Problems with condensers

wiesshund · Oct 19th 2016

I just ran into the craziest issue

I have a 5X5 reactor, on the S side, I have 2 power plants

Each one consists of
2 heat exchangers, powering 1 steam generator, feeding two turbines with a condenser on the last turbine, fluid ejectors in all of them

it works as it should, condensation gets sucked up out of the last turbine by the condenser, and some how by osmosis, it migrates it back up the chain to the steam generator
the closed loop works, aside from some gradual loss, which is realistic.

Ok now on the W side, I duplicated the set up for 2 more power plants (800 Hu reactor)
all should be well right?

But it isn't, the condensers are not working, the end turbines fill up with water and shut down, the front turbines remain water free.
I have double checked that I have all blocks facing the correct way except the condensers which don't appear to be turnable as if I wrench them, they just break regardless of what side I wrench,and everything, made sure they have the correct parts in them etc.

It is set up exactly how the S side is, but does not work.
I have even torn it all apart and rebuilt it, but it does the same thing.

Do they only work aligned N and S or something?

Chocohead · Oct 19th 2016

The magic osmosis sounds more questionable than the end turbine filling up with water.

guarditan · Jun 6th 2017

First of all I saw one build which did like this on youtube.

But second I have a similar problem. Maybe you can help out.

I build a fluid reactor with Steam Boiler (for superheated steam), 2 turbines and at the end a condensor. My way back is via a pipe system. Problem is that depending on the orientation the boiler releases water into the turbine no1 which forwards it into the 2nd turbine where it got stuck. With the correct orientation the first turbine automatically shifts back the water into the boiler and forwards the steam into the second turbine (i think it has to be the east side of the reactor). I did not orientate the fluid ejectors in any way. So the normal prioritization seems to result in the perfect behaviour. Is this the whished behaviour? Did i miss aynthing in setting up my reactor design?

And also. How fluid can one reactor port handle? My is idea would be to build all the turbines at the east with two liquid ports (one for input, one for output)

Thanks in advance

Chocohead · Jun 6th 2017

Quote from guarditan

I build a fluid reactor with Steam Boiler (for superheated steam), 2 turbines and at the end a condensor. My way back is via a pipe system. Problem is that depending on the orientation the boiler releases water into the turbine no1 which forwards it into the 2nd turbine where it got stuck. With the correct orientation the first turbine automatically shifts back the water into the boiler and forwards the steam into the second turbine (i think it has to be the east side of the reactor). I did not orientate the fluid ejectors in any way. So the normal prioritization seems to result in the perfect behaviour. Is this the whished behaviour? Did i miss aynthing in setting up my reactor design?

The order it tries to eject is simply the order the code is run checking sides, there's not really a preference beyond that. (East is the very last side to be checked for reference).

Quote from guarditan

How fluid can one reactor port handle? My is idea would be to build all the turbines at the east with two liquid ports (one for input, one for output)

As much as you can pull out of or put into it. There's no other limit that what ever's connected to it.

guarditan · Jun 6th 2017

Quote from Chocohead

The order it tries to eject is simply the order the code is run checking sides, there's not really a preference beyond that. (East is the very last side to be checked for reference).

Ok that is what i thought but is there a valid setup for a fluid reactor independent of the orientation?

Chocohead · Jun 6th 2017

Quote from guarditan

Ok that is what i thought but is there a valid setup for a fluid reactor independent of the orientation?

Not really. The steam system is a tad dodgy beyond just which order the sides are checked in, the fact distilled water can leak out of boilers for a tick or two as the world loads is really the issue over orientation potentially fixing it. The flickering of steam and water when the numbers aren't quite right is another issue.

It needs working on again to make the boiler more useful past literally two settings, but trying to find a could balance that's useful to use but also not using hard numbers. As a boiler it should probably store heat more readily and be able to fluctuate temperature to maintain output, compared to now where it will reach a temperature given by a formula and be stuck at that point. That in itself is probably not too hard to do, changing the formula for better fitting of pressure and water input is more so.

For your issue in particular, I always used to just have a pipe pulling out distilled water from the super-heated turbine to stop it ever being blocked by it. If the boiler output is stable then it will only rarely need to run at most. Of course if it's switching ever second then that could be more problematic for making sure steam doesn't end up being pulled out too. If a direction works well though I'd still roll with it, longer piping is a small price to pay for a more stable and predictable experience. It's far from ideal I know, but it's just the way it works (or doesn't ).

guarditan · Jun 7th 2017

Thanks for the explanation. I nearly thought I was a little bit dumb

One questions still stays for me. Usually you want to have a multiplicative of 200 in heat as your outcome to maximize your boilers efficiency and not creating any additional heat. Is there a way to interpret heat in the matter of liquid? I thought about installing a fluid regulator which should transfer the offset to a stirling engine but i need to setup the amount of fluid.

Just imagine the reactor is creating 220 heat. Then I would install one boiler and one regulator and the regulator should push 20mb per tick to the stirling engine. In the beginning the regulator may get more than it needs but after it is full the distribution will be fine under the assumption that 20 heat per tick equals 20 mb of hot fluid.

Chocohead · Jun 7th 2017

Quote from guarditan

Is there a way to interpret heat in the matter of liquid?

Yes, each fluid that can be used has a registered value of the amount of heat produced per mb. For lava and hot coolant it's 20 HU per mb (multiplied by the config values in the balance/fluidconversion section, but they're 1 by default).

Just for reference, water is registered to need 1 HU per mb to heat up, but that's for the stirling kinetic generator and fluid reactors.

Problems with condensers

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