Buck's Guide to not Being an Atmos Scrub

[Saaesculus]

 

No, I checked, the air to external distro has no use because it only connects to the hallway portable pumps and the two connector ports in the fireaxe room so I feel giving it a volume pump would be sort of a waste of air.

 

All of the pumps and scrubbers on the station come from the air to distro and the waste in pumps, which are already set as volume pumps, even the pumps in atmos itself.

 

So yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. :V

 

[Fj45]

Hmm, very interesting. Good pipe to hit for some extra vents in engineering I guess.

[Bone White]

 

I turn off the pump TO the portable pump nodes as soon as the shift starts, otherwise you end up with 4500 kPa of otherwise breathable air in there.

 

Such a waste.

 

[Fj45]

Right, guess I'll use that line to add several extra vents in the lobby and hallway.

[Habalabam]

 

I did not understand the need to turn off the pump to external. Is it to prevent the piping from the pump to the ports from achieving 4500 pressure? Isn't this already stabilized at shift start?

The ports do not consume anything unless something is actually hooked up to them, correct?

 

[Fj45]

Due to it only having a pump, not a volume pump, the distro line would only have a low amount of pressure. Correct, if the distro pipe was isolated, it would retain its pressure but not be refilled as the ports are used.

[Habalabam]

 

I still do not get it.

BW said that he disables the pump to external (not distro) because it wastes air?

 

[Fj45]

Well, if nobody refills any pumps there's a good bit of air stored there that's never used. If you isolated the line your airloss would be minimal, there would probably only be enough air in the pipe to refill a pump or two.

[Habalabam]

 

Right, got you.

I would assume that this would be pressurized already at shift start. But ramping up the pressure to 4500 would of course demand more gas.

 

[Fj45]

 

Aye aye, thats it.

 

Right, to tide you guys over while I continue this guide, heres a pic of a proper atmos setup:

 

 

 

Now, the space loop is useless, my fellow atmos tech had some kind of plan for that. We weren't using it anyway.

 

As you can see we have multiple vents and scrubbers setup in atmos. A panic syphon pulls air crazy fast and I would think that it would get replaced quickly too.

 

[DZD]

I'm guessing that the connectors are all disconnected because you didn't plan on filling any canisters?

[Fj45]

 

Yep, I was planning to conect a few lines up but it just wasn't needed.

 

Easy enough to build em in a better spot or use the yellow line connected to the airmix tanks.

 

[Taaketa]

 

Now, the space loop is useless, my fellow atmos tech had some kind of plan for that. We weren't using it anyway.

 

That was me. My plan was to name that as room but for some reason the blueprints weren't allowing it to be. Then place air alarms in it and fill it with N2. Once done set the air alarms to be a server room and that would provide a much omre controlled system of cooling the gas flowing through the radiators.

 

Seems the station engineer blue prints are broken.

 

 

Also on a side note after seeing it too often now:

 

Stop pumping large amounts of super heated gas into the scrubbers.

 

The proper proceedure to prevent atmos from jamming up is to do the following:

 

 

• Isolate the room from the scrubber system by turning off the atmos vents and scrubbers.

• Vent the room into space or use a combination of air pumps and scrubbers.

Bring super cooled gases into the room and ensure you do not spread the super heated gas. (enter through space if needed)

Release the super cooled gas to balance the temperture to the room. Your target is to bring the room temperture within 10 degrees of normal room temp (20 degrees). The air alarm can do the rest of the work as can the scrubber system.

 

Point being:

 

Do not dump 6000 degree gas into the scrubber network.

 

 

 

Also:

 

As you can see we have multiple vents and scrubbers setup in atmos. A panic syphon pulls air crazy fast and I would think that it would get replaced quickly too.

 

I'm not entirely sure why you wanted so amny vents and scrubbers in atmos. Those vents and scrubbers will only affect atmos and not the entire station.

 

[Fj45]

 

Simple. Breaches due to space carp or whatever happen often, and as atmos is so big it takes quite some time to refill. Plus, with so many scrubbers, if anyone lets the NO2 out they will clean it easily. I was planning to build some more vents and scrubbers in the engie hallway and lobby but ran outa time.

 

While your list makes sense on paper and should be best way to do it, I can easily say that it is just not practical when stuff does go wrong.

If the room is small enough, (say a fire in chem) the coolers will be adequate to ensure atmos does not get clogged.

If its any kind of larger fire, it will be multiple rooms and doing anything but panic syphoning (plus manual fire suppression/mobile scrubbers) would be impractical and dangerous.

