Question about Liquid Hydrogen?

[MythN7]

So, I am still struggling to setup a good system, I know of many ways back before 1.0, but I never bothered really doing it, as the effort was not really my thing without super coolant and the Thermum / Insulation from space to help out.

I have gone to the 3rd row of space using petro / oxylite, so i have some of this stuf to use now, thus I am wanting to setup a rocket that can go higher than the 3rd row with a cargo module.

I know that liquid hydro needs to be much colder than liquid o2.

So is it a good plan to try to setup my liquid o2 and run that untill I have lots in stock just at its near freezing point? then switch that line to hydrogen and build a new copy for the o2 again?

what im worried about is the liquid tollerance is less than 8C i think, and the tuner chills by 15's, so it would be hard to maintain the pipes from breaking.

[Hedning]

It doesn't matter if some freezes, it will just be thawed by other liquid and the hot o2/h2 going in. Once you have a pool of liquid o2 or h2 that pool will help stabilize the temperature. Set your thermo sensor to be just below the condensation point and place it just before the super coolant leaves the condensation chamber.

Yes going in the liquid will be too cold, but like I said it doesn't matter. If you are still worried you can put a pool of super coolant at the bottom of the condensation room, or use a liquid tank to average the temperature, but it will be redundant once you have built up a pool of the oxygen/hydrogen since that pool can serve the same purpose.

I don't know what pipes you expect to be breaking. You cannot keep the o2/h2 in the gas pipes anyway since changing the state is the purpose of the whole thing.

[MythN7]

Originally posted by Hedning:

It doesn't matter if some freezes, it will just be thawed by other liquid and the hot o2/h2 going in. Once you have a pool of liquid o2 or h2 that pool will help stabilize the temperature. Set your thermo sensor to be just below the condensation point and place it just before the super coolant leaves the condensation chamber.

Yes going in the liquid will be too cold, but like I said it doesn't matter. If you are still worried you can put a pool of super coolant at the bottom of the condensation room, or use a liquid tank to average the temperature, but it will be redundant once you have built up a pool of the oxygen/hydrogen since that pool can serve the same purpose.

I don't know what pipes you expect to be breaking. You cannot keep the o2/h2 in the gas pipes anyway since changing the state is the purpose of the whole thing.

the breaking would be from the liquid h2 either going back to gas in the fluid pipe, or comming out the tunner below its freezing point making it a solid.

[Hedning]

Where would you get the liquid h2 from in the first place to put into the tuner? Why not use that to make all of the liquid h2 instead of trying to use the first liquid h2 to condense more?

In the case of h2 you make liquid h2 by pumping super coolant through a tuner and letting those pipes interact with h2 gas. That's it. It's really rather simple, and you should have easy access to super coolant since you must have petroleum rockets to unlock the h2 engine.

You may have to pre-cool the pipes used to pump the liquid o2/h2 to the rocket depending on the material of the pipe. I like making non-insulated obsidian pipes. Those will get cooled by just a few packets of the super coolant running through them once first.

[MythN7]

on the map seed im playing on, the only florine stuff is trace amounts on the 3rd row, so its taking me 922kgs of oxylite and petro per trip, but right now i have 1030 visco gel, 300 super coolant, and 113 isoresin, and 5.4T of Insulation.

So i am hoping i can get a setup going with this stuff.

when using insulation, do I need to bother with the heavy Insulated Tile type, or is regular block good enough to hold in the temp?

[Hedning]

Use insulated pipes with insulation. Regular does not work. You can however save material by only using the insulation closest to the rocket and build a wall to block off any exhaust from the rest of the pipe*. Most of the pipe can be made from common materials as long as you pre-cool it as there is nothing in space to heat it up again. To be entirely honest you don't even need insulation at all, but it does make it simpler.

You need very little super coolant to get started. One trip is enough. Keep your aquatuner loop short. It doesn't need to be long. Start with h2 production and expand with lox once you have enough. Or if you have very little oxylite you can start with lox and just upgrade your petroleum engine for the first trips. With lox you can put two cargo modules on your petroleum rocket for x2 as much material per trip.

*You can also save some materials by using bridges (I hear), but I find that to be a bit exploity so I haven't tested it.

[MythN7]

So this is mysetup so far, The room with the nullifier and the hydrogen is 40kgs per tile presssure, and is there so the nullifier can have something to work with, plan to add diamond shift plates checkered threw it as well.
this room is meant to do nothing but keep the tuners and regulators from over heating, they are made from thermium.
the insulated tiles are ign rock, and the normal tiles are insulation, the dark tiles are asphault from a mod, they are 0,17 conductive, so just under what a ceramic is i think. will switch to insulation as i get more, saving the 2T i have for pipe right now.

