To which @keyspace replied:

=====

@creamerl1015

> ... now to go yell at Splitsie and Kanajashi to install this for their next "masochism/realism survival" series.

Splitsie was actually one of the first to comment on this mod, I'd guess he didn't want to switch the game style of SI, considering that the balance changes basically invalidate the choice of having both an O2/H2 gen and an H2 engine on the same vehicle.

> This should reduce the H2 consumption rate while keeping the vanilla power output, correct?

Correct.

HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier is a setting for how much Ws (kWh) the engine produces from one liter of gas - a different way of saying what you did.

> As I understand, that will also decrease the ice-to-gas rate of the generator (x129)?

Correct, it is factored into a hidden setting of OxygenGeneratorSpeedMultiplier, together with OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor.

-----

(continued)

> This value violates the requirement for "[OxGen]PowerConsumptionMultiplier * [OxGen]ExtraSpeedDivisor must be 10 or higher" ...

I'd suggest working "in reverse" and "on paper" then (more on this later).

> ... AND it's a small decimal value where I suspect only integers are allowed.

Nope, floating-point are allowed, 0.00775 should work.

> ... I would suggest decoupling HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier from the generator's production rate, ...

Yeah... The mod grew "organically", as have Keen's decisions on what settings are exposed and how... It's now a mess.

I do tend to agree now that it would've been better to make no "hidden" settings, but expose the raw internals.

I'll start a discussion thread and continue to post there - easier to track.

=====

Actually, looks like you've also unearthed a bug!

Filed:

https://github.com/keyspace/NoMoreFreeEnergy/issues/1

And, due to that:

https://github.com/keyspace/NoMoreFreeEnergy/issues/2

Re: My config and related replies.

Yeah everything works, it's wonderful! :D

Re: value of O2/H2 generator on same vehicle when that arrangement no longer generates power from ice.

If we made the Ice + Power -> H2 -> Power cycle return all of the ice and at least 80% of the power (that's thermal-recapture fuel cell levels of efficiency, but not unrealistic) then it is functionally equivalent to batteries but with a better stored power density and material cost (H2 tanks are great, should be better in some ways), at the cost of peak discharge rate (and charge from onboard generator, though tanks can be refilled quickly from bases) - unless we load up on generators/engines or tweak the reactant flow of the systems to be even more competitive. There's a few assets floating around that do a [2 H2 + 1 O2 -> 2H2O + Power] reaction with conservation of matter which could be adapted/integrated with permission or used as a template.

Also, as splitsie noted, the stationary refining/refueling system this promotes for running rovers/drones with H2 tanks/engines is more realistic for small scale systems. If I were to make a large mobile base using this mod (hint - I am. It's going to use Industrial Overhaul and be GAUDY) I'd want a ton of generators, tanks, and engines on it so it can run at night on stored H2, as well as a massive solar array to run the generators on during the day.

Re: working "in reverse" and "on paper"

If I understand you, I did. I just explained it oddly because of my ADHD brain.


Customizing vanilla/mod config files is about the extend of my modding expertise in any game, but if you're going to be editing your mod to eliminate all of the "hidden" settings and want to integrate a couple of new/redistributed assets into the mod at the same time I'd be happy to help out with that end of things... or just keep making my own custom configs!

> The 1000x power consumption just requires that I set OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier = 1000... but for the speed I'd need to set OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor = (1/129 = ~.00775).
>
> This value violates the requirement for "[OxGen]PowerConsumptionMultiplier * [OxGen]ExtraSpeedDivisor must be 10 or higher"

Ugh, this is all in a state of mess - the mod description seems to not have been updated, too.

The "default config" is written out as

OGSM = 1 / (OGESD * OGPCM * HEEM)

which was the intent with the introduction of OGPCM in the last update (since Keen had to go and "tweak it a little", so I had to tweak it back).

(This is the setting that you want to set to x1000.)

However! When reading in an existing config - the formula erroneously stayed as

OGSM = 1 / (OGESD * HEEM)

So the power consumption is indeed increased as a setting "by itself", but is not factored in to reduce speed...

This convinces me to stop "playing smart" with hidden settings and just "play simple".

> Re: working "in reverse" and "on paper"
>
> If I understand you, I did. I just explained it oddly because of my ADHD brain.

Nah, the instructions weren't updated and/because the config reader wasn't updated, the last release dropped unbaked and it couldn't work for all valid tweaks.

Either that, or I shipped a version to Steam and didn't push it to Github, too.

I'll get to my Windows computer in an hour or so.