I very rarely have cans of cooled N2 lying around, (I should always try to though) let alone anything supercooled.

 

It would take far too long to make a supercooled canister and with any kind of large atmos problem you have to babysit or the greyshirts will open every damn shutter for funnsies.

 

[Bone White]

 

No it's not "stabilised" at round start.

 

The ports don't consume any air correct, but the pipe that supplies the port has plenty of breathable air which would be better in the light blue / dark blue pipe as reserve air for when/if it's needed by the ship's vents.

 

[Taaketa]

 

If the room is small enough, (say a fire in chem) the coolers will be adequate to ensure atmos does not get clogged.

If its any kind of larger fire, it will be multiple rooms and doing anything but panic syphoning (plus manual fire suppression/mobile scrubbers) would be impractical and dangerous.

 

If you scrub a room like toxins. You will be dealing with a back logged scrubbers network for the whole round I guaruntee it. You'll also have the whole station complaining at you asking why the levels of CO2 are rising across the entire station due to the back pressure in the scrubbers network unable to cope with the huge amounts of superheated gas inside. Your best option with any large room is to vent it into space. Lower the pressure to around 44Kpa and then fill it with normal air mix to help cool it.

 

In fact I just did it in a game yesterday after someone setup the incinerator and left it to burn through the walls into the mechanic's area and then into the engineering corridor. Vented all the inicerator gas into space and then vented the engineering corridor into space through maint. Then filled it with normal air mix. All in all. Took around 10 minutes to fix and that was without cooled N2.

 

It would take far too long to make a supercooled canister and with any kind of large atmos problem you have to babysit or the greyshirts will open every damn shutter for funnsies.

 

You can make -100 degree N2 in 10 minutes from round start if you make that a priority task.

 

[Taaketa]

 

Just to follow on from you were suggestion earlier FJ45. This would be a better setup for huge fires. It took me about 30 minutes to get it all done solo. Faster if someone was assisting.

 

Step 1 Clear all of the piping for the mixing room:

 

Step 2 Lay and wrench piping like thus:

 

http://imgur.com/a/yT0fr#0

 

Notice the extension of the heat exchanger array outside.

 

Step 3 Direct Insulated pipes to the lower entry point of the heat exchangers. Direct heat exchangers into the mixing tank.

 

http://imgur.com/a/yT0fr#1

 

I used insulated tanks as hot pipes can bleed into other pipes and screw up atmos.

 

Using this setup you can cool incoming gas from the station and have somewhere to pump the backpressure gas. Don't get me wrong the scrubbers system will jam still if you vent. But at least the tank will allow you to keep removing pressure from the system whereas with your setup once the pipes are full there is no further movement of gas out of the station.

 

[Fj45]

 

Huh, looks like a great setup and the perfect way to unclog the pipes.

 

I do very much agree with venting into space being the best way to remove hot gas, the problem is being able to open that section to space. The CE's RCD helps but they are not always carrying or there to help.

 

[Habalabam]

 

Atmo/Engineering should have a pod with RCD.

 

It seems strange to have atmo people crowbar'ing emergency shutters from pressurized areas.

 

[Fj45]

 

?

 

Not really sure what you are trying to say.

 

[Taaketa]

 

And this is how I like to see atmos as well.

 

 

[Taaketa]

 

Add to the above another thing to help fire fighting is super cooled CO2 use it to surpress and cool at the same time.

 

http://imgur.com/S6GjuG7

 

[Fj45]

 

I saw that, while nice in theory seems a bit over-complex and the gas has to go through a very long series of pipes.

 

Super cooled CO2 might work well, bit more dangerous then plain old N2 though, I guess it could be pretty effective. That reminds me, I really need to post my fire fighting foam idea.

 

[Taaketa]

 

I saw that, while nice in theory seems a bit over-complex and the gas has to go through a very long series of pipes.

 

The only complex part really though is dissassembling the mixing room. The rest of it is pretty straight forward. Insualted pipes are vital to stop heat spreading and the Heat Exchanger get's extended to handle more gas and cool it too whilst the mixing tank can store the gas as it is being pumped into filters of the waste loop. I'd rather have most of atmos remain the same as the changes I made barely make a difference to the existing vital sections of atmos. Mixing room is just a pointless area as it really can only be used by traitors for traitor things.

 

[Fj45]

By complex I mean how long it is and how junctions there are. It isn't like the pipe layout is open like most of atmos. It would be easy to mess up but hard to find. Anyway, still a very long pipe system for something the coolers can do.