setup. If you cannot constantly keep the O2 amount in the tiles around your electrolyzer under a certain amount the setup's efficiency will suffer. Ofcourse you can do it your way, but that will never ever be a 94% efficient setup. 

 

I made a setup with 2 electrolyzers, 4 pumps, 2 gas filters and one generator. It runs with 100% uptime but I have to make one concession. Liquid pump included the net amount of energy is -80 W. To make it selfsufficient you need at least a setup of 4 electrolyzers and each other electrolyzer will give you about 40 W more.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

18 minutes ago, Munkel said:

because each of them draws 0.5kg/s

0.5 kg/s is an ideal value. To reach this number, pumps are supposed be submerged in single kind element(gas/liquid) with high density. Since there are two kinds of gas(oxygen and hydrogen), at least one pump can't reach the ideal value.

Therefore, we still have reason to set up one more pump.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Terzsian]

15 minutes ago, Munkel said:

I made a setup with 2 electrolyzers, 4 pumps, 2 gas filters and one generator. It runs with 100% uptime but I have to make one concession. Liquid pump included the net amount of energy is -80 W. To make it selfsufficient you need at least a setup of 4 electrolyzers and each other electrolyzer will give you about 40 W more.

Under efficiency, I mean produced O2 compared to the theoretical maximum which is 532.8 kg per cycle. A 94% efficient setup will produce 500 kg on avarage. Check your production, I doubt your 2 electrolyzer setup produces 1000 kg of O2 in a cycle. Or 4 electros 2000 kg/cycle.

[Oozinator]

14 minutes ago, Terzsian said:

I doubt your 2 electrolyzer setup produces 1000 kg of O2 in a cycle. Or 4 electros 2000 kg/cycle.

Hm not sure about that, but i know absolutely relatively surely, that it was for 6 electros 3000 Kg/cycle!

[Munkel]

took me a while to reproduce it, since the piping was key for this setup to work. maybe the piping can be optimized, but this is my result: 20 tiles of vacuum filled to 2000g per tile with oxygen within 46 seconds makes 870 g/s if iam not wrong. Nearly the optimal amount of 888 g/s.

 

 

Okay, i ran it trough 10 cycles, until it got stuck on me. I may look into this later.

[Munkel]

Ok, i ran another test with the same setup, but 100 tiles filled up to 1000g of O2 with both exit pipes connected. This time it took around 61sec resulting in 820 g/s per electrolyzer. The reason why it stuck up is because of what R9MX4 said earlier. This may result in an unlucky streak of not enough H2 for the generators, which means in the most lucky case you wont need to power this setup for a long time or in the worst you have to jumpstart it every now and then.

 

[Terzsian]

1 hour ago, Munkel said:

took me a while to reproduce it, since the piping was key for this setup to work. maybe the piping can be optimized, but this is my result: 20 tiles of vacuum filled to 2000g per tile with oxygen within 46 seconds makes 870 g/s if iam not wrong. Nearly the optimal amount of 888 g/s.

You can get an exact result on the report page if you run only the test electeolyzer.