Can't say for sure, I used the config settings from my initial comments and the H2/O2 generator power consumption and H2 engine power production were correct so I assumed the ice-to-gas and gas-to-energy rates were correct as well but I didn't actually measure - just checked that everything ran and I wasn't throwing NREs or Div0 errors everywhere.

I looked around a bit for that H2 engine that conserves ice mass and couldn't find it - maybe I misremembered seeing it browsing the workshop - but if you were interested in integrating some generators/engines with increased chemical realism then I'd be happy to ask around for some models to borrow and work on the configs.

> Can't say for sure, I used the config settings from my initial comments and the H2/O2 generator power consumption and H2 engine power production were correct ...

Actually, it seems I was wrong about the nature of the issue. It seems the issue only manifests when no config is present, and so the default one is generated, but used with a different formula.

If you were fiddling with an existing config file to have the right numbers, then you wouldn't have observed the buggy behaviour.

> I looked around a bit for that H2 engine that conserves ice mass and couldn't find it - maybe I misremembered seeing it browsing the workshop

Engines don't actually contain Ice, they contain H2 gas. "Gases with Masses"

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2048290970

might have been the thing, but it only says it touches tanks.

> if you were interested in integrating some generators/engines with increased chemical realism then I'd be happy to ask around for some models

I'd definitely like to avoid any extra blocks, especially with models.

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, and have evidently failed already. ;D

Re: I'd definitely like to avoid any extra blocks, especially with models.

I can certainly appreciate that. As I understand your code (barely), I think I can figure out how to make a standalone block mod that does what I wanted and is visible to this mod.

Re: Engines don't actually contain Ice, they contain H2 gas.

Yeah what I would be looking to do would be to keep the H2 engine's H2 tank, add an O2 tank, and allow their inventory to store ice as well as bottles. The H2 engine would then consume H2 and O2 to produce power and ice, which would be pushed/pulled from the inventory back to a cargo/generator in a closed loop.

Since your mod doesn't look at O2 consumption I'd actually probably want to just make it so your mod DOESN'T see my nominal modded H2 engine and fiddle with one gas but not the other. That's probably for the best anyways, as that would eliminate the dependency and allow all those thermodynamics heretics to use my engine as part of a FULLY closed-loop infinite energy system. I can see the workshop front page already!

> As I understand your code (barely), I think I can figure out how to make a standalone block mod that does what I wanted and is visible to this mod.

That would require using the same type/id as the vanilla blocks (i.e. the same replacing copy-paste approach that most modded blocks use), then make sure NMFE is loaded after the modded block (so the multipliers are applied after and not before the replacement).

> I can see the workshop front page already!

Heh, make sure to use a descriptive name with a proper thumbnail. :)

BTW, would you mind posting the config you've settled on?.. I'd like to put it on the workshop page as a "close to realism" canned option.

I'm also trying to rework the settings to have no hidden OxygenGeneratorSpeedMultiplier. Currently (and from the mod's genesis), it ensured the constraint of:

OGSM = 1 / (OGESD * HEEM)

But as the discussion here showed this is confusing considering there's also the recommendation of

OGPCM * OGESD >= 10

... which is mentioned on the workshop page but not enforced.

It's possible to drop the (also confusing) OGESD setting and just letting the user configure OGSM directly, with the recommendation becoming:

OGPCM / (OGSM * HEEM) >= 10

... if I'm correct; I'm wondering how far beyond 10 you've gone.

Re: BTW, would you mind posting the config you've settled on?

Of course!

The config I just loaded in with is:

------

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>129</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>4</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>
<HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>1000</OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>.00775</OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>

------

I kept the settings listed above except I adopted your HEMPOM preference of 4; the generator is insanely dense, let's let the engines be dense. For convenience the stats for the key blocks with this config are listed below:

LG H2/O2 generator: 500 MW power input, 80% energy efficient*, identical ice-to-gas stats as vanilla - consumes 25 kg/s ice to produce 250 L/s O2 & 500 L/s H2

LG H2 Engine: 20 MW power output, 40% efficient, consumes 15.5 L/s H2

SG H2 Engine: 2 MW power output, 40% efficient, consumes 1.55 L/s H2


*The theoretical minimum for electrolysis is 400 MW at 25 kg/s (based on Complete Hydrogen Rework's H2/O2 generator calculations).


I really like the H2/O2 generator efficiency but it's so much more "dense" than the engines and it's dense enough to be one of the highest power-consuming blocks in the game (not that unrealistic, but the scale is excessive) so I'm going to play test it scaled down by 50x.

