User:Missatessatessy/Sandbox
Colton's Guide to Gas Synthesis
| Warning: The author of this guide is actively tweaking and adding new gases to atmospherics. Sections will be marked updated or otherwise, but the gist will remain. Current Status: Fully updated but incomplete |
Introduction
Gas synthesis is a precise science, requiring practice, brain cells and more than a fair bit of autism. This guide assumes that you have all three in ample supply, as well as the patience to relentlessly optimize your gas setups for incremental gains. Here, you will learn how to synthesize the gases in large batches, well past the standard amounts you are normally used to, as well as the more faceted aspects of atmospherics that always give you something new to try out.
What you'll need:
- Understanding of basic atmospherics.
- The ability to explain what each piece of piping and machinery dispensable by your RPD does (roughly), especially Heat Exchange systems.
- You must also know how to make an effective turbine engine that doesn't waste too much gas.
Gas Production
Each gas has different reaction requirements. Fulfilling those requirements to synthesize a small amount of gas is quite easy, making them in large batches in excess of 1000 moles in a timely and fuel-efficient manner is what this guide is about.
Tritium
Tritium is the most frequently produced gas in the turbine and for good reason. It is the most energetic non-fusion gas reaction, producing enough heat for the nitryl reaction, heating up fusion canisters to the requisite temperatures, generating radiation for the pluoxium reaction without the use of a supermatter crystal and is required in all the higher level gases. It also makes for great practice, since mastering the techniques required to produce large amounts of it touches on one of the essentials of every other gas reaction. Due to this, it is a good idea to practice tritium synthesis as you'll find it useful for all other reactions.
Tritium is produced when plasma burns under a high concentration of oxygen, specifically, a threshold (known in the code as the super saturation threshold) 96 times more oxygen than plasma. For this reason, only a 1 percent amount of plasma mixed with 96 percent more of oxygen will burn to produce tritium. This is true if we only consider one reaction tick, however the experienced among you know that you can get away with a 97-3 oxygen:plasma ratio and still get tritium. The reason for why this is is because of the oxygen burn rate being low enough that the oxygen replenishment rate rapidly ramps the concentration of oxygen to the point that the feed-in rate of plasma places the ratio of plasma to oxygen above the super saturation threshold. If this isn't clear enough, try understanding the following table:
| Tick count? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oxygen | 97 | 191 | 285 | 379 |
| Plasma | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| O2:Plasma ratio | 32.33 | 63.66 | 95 | 126.33 |
| Generating Trit? | N | N | N | Y |
Tessa note: I dont get what this table is supposed to look like or get what it even means, just looks like random numbers tbh. i've thrown it into a simple table so you can figure out what to actually put.
This table is not 100% accurate due to LINDA and other aspects of atmos that complicate the calculations, but demonstrates the point.
As you can see, plasma is always burned off at a rate of 1:1 with the oxygen, resulting in the plasma mole count remaining very low while oxygen keeps ramping up and increasing, eventually to the point that the ratio reaches the super saturation threshold and producing tritium. This applies to any atmos mix. This is very important because you can ramp up the plasma percentage of the feed in gasmix and still remain above the super saturation threshold. It is very common to have a mixture of 85-15 oxygen-plasma once a large amount of oxygen has accumulated inside the burn chamber, resulting in a tritium generation rate that is 5 times higher than the usual 97-3 ratio used by beginner atmosians. Peak atmosians generally start off with a lower concentration burn mix like 7-93, then switch to 15-85 after the reaction has been going on for a while to maximize the amount of time that the chamber spends above the super saturation threshold.
This phenomenon is dubbed the oxygen accumulation rate, or oxyrate for short, and can have very interesting results when tinkered with. Just as the oxyrate being positive results in a higher and higher O2:plasma chamber ratio, turning your oxyrate negative should lower the chamber ratio. You might wonder why this is desirable, but another optimization trick that is performed by peak atmosians is short duration negative oxyrate burns. This is performed when the accumulation of oxygen inside the chamber has gone on for so long that the engineer operating the system pushes up the plasma percentage to something insane like 40% plasma and 60% oxygen, burning away excess oxygen with a negative oxyrate burn while still remaining above the super saturation threshold and producing tritium. As long as the ratio remains above the super saturation threshold, this strategy is viable and more often than not results in large bursts of tritium being accumulated in the cooling vessel. Do note that this should only be performed with a high capacity cooling vessel.
Oxyrate tricks and LIDNA complications (Work in progress)
Cooling your tritium
This is something the atmosian should be familiar with already - scrubbers work best when removing cold gas. The reasoning is simple, they can cram more moles in if the pressure was lower, but cooling is not the only answer to fast scrubbing, there is another that one should learn to use effectively: Volume. Volume dictates pressure in the ideal gas section with a linear inverse relation, as any atmosian should know and connecting your scrubbers directly to a high volume pipenet will allow them to harvest even more gas per tick. Any atmosian who has studied the SM will now understand why the spaceloop is so useful, it provides both volume and cooling. The same applies to your tritium, except its even hotter than your SM (though thankfully less dangerous), dumping all the gas into a large spaceloop is the best method of harvesting it, even better than freezers. In fact, freezers are completely outclassed by spaceloops in this department, regardless of how well upgraded the freezer is. The spaceloop may not be able to compete with the freezer in reachable temperature, but it makes up for that fact by having 2 orders of magnitude more volume. A spaceloop of 20,000 volume has 100 times the volume of a cooler, and since its cooling speed scales linearly with the amount of tiles it spans (which also increases volume), they are a far more effective cooling solution than a fully upgraded freezer ever will, at least in this situation. Plus, a large spaceloop can be built in 5 minutes with an RPD, while a freezer requires science to do their job, miners to do their job and for you to have access to said materials. This usually occurs at the 20 minute mark at best. The spaceloop can be completed by the 15 minute mark while tritium harvesting is underway. This 10 minute gap clearly makes spaceloops far more effective for the job - you will only need the freezers if you for some reason need the gas at temperatures below 22.7K, such as for making hypernoblium bombs or portable tritiumfloods in a tank for traitor activities.