Monopropellant Fuel Cells?

[ottothesilent]

I know at one point I had a mod installed that had a monoprop fuel cell. To my knowledge, it was just a reskinned stock cell that ran on (you guessed it) monoprop. Trouble is, I can't remember which mod it was, exactly. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful.

-Otto

[sebi.zzr]

44 minutes ago, ottothesilent said:

If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful.

 

[Flamingo]

Never heard of the mod, but you should be able to do it yourself. If you go into /KSP/Gamedata/Squad/Parts/Resources/FuelCell, you can copy the .cfg file of the fuel cell you want to run on monoprop. Then you paste it in the same folder, but under a new name (it could be MonoFuelCell or similar).

Now you need to open the config file and first find this:

name = FuelCell

just change this to the new name of your config file.

Then find where it says:

 INPUT_RESOURCE
		 {
			ResourceName = LiquidFuel
			Ratio = 0.0016875
			FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW
		 }

		 /INPUT_RESOURCE
		 {
			ResourceName = Oxidizer
			Ratio = 0.0020625
			FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW/

...and delete everything that I have placed in between the slashes.

Now you can replace LiquidFuel with MonoPropellant and change the conversion ratio.

 

This should do it, but be sure to have a copy of everything you want to change.

 

EDIT - Oh, I see that you found what you were looking for while I was typing  

Edited February 16, 2017 by Flamingo

[ottothesilent]

2 minutes ago, sebi.zzr said:

 

Thanks very much! I had this exact mod installed once upon a time, but I never remembered. This is exactly what I was looking for.

[Supercheese]

I, too, use the RLA Monoprop Fuel Cell, but IIRC the M.O.L.E. mod also has an MPU for turning monoprop into EC.

[luizopiloto]

monoprop fuel cell is kinda impossible to exist...
could be a monoprop generator, as the fuel spins a turbine to generate power...

[DStaal]

3 hours ago, luizopiloto said:

monoprop fuel cell is kinda impossible to exist...
could be a monoprop generator, as the fuel spins a turbine to generate power...

Not really.  There are designs for Hydrogen Peroxide fuel cells, for instance.  Typically they either use a catalyst, or have a secondary reactant that's built in to the fuel cell, and reacts very slowly.  (Like Aluminum.)

[NotAgain]

The USI Survival Pack has a little Monopropellant fuel cell, which is smaller (but less powerful) than the RLA cell.

Edited February 17, 2017 by NotAgain

[VikingStormtrooper]

22 hours ago, DStaal said:

Not really.  There are designs for Hydrogen Peroxide fuel cells, for instance.  Typically they either use a catalyst, or have a secondary reactant that's built in to the fuel cell, and reacts very slowly.  (Like Aluminum.)

Looks interesting. Do you know the possible efficiency and the output power of those cells?

Edited February 18, 2017 by VikingStormtrooper

[luizopiloto]

On 17/02/2017 at 2:01 PM, DStaal said:

Not really.  There are designs for Hydrogen Peroxide fuel cells, for instance.  Typically they either use a catalyst, or have a secondary reactant that's built in to the fuel cell, and reacts very slowly.  (Like Aluminum.)

It sounds more like a battery... Fuel Cells are not like batteries...

[DStaal]

A quick search turned up: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.31522?journalCode=jpp

I haven't done much research into them - I just know they exist are are called fuel cells.

[luizopiloto]

Yes... that is a fuel cell... but reading that paper, there says it still needs another compound to react with the Hydrogen Peroxide to create electricity...
Monoprop is just compressed gas like CO2 or Nitrogen... I know in KSP monoprop engines are more like hypergolic engines, but whatever... Kerbals are not Humans and Kerbin is not Earth... 

[DStaal]

10 minutes ago, luizopiloto said:

Yes... that is a fuel cell... but reading that paper, there says it still needs another compound to react with the Hydrogen Peroxide to create electricity...
Monoprop is just compressed gas like CO2 or Nitrogen... I know in KSP monoprop engines are more like hypergolic engines, but whatever... Kerbals are not Humans and Kerbin is not Earth... 

??  The most common monopropellent in the real world is hydrazine, with H2O2 being a decent second place - both are typically fed over a catalytic bed into the thrust chamber.  Even RCS thrusters tend to run on one of those (H2O2 being more common in that usage) or variant LFO mixes like monomethylhydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide.  Compressed gas might be useful for a cubesat or something, but you aren't going to get much dv out of it in a large-scale use.  (Unless of course you're using it in a non-space application - where you can recompress gas between thrusts.)

As I said, that was just the first I found recently.  I believe I remember reading about one a while back that used a platinum (or similar) catalyst to encourage the reaction - Assuming that's a real catalyst, the only fuel the cell needs is H2O2.  As far as I can tell, it's likely these have a higher power output - but you'll have to replace the aluminum block in them occasionally.

Either way, the point is that if you're storing an unstable chemical you can get it to break down, and if you know what you're doing you can get that breakdown to output energy in a variety of ways, and monopropellents tend to be very unstable chemicals.