Slow LG H2/O2 generator: 10 MW power input, 80% effic., consumes 0.5 kg/s ice to produce 5 L/s O2 & 10 L/s H2.

The config for that:

------

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>129</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>4</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>
<HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>1000</OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>.3875</OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>

------

It occurrs to me writing out those stats that I've gone astray in my maths, since 2 of my slow H2/O2 generators can be run on the power from 1 LG H2 engine and will have the H2 output to feed that engine at full power... I'll post a more realistic one soon with thermodynamic equations and references and send it out for peer review, but for the moment I'm going to go do some "very necessary testing" with the current configs.

Re: but for the moment I'm going to go do some "very necessary testing" with the current configs.

Just kidding, apparently I like wikipedia and dimensional analysis more than playing Space Engineers!

Long story short, Complete Hydrogen rework starts talking about Slush Liquid Hydrogen / LOX being what H2 represents in their mod, mentions that SE vanilla has the same H2 energy density of 3.201 MJ/L as justification, and I didn't bother to check if that's true. It's not, and I shouldn't be using that 3.201 MJ/L figure for anything. Their figure for the electrolysis of water (290 kJ/mol) however is correct to within 2% so my calculations for the generator are fine. Let's work from vanilla ice/gas consumption rates and IRL thermodynamics to figure out how much energy the vanilla systems should consume/produce:

Vanilla H2/O2 generator rate = 25 kg/s x (1000 g / 1 kg) x (1 mol / 18g) x (0.29 MJ / mol) x (100 MJ input / 80 MJ work) = 503.4 MJ/s (MW). We'll call it 500 MW and congratulate the engineer on the 1% efficiency gain.

The vanilla H2 generator's H2 production is the same as the H2 Engine's H2 consumption, so it should produce power equal to the net work/second done by the H2/O2 generator times the efficiency of the H2 engine (and burn 2H2-to-1O2, but that's another thing entirely). That is 25 kg/s x (1000 g / 1 kg) x (1 mol / 18g) x (0.29 MJ / mol) = 402.777 MW x 40% = 161.11. Here we'll reprise the engineer for choosing a V8 instead of a turbine engine and losing some efficiency from our 40% target, resulting in a yield of 160 MW.

Keeping the vanilla ice/gas rates on both made the thermodynamic calculations easier - 500 MW in is in fact more than 160 MW out, yay - but now we have two assets that are Dense, too Dense. If we like 20 MW for the large H2 engine (8x lower scale) then we might want the large generator at the same scale, consuming 62.5 MW. However, if you're storing power as H2 because you don't have uranium/reactors then it's not going to be fun building 160 wind turbines just to feed this hungry boi, and we're probably not going to be running a rover that runs the 20MW engine on full blast constantly... or you are and you can build 5. I think keeping the power consumption to 12.5 MW (40x lower scale) will make it easier to run on a grid.

Before taking that as "reasonable" and "fun" and going and actually playing the game (gasp!), I also took a look at what realistic density would be. US submarine EOGs are about 1mx1mx0.5m (4 small blocks) and should use ~40 kW as best I can calculate, or 10 kW per 0.125 m^3, meaning the SG generator should consume 180 kW and the LG generator should consume... 12.5 MW - by golly I got lucky!

The SG generator actually consumes 1.25 MW with settings that make the LG 12.5 MW, but that's acceptable. The final changes we want are as follows:

HEEM 32 (H2 engine efficiency ~1.25% -> ~40%)
HEMPOM 4 (H2 engine output 5 MW -> 20 MW, because you should be able to run atmos on a V8)
OGPCM 1000 (vanilla generator ice rate energy consumption 500 kW -> 500 MW)
OGESD (40/32) 1.25 (stacks with HEEM to get 40x generator speed reduction)


Here's the config that should give the appropriate values:

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>32</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>4</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>
<HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>1000</OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>1.25</OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>


Ok, NOW I'm gonna go test that out thoroughly before making an H2 fuel cell asset with 80% efficiency or worrying about the tragically missing input oxygen and exhaust ice from the H2 engines.

The config from my last comment ignored a couple of relationships between the multipliers, and I discovered that the Industrial Overhaul mod increases the power consumption of the large/small grid gas generators by 2/2.5x respectively. I assume they didn't change the gas generation rates, and again I'm more concerned with balancing the large grid generator as intended. The updated config for Industrial Overhaul:

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>32</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>4</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>
<HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>12.5</OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>1.25</OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>



For Vanilla SE:

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>32</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>
<HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>4</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>
<HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>25</OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier>
<OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>1.25</OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor>

In both versions the gas generators are 40x slower while the engines use fuel only 8x slower because of their increase max output. Running engines on filled tanks is preferable whether those tanks are fueled by an on-board generator or through a connector.


