Storing energy as hydrogen (and oxygen) / Cool it down to store energy

[ssilk]

@Takezu: I try to anwer a bit.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_ ... on_methods
Especially
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_ ... ectrolysis

Yes, there are mods. The devs said, there will be more types of energy in the game: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?f=9&t=5
Atomic power lays on the hands.

If you want to store serious amounts of hydrogen, you need to cool it. Otherwise: booom.
If the hydrogen is too hot and the pressure too high it will explode and destroy pipes or whatever.

You mentioned "law of energy conservation". The cooling takes energy. Much energy! But the advantage is the density of energy you can reach with this. Which is of course lower, than the energy you put in.

Or is the big point the means of storage?

Exactly. That is - as already said - the most important part: Storing energy.

There is no perpetuum mobile. You don't gain energy. You store it. Or you make the process more efficient (with the water-cooler). That's all. You don't gain energy, indeed you loose a lot.

This looks to me more like an alternativ form of energy accumulation. Whats wrong with that.

It is too easy and stupid boring to lay out masses of accumulators. I want energy storage on much higher level and adding just a bigger accumulator is really stupid. AND the hydrogen can (obviously?) be used for the rocket. So it is needed somehow.

1) Why is cold hydrogen better?
2) Why is cold water used to make hydrogen better? Cold water is an unlimited free resource.
3) Why does this also generate electricity THREE WAYS?

1: Because it is then more dense. Well, this is not really realistic, but I think it is understandable.
2: Cold water is used to pre-cool the warm hydrogen and to make the process more efficient, because it doesn't cost energy to cool it like so and you can use the warm water for electric energy.
3: Why not?

First the hydrogen is made, then it is cooled, producing hot water for energy, then it is cooked, producing energy, and the cooking produces hot water for MORE ENERGY.

No, first you need electric energy. Then you can make hydrogen out of that. Then you need to cool it. To cool it efficiently you cannot use only water (you can cool it down only to 15 degrees minimum with water and heat-exchanger, but you need to cool hydrogen much more, -252 degrees, short before it gets liquid, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_hydrogen ). This costs a lot of power. But this process is nothing else, then the burners, when they heat the water; the hydrogen can then be burned much more efficiently.

See it so: 15 degrees warm water cannot be used to produce electric energy. But 100 degrees hot water let the steam engines work with 100% efficiency.
The same with hydrogen: 100 degrees warm hydrogen (just a number, this needs to be balanced) cannot be used for energy production. And is very dangerous: If the pressure gets too high it will destroy the pipes and you loose the hydrogen.
You can cool it eventually down to 15 degrees with water only. With that temperature it can be burned, but it will not create much energy (maybe 20% efficiency). If you cool it down more, the energy-level you can get by burning in the turbine rises. (because of the "density")

The output of the turbine is then again 100 degrees hot water, but much less, than the amount of water you put in (maybe only 1-10%, maybe the water just evaporates? ). My thought to that was, that this hot water can be used to power some control: If the turbine runs (because the energy is needed) the hot water can be used for signaling, that new hydrogen must be produced. Or vice versa: If you hot water comes out, this doesn't produce hydrogen, because it is empty.

All I'm seeing here is an infinite energy loop.

I'm not. This is not a physically correct simulation. All what's needed is, that it is understandable.

If you add efficiency modules to the mix then it's a blatant perpetual motion machine.

I mentioned nothing about that. And no, this is not a perpetuum mobile.

Energy makes hydrogen, which can produce hot water energy two different ways AND be stored/cooked on its own. If the ultimate goal is to make a super powerful energy source to replace accumulators, why not just make some fancy sci-fi like a superconducting ring, some kind of antimatter storage (hey it goes BOOM), or use alien artifacts to make alien stuff?

Because I want to lay more pipes, to make the cronstructive chaos perfect. Think if all the connections needed to create a really cool looking and efficient power storage.

[Takezu]

Silk Hydrogen as form of energy storage is quite a good idea.
It would be a net loss, but i've done right, could power you long enough to get
the mainproblem under control.

