Please improve the hydrogen generator

[628960_1452790609]

I'm told it's supposed to be an "end-game" power source, but it's hilariously inefficient.

When used in conjunction with the electrolyzer (which is the intended purpose, since there are no hydrogen geysers), it requires a chamber with:

• Electrolyzer (120 W)
• Two gas pumps - one for oxygen, one for hydrogen (480 W)
• If you want to play it safe, also a gas filter attached to the top gas pump to make sure no oxygen is sent to the generator (120 W)

The power output of the generator is only 800 W, so when all is said and done you only have 80 W surplus.

 

[Sevio]

11 minutes ago, 628960_1452790609 said:

The power output of the generator is only 800 W, so when all is said and done you only have 80 W surplus.

My goto design that I can sprinkle about my base. Oxygen flows directly into the base, hydrogen gets pumped. It doesn't reach full throughput and it will need a gas filter for a while until the pump chamber stabilizes to only hydrogen. Once it's stable you can remove the gas filter and you get the maximum possible power surplus.

The switch next to the electrolyzer is set to "Below 1600 g", but it should not be strictly necessary.

[Coolthulhu]

You certainly don't need two pumps. The second pump increases throughput, but decreases efficiency.

[Michi01]

I don't think it's meant to be a great power source, just a way to deal with hydrogen and get a bit of extra power from electrolyzers.
Where were you told that it's supposed to be an end-game power source? Being high up on the research tree doesn't mean that it is one.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, 628960_1452790609 said:

I'm told it's supposed to be an "end-game" power source, but it's hilariously inefficient.

When used in conjunction with the electrolyzer (which is the intended purpose, since there are no hydrogen geysers), it requires a chamber with:

• Electrolyzer (120 W)
• Two gas pumps - one for oxygen, one for hydrogen (480 W)
• If you want to play it safe, also a gas filter attached to the top gas pump to make sure no oxygen is sent to the generator (120 W)

The power output of the generator is only 800 W, so when all is said and done you only have 80 W surplus.

 

You don't need 2 gas pumps and you actually do not even need a gas filter. You have to use the hydrogen gas' mass to your advantage, as hydrogen will always be on top of any other gas and will collect itself underneath the roof. If you build the roof of your base accordingly, you can get something like this:

Note a couple of things:

1.The pump is walled (with the exception of the top), this in order to keep it from pumping oxygen. Since the pump automatically pumps in a vacuum, the hydrogen will fall into the vacuum nicely this way. Before fully enclosing the pump and though and activating it, make sure the space there is already flooded with hydrogen...

2. ...and this is why you have a power switch up there. It'll allow for enough hydrogen to collect  in the nook to push out the oxygen.

3. Finally for efficiency purposes, there's a atmo switch turning the pump off when hydrogen falls below 1000g

4. The hydrogen generator is out of the camera; I actually build it walled outside the living quarters to keep the heat out.

5. Note that I am using 4 electrolyzers. According to the provided numbers, one electrolyzer should be enough to feed one hydrogen constantly, in theory. In practice I've never seen this as current system mechanics throw a wrench into that. Even 4 electrolyzers working none stop are not enough by a long a shot to outproduce the generator's usage.

Note that with a big battery this system with a hydrogen generator and a geyser providing water, is fully self sustainable. Throw in additional wheeze worts and you'll take care of the heat as well. You will need some outside power though to kickstart the system, getting the electrolyzers to produce enough hydrogen. When the area gets over pressurized, the electrolyzers will stop working and like wise you will not be consuming power.

[FR4NK]

Here is my current setup:

 

The right side is currently operational while the left side will be ready once I get two more wheezeworts.

 

[628960_1452790609]

5 hours ago, turbonl64 said:

You don't need 2 gas pumps and you actually do not even need a gas filter. You have to use the hydrogen gas' mass to your advantage, as hydrogen will always be on top of any other gas and will collect itself underneath the roof. If you build the roof of our base accordingly, you can get something like this:

...

5. Note that I am using 4 electrolyzers. According to the provided numbers, one electrolzyers should be enough to feed one hydrogen constantly, in theory. In practice I've never seen this as current system mechanics throw a wrench into that. Even 4 electrolyzers working none stop are not enough by a long a shot to outproduce the generator's usage.

Note that with a big battery this system with a hydrogen generator and a geyser providing water, is fully self sustainable. Throw in additional wheeze worts and you'll take care of the heat as well.

Wow, four electrolyzers to fuel one hydrogen generator?

A steam geyser spits out 4.2 kg/s of water, and four electrolyzers require 4 kg/s. All that for... ~540 W of power???

[FR4NK]

8 minutes ago, 628960_1452790609 said:

A steam geyser spits out 4.2 kg/s of water, and four electrolyzers require 4 kg/s. All that for... ~540 W of power???

