Lilscratchy Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 I've been running up on hydrogen rockets, research should be finished soon. I've already set up liquid H2 and O2 production so that I have some ready for when I can get to building hydrogen engines. Now I have a question about the general setups and my own setup, but first off a little explanation about my situation/setup. I see lots of setups using several aquatuners, a lot of automation which seems overly complicated to me, but maybe I don't understand the designs. I have a small 1 tile high pool filled with tiny amounts of supercoolant surrounded by diamond tiles through which gold radiant liquid pipes with supercoolant is circulated, this is of course linked to a steamturbine/ aquatuner setup. Above and below I this little space I have connected several automated airlock serving as thermal injectors, which as far as I can see eliminates the need to manage your sc temperatures. In the basins for H2 and O2 I have a couple of reservoirs which are linked to each other, and the outlets circulate through the diamond tile outlines of the tanks to disperse and spread cold throughout the reservoirs. Before being reintroduced to the beginning of the loop, of course a liquid pump is also in the reservoirs This loop is at its end connected to the input end of (currently) inactive shutoffs which allow me to automate fuelling the rockets. Inside the reservoirs I have some tempshift plates to equalize temperatures. (update) I found out the placement of tempshift plates doesn't matter for lox that much. Lh2 however has much less wiggle room between keeping it condensed into liquid but preventing it from freezing. I have placed 1 row down from the leftmost tile of the left liquid reservoir in the hydrogen tank. And one row down the rightmost tile of the liquid pump. Hydrosensors set to activate the pump at certain pressure, maintaining a layer of liquid O2 or H2 that helps stabilize temperature in the tanks. Inside them is a thermosensor that sends green signals to the thermal injectors if ambient temperatures inside the reservoirs go above a certain threshold, I can't remember the exact numbers, but remember setting them to 2 or 3 degrees below the condensation points of both H2 and O2. This is also linked to gas shutoffs, killing the inflow of Gass should ambient temperatures in the reservoirs go too high. This has allowed me to pull vacuum in both rooms meaning that the Gass instantly condensates on entry into the tanks. (I'm on a little trip right now, can't post pictures, could add them later.) Note, as of testing I am capable of processing a full 1kg per second inflow of hydrogen and oxygen into liquid form. Planning on stresstesting the system to possibly handle large inflow of hydrogen and oxygen. So, I'm asking you all. Have I come in touch with a spark of genius I never knew I had and created a Hella simple setup, or are there drawbacks to my system or perks to others that I'm unaware of? It might be hard to judge without pictures as of now, but I'll add them later. (Update/edit, As promised, i have gathered together some pics of my setup . Extra update* hydrogen is tends to heat up pretty quickly. Often shutting off Gass inflow and killing production. I have had the oxygen and hydrogen tanks switch places, because thermal injectors can provide some more immediate cooling to the H2. I also put regular drywall and an insulated tile above the Gass vent in the H2 tank, to keep it from heating up adjacent diamond tiles too much, to prevent potential heat damage to the pipes.) \ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caffeinated21 Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 A picture is worth a thousand words Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BT_20 Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 @Lilscratchy I like the idea for using a thermal injector to make liquid oxygen and hydrogen,I typically use a pipe sensor paired with an averaging tank to fine tune the temp but I might give your idea a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilscratchy Posted January 9, 2020 Author Share Posted January 9, 2020 3 minutes ago, BT_20 said: @Lilscratchy I like the idea for using a thermal injector to make liquid oxygen and hydrogen,I typically use a pipe sensor paired with an averaging tank to fine tune the temp but I might give your idea a try. Sounds good! I'll post pictures later on, might also clean up the piping and everything a bit, since this was my first try everything still looks a bit wonky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkunkMaster Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 This has been my setup the last couple of colonies: The whole hydrogen chamber is cooled down to liquid hydrogen temps, the solid oxygen is shipped into the liquid oxygen room, where it is kept at the right temp with a tepedizer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilscratchy Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 3 hours ago, SkunkMaster said: This has been my setup the last couple of colonies: The whole hydrogen chamber is cooled down to liquid hydrogen temps, the solid oxygen is shipped into the liquid oxygen room, where it is kept at the right temp with a tepedizer. Looks very well designed and put together, lots of automation though, especially with the conveyors. Is it hard to set up in survival? Also is it heavy on power requirements? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neotuck Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 3 minutes ago, Lilscratchy said: is it heavy on power requirements? given that there are 4 steam turbines I'm gonna guess.... no Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suxkar Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 11 hours ago, Lilscratchy said: Looks very well designed and put together, lots of automation though, especially with the conveyors. Is it hard to set up in survival? Also is it heavy on power requirements? I was going to say that there is a lot of energy wasted in overchilling the oxygen and then heating it up, but this setup completely avoids pumping the gas from the electrolyzers. You would need around 15 for 10 electrolyzers, that's almost 2 petroleum generators worth of energy. Considering how much energy efficient supercoolant aquatuners are with steam turbines, this is a great setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psusi Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 How many rockets are you feeding with those 10 electrolyzers? I have two and I just feed 1000g/s in from my main oxygen network ( that is fed by only 4 electrolyzers ), and even that is disconnected most of the time. I haven't gotten to hydrogen rockets yet though. I guess that's next on the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caffeinated21 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 @psusi depends on the rocket, obviously, but across most distances and reasonable amount of cargo, a single hydrogen rocket averages a little over an electrolyzer output. So @suxkar I posted a design a little while ago that directly liquifies both without pumping or over chilling. Couldn’t find it in search. I’m rebuilding a variant in survival now. Will post when finished Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psusi Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 1 hour ago, caffeinated21 said: @suxkar I posted a design a little while ago that directly liquifies both without pumping or over chilling. Couldn’t find it in search. I’m rebuilding a variant in survival now. Will post when finished How the heck do you do that? To avoid over cooling the oxygen you have to separate it from the hydrogen. Only way to do that is to pump it. Unless you use a door pump? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caffeinated21 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Gravity separation! There’s certainly heat flow from the hydrogen to the oxygen, but since you’re continually injecting 90+C gas into the system it mostly goes to cooling that down. And if you lost water flow, it would end up forming a vacuum. That perfectly insulates them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psusi Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 31 minutes ago, caffeinated21 said: Gravity separation! There’s certainly heat flow from the hydrogen to the oxygen, but since you’re continually injecting 90+C gas into the system it mostly goes to cooling that down. And if you lost water flow, it would end up forming a vacuum. That perfectly insulates them Oh. I was thinking that once the oxygen liquefies the hydrogen will flow down and touch the LOX and freeze it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caffeinated21 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 13 minutes ago, psusi said: Oh. I was thinking that once the oxygen liquefies the hydrogen will flow down and touch the LOX and freeze it. Yeah the key is liquefying it in a place oxygen can’t get to. Updated design is a little different; switches to mini pumps for great airflow area Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkunkMaster Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 On 1/10/2020 at 12:40 PM, suxkar said: I was going to say that there is a lot of energy wasted in overchilling the oxygen and then heating it up, but this setup completely avoids pumping the gas from the electrolyzers. You would need around 15 for 10 electrolyzers, that's almost 2 petroleum generators worth of energy. Considering how much energy efficient supercoolant aquatuners are with steam turbines, this is a great setup. Actually oxygen is only chilled to around -210c. Flash freezing oxygen limits how much cold you can put into it, so while the chamber is around -255c, the oxygen only ends up at -210c before leaving the room. Atleast that is how it seems to be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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