Clotting Factors

Suppose that your airship gets punctured. This is bad. Your hydrogen or helium leaks out, and your airship loses altitude.

What could you do to deal with the problem?

One approach would be clotting factors. You could put little cages of full of patches or balls with easily breakable adhesives in them around the interior of your envelope of gas, and if a gauge revealed that you were losing gas from a leak, they could be released. The flow of gas out of the envelope would carry them to the leak, the adhesive would be released, and it would patch the hole.

You might also have a heater in the envelope to raise the temperature of the gas in the envelope when it lost gas so that it could continue to stay fully inflated.

You might also has something that bonds to oxygen faster than hydrogen does as an intentional contaminant in the gas to suppress fires.

The concept of clotting factors could be generalized to any fluid contained in something with higher pressure on the inside than than outside. You could use it is fuel trucks, water trucks, cisterns, liquid natural gas tanks, propane tanks, beer trucks, pipelines, tires, air in a spaceship. whatever.

In the case of something filled with air, or which air could be substitute, you could have a pump that puts more air in after the clotting factors seal the leak.

For example, in the case of an airship, in combination with the heater, you could have clotting factors seal the leak, temperature heat the interior, and could pump air into the envelope, effectively converting the airship to a hybrid airship-hot air balloon, on a temporary basis until it could land, have its holes permanently repaired, and be refilled with its ordinary hydrogen or helium.

What about the opposite problem: high pressure fluids outside an enclosed area in, for example, the case of a submarine or a ship with a puncture?

You could put blisters with a patch material and an easily punctured adhesive outside the shell ready to be released if there was a puncture, and perhaps a drone with magnetic feet or connections to the full to deliver them to the puncture if necessary.