New Chemical Lab recipe: Deuterium Separation

[tomyeltz]

Description

It's a bit niche, but in the interests of sustainability for the fusion reactor, I'd like to see a way of separating deuterium out of water. This could be implemented as a new chemical lab recipe—water goes in, deuterium and wastewater come out.

[Greeba77]

I’m managing to keep a few Fusion Reactors going having hoarded all the Deuterium available for months on end (probably from Alpha 4 to Alpha 6) before using the new Buy Ship feature to get a Tolkavian Cruiser to get the reactors. And I did cheat a little by hacking a save game to let me fill a tank along the way, otherwise the canisters would have taken too much space.

So yes, the ability to build up Deuterium without buying it 4 units at a time would be good. Should probably be a high energy requirement, due to nuclear fusion or something.

[Greeba77]

Not sure about the waste water thing though. Waste water being dirty from minerals or sewage is one thing, nuclear isotopes is quite another.

[Greeba77]

If anything, the logical byproduct would be Oxygen.

[Greeba77]

We kind of already have this problem on ships. The Oxygen Maker takes water and energy and gives out Oxygen, with no explanation for where the Hydrogen goes.

[tomyeltz]

I was basing the idea on my layman's understanding of the Girdler sulfide process which separates naturally-occurring deuterium oxide (heavy water) from water by running hydrogen sulfide gas between hot and cold stages of water, coaxing the D₂O into the H₂S gas on the hot side and releasing it into the water on the cold side. I don't know about you, but even if the process doesn't actually alter the "depleted" water (and it doesn't), I still want it run through a treatment plant before I drink it. And it helps to moderate (pun intended) the strength of being able to create fuel for fusion reactors by requiring the player to account for a byproduct. Also, the GS process is described as being "highly energy intensive", so there's that.

Anyway, I guess there's no real reason why, in a world of hyper-space, artificial gravity, and nebula-mining, that we can't imagine a more futuristic (and efficient) process. And you're completely correct that there's a lot of hydrogen going missing already.

Edit: OK, how about this: we forget the water entirely. Instead, the O₂ Maker outputs hydrogen as a byproduct that can be stored in tanks (or unloaded to bottles and sold), which can later be run through a chem lab (or maybe refinery? it does have a recipe selector on it)—using a lot of power—to produce the deuterium with no byproducts.

[Greeba77]

This is done in A8, we have Refineries making Stable Isotopes from Hyoerspace Isotopes, then Chemical Labs making Deuterium from Stable Isotopes.

[tomyeltz]

Verily, my cup runneth over with hyperspace isotopes, so I am delighted to trade them for deuterium.