Refilling Canisters and Pipes Make No Sense to Me. Help?

[Fridge Lord]

Hi, I can't figure out how the heck pipes and canisters work. Nothing I do seems to refill the oxygen canister. I try putting it in the portable oxygen tank- makes no sense. I stick it in and my canister O2 goes from 5700 to 3800. I don't see any change in the pressure of the Portable O2 tank. Using the pressure valve on the O2 tank seems to release the oxygen into the environment. I've tried setups with the gas canister storage and the tank holder. I can't figure any of it out.

I've tried putting new, empty canisters in the gas canister storage and directly into the portable oxygen tank, and each time they just come out with nothing in them, no oxygen label.

This makes no sense. Also, how do I know what volume of gas is actually in them? What gas is stored inside and how much of it there actually is seems to be independent of the pressure.

I am so confused and I have no way to read the contents of canisters and I can't find anything detailed enough online. Please help.

[Front1erm4n]

If you want to empty a pipe/canister fully you have to employ a machine or part that sucks it out. Volume Pumps, Pressure Regulators, Filtration Units, Air Conditioning Units all suck pipes dry.
Edit: Be careful with the Volume Pump though. It does not stop no matter how high the pressure in the following pipe is! This can lead to !FUN!
Edit 2: Maximum safe pressure for small canisters appears to be around 10133 kPa. Any higher and they start taking damaging and explode.
Edit 3: Recent testing suggest that the burst point of pipes is around 60-61 MPa (60000 kPa)
Edit 4: Re-reading your post I realised that what you meant is the other way around not emptying but filling a canister. In this case a system that drains the pipe to a storage tank could prevent waste. Though "waste" is a bit wrong since the gas will just stay in the pipe forever so if you were to refill the same tank again it would still be there and get possibly pushed into the tank/canister.

[Sinner_D]

@Fridge: I ended up just making several canisters, feeding them all into the output, then puting the primary canister into the output of my gas mixer system and feeding the excess back into the original primary canister, once one of the two input was empty I'd just cycle the mixer to 100% from the other input. left over with 1 canister(primary) with majority, 1 canister with like 4kpa and the third empty.

Honestly I think you just have to deal with the residual gases left in the pipe for the next refill.

@Front: Can you define "Normal temperature" aside from my suits 20*c I've so far been usually in 0*c ;)

Very interesting, I wasnt aware temperature had such an affect ingame. Great now I've got so much more to test out...LOL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Restarted my save today, wow second time through was so much smoother. the controls has a huge learning curve. Not quite ready for testing again yet. Damnit they changed the ore textures on me AGAIN!!! its SE all over again Still have yet to see nickel though, but the new uranium ore texture looks really good

@Fridge: just had an idea, if your gas canister were put onto a T intersection pipe, and then you circularise your pipe system with a presure regulator within the circular circuit, the another T intersection with a shutoff valve leading to your output... that should solve the pipe residual effect(theoretically speaking of course) games surely not 100% accurate with fuild dynamics, would be amazing if it were...Worth a try though

             | v ----------<----------<----------<----------|
             | v |                                                 | ^ |
T inlet intersection -> regulator -> T outlet intersection 
             | ^ |                                                 | v |
Gas canister storage                           Shut-off Valve     
                                                                   | v |
                                                               Output

[Sinner_D]

^preserve spaces my ass ^

[Limmin]

I was wondering what sort of standard...or lack of it...people would flock to when trying to communicate complex piping (or wiring or logic) in this game. Looks like a work in progress.

Anyone care to nominate a tool to quickly sketch a block diagram, convert it to an image, and upload for visibility here?

[Front1erm4n]

@Limmin: To make a quick and dirty block diagram use Excel or similar with coloured fields.

Standard temperature is for me 0°C or 273 K.

The effect of temperature on pressure is simple thermodynamics. Haven't had the time to test how closely to ideal gas they are calculating in the game but if they are assuming ideal gas conditions for every gas then you could calculate pressure depending on temperature from the equation:

p * V = n * R * T

with: p = Pressure in kPa
V = Volume in L
n = Amount of gas in mol
R = Gas constant (8,314 L kPa / K mol)
T = Temperature in K

Maybe I'll have time to test it at some point.

@Sinner_D: Your design at the end of your post would not work. The pressure regulator would pull out the gas behind it, yes, but it would just flow back to the regulator, pumping it in a circle more or less. You would have to add a breakpoint some were to stop the gas flow.
However if you were to put the gas canister on a T-Section as you said then you could add on one of the other two the pressure regulator/volume pump (if you need it to go faster since regulators are slow) and on the last open port of the T-Section a valve (either manually or digital depending on preference) then you could empty the last empty section in front of the gas canister storage by running the regulator while closing off the valve in front of the section.

Utilitity pipes do not store gases. Valves, regulators, pumps all do not store gases. Only normal pipe sections.

[Fridge Lord]

Is there currently any type of setup for

[Utility pipe of some kind] -> [Completely emptied pipe] -> [Gas canister storage with all gas from system in canister]

Instead of

[Utility pipe of some kind] -> [Pipe with random moles & pressure] -> [Partially filled gas canister storage which is some random fraction of moles and pressure in previous pipe]

?

[Sinner_D]

Whats all this talk of "utility pipe" you guys are talkin bout? is there a new type of pipe ingame?

also I recently came across an element refered to as "X" on my atmo scanner, am I right to assume thats Xenon

Was doing some gas mixing tests and got a volatile mixture think it was high N with a near equal O2 to CO2 ratio, then a sudden brilliant bluish spark of light and bam 0.04mol of element X

[Limmin]

Isn't X just "pollutant?"