That would be something that current accumulators aren't capable of.

The easy way would be some form of Electrolysis.
As far as i'm aware there is no pressure system in Factorio itself, am i right?
Thats why you choose cooling where i'd choosen compression?

The boom effect needs a specific amount of elementary oxygen mixed into the hydrogen. No oxygen no boom too much oxy and the BOOM will only go plop.
But right is "warm" H² is more likly to go boom as cold. But under the right conditions, it blows up anyways.

Surly some energy out of the cooling process could be recoverd through heat exchanging, but most would go lost into the enviorment.
But true, the MJ you could store surpass Accumulators with ease.

But a minor catch, i don'T think it would be practicable to cool Hydrogen to round about 20 Kelvin, you could however raise the boiling point by pressure.
But thats where it goes to my question about a pressure system.

[Koub]

For gases (and most fluids), cooling and compression are two sides of the same coin : when you compress, temperature raises. When you cool, pressure lowers. PV=nRT, and all that stuff.
If you want, you can test it at home : take a bycicle hand pump, a bicycle, and inflate a tire. you'll feel the pump get warm, a lot more than when there is no tire and you pump into nothing.

If you compress, and don't want temperature to raise above a certain point, you have to cool at the same time.

All the point is how to store energy into something that doesn't need square miles of flat terrain (like it's the case for accumulators), even at the cost of some loss (but obviously not too much, because we wouldn't want to do energy storage area /10, but solar panels area x10 ).

[Takezu]

Pressure times Volume equals amount of substance (in mol) times gas constant times temprature
Gasequation would have been a term to me also

Yes they are two sides of the same medal.

And thanks of reminding ...
The more i think about, introducing pressure would only shove the energycosts from cooling to pressurising.
Well in the end only shoving numbers around with no real gain ^^

[ssilk]

Well, pressure in Factorio is equal to the level of the fluid. That's a decision, which is needed, cause calculation of real gases would be really too hard for the CPU.

So, with 0.12 we can see also the level of the storage tanks. See last FFF. The level can just be understood as something between 0% and 100%. If the level is 100%, the full storage capacity of the fluid is reached. The storage is also called "liquid stack" and every entity handling with fluids have one or more liquid stacks (the refinery for example needs 5). For pipes it is 10, for storage tanks it's 2500 units of fluid (UOF), so a storage tank is nothing else than a big pipe with 4 input/outputs instead of 2.

This is then a much simpler calculation, cause: level == pressure == volume. (*)

So forget everything about pressure * volume = density. Or lowering pressure (= level = volume) by cooling. This is not the case, the handling is much, much simpler, cause the volume keeps the same all the time, no matter, if we are cooling it or not. And so also the pressure. Only the energy, that is contained in the fluid (here hydrogen, there the water) rises, by changing the temperature. In the case of the water energy rises by warming it up. In the case of hydrogen energy rises by cooling it down. Both takes energy.

In other words: Like cold water you cannot use warm hydrogen to make energy out of it.
In other words: The colder you make the hydrogen, the more energy is stored in it.

The only twist I introduced (and this is not really needed to play it, cause it makes things a bit more complicated, but I thought it is just an interesting twist, because otherwise it would be just a mirror of the boiler/steam engine system for hot water) is, that warm hydrogen with too much pressure (=level) will break pipes. Cause that will force the players to install some kind of regulation, that not too much hydrogen is produced at once, using pumps to lower the pressure of the warm hydrogen and other twists. Nice game-situations, if then the energy breaks down and the regulation fails. I think we can see a lot of designs then, that prevents the system to behave unstable in such situations.

(*) I need also to mention, that fluids in factorio don't change their temperature themselves. They are not loosing temperature or gaining temperature, no matter how long the pipes are. This is also a needed simplification of the fluid model in Factorio.

[Takezu]

Ah don'T ^^' energy never rises by cooling something down.
Something that cools passes its energy on to something other.

You'd rise the energydesity, thats energy per volume not energy.

