Space Rodriguez's for Power?

[GeePaw]

Folks...

Sitting here waiting for a solar panel build, and I had a brainfart, and I'm wondering if anyone's experimented with this:

On a terra, we have a *lot* of liquid. My current has two CSV's, two salt water geysers, and two cool slush geysers. A rodriguez in atmo is slightly but genuinely power-positive, including the pump and the sieve/desalinator.

What if we built one in space, and don't drywall the pump level, but just let the o2 disappear? If the h2 pressure held up well enough, you'd not be using the six air-pumps, so you'd gain 1440w just from their absence, not to mention whatever h2 you get from being always-up. An always-up Rodriguez consumes 4kg/s of liquid, and that terra I just described is averaging perhaps 16, maybe even 20. So put three or four in space. Wouldn't that be 4+kw of maintenance-free power?

I mean, 4kw of no-effort power isn't the lottery, but it's not nothing. On a terra, you can fill the sky with solar panels and you'd get about that. Certainly 4kw of no-effort power is very close to being enough to sustain a 16-person colony forever.

Has anyone done any serious efforts at this? If not, wellllllll, closing in on the weekend here. If so, I'd love to hear about your results! -- GeePaw

 

[asurendra]

Build a hydra. It allows you to have oxygen overpressured without any limits so you will get all hydrogen power you want and save oxygen for time you need it. Also its easy scalable so you are not tied up to 4 electrolyzers

[blakemw]

Yep, it works great. If you're going for Super Sustainable it's especially good. You can easily run a modest base on hydrogen power if there are surplus geysers.

A funny thing is that a Water Geyser is a top-tier energy producing geyser/vent. For instance a Natural Gas or Hydrogen Vent is good for about 800 W continuously, but a Water Geyser, producing 2.7 kg/s of water on average, is good for 2.4 kW of gross hydrogen power, or about 1.9 kW of net power.

Basically it works out there are three tiers of power production potential:

1. 2 kW: Major Volcano, Steam Vent, Water Geyser, Polluted Water Vent, Salt Water Geyser
2. 1 kW: Minor Volcano, Cool Steam Vent, Cool Slush Geyser, Natural Gas Vent, Hydrogen Vent, Salty Slush Geyser
3. 0.2 kW: Leaky Oil Fissure, Metal Volcanoes

 

[Gurgel]

Here is an optimized design for this. Tried recently to make it better, no success.

Also tried a 2 and 1 electrolyzers, but could not get the same efficiency. But there is room for experiments for the smaller designs, I did not try very hard:

 

[The Plum Gate]

I build polluted water based oxygenation. 

It's a reservoir with mesh and airflow sandwich. Haven't tested it in many release cycles though.

Only problem with it is running out of PW or needing it navigable. 

[Tranoze]

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Here is an optimized design for this. Tried recently to make it better, no success.

Hydra.

 

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

I did not try very hard:

Understandable.

[ZombieDupe]

Just here to mention that oxygen doesn't have to be a byproduct to vent to space when you reach this point. You can have longhair slickster ranches to consume it and provide you with more food, meaning some other food production systems may be turned off if need be.

[blakemw]

12 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Just here to mention that oxygen doesn't have to be a byproduct to vent to space when you reach this point. You can have longhair slickster ranches to consume it and provide you with more food, meaning some other food production systems may be turned off if need be.

Considering that Longhair Slicksters only consume 50 g/s, and thus you would need 18 tame Longhairs or 89 glum Longhairs per Electrolyzer, that is not a super practical way for maintaining hydrogen production.

Also longhairs have some of the lowest grooming efficiency for meat production, they produce as much meat as other slicksters and hatches, but have a 50% longer breeding cycle: a Slickster ranch would produce 50% more meat.