Produce LH without Super Coolant or Space Material

[SamLogan]

Hello,

The technique I've found is usable to produce LOX but given you can simply liquefy it with Themo regulator and hydrogen, I will focus on LH (Liquid Hydrogen).

Normally, you have no material or solution to liquefy the hydrogen given it have the lowest condensation point. But by using this property : "the matter state change don't break the pipe if is flow is divided by 10 of it maximum flow" (1Kg / sec for liquid, 100g /sec for gas). Note it's not a glitch, Klei consider the mass is not enough to break the pipe as in real life, 100g of liquid oxygen will not break a gas pipe.

To protect your pipe, you can use a valve so set the right flow. The problem is if I use it with an AT, it will fix the flow to 10Kg, same the thermo regulator. So my idea was to use 2 valves to maintain the correct flow. And it's works !

Note the thermo regulator is not a good choice, the flow will be too slow.

To have a bigger flow, I've tried with an AT + polluted water and it works !

(Image credit : Keaulaim)

The valves are set to 1000g / sec. Note you can have sometimes, some damages on the entrance or exit of the valves if you have lag.

So it's not an ultimate solution, Super Coolant remain the better choice, but when you don't have it for some reasons, no petrole (custom map) or too far, it can be a temporary solution. In any case, easier than the only other one I know :

 

[psusi]

Huh?  Did Klei change something while I wasn't looking?  Both ATs and TRs have always been able to accept packets smaller than the max and put out packets of the exact same size.  They have never backed up and wait to output a full packet.  People used to go to great lengths to stack packagets to make sure that they didn't put in a small packet because doing so gets you less cooling for the same amount of power.

Also even if the TR did wait until it could output a full packet, and you used a valve to break it back into smaller ones, at least in that segment of pipe before the valve, there would still be a full packet that would change state and damage the pipe before being broken up by the valve.

[TheMule]

Multi stage coolers are way better. Hydrogen has a decent SHC, cooling it down isn't that easy. What you can do is use pwater to bring it down to -6C, then methane to go as low as -169C, H2 gas in a thermoregulator down to -239C. From there you can use the 1000g trick with water.

There can be another intermediate step, ethanol down to -100C but probably it's not worth the extra setup. The SHC of ethanol is slightly better that methane but not much.

Compared to supercoolant, the first step is about 50% as efficient, the second 26% (ethanol is 29%), the third 14% the last one 5%. Doing it all the way down from potentially 70C or 95C from electrolyzer output with only 5% efficiency is a huge hit. 

 

Edit: not that I'm advocating this for any reason. It's quite uncommon that no planetary destination has fullerene within the range reachable with petro engine and oxylite (60k). Even then you need LOX not LH2. With LOX, the range is 110k. Basicly you are forced to get LH2 w/o supercoolant only if there's no fullerene inside the 110k range.