I take "utility pipe" to mean the exit port of a device that connects to a pipe...?

[Apoch]

Good lord... We are sprawling all over the place and I am loving it... Group of us going ham trying to figure this pressure thing out.
I've blown out my pressure room & vent room beating my head against the wall trying to get 0 pressure.

All for not.

As soon as I connect that empty canister and open all valves "somewhere" in the setup I get a pressure bump.

@Devs... Can we get some input?
@Anyone on the discord with Devs please post link to this so we can get some input.

[Sinner_D]

@Apoch: you sure you have your AVents toggled correctly? kinda confusing sometimes how highlight displays what will happen if you click rather than current mode.

I have yet had any problems getting to 0 pressure, usually its keeping my pressurre in that gets me.

[Apoch]

yea. all vents set correctly... I leave the last valve closed until I need to use the vent.

So basically a scaled down version of my new setup as follows.
= Pipe
+ manual valve
^ Active Vent
* Holder

^=+==+===+====+====+===+==+=*

What I am trying to test is if there is an issue of math vs something purposefully coded.

So if it is coded to be a base pressure of 0, I shouldn't see a difference between opening one valve or all of them. Except for that last one as it is connected to the active vent that would pull pressure/contents inwards into the system.

So what you see is a ramp up/down of the segments between the valves... to test the math of it all... IF there is something off (again assuming that pressure is 0) we should see it? Right? Enough segments of .0001% pressure will eventually add up to something readable. lol Right?

If my assumptions are correct and given enough length, I should be able to "pressurize" a tank with nothing?

Its a simple enough test I think... idk.. need to sleep on it.

[Sinner_D]

Is there a purpose to segment increase/decrease of pipe length between shut-off valves? I would imagine in theory the number of pipes per segment wouldnt matter if your target is simply 0.0001%kpa per segment.

I guess the real question is what is the smallest incremental value of pressure can be achieved ingame.

this also raises the question of negative pressure and would that equally cause an implosion of canister/tank as ~10000kpa causes an explosion.

P.S. I hope youre doing this in creative, thats a lot of iron going to pipe production for one test ;)

[Apoch]

NOPE, survival. Not really much to do as I have my base... so waiting on new content and refining my piping setup...

This is just a break from my particle experiments.

[Front1erm4n]

@Fridge Lord: No that is currently not possible. With that you would only have something pushing gas into the pipe but nothing taking it out. You need something that pulls the gas out. Otherwise the pressure in the last pipe section before the tank will equalise the pressure between itself and the cas canister.

As "utility pipe" I referred to any kind of pipe module that replace a normal section of pipe.
This includes: Gas Mixer, Volume Pumps, (Back) Pressure Regulators, Valves, both digital and manual. It does not include analyser or meters since those are added onto the pipe instead of replacing the pipe section.

As I pointed out last page the X is for pollutants not xenon.
The currently implemented gases are:
O2 = Oxygen
N2 = Nitrogen
H2 = Hydrogen
CO2 = Carbon Dioxide
X = Pollutants
H20 = Water

Water while a liquid is treated like gas in pipes.

The ices are made up out of:
Ice (Volatiles) = 100% H2
Ice (Oxite) = 90% O2 , 10% N2
Ice (Water) = 80% H20, 20% N2

@Apoch: No. That will not work. The game tracks pressure as a property of the amount of gas in moles and the temperature of the gas. A pipe that has no mol of gas in it will never have pressure. An active vent will completely empty the pipe of all gas if allowed to. So if you start with constructing the pipes they start out empty. If you connect an empty tank to the storage the pipes will still be empty. Opening and closing valves does not create moles of gas and therefor can not create pressure.

The lowest pressure the game actually tracks is around 10 Pa. Around that the game decides that this pressure should be considered 0 and empties the pipe of all gas.

Something else that this demonstrates: There can not be negative pressure. If there is nothing there is a vacuum. A negative pressure would require space more empty than a vacuum which is impossible both in-game and IRL.
"Negative pressure" as sometimes referred to in RL is a pressure difference between the atmospheric pressure (101.3 kPa for SL) and the pressure in the observed system. Say a pipe with the pressure of only 10 kPa. This just means the difference between the two systems (outside and pipe) is less than 0.
This means that the outside atmospheric pressure is "pushing" on the surface of the pipe with this difference. From the point of reference outside it appears like there is "negative pressure" in the pipe. From the point of reference inside the pipe it appears like there is normal pressure in the pipe and higher pressure around it.
Another approach to this: Submarines. You never hear someone referring to the pressure inside a submarine as negative pressure. This demonstrates the fact that the pressure outside is just higher than the pressure inside.

For the game this means that to crush something you would need to empty it of all gas and then pressurise the atmosphere around it to cause it do implode.


Edit: What causes (sometimes) pressure spikes in pipes is the pipes equalising pressure between them.

[Apoch]

Hmm,, loads of good information.

So basically you can never have a true 0 pressure after using the pipe... the game will assist if you get low enough.

interesting.


On an off topic... your knowledge of the game, is this all trial and error or some hidden wiki =)
OR are you a Dev not wearing your developer tags?

I noticed that Steam level 0. I'm always suspicious of lvl 0's. \0/
Especially when they seem to have a firm grasp of an undocumented EA game.