Very important! Hydrogen energy generator. Сonsumes fuel too quickly.

Life is Beautiful shared this feedback 3 years ago
Submitted

To begin with, I started playing not long ago and I really liked the game. But there is a moment that kills all the desire to play. This is a hydrogen energy generator.


The crux of the problem is that it is eating too much hydrogen. Both the large generator and the small one.


How did I come to such conclusions?


I started the game on the moon. Collected cosmo credits for the first miner (aggressive miner). Built a mobile base. For several days of playing Uranus on the moon, I did not find, but I did find a lot of ice. And then the first problems began.


The bottom line is that on my ship (Aggressive miner) there were 3 generators, 1 uranium and 2 hydrogen. And then I noticed for the first time that the consumption of hydrogen was not logical. Less than 2 generators are spent on a flight of fuel (I got this feeling). But I found a simple solution, took them and turned them off, then forgot about them.


But after I built the mobile base, there was a problem with the need for energy. Since this is the moon, there is no air there, so I never found uranium. All that's left is the sun and ice. But the problem is that the night feels like it lasts longer than the day. Therefore, a large number of solar panels and batteries does not save the situation. Only hydrogen remained.


And then something happened that upsets me very much, very much! The bottom line is that a standard miner with an enlarged large tank cannot provide continuous operation of a hydrogen energy generator. More precisely, maybe, but for this I need to continuously extract ice. 2 fully filled tanks (large) are sufficient for a maximum of 16 minutes of operation (real time). When it takes 10-20 minutes to fill these tanks.


The extraction of energy with the help of hydrogen turns into something nonsense. It turns out to be mining ice for the sake of its mining. Or Attempting to fill a fuel tank with a bucket without a bottom.


As for me, it would be optimal when a large generator could work for 15-20 minutes per trip of one standard miner with a cargo lifting capacity of 40 tons of ice (1 filled large container, small ship).


Thus, there would be a balance between the supply and the need for production.


At the moment, hydrogen power generators are converting fuel into something incomprehensible ...


I have reviewed many articles on the forum about the problems with high hydrogen consumption and they all have the same root of the problem - too high fuel consumption of a hydrogen power generator.


It seems that when developing or modifying the scripts of the hydrogen system, the rate of hydrogen consumption was increased during the test, and then they forgot to fix it back. Because the system must consume hydrogen in an hour, even if it is in game time, but it does not consume an hour, but in a second of real time! A game hour lasts well, not like 1 second of real time.

Replies (3)

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In addition to the numerous "5x hydrogen engine", "7x hydrogen thruster", etc. mods on the workshop you might be interested in keyspace's No More Free Energy. It adds a config with multipliers for hydrogen thruster efficiency, engine efficiency, engine output, as well as power consumption and gas output of gas generators. The config multipliers aren't 1:1 with those values (they have internal relationships) as of this comment, but I think the author is working to make that the case so it's straightforward for users.


The stock configs make the H2 engine more efficient but also make the generator cost more power than the engine can produce to maintain thermodynamic realism (hence the name of the mod). I recommend just using a modded solar panel and/or wind turbine to power your refueling station depending on where you are, then running your ships on H2 power (possibly thrust, but it's energy intensive), but you can just edit the configs and make the gas generator have vanilla production rates and power consumption for a free energy machine.

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They made an update last year which included a welcomed hydrogen rebalance:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/announcement/update-1-197-planet-pertam-new-features-blocks-wasteland-pack


  • Improved the balance of hydrogen fuel production/consumption and storage
  • Improved the balance of components->health of hydrogen tanks

In other words:

capacities increased for all tanks and reduced for all engines


O2/H2 Generators now use 1/2 the amount of ice per second (and produce twice as much hydrogen per unit of ice). So for 1 kg of ice, we get 4x the amount of energy, but the engine still consumes 100L/s/MW


However, despite the rebalance, I still find it hard to justify using an engine+tank vs just using two batteries for small grid


engine: 1000 kg

tank: 1600 kg

total mass: 2600 kg

Stored energy: 1.4 MWh = 505,000 L / (100L/MW) / 3600s/h

efficiency: 0.54 kWh/kg


2x batteries: 2080 kg

Stored energy: 2.0 MWh

efficiency: 0.96 kWh/kg


So, with two batteries I get:

  • less weight
  • more energy
  • overall twice the energy per weight
  • recharging from free renewable (solar or wind)

What's the use case for using the hydrogen engine? The only advantage is a much faster refuel (instance vs 15 minutes for batteries)

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And just for reference:


The density of liquid hydrogen is 0.07 g/cm3, which corresponds to an energy density of 2.8 kWh/L assuming perfect combustion.

ref: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/contryman1/

In the game, the density is 0.003 kWh/L (1000 times less than reality :) )

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Yeah this needs another balancing pass currently hydrogen engines are useless except as emergency power for hydrogen ships and maybe rovers on Triton and Europa for refueling on the go. If they increase the energy density to realistic levels hydrogen engines would still have the disadvantage of needing both power and ice to refuel and having rather low max output, but at least they would excel at endurance and refueling speed from a base or mothership. This would give us at least a few case were usage makes sense, instead of being always inferior. This can’t even be justified with progression as batteries are on the same bottom tier as hydrogen engines.


Not to mention we get laughably little out of ice even after the update. 1 kg ice results in 20 l of hydrogen or 10 l of oxygen in space engineers. In reality H2O has a molar mass of 18,02 g which means 1 kg of ice is 54,94 moles of H2 and 27,47 O2. One mole of any gas is about 22,4 liters at atmospheric pressures and 0°C which is one of the more common standard conditions. The other is standard lab conditions which is atmospheric pressure and 25°C (scientists apparently don’t like to freeze their asses off) which would give us 24,8 liters/mole. Even if we go with the lower value that would still be 1230 liters of H2 and 615 liters of O2 per kilogram of ice. Though to be fair it would require much more energy for the current output of H2 and one hell of a lot more energy for the current input of ice than the generators currently need.

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