Episode 11 of Season 1 is a stream that opens on Cycle 37 with thirteen duplicants and the alert Insufficient oxygen generation. This video is about making air out of water: an Electrolyzer comes online, a Gas Filter and a Hydrogen Generator get piped up around it, and Air Deodorizers go in against polluted oxygen that seems to be everywhere. Water and power both run short along the way. It ends on Cycle 39 with the oxygen overlay still showing most of the base in red.
Water in, oxygen out
The algae is nearly gone, and nobody is digging out the patch nearby, so it gets marked "a high priority. Let's make everything a priority." The new machine for this stream is the Electrolyzer. Its card first reads No Liquid Intake and Empty Pipe, and the build gets priority 8. Then it starts: "okay now it's actually producing oxygen. Good. And hydrogen."
It uses water, and the colony has only so much. The commentary accepts the trade: "if I keep them alive then running out of some water is not a big deal."
Burning the hydrogen
Power wires run up to the new machines, and a Hydrogen Generator is placed nearby. The idea, on the recording, is to "take hydrogen and pass it to the side here and then pass oxygen up." Gas pipes run to a Gas Filter, whose list offers Hydrogen, Oxygen, Polluted Oxygen and more.
At first only polluted oxygen moves through the pipes. "I thought there's gonna be more hydrogen." Then a little turns up: "I overestimated how much hydrogen actually produces, but in theory... the thing I've made kind of works." The plan is a closed room that makes hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen burned for power and the oxygen sent down to the duplicants.
Polluted air everywhere
"Why is it so polluted everywhere?" The game is paused, and the Oxygen menu now has an Air Deodorizer, which filters polluted oxygen and gives off a little oxygen and clay. Several go in around the base at high priority. The duplicants build them quickly, but the power for them was never prioritized, "so they're not powered."
A suggestion passed on in the commentary is to use sideways airlocks, and a Manual Airlock goes in near the top so less gas escapes upward.
Not enough water
Then the water stops climbing. "Is this pump broken?" The trouble seems to be a vent in the line, so it comes out and the liquid pipe is rebuilt as plain pipe: "now everything's working again... for some reason I set that up wrong." Water still reaches the top slowly, so an "express pass" pipe goes straight up, and a ladder goes down toward the algae.
Down low there is oxygen, "but it's all polluted." A gas vent comes out so the oxygen gets dumped lower, since "the oxygen I think will rise for the most part." On the way past the bathrooms, a progress bar turns out to be someone "taking a shower."
One generator
"I might only need one of these things for now," so the extra big buildings are canceled. Gas pipes go up and over the other lines with a Gas Pipe Bridge, carrying the filtered hydrogen to the one Hydrogen Generator. Its card calls it "A Power source that converts Hydrogen into electricity," and adds, "Hey, wait... this thing doesn't generate hydrogen at all." On the recording: "Looks like this hydrogen thing is working pretty well."
Where it ends
Power runs low anyway, "which is kind of ironic," the batteries are empty, and there is still no algae. The duplicants are asked to "run on your hamster wheels" at the manual generators. The Gas Filter is set once more to send hydrogen to the side, and the game is sped up again, still on Cycle 39. The last look is the oxygen overlay, mostly red, with the commentary blaming "the polluted gas that's kind of polluting everything." The stream ends there.