 

Well it does also produce oxygen which is kinda useful.

[trukogre]

2 hours ago, 628960_1452790609 said:

Wow, four electrolyzers to fuel one hydrogen generator?

A steam geyser spits out 4.2 kg/s of water, and four electrolyzers require 4 kg/s. All that for... ~540 W of power???

When he says 4 electrolyzers, he's referring to the electrolyzers in his base which are using about 500 g/s each because of overpressurization near them, not 4 magical electrolyzers pumping into an infinite vacuum and actually using 1 kg/s of water each.  When you consider that hydrogen generators + electrolyzers should be a power losing cycle which doesn't produce any net oxygen at all(although which also shouldn't consume any water overall), then perhaps you will be grateful that in the magical world of ONI, it results in both a power and oxygen surplus, basically from nowhere.  Although in another sense, if the hydrogen is just gone from the universe, as the hydrogen generator has no exhaust,then it should be replaced by basically unimaginably much energy, we're talking E = mc squared amounts.  So yea, E = (100 g)(9 * 10^16 meters squared per second squared) is the per second Energy that should be created., so that's .9 * 10^16 watts, or 9 petawatts per hydrogen generator. So some of that should be converted into usable power, and the rest into a bit of heat that would heat up the asteroid somewhat.  p.s. who else here is anxiously awaiting the introduction of the first petabyte consumer hard drives in 2029?

[Masterpintsman]

1 hour ago, trukogre said:

if the hydrogen is just gone from the universe

You're arguing that the hydrogen generator should turn into a 100% conversion rate hydrogen bomb?

Kidding, but possibly the HG should exhaust small quantities of helium (which could be used for decorative baloons).

1 hour ago, trukogre said:

who else here is anxiously awaiting the introduction of the first petabyte consumer hard drives in 2029

I'm not, even the current 8TB ones are so slow that they make no sense for me (speed/capacity is very bad, ZFS scrubs take so long that you at least need raidz3 to be somewhat safe against additional drive failures when replacing a dead drive).

[Guest]

3 hours ago, trukogre said:

When he says 4 electrolyzers, he's referring to the electrolyzers in his base which are using about 500 g/s each because of overpressurization near them, not 4 magical electrolyzers pumping into an infinite vacuum and actually using 1 kg/s of water each.  When you consider that hydrogen generators + electrolyzers should be a power losing cycle which doesn't produce any net oxygen at all(although which also shouldn't consume any water overall), then perhaps you will be grateful that in the magical world of ONI, it results in both a power and oxygen surplus, basically from nowhere.

It is exactly that. I don't think the hydrogen generator is meant to be as a power source capable of running half or more of your base. It's there to put electrolyzers in a loop concerning power. As you said yourself, the electrolyzers have a lot of downtime because of overpressurizing, but with proper base planning 4 are more than enough to provide oxygen for a whole base

[BlueLance]

I have seen massive bases running on very little electrolyzers, 1 produces enough oxygen for 8 dupes at 100% up-time, Personally for me though I have more than needed but I run my entire base off of Hydrogen and Coal, Coal is there as an "Emergency" and All my hydrogen is pumped into 2 chambers, half of the hydrogen is pumped to one, the other half into the other, once they are both at max pressure, I pump one and feed 2 generators for about 20-30 cycles, then I switch to the other chamber, rinse and repeat.... But i just love hydrogen XD

[Lifegrow]

2 hours ago, BlueLance said:

I have seen massive bases running on very little electrolyzers, 1 produces enough oxygen for 8 dupes at 100% up-time, Personally for me though I have more than needed but I run my entire base off of Hydrogen and Coal, Coal is there as an "Emergency" and All my hydrogen is pumped into 2 chambers, half of the hydrogen is pumped to one, the other half into the other, once they are both at max pressure, I pump one and feed 2 generators for about 20-30 cycles, then I switch to the other chamber, rinse and repeat.... But i just love hydrogen XD

I'm well aware of your duo-chamber malarkey  

Personally I think a lot of people have missed a key point here as regards hydrogen. If you are running electrolyzers that have even a small amount of down time due to being over pressurised, then you're probably getting a fraction of the 112g/s that it advertises. Many people, myself included, have done tests and tinkered with their output - and it's spot on - providing they aren't sat in a over pressurised/gas saturated area.One electrolyzer can indeed support one generator, there are sustainable electrolyzer builds all over the forums - however they aren't showcasing an amazing power gain system, they're normally an exercise in efficiency.