In the pipes above in space, is where ill pre cool them as cold as i can with super coolant from the nullifier room, then once that is done, build a box out of metal tiles around them with drywall to feed hydrogen gas into from lower room till its just about to freeze up, till the rooms walls are stabilized at the cold temp, then ill add the pumps and stuff.

is this a good method for a longer term build it and forget it method?

edit

so i hope the only insulation insulated pipes i need are the ones leaving the nullifier room

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1983796869

[Hedning]

I haven't tested using a nullifier, but it feels like it shouldn't have the capacity to make liquid fuel at a decent pace. You should calculate how much fuel you need before committing to it. The nullifier can delete 80kdtu/s. Will that be enough?

A steam turbine has a lot more capacity. This picture is not of a lox factory, but a very simple design showing how a steam turbine can be used to keep an aquatuner cooled: https://i.imgur.com/E9f8AXC.png

As for the pipes in space I am a bit confused as to what you intend to have in them. "pre cool them as cold as i can with super coolant" implies that you are not going to have super coolant in them later. Super coolant is the only liquid suited to condensing hydrogen. And btw that loop is very long. You said you only had 300kg of super coolant? That's way longer than 300kg.

[MythN7]

Originally posted by Hedning:

I haven't tested using a nullifier, but it feels like it shouldn't have the capacity to make liquid fuel at a decent pace. You should calculate how much fuel you need before committing to it. The nullifier can delete 80kdtu/s. Will that be enough?

A steam turbine has a lot more capacity. This picture is not of a lox factory, but a very simple design showing how a steam turbine can be used to keep an aquatuner cooled: https://i.imgur.com/E9f8AXC.png

As for the pipes in space I am a bit confused as to what you intend to have in them. "pre cool them as cold as i can with super coolant" implies that you are not going to have super coolant in them later. Super coolant is the only liquid suited to condensing hydrogen. And btw that loop is very long. You said you only had 300kg of super coolant? That's way longer than 300kg.

right later i will be using them to transport the actual liquid hydrogen is my thought. thats why i made them every other tile, so i can run another line for the super coolant at that point.

[Hedning]

Why are you snaking the liquid hydrogen around? Once you made it liquid it just needs to go to the rocket.

[MythN7]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Why are you snaking the liquid hydrogen around? Once you made it liquid it just needs to go to the rocket.

oh, good point lol, i dunno.

but to your previous reply,
right now, im not concerned about volume per sec, i just want to get a working setup, ive tried following some videos online but they are always done in sandbox where the setup is hard to follow by actual dup hand made construction, also they are usualy long winded with extra bloat chatter that for me with autism and adhd its hard to get the grasp of a bare bones safe non stop cont.. running system without having to check on if things are over heating or not.

[WillieSea]

The nullifier in my game is right next to a hot water geyser. Going full blast, using temp shift plates, it cannot cool the water down much before the next geyser event. So how can it cool down hydrogen enough to become liquid? Or is it your regulators doing the work?

[MythN7]

Originally posted by WillieSea:

The nullifier in my game is right next to a hot water geyser. Going full blast, using temp shift plates, it cannot cool the water down much before the next geyser event. So how can it cool down hydrogen enough to become liquid? Or is it your regulators doing the work?

oh no im not using it to cool hydro to liquid im using it to keep the room from over heating from the body temp of the tuners and regulators, im not taking any hydro out of the room its mass is for heat sinking the energy from the tuners to the nullifier

im feeding the hydro to the nullifier, and if the line is backed up thats where i send the hydrogen to be made liquid is my concept.

so any hydrogen first is used to keep the tuners from overheating

[Hedning]

@both. Regulators/tuners can not cool, just move heat. The only purpose of the tuners in that setup is to move the heat so it can go lower than the nullifier's minimum temerature (if it gets too cold it stops working). The nullifier will still have to do all of the cooling and the rate at which it cools the h2 doesn't change because of your tuners/regulators.

The capacity a nullifier has with water is the same as with h2, however since h2 has a lower heat capacity you can cool about twice as many degrees, so if your water is lowered 10 degrees the same mass of h2 can be lowered 17 degrees. Cooling down to -152°C is a lot of effort though, why I didn't recommend a nullifier.

[MythN7]

Originally posted by Hedning:

@both. Regulators/tuners can not cool, just move heat. The nullifier will have to do all of the cooling. The capacity a nullifier has with water is the same as with h2, however since h2 has a lower heat capacity you can cool about twice as much, so if your water is lowered 10 degrees the same mass of h2 can be lowered 17 degrees. Cooling down to -152°C is a lot of effort though, why I didn't recommend a nullifier.

maybe ill turn this into sandbox for a sec to try it and show you t he finished vision i have.

I like to build things in survival, and only go to sandbox if i get stumped trying. i feel if i go to sandbox 1st, whats the point of playing the game in survival at all heh.

[Hedning]

Well, I can do the calculations for you. Assuming the h2 enters at 100°C (common temp if you electrolyze cool steam vent water), then:
the mass/second = 80000/352/2,4=94g/s. So it can generate 94g/s of liquid h2.