SO correct cold Hydrogen stores more energy but not because it has more energy, it has more mass in the same space.

I know that that was your point but the words energy rises by cooling.
No offens, that was so wrong that it hurts my head .

Heating -> Using energy to store potential energy in a medium that does work.
Cooling -> Using energy to pack more medium in the same space, to have a higher energy density.

The breaking pipes would be a nice twist, but i have one other for you.
You can't use iron pipes. Corrosion, H² corrodes iron, pretty fast.
gameplay wise, we would ne copperpipes or plasticpipes. and tanks for that matter.
That would a twist i like to see. And for that matter a change reagrding H2SO4-
Feels strange to me to pump that stuff around in Iron, when i've learned 3,5 years how corrosiv it is.

[ssilk]

You'd rise the energydesity, thats energy per volume not energy.

Yes, and if you paid attention to what I wrote you know now, that there is an equality between density, volume and pressure in Factorio.
It just doesn't happen. No need to explain that further.

You can't use iron pipes. Corrosion, H² corrodes iron, pretty fast.

That's the reason, why it eventually explodes with warm H². But reality? This is a game. I can carry half a ton of iron plate and run around with it in the same speed as if I carry nothing. So, why should there be a problem with using iron pipes?

[Takezu]

i'm chemist can't be helped

As said no offens meant.
You're completly right the volume doesn't change at any point so the energy rises, based on rising energydensity.
But as said, a sentence like cooling rises energy, let me remember vocational school, and gives me a headache.
So were the little things at that time which could take hours of discussions about nothing ...

As to the pipes, i think about pipes that would give you more time. Like make it with iron no problem, but the risk is higher as
if you make it with steel. As to the reality fact see first line

[ssilk]

I think it is very ok to ask such question; that's in my eyes the sense of discussions. And I really didn't explain everything good enough.

So I have updated the first post, added a TL;DR and a bit more explanation.

[Takezu]

TBH, i have now idea what TL;DR stands for.

But the update makes the mainpoints quite clear.
And even without corrosiv effects, it would a) be a nice storage system for energy and b) you're idea with the dissociator, the cleaning of pollution,
would add a gameplay feature that i miss a bit. I've hundrets of means to destroy the enviorment, but noway to contain the damage.
And i'm not thinking of revising, but a bit of containment would be really nice. Also thinking of, i think it was in one post or FFF can't remember exactly,
that our pollution might became visible, through dying nature. Even if it woulden't be that much would a nice feature to have.

[tobsimon]

I don't see any gameplay benefits for these types of energy storage. We have accumulators for short term and (hacky) hot water for other special cases. No real gaps, that need filling. Also, in place of hydrogen, there is other, more conventional stuff, like gas preassure, or kinetic energy.

However, I very much like the concept of handling dangerous stuff, which may just blow your factory to pieces.

[ssilk]

Hydrogen might become very important for building up the spaceship.

[bobucles]

Factorio is VERY forgiving when it comes to a poorly set up factory. Movement belts wait patiently, factories shut down, and wasted idle energy is nearly non existent. If a factory is set up poorly, the only real harm that happens is the factory doesn't produce well. An energy storage that requires high active upkeep really goes against that.

That being said, I DO think high tech structures should be volatile. I don't think they should be destroyed through player incompetence though. It is better to have the enemy attack it, and have the structure multiply damage against your base by exploding. This would encourage a more spread out base design which competes against compact efficiency. Good volatile structures would include the substation, accumulators, filled oil tanks, stuff like that.

(hacky) hot water for other special cases

Nah it's not hacky. It's clever. Players found a way to make a mechanic work when it doesn't normally exist. That's pretty cool. A permanent solution IMO is to let players set a percentage level for their accumulators (10-20% is a good threshold when solar takes over, but your mileage may vary). When energy goes below this threshold the steam turns on, when it goes above the steam power turns off. The "hack" setup emulates this behavior when the power reaches 0 anyway.

[Cordylus]

Hydrogen might become very important for building up the spaceship.

