Atmospherics and air console settings

[Starshard0]

I've been doing some testing in experimental mode with setting up a full-scale atmospherics department. All waste gas is pushed through several filters to separate the invidual gases, and then oxygen and nitrogen are mixed at 20:80 and pushed into a pipe that supplies air to the rest of the base.

My question is regarding air consoles. I want to design a system where fresh air is pushed into a room up to 100 kPa, and the air is scrubbed as needed. Currently, there are only two options in the air console. I can either "pressurize", which involves a single active vent which either brings air into the room, or sucks it out in order to maintain pressure. Or I can "draught", which uses two active vents in tandem to bring air in and push it out, creating a constant flow of air.

I see problems with both of these settings. With draught, my rooms don't seem to pressurize to a specific pressure, and instead stay in the "safe" range. That is, my outflow vent keeps sucking away even as my inflow vent is struggling to maintain pressure. With pressurize, I have no way to reliably get rid of waste gases.

Has anyone had any luck getting a full-fledged atmospheric circulation system up and running?

[Vitriks]

I also have a question about draught setup. What is the right order I need to connect stuff? Oxygen tank - > Active vent Inflow -> Active vent Inflow -> AC -> Oxygen tank?
Is there a specific tank pressure you need for system to work properly? I'm talking about big base setup.

[KillPond]

Just spent 6+ hours on stream tackling this issue. One of the dev's helped explain a couple of things.

Active vents only push air out when the pressure at the vent is < 110kPA. You need a passive vent and a volume pump if you want to shift any kind of serious pressure.

AC unit waste will fill to about 150kPA before anything will come out of the output. The waste just needs to be a capped pipe leading to a cold place.

AC unit can only process 9L of volume per tick, use a volume pump so you don't blow pipes.

Draught mode is s..l..o..w.. by design and should be used once the atmos is balanced manually. Do not rely on it doing anything other then trickle fresh air very slowly.

Seperate your AC and filtering as AC will bottleneck filtering completely.

Hope that helps! Still learning myself :)

[Decker]

draught is a lack of water. Draft is what air does.

wouldn't a pressure regular and passive vent suffice?

[andreykl]

I use two passive vents, two pressure rugulators and one volume pump:
My Air mix -> 101KPa pressure regulator -> Passive air vent 1 -> Room
Room -> Passive air vent 2 -> 120KPa back pressure regulator in paralel with volume pum )->recycling system
When I need to cycle air I activate volume pump.

Woorks good so far but in future I will be doing passive air vent per gas (may be + plus mixed vent for initial pressure and/or air lock), instead of only ready mix. This way it will be way easiear to control percentage of certain elements (with how fast plants seem to eat CO2 and generate O2 I probably won't be using O2 vent much)

[Vitriks]

@andreykl @KillPond
Thanks!

[Sinner_D]

I'm having an issue with the AC unit, I watched a dev video do a similar setup. Ive got PVent on the inlet, PVent on the outlet, and a portable tank for the waste. only difference between my setup and the dev vid setup is the vents, and they had an AC console.

The odd thing though is that I'm having powerr burnout whenever I turn the AC unit on. my entire base is operational under the same setup no issue( 4 solar panels wired inline to a battery kit unit, followed by a Sm. Transformer set to 600w, then an APU with large battery for all external systems, then a secondary APU at my Airlock for Airlock and all internal systems including the AC unit in question) the entire system is an inline power setup, no overlaps.

What is wrong? why does it seem like my transformer isnt doing anything? and my AC unit is worthless :(

Furthermore, the Sm. Transformerr was put in after the fact in an attempt to safegaurd from whatever was happening. only thing I can think of is to put the transformer directly prior to the AC unit, but even if that works, I'm not understanding why the devs didnt have the same issue.

[Yuccasu]

600W seems to be a bit to low for your setup. My base ventilation takes about 1kW. My transformer is set to 2kW.

AFAIK the standard wires can handle 5kW, so its safe.

[Sinner_D]

Well I dont know what to say, My entire base is wired with Sm. cables except between my solar panels and battery kit unit, like I said the transformer was put into the system after the AC unit issue started. I tried 600w cause at that level I was getting charge to all APUs with standard operations all on. I only put the transformer in after as I assumed the AC unit was requiring the batteries to release more power than the wires could handle, but if a 5kW rating is accurate, I find that highly unlikely, my base is rather small, and most systems are usually in the off position so my power req. for standard operations is rather low, I'd say maybe 1kW. didnt think to check the network via tablet...ill have to do that.( pain in the butt though as the majority of my network is buried. uhg)

My current setup AC unit is just a testbed, so its rather small. trying to get a handle on how it works before I implement it across my base.

[KillPond]

AC can pull up to 6kW so it needs heavy cable directly from your big batteries.

