CRCS Cooling Tower :: Not Cooling to 0

Atomsk · Feb 25th 2014

Hi Everyone,

I am fairly new to the Nuclear Reactor Design and have played around with a quite a few builds that I have seen here from the very informative post of HAYO! Corp (Skavier470) and ShneekeyTheLost, and a few I came up with the help of the Reactor planner(Not as efficient as what have been posted).

One of my large projects was to create a LZH Reactor and repair the LZH condensators, I quickly learned that this is not at all viable on survival due to the amount of Lapis required. I read a few threads on CRCS Reactors and started building a few small reactors to see how the cooling works.

The problem I am having now is that the heat from the 60k coolant cells are moved around in the Cooling tower and never dissipates completely. This is the design.

From what I gather, the Component Heat Exchanger moves the heat between Coolant Cell and the adjacent Overclocked Heat Vents, creating a loop of heat being passed back and forth.

I have tried the other Grid Layout of Component heat Vents (here), but the rate at which heat is removed is 3-5 heat per Coolant Cell, which is very slow. With this method I did manage to setup a working reactor with two 6 chamber coolant towers hooked up to an AE system. But there are long periods where the reactor is inactive due to cells being cooled.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge will be able to provide some helpful information.

Thanks in advance

JaxFirehart · Feb 25th 2014

Basically this is just a quirk of how Component Heat Exchangers work. They try to equalize heat among surrounding components, so as the remaining heat in the coolant cells approaches 0, the heat exchangers exchange less and less heat causing it to take a long time to cool.

ShneekeyTheLost · Feb 26th 2014

JaxFirehart got the basic principle down.

Basically, you use Fuzzy buses and use a Greater Than 75% and Less Than 25% conditionals on the reactors. Pull out when you hit less than 25% and store in AE Network to be deposited once another cooling cell has been pulled out of the reactor.

gollark8 · Feb 26th 2014

With the cooling tower,use an AE fuzzy import bus set to import 99% or more coolantcells.Or 75% if 99% doesn't work.
Plus an export bus set to coolantcells with less then 25% left.

With the main reactor,use a fuzzy import bus set to coolantcells with 25% or less.
Plus an export bus set to 99% (or 75%) or higher dur. coolantcells.

Atomsk · Feb 26th 2014

Ah I get it!

The Closer you get to 0 the longer the cooling would take. So to keep it optimal you damage cells to 25% and put them back at 75%, thus keeping cooling time cycle down with higher efficiency.

Was not aware that the CH Exchangers equalizes the heat, only though it pushed it out to other components.

@gorlak8, I had it set to 99% but the cooling still took to long. I will try the lower settings for cooled cells.

Thanks again for the help

Someone Else 37 · Mar 1st 2014

Yeah, that cooling tower design never does clear out the last couple hundred heat or so, which is why earlier designs all had at least one component vent adjacent to the coolant cells. However, the advent of ME Fuzzy Busses allowed me to improve the efficiency of the tower and get around the problem where the only previously existing item filtering devices couldn't actually read the exact damage on an item.

A Fuzzy Bus in 99% mode works very much like, say, a Redpower Filter, in that it only cares about whether or not the item has a damage bar. If a 99% Fuzzy Import Bus is set to pull full cells, it will only pull cells that have no damage bar at all, and not cells that are 99.99% full (but still have the green damage bar).
It's a bit of a misnomer.

Also, if you're not worried about space, this will save you some resources. Its cost is equal to two of my one-chamber coolers, minus the extra components (an advanced circuit and a generator, last I checked) need to make a reactor core, and it runs a bit faster to boot.
Additionally, the above can be upgraded with another chamber and a few extra components to give this cooler, which chills cells as fast as component exchangers can chill them.

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