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De-mystifying the Hydrogen Generator


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Hello there! I have seen quite the countless number of those Hydrogen generators being highly inefficient and all, so I decided to perform a test and do a little bit of math for the sake of science and exploration! yay.

The devices used and their outputs and inputs are listed below:

Electrolyzer:

112g/s of Hydrogen generated.

888g/s of Oxygen generated.

120W of Power consumed.

1kg/s of Water consumed.

Hydrogen Generator:

100g/s of Hydrogen consumed.

800W of Power generated.

Gas Filter:

120W of Power consumed.

Gas Pump:

240W of Power consumed.

500g/s of Gas pumped.

Sum of components:

Power Generated: 320W

Oxygen Generated: 888g/s

Hydrogen Generated: 12g/s

Gas left in chamber: 500g/s

Water consumed: 1kg/s

 

With that list out of the way, we can finally talk about the findings. We have a net power generation of 320W, which is 80% of the power generation of a dupe wheel. Though smaller, it's a passive amount of power created. In terms of water consumption, it is consuming the same water as would 3.33 Algae Terrarium. It's pretty damn efficient!

What's more, you ask? It provides your colony with 888g/s of oxygen generated. That's enough to feed 8 dupes at most (or, approximately 4 if you have 3 mealwood plants for each dupe -don't quote me on this one though).

However, that's under ideal conditions. How do you imitate that? With the set-up shown below.

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Additionally, you can simply place a single gas permeable tile at the bottom pannel to allow pressure to diffuse the oxygen outwards into your base. Doing so ensures you get the full capacity of the 888g/s of oxygen generated. Hydrogen floats to the top of the tiny room, which then almost guarantees your hydrogen generator to recieve the 112g/s of hydrogen generated. In this case, the hydrogen generator will always be topped off at all times.

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Have two of them, and you can generate twice as much oxygen, and twice as much power for only the net loss of the same water consumption as 6.66 algae terrarium.

 

Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug where the hydrogen generator does not produce any power, even when completely filled with the hydrogen it so requires.

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Just now, Octyabr said:

Now that its finally working properly, it's nice to know that this setup basically energy-free and only consumes water.

By the way, I loved your tags. :wilson_ecstatic:

Gas pumps are so amazing, I'm glad they fixed it haha. And thanks, tags are important apparently ;)

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Just now, kambing said:

I can safely say that the actual amount would be much less than that because it keep hitting "Max Gas Pressure" even though O2 pressure was low as a whole.

Not if you have mealwood present, which tends to always gobble up gas, therefore decreasing gas pressure. Additionally, if it is always at max gas pressure, it's doing it's job and therefore increasing the efficiency of the Hydrogen Generator (since the electrolyzer wouldn't be using power as it turns off at max gas pressure).

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It's at max gas pressure even though the oxygen around it is as low as 300g/tile. I think gas diffusion is just not fast enough for it to actually generate the full amount of oxygen needed for the dupes, even though it might be using less resources.

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27 minutes ago, kambing said:

It's at max gas pressure even though the oxygen around it is as low as 300g/tile. I think gas diffusion is just not fast enough for it to actually generate the full amount of oxygen needed for the dupes, even though it might be using less resources.

Nope, that means you're experiencing a bug. Max gas pressure is upwards of about 1k g/tile. If it's showing max gas pressure at 300g/tile, destroy and rebuild it if turning it on and off doesn't work. If you're referring to a gas vent, the same thing occurs. The game is in alpha, after all

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I'm hoping that in later builds these will follow the laws of physics, instead of producing free energy.

The hydrogen generator really needs to consume oxygen as well as hydrogen, and spit out water as well as power.... but burning the hydrogen can't produce more energy than the electrolysis requires to create it!

 

EDIT:

On further thought, I take this back.  The Hydrogen Generator just needs to say "this works on the principal of *something something* cold fusion" - which would use up hydrogen without oxygen, and can have whatever energy efficiency makes for the best gameplay without violating the laws of thermodynamics!

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16 hours ago, Rogue Scientist said:

I'm hoping that in later builds these will follow the laws of physics, instead of producing free energy.

The hydrogen generator really needs to consume oxygen as well as hydrogen, and spit out water as well as power.... but burning the hydrogen can't produce more energy than the electrolysis requires to create it!

