Where is my hydrogen going?

[inquisitiveToast]

I've been trying to use my hydrogen generators to sink heat from my natural gas generator, but my hydrogen keeps disappearing from the system. The reservoir started full, and now there's barely enough hydrogen to run the system. Am I missing something? Electrolyzers in the bottom right produce hydrogen, which is pumped up to the reservoir. Then the hydrogen is sent to the sink room and pumped past the thermoregulator. The heated hydrogen is then sent past the hydrogen generators, where valves send 100 g/s down to the generators. The excess is then returned to the reservoir. I've been running the system with only a single electrolyzer because of my population, and only a single generator. This ought to be netting me 12g/s of hydrogen, but instead the system quickly runs out of hydrogen almost entirely. What's going on here???

 

[Neotuck]

confined areas with electrolyzers can cause over pressure easily even with 2 or more pumps

keep an eye on the electrolyzer and if it shows over pressure at all then you are NOT producing hydrogen at 112g/s

[Coolthulhu]

22 minutes ago, inquisitiveToast said:

This ought to be netting me 12g/s of hydrogen, but instead the system quickly runs out of hydrogen almost entirely.

The pump only takes up 500g/s. Electrolyzers won't work until tile density drops below 1800g/s. Since you're only using 50% of an electrolyzer, you're getting 55g/s of hydrogen.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, Coolthulhu said:

The pump only takes up 500g/s. Electrolyzers won't work until tile density drops below 1800g/s. Since you're only using 50% of an electrolyzer, you're getting 55g/s of hydrogen.

he has 2 pumps

[Coolthulhu]

Just now, Neotuck said:

he has 2 pumps

The 3 lower pumps aren't connected, the upper pump in wheezes is only for wheezes. Only one pump is feeding the filter and there is no other hydrogen source.

[Neotuck]

Just now, Coolthulhu said:

The 3 lower pumps aren't connected,

look at the middle one (behind the attack button)

[Oozinator]

Dunno, but right lower corner you suck O² Hydro mix into filter and output vent seems to be blocked, could reduce production. Vent it to a non-overpressurized area, but another but:
You have massive hydro gen setup, you need much more hydro for that, to run.
Those "closed/narrow" systems i don't like, because when heat is generated/hard to fight.
I use something like that / only lower pump sends stuff to filter for exos, upper is venting away only, to increase hydro production

For hydro i use that/without filter
Gives me that..

[inquisitiveToast]

I have two pumps running. I checked the reports, and the electrolyzer was producing 520 kg/cycle of oxygen, which should be roughly 58 kg/cycle of hydrogen. This isn't quite enough to run the generator, but should take quite a while to bleed the system dry. The filtered pump was getting blocked up a little bit, but as the room is sealed, the hydrogen shouldn't be escaping there. I expanded the ventilation system connected to the filter to avoid blockages, and this seems to have increased the overall hydrogen production. It seems like the built up hydrogen should have been coming up in big packets any time the top pump was running, but instead it was still receiving small packets, just more rarely. Maybe semi-blocked pumps can destroy small amounts of gases?

8 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

You have massive hydro gen setup, you need much more hydro for that, to run.

The hydrogen system is gated by valves. Only 500 g/s into the sink room, and only 100 g/s to only a single generator. While the hydrogen system was full, this seemed to be working exactly as expected, with reliable 400g hydrogen packets returning to the reservoir.

[Oozinator]

11 minutes ago, inquisitiveToast said:

The hydrogen system is gated by valves. ..

The small room with the thermo thing / vent pump. I would forget whole thing for now (if i would be you).
The cooling is not really needed there/using energy without reason. Klin and other heat producing stuff could be moved into oil biome, placed in small layer of petrol/oil (for example).
That room with pump/thermo is killing 480 w.. Look at the small output of hydro in the line, for 240w..
use pressure switch/ atmo sensor, if needed..
Edit check the reservoir line, you loop it into "production", not possible to store, when pipe after output point is empty - fills up - empty r - hydro gen - omnomnom - pump/thermo - tschuff tschuff.

[inquisitiveToast]

lol I was trying to cool down the natural gas gen, to avoid heating up my water system. The power loss doesn't really worry me, it's just the disappearing hydrogen.

I allowed my hydrogen reservoir to refill, and then ran the system again. When full, the system runs as expected.

However, the system quickly ran out of hydrogen again.

My electrolyzer is producing 532.8 kg/cycle now, which is the full 888 g/s

This is my electrolyzer room, if anyone was curious.

Is it possible that the electrolyzer is producing oxygen but not hydrogen sometimes?

32 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Edit check the reservoir line, you loop it into "production", not possible to store, when pipe after output point is empty - fills up - empty r - hydro gen - omnomnom - pump/thermo - tschuff tschuff.

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand.

Where the production system and loop come together, the packets just combine together. Even when occasionally the packets are too big, it just causes a slight backup, increasing the packet sizes further back.

[KittenIsAGeek]

2 hours ago, inquisitiveToast said:

Is it possible that the electrolyzer is producing oxygen but not hydrogen sometimes?

There are a number of threads on this board where this exact issue has been investigated.  I can't find the exact thread now, but someone posted an exhaustive reference for electrolyzers.  In it, they showed that depending on how your small room is set up, you can unintentionally convert some of the oxygen to hydrogen or some of the hydrogen to oxygen.  Basically it boils down to a combination of pressure and small confined areas.  In your picture you have some blocks immediately above the electrolyzer.  This limits where each gas can go when produced.  If you move your pumps and solid blocks one tick higher, you will probably have better results.

I can't see your entire electrolyzer set-up, but re-do the top of your room like this:

Spoiler

Notice how there are no blocks in the space immediately above the electrolyzer.  Your build looks fine underneath.  But the top side needs more room. You're forcing it to chose whether it places hydrogen or oxygen at any particular tick because you've covered the areas in which the gasses can go.  

[inquisitiveToast]

Interesting... I'll try that out.

[pacuegg]

An interesting test would be to really test if you get all the hydrogen you expect.

Vacuum out the Electrolyzer room so there's no other gases to confuse the data.
Partially fill a Liquid Reservoir with 200kg or so. Pipe the LR into your Electroyzer. Connect the Gas Pumps to Gas Reservoirs.
Run the system until the liquid is gone and the room returns to a vacuum.

The Gas Reservoirs should have 177kg of Oxygen and 22kg Hydrogen in them.

[Lurve]

10 hours ago, inquisitiveToast said:

to sink heat from my natural gas generator,

But natural gas generators ARE a heat sink.   Their output is the same temp as the building, so the colder you get the building beforehand the more heat they will delete. 

Try this: build a generator in an insulated box, with a wheezewort on both sides and a mesh tile at the base of one wall to drain PW onto something hot.  Fill with hydrogen, allow to chill to -10.   Turn it on and enjoy your free cooling.

[inquisitiveToast]

1 minute ago, Lurve said:

so the colder you get the building beforehand the more heat they will delete

This is what I meant by "sinking heat from the gas generator".

[Lurve]

5 minutes ago, inquisitiveToast said:

This is what I meant by "sinking heat from the gas generator".

I don't think it is.  You don't need hydrogen generators.  Fill the nat gas gen room with hydrogen, once, and cool it down with wheezes.  Do this BEFORE there's any heat in the system.  Then the nat gas gens will make cold PW to serve as their own thermal mass, and become self-sustaining.

[inquisitiveToast]

??? It is what I meant. I was doing it a different way. I was using a thermoregulator to cool the gas generator. The hydrogen system cooled the thermoregulator, and then sent the hot hydrogen to a hydrogen generator to be destroyed.