[Sinner_D]

Well I'm even further dumbfounded, just loaded up my last save with the problem previously described last I played... AC is "working" had it power on for a while now, no power blowouts.

I have no idea wtf was going on, but apparently it is working now. I'm so confused.

[andreykl]

Originally posted by KillPond:

AC can pull up to 6kW so it needs heavy cable directly from your big batteries.

If there is an APC inbetween, it won't be able to pull that much. And there is no reason to provide that much power for small setups.

[KillPond]

Originally posted by andreykl:

Originally posted by KillPond:

AC can pull up to 6kW so it needs heavy cable directly from your big batteries.

If there is an APC inbetween, it won't be able to pull that much. And there is no reason to provide that much power for small setups.

If it can't pull 6kW then it won't turn on tho?

[andreykl]

Originally posted by KillPond:

If it can't pull 6kW then it won't turn on tho?

Works absolutely without issues from APC (1KW?). I placed APC, connected output to A/C (normal wire), but no input, incerted full battery into APC. A/C connected to two passive vents and 'waste' pipe. A/C powered up and started (-60 in settings) with no issues, at the end of the test waste pipe got 850 celsius and over 500KPa and room dropped from 26 to 18.
Either power requirement depends onto power difference or A/C is smart enough not to use more then there is.

P.S. A/C is way too slow, so i had to reduce temperature setting to -60 to see an effect, at 20 temperature was increasing. So will have to use control either way... Probably will try usin A/C to heat up furnance)

[NIKOSDASHOOTA]

Originally posted by Starshard0:

Has anyone had any luck getting a full-fledged atmospheric circulation system up and running?

I've fouund the same thing I have a pressurize system - Two tanks piped to my pressurization active vents and set up with console etc. as normal and a separate draught/filtration/heating supply and extract system and like you say my outward/supply vents seem to struggle, with pressure building in the pipes feeding them.
I put a passive vent next to it and promptly got (duh, there was 3.8 Mpa) thrown across the room ripping my suit and doing that red screen flash thing that has not failed to give me a heart attack yet while listening to the quiet hum of my plant and thinking up new ways round problems all peacefully, in the zone, you connect one passive vent (or dismantle one frame ) and boom brown trouser moment. either you know or you will know lol.

So I quit and came straight here to calm down and have a dig.
Before my passive predicament I was wondering, if i replaced all my AV's with passive's would it balance out? ie: I used to do this as a job (Balancing & Commissioning of air and water systems
in large and some famous buildings in London) and on any system air or o2 will take the path of least resistance (wanna say obviously, but its not for everyone - some people on here posting could remember) so if all grilles are passive is the one furthest away (Index Terminal) gonna get any air? you would have to balance it in RL to a design volume for each terminal that because the volumes may be different for each terminal is turned into a percentage therefore you balance all terminals to 100-110% by turning valves or dampers down to push air towards your index which should be fully open with everything in balance.

Thinking now that Might be Why the draught system with AV's might be slow on the output - to allow pressurization therefore ensuring all grilles are fed, but it just doesn't offer enough volume without maybe spamming grilles plus you cant really do anything with the consoles like adjust or check temp or check atmo. gas ratio or anything yet really so...

I'm gonna leave my station press sys as is and build my heat/filtration systems or maybe just supply/output using passives and if it works pressure regs and then use 2 led displays one for required or "set" temp (that hopefully can read the a/c setting or have to make something that counts button presses and has min/max either way i dont mind ) then another for actual temp and 2 logic buttons to (again hopefully) adjust temp of a/c, then i could make something to bypass the a/c when its within say 5 degrees of the set temp (so a thermostat lol). If it works I could roll it out to all my areas so each area has its own a/c fed with fresh air and controlled with a wall stat! the possibilties diving back in now!

[NIKOSDASHOOTA]

while im on the subject and before i forget I propose a system where instead of Heating/cooling A/c you would have a boiler similar to furnace but with an input and output loop seperated from the combustion side (heat exchager) to heat gasses/ liquids passed through it and a chiller system that would be an ac unit but with an input and output waste loop that you would have to pipe to cooling towers or dry air cooler (using electromagnetic radiation) type devices that would reject a set amount of heat meaning you'd have to work out your heat rejection requirements and scale accordingly or go kerbal and just have a crack (my favourite way!). Think it could work for sub zero temps theoretically because space is 2.7K which is -270.7C not fully up on the laws of thermodynamics in a vacuum so could an object radiate enough heat to match its surroundings using just E.M radiation? when i say it it sounds silly of course given enough time! (no?) so it would come down to how much your fluid or gas was being heated (by exchanging it with the heat in the input output of your ac unit) and how much area your cooling towers have to reject that heat. Just a thought but it would make a bit more dense than the current capping waste and storing heat/cold and would fit with the game whereby you need to work out your requirements ideally before you build.