 

EDIT:

On further thought, I take this back.  The Hydrogen Generator just needs to say "this works on the principal of *something something* cold fusion" - which would use up hydrogen without oxygen, and can have whatever energy efficiency makes for the best gameplay without violating the laws of thermodynamics!

Would still require a waste product, in this case, helium....

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On 2/24/2017 at 0:16 AM, Rogue Scientist said:

On further thought, I take this back.  The Hydrogen Generator just needs to say "this works on the principal of *something something* cold fusion" - which would use up hydrogen without oxygen, and can have whatever energy efficiency makes for the best gameplay without violating the laws of thermodynamics!

What if the 'Oxygen not included' universe doesn't have the laws of thermodynamics or has a modified set?

I will say that it's a bit odd this is a viable power generation strategy.

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18 minutes ago, Enderengine said:

Is there any way to fix a bugged hydrogen generator?

So far I only had one that actually produced power... in every other instance I can't get it to work.

I tried removing and rebuilding it, restarting it, remaking the connections...

Using a valve perhaps? to give it a constant flux of thin hydrogen instead of big quantum like packets.

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55 minutes ago, Octyabr said:

Using a valve perhaps? to give it a constant flux of thin hydrogen instead of big quantum like packets.

I actually tried that and it didn't work either.

I reduced the slider and everything.

It still runs with a stuttery animation and no power is produced.

 

The funny thing is, in the one instance where I got it to work I simply connected a pipe between the generator and the gas pump... no valve, no nothing.

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I can't seem to get this to generate enough power. It's still extremely efficient, at least for generating oxygen, It doesn't seem to be making enough hydrogen to power itself. My hypothesis right now is that the pressure in my base is so high, the hydrogen generator isn't operating all the time but the gas pump and filter are, using up a greater portion of the power than they should be.

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I've tried this exact setup a dozen times in slightly different configurations, including using two electrolyzers in the hopes that increased hydrogen production would do the trick, and in no case has the hydrogen generator ever worked correctly (same problem in the thermal upgrade patch).

I had one that filled up completely green (because I stuck a gas pump in an hydrogen-filled pocket to test it), but it still just sat there stuttering away, barely producing power (and despite a gas valve, those thousands upon thousands of kg of hydrogen in the pocket disappeared within minutes, but I haven't retested that yet in thermal upgrade). 

All others never even fill up because the gas pump is never picking up and sending 112g/s of hydrogen to the thing, even with two electrolyzers (again, same exact behavior in the thermal upgrade). Add to that the issue of constant "max gas pressure" stopping the electrolyzers from working consistently (thus producing less hydrogen) no matter how many gas tiles I put underneath.

I don't understand how it can possibly be PEBKAC when my setup is exactly as above, and yet I feel it must be me because I can't find this issue reported as a major bug and don't see many people complaining about it (or maybe my "search" skills are the failure lol).

Any advice? 

 

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14 hours ago, Keyimin said:

I've tried this exact setup a dozen times in slightly different configurations, including using two electrolyzers in the hopes that increased hydrogen production would do the trick, and in no case has the hydrogen generator ever worked correctly (same problem in the thermal upgrade patch).

I had one that filled up completely green (because I stuck a gas pump in an hydrogen-filled pocket to test it), but it still just sat there stuttering away, barely producing power (and despite a gas valve, those thousands upon thousands of kg of hydrogen in the pocket disappeared within minutes, but I haven't retested that yet in thermal upgrade). 

All others never even fill up because the gas pump is never picking up and sending 112g/s of hydrogen to the thing, even with two electrolyzers (again, same exact behavior in the thermal upgrade). Add to that the issue of constant "max gas pressure" stopping the electrolyzers from working consistently (thus producing less hydrogen) no matter how many gas tiles I put underneath.

I don't understand how it can possibly be PEBKAC when my setup is exactly as above, and yet I feel it must be me because I can't find this issue reported as a major bug and don't see many people complaining about it (or maybe my "search" skills are the failure lol).

Any advice? 

 

With two electrolyzers set up in a similar method to the OP, I wasn't able to get a constantly running hydrogen gen either, so it's not just you. The problem isn't down to the electrolyzers;  they're constantly working. It does provide some power, but it will work for only short periods before stopping. At the moment it seems like it's strictly useful to take the edge off how often you need to get dupes to crank the manual gens. I'd much rather be using coal generators, but at the moment the overheating headaches have led me to give up on that idea for now (this is all on the thermal update).