Don't get me wrong - I would love it if we had a machine to split water into hydrogen/oxygen (electrolysis?) solely for power generation...but wait... we already have that - it's just all that pesky oxygen keeps getting in the way  

[Saturnus]

15 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Don't get me wrong - I would love it if we had a machine to split water into hydrogen/oxygen (electrolysis?) solely for power generation...but wait... we already have that - it's just all that pesky oxygen keeps getting in the way  

We also have a machine that converts oxygen into power... well sort of, there's a few complications with hamster wheeling dupes but they can give a fair amount of power.

But a 100% efficient build (with semi-submerged electrolyser) is a fairly decent power generator with 752Wavg surplus power as the electrolyser uses 120Wavg and the pump feeding it uses 24Wavg (on 1/10th of the time) and the hydrogen generators produce 896Wavg (1.12 generators).

However, if people are seeing this as a good power generator generator they're doing it wrong. Electrolyzers destroys water. Water geysers can only produce a certain amount so the electrolzer should be the end of a long chain of processes converting water into polluted and back into clean water, possibly even several times.

[Suinatra]

15 hours ago, 628960_1452790609 said:

I'm told it's supposed to be an "end-game" power source, but it's hilariously inefficient.

When used in conjunction with the electrolyzer (which is the intended purpose, since there are no hydrogen geysers), it requires a chamber with:

• Electrolyzer (120 W)
• Two gas pumps - one for oxygen, one for hydrogen (480 W)
• If you want to play it safe, also a gas filter attached to the top gas pump to make sure no oxygen is sent to the generator (120 W)

The power output of the generator is only 800 W, so when all is said and done you only have 80 W surplus.

Well, in real life splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen then burning hydrogen should not be power proficient, should it? Your 80W surpuls is great, and doesn't even consume oxygen!

So it's not end-game power source, it's just a way to utilize hydrogen from electrolyzer while main propose of electrolyzer is making oxygen

[Saturnus]

I think he misunderstood "end-game" for "end-of-the-line". Electrolyzers are the end of the line power generators.

[BlueLance]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

However, if people are seeing this as a good power generator generator they're doing it wrong. Electrolyzers destroys water. Water geysers can only produce a certain amount so the electrolzer should be the end of a long chain of processes converting water into polluted and back into clean water, possibly even several times.

For me Electrolyzers are king XD, With coal as a backup, and If i ever bother to do it one day I will create a chamber of Nat Gas to sit alongside my Hydrogen Chambers Mwahahaha and alternate it for free energy and Polluted water.

On the topic of power correct me if I am wrong, 1 Electrolyzer (120W), 2 Pumps (Because 1 ump can only suck up 500g/s 480W), 1 Filter (120W), 1 Water Pump (240W), is 960W, If you have a perfect Setup, you can make a grand total of 800W from 1 Hydrogen Generator which you can run on 1kg/s of water. 

This can be shortened down to 720W if you assume your pump is always running because of other requirements which is a small gain of 80W.

If you use gas mechanics you can reduce this by a further 120W by removing the Gas filter, and using a layer of hydrogen. You can further reduce it by another 240W if you let the oxygen flow freely out of the chamber. So a total cost of 600W giving you a 200W gain for 1k/s and if you dont wanna add the water pump into the electricity cost it's 360W....doing this math i really should change my setup....

[Saturnus]

41 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

On the topic of power correct me if I am wrong, 1 Electrolyzer (120W), 2 Pumps (Because 1 ump can only suck up 500g/s 480W), 1 Filter (120W), 1 Water Pump (240W), is 960W, If you have a perfect Setup, you can make a grand total of 800W from 1 Hydrogen Generator which you can run on 1kg/s of water. 

Don't need the air pumps. Depends on your set up. So only count those if you use them. Technically , you only need one air pump, and it only needs to be on 14/125th of the time for 26.88W(average). Don't need an air filter, use a mechanical filter, and even if you did need it it'd only be on 14/125th of the time using 13.44W(average) during normal operation, ie. when there's nothing to filter out. Supply water pump only needs to provide 1kg/s so it's only on 1/10th of the time, so it's 24W(average) as I wrote above. And remember that it's not 1 hydrogen generator per electrolyzer, it's 1.12 unless you want to cheat yourself out of 96W. To exploit this you just build one extra hydrogen generator for any system up 9 electrolyzers. However, at 9 electrolyzer you are technically also beyond the sustainable water supply you can possibly get from 2 water geysers and 2 natural gas geysers (but only by a few g/s)

[BlueLance]

I did mention you can use less depending on the setup  and yeah I dont think I have ever had more than 6 electolyzers.

And alrighty I was going for simpler numbers but yours are more accurate XD I think I will have to go over my Electrolyzer designs though, I use 1 pump, but my electrolysers do overpressure.

[Xarian]

Use hydrogen generators to get rid of hydrogen (it will suffocate your dupes). They aren't actually useful for generating power unless you find a pocket of high-pressure hydrogen somewhere on the map.