Fuel cell

[Dron__]

Device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction of positively charged hydrogen ions with oxygen or another oxidizing agent
Fuel Cell Power Plants

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stationary installation -----------------1 MW------------------------------------------------------250 kW
Portable installation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------50 kW

Low temperature fuel cell: PEMFC- Technology
fuel - methanol

High temperature fuel cell: MCFC- Technology
fuels - natural gas, synthesis gas

Fuel cell system
A fuel cell is based on a reverse reaction of water electrolysis. Hydrogen (Hydrogen is obtained by reforming natural gas) reacts with oxygen in the air to produce water. In this process, electricity and heat are generated. It is a power generation system that does not produce greenhouse gases like CO2 in the process of power generation.
Natural gas sent without losses is converted into electrical energy on the site where it will be used, and the waste heat is recovered , and utilized for hot water supply.

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p.s.
Production methanol
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39635

[Deadly-Bagel]

There are two main problems with this...

First of all you're outputting water, but aside from dumping it in a Steam Engine there isn't any means of disposing of it. I don't think it's an intentional game mechanic that Steam Engines delete fluids as they do as normally there isn't any reason to do so and as the whole process is being changed with 0.15 it probably won't even work anymore. I guess as the main output is electricity, you could heat it up and put it into a boiler to provide more electricity (therefore if the Steam Engines aren't running neither will the fuel cell) but it seems counter-productive to require a low-tier power source to deal with a high-tier power source byproduct.

Secondly with Nuclear energy being implemented there's pretty much no way this is going to happen. It's simply not required, when would it be used? Oil is precious enough to most players that it won't see use there and it can always be turned into Solid Fuel and used in boilers. You're filling a gap that doesn't exist.

Another problem is the size of the units. A Steam Engine provides 510KW and is something like 3x8 tiles, PLUS you need the 1.4 boilers to power it and the offshore pump. This idea looks like... well your diagram doesn't follow the grid but it provides twice the energy of a Steam Engine without as large a footprint or as much of a challenge. Steam Engines are tricky to expand due to the shape of and access to water, solar panels have a massive footprint but have no logistic or maintenance requirements (other than setup and defending them). Nuclear power will be a complex challenge to get working efficiently. These fuel cells are... what? Small, tileable, high output, basically nothing to add to the gameplay.

I'll also point out there are mods that add the likes of diesel generators that run on oil/oil products and basically behave the same way (minus the useless water output), there have been requests for that since before I was playing and yet still not implemented because they suffer the same problems.