Hydrogen output from two electrolyzers isn't enough to comfotrably feed one of these things unless i'm doing something drastically wrong, but I don't think I am. It will take far more and that isn't practical or really feasible unless I hugely expand to the point that I really need all that extra oxygen.

It could be more viable if you had a head start though, as a big part of the problem is that the trickle of hydrogen is very slow because it has to reach the gas pump(s) in small pockets be filtered out, and travel to the gen, and that's just not enough gas quickly enough when the filter is working through the massive amounts of O2.

Maybe we're being too clever for own good and the best method is to build a tall base, make minimal effort to control the gas, and let the stuff really accumulate before pumps are set up to begin putting it to use.

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Interesting, I started my first thermal_update world last night and the hydrogen generator was operating perfectly.  Actually, the biggest issue was that it was operating nonstop even when my battery storage was totally full (considering that we are now seeming required to have multiple separate circuits to keep things from overloading, this is kind of an issue).  

In my case, I'm just letting the hydrogen diffuse through the base and collect in an area at the top rather than trying to isolate in little rooms but I wouldn't think that'd make a difference.  I do have like 4 going though and the hydrogen at the top is sitting at around 250-500g/tile.

I guess I should double-check given your guys' experience, although I know for sure that the animation/audio for it is perfectly smooth.

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Let's see formula of water H20 with is mean we have 2 atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Ok.

Let's see nuclear mass of those elements:

1. Hydrogen nuclear mass = 1 but we have two atoms of hydrogen, ok... so it will be 2.

2. Oxygen nuclear mass = 16 and we have one oxygen atom in water molecula.

Now let's calculate proportion how much oxygen and hydrogen we will gain in % from water.

Water = 2xHydrogen+1xOxygen; Hydrogen = 1, Oxygen = 16

Water = 2x1+1x16

Water = 18 nuclear mass, so

water contents 2/18 of hydrogen and 16/18 of oxygen, let's see in % now:

2/18*100 = 0,(1)*100 = 11,(1)% of Hydrogen.

16/18*100 = 0,(8)*100 = 88,(8) of Oxygen.

Ok. Now let's see how much water electrolizer consume every second, well it could be 333 or 666 or 1kg, so

Our maximum of Hydrogen/Oxygen generation from one electrolizer could be 1000 g/s, so

You have to place valve and set it up to 1 kg/s that will prevent your pump to work all the time in close area you have.

But If you'll think about - what if I'll set up electrolizer in the middle of the base, and create my base in case where hydrogen will rase up by it's own and your pump will be under the roof of your base where it could collect that hydrogen and place it into generator.

What do I need it for? Hehehe, all simple - your valve could be set up now at 112-120 g/s with is save your power becase your gas pump will eat like 5 times less power than it's for now when you didn't even have any valve and it's work like cursed. So you'll spent not 240W on your gas pump every second, but like 50W or some thing like that, and yeah, Klei solve this problem with valves, now not they not consume gases and work normally.

(I'm russian, could be grammatical misstakes etc.)

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2 hours ago, Tinsoldier said:

Interesting, I started my first thermal_update world last night and the hydrogen generator was operating perfectly.  Actually, the biggest issue was that it was operating nonstop even when my battery storage was totally full (considering that we are now seeming required to have multiple separate circuits to keep things from overloading, this is kind of an issue).  

In my case, I'm just letting the hydrogen diffuse through the base and collect in an area at the top rather than trying to isolate in little rooms but I wouldn't think that'd make a difference.  I do have like 4 going though and the hydrogen at the top is sitting at around 250-500g/tile.

I guess I should double-check given your guys' experience, although I know for sure that the animation/audio for it is perfectly smooth.

It seems to be working, It's just that the method posted by the OP here is very inefficient and doesn't work. It's good to hear that allowing it to naturally pool at the top of the base works much better. I'll try that method out myself next time I play.

I suppose the question is, if allowing the gases to build to make a buffer makes all the difference, how many elecs are needed to keep the gen running smoothly? Or are the amounts of hydrogen produced perfectly fine, and something else is going wrong? Will have a play around with this later.

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