I don't know, because in 0.12 won't be hydrogen. Instead of this will be unknown "rocket fuel".
(info from Crowdin)

[Flextt]

I love the idea of new energy concepts and heat integration (process engineer/verfahrenstechniker here), but I think the cooling of Hydrogen is rather "unelegant" (cant find better wording). Water energy content is calculated by Q = m*cp*dT. For hydrogen, its energy content would have to be calculated in reverse to work.

Keep the turbine, make it a staple in a few recipes (numerous applications around oil processing), remove heat exchanger / super-cooler.

Maybe we will see the rise of refrigerating macines in another way.

[ssilk]

I love the idea of new energy concepts and heat integration (process engineer/verfahrenstechniker here), but I think the cooling of Hydrogen is rather "unelegant" (cant find better wording). Water energy content is calculated by Q = m*cp*dT. For hydrogen, its energy content would have to be calculated in reverse to work.

Keep the turbine, make it a staple in a few recipes (numerous applications around oil processing), remove heat exchanger / super-cooler.

Maybe we will see the rise of refrigerating macines in another way.

I'm sure we have some suggestions about creating hydrogen or other types of energy storing.
"Someone" should make a draft of them.

[Takezu]

The energy increase of the hydrogen via cooling is based on the fact that the volume never changes. If i cool water (down to 4^C not under!!! [this is important yes]) but where to hold the Volume all the time my "mass" of Water must increase. Same For Hydrogen, in which case the potential energy also increases, since it is after all the fuel for an exotherm reaction with oxygen. This storage isn't based on thermodynamics, it's rather based on densty. Which in simple terms means more mass per Volume = more fuel or potential energy stored.
The heat exchanging and afterwards cooling to cryotempratures to store the potential energy is a neat concept that shouldn't be scrapped

H² btw is also a good rocket fuel with high exhaust velocity.

[Flextt]

The energy increase of the hydrogen via cooling is based on the fact that the volume never changes. If i cool water (down to 4^C not under!!! [this is important yes]) but where to hold the Volume all the time my "mass" of Water must increase. Same For Hydrogen, in which case the potential energy also increases, since it is after all the fuel for an exotherm reaction with oxygen. This storage isn't based on thermodynamics, it's rather based on densty. Which in simple terms means more mass per Volume = more fuel or potential energy stored.
The heat exchanging and afterwards cooling to cryotempratures to store the potential energy is a neat concept that shouldn't be scrapped

H² btw is also a good rocket fuel with high exhaust velocity.

I know that. The problem is: How would you implement the feature of cooling hydrogen without deviating from previous concepts? As ssilk said, Factorio doesnt know pressure except to calculate a liquids flow direction. I love the idea, but there are a whole bunch of other energy carriers and options for Hydrogen that do not break with the already implemented concept for Steam.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage)

A solution would be to create a phase-change. Let a fluid reach a certain temperature, at which it performs a phase change. This phase change also influences its fuel value or whatever value you want. This makes flow calculation fundamentally more difficult however, since factorio tries to balance piping systems and it would suddenly have to balance two liquids in one piping

[Takezu]

Where does it break? It would roughly be the same with other names.
The game doesn't care aubout water heat, for the game counts more or less how much energy ithe water has absorbed.
We see that as Tempreature, but the information is more ore less only the stored energy.
The only thing that would change would be a small addition in form of times -1 in the end to reflect a negativ tempreature.
it would be a bit of a sharade yes but it would work.

[Flextt]

Where does it break? It would roughly be the same with other names.
The game doesn't care aubout water heat, for the game counts more or less how much energy ithe water has absorbed.
We see that as Tempreature, but the information is more ore less only the stored energy.
The only thing that would change would be a small addition in form of times -1 in the end to reflect a negativ tempreature.
it would be a bit of a sharade yes but it would work.

Yeah, I consulted the wiki. Energy = dT * watt/degree for (hot) liquids, so the watt/degree factor would have to be negative for cold hydrogen to produce work.