LG generator max consumption = 12.5 MW

LG engine max output = 20 MW

SG generator max consumption = 2.5 MW (3.25 MW with IO)

SG engine max output = 2 MW



Love the mod.

@creamerl1015

IF you were interested and had some time I've got a head scratcher that I can see an answer existing for, but I'm having trouble making my brain find it.

I started trying to work out what so set the HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier to in order to get the Hydrogen thrusters to be *slightly* more efficient than a Hydrogen Engine powered one instead of the other way around and now I have 2 days of headache from mental gymnastics.

I picked the small grid Atmospheric Thrusters and Hydrogen Thrusters to compare because of their similar maximum thrust outputs. (96 kN vs 98.4 kN)

https://spaceengineerswiki.com/Thruster#Overview

The electric thruster calculations were easy:

A vanilla small Hyd. Engine consumes 50 L/s at 0.5 MW, so 0.6 MW for Atmo. thruster would take 216 000 L for an hour of use (or 60L/s)
0.6 MW for an hour (0.6 MWh) represents 2160 MJ of energy
2160 MJ divided into 216 000 L is 0.01 MJ per 1L - This is same number found in the Vanilla SE Hydrogen Engine "FuelProductionToCapacityMultiplier"

Hydrogen thrusters are a little more fuzzy

80L/s of Hydrogen gets the Hyd. thrusters 98.4 kN and so takes 288 000 L for an hour of use. Vanilla Hydrogen "Energy Density" for thrusters *says* its "MWh per 1L" is 0.001556 in the GasProperties.sbc (or 1.556 kWh per 1L) This translates to 5.6016 MJ per 1L.

So the 288 000 L *somehow* has 1613260.8 MJ of energy in it but the Hydrogen thruster is so poor that it only generates the about same thrust that the Atmo. thruster delivers from 2160 MJ of energy? NOW I'm grabbing around trying to find some reasonable explanation or baseline or something.

Interestingly, the .01 MJ/L for the Hyd Engine and the 5.6 MJ/L can be found in this chart:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_reactions_(oxidation)

With .01 MJ/L being that of Hydrogen Gas at 1 atmosphere and 5.6 MJ/L being pretty damn close to Hydrogen Gas at about 681 atmospheres (69MPa, ~10,000psi)

So THEN I'm quick looking at the Large grid Large Hydrogen Tank Volume being 421.875 cubic meters and being that works out to 421,875 L and the gas capacity is 15,000,000L, my head is spinning too much to finish working out what pressure that gas would have to be at in that approximate volume so I can further work out how many MJ/L the gas represents at what pressure so I can figure out a median to use between the thruster efficiency and the Hyd. engine efficiency so I can pretend they really are using gas from the same damn tank........

Then I saw you saying "apparently I like wikipedia and dimensional analysis" and thought "here's a guy who might be able to get this one worked out"

I'd really like *some* reasonable value for MJ/L stored in the tanks and then have some numbers to put into the config to get Hyd. Thrusters to be *slightly* better on hydrogen than 'electric' thrusters, and some numbers to make the output of the Hyd. Engines reflect the 'supposed' MJ/L of the fuel. I'd like too if the power required per L by the Gas Generators could roughly match the power produced per L by the Hydrogen Engines (because the engines should really be super efficient fuel cells functioning by means of future space magic) but I can always fudge those numbers in later.

I guess if anyone's got ANY insights I'd be glad for those too. :)

@roypai if I'm understanding you correctly, you want to maintain the same thrust output for the atmo thruster and H2 thruster, you just want the H2 thruster to consume slightly less H2 than a hydrogen engine running said Atmo thruster.

First off, this is the opposite of how real physics works, which is a prerequisite for maintaining my interest. Both atmospheric jet engines and turbine-powered rotorcraft (helicopters) get massively better fuel economy than rockets, and as battery and motor technologies improve with the application of superconducting materials the use of electricity as a low-loss energy storage/transfer step in propulsion systems will be increasingly common. This trend is already being explored in modern/near-future warship and jet fighter designs which power energy weapons with capacitor banks charged by their gas turbine engines.

Rockets are really cool too, and they tend to have much better thrust to weight ratios than jet engines, but I don't find it "fun" to pretend that the H2 thrusters are nuclear rockets (high efficiency) because of their ridiculously low mass compared to any imaginable nuclear rocket.