Mark II, Industrialcraft Only (4 core)

ff255away · Feb 27th 2012

I've been learning mine craft nuclear physics for the past couple of days. This has led to a competition with a friend to build the most energy efficient reactor based on highest output compared to lowest uranium count generator. Problem is, our server freezes up when connecting an ic2 pump to an ic2 compressor. This has led to the following problem- to minimize micromanagement, we have been using strictly cooling cells, disperser plates, and normal plates.

This is my current design, that I'm about to put into place. My previous one utilized a dual two core, and I'm in the process of building the disperser plates necessary (need about 4 more...).

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…r=1k101010015015111r11r10

What can I do to stream line this? I'm aiming for a mark II, and with the quick cool down time, I'm happily calling it a successful design. Is there a way to turn this into a five or six core without going mark III? Again, no ice or water, unless the bug has been fixed in 1.71 (we are still using 1.63).

raGan · Feb 27th 2012

Have you looked here ?

Here are some interesting reactors:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…1k101010037ps011111101110
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1k10101001501521s1r11r10
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…k101010037ps01121s1111110
First famous one made by dezuman, other 2 made by me.

@ your question: If you want to use 6 uranium cells like this, it is not possible to make Mark II. Any Mark II with efficiency higher than 3 is not possible without SUC (single use coolants).

ff255away · Feb 27th 2012

I read the first post, but seem to have been so drawn back by the inefficiency of the generators in the first post that I assumed it was a closed thread! Thank you, I am reading through the posts now.

The mark II-15 EC you've designed is brilliant! I have been a bit uncertain about one thing though- active vs effective eu. My current thought process says that every tick you're spending 100 eu a tick to produce 95, a 5% loss in eu which is acceptable in my books. So why would you use 5 cells (comparing your two designs) for less eu output, and on top of that you're losing 30% of your energy for a minimal gain in cell life (which is almost definitely outweighed by the fact you're losing more eu than you'd gain in overall life?).

::EDIT:: and thank you for the explanation of SUC, I've been wondering for days what this 'CASUS' and 'SUC' are. That actually explain a lot.

bbqroast · Feb 27th 2012

Quote from ff255away

I read the first post, but seem to have been so drawn back by the inefficiency of the generators in the first post that I assumed it was a closed thread! Thank you, I am reading through the posts now.

The mark II-15 EC you've designed is brilliant! I have been a bit uncertain about one thing though- active vs effective eu. My current thought process