Can't you just compress lifting gas to reduce it's volume?
Can't you just compress lifting gas to reduce it's volume?
I looked up some compressor manufacturers. And got roughly the following:
Large helium compressors, which compress like 2000 liters of helium per minute to 200bar, weight around 2 tons and consume power in the order of 60kw.
Not sure if 2000 liters per minute is the right amount but you get the idea.
So even if you can fit that thing on your airship, the 60kw power plant and all its accompanying fuel does not fit.
And remember you are doing this because of fuel usage the first place! So you would be using fuel to compress gas which you have to compress because you are using fuel...
Usually gasses like this are compressed (and liquified) via something like the Linde process:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampson%E2%80%93Linde_cycle
That is industrial scale and does not go onto anything that moves...
And you would need to store your compressed gasses somewhere too.
All of this is super complex, heavy, requires stupid amounts of energy and thus is way to costly to do on something that flies.
But compressing the gas takes time. If you intend to leave the ship parked there until you finish this, you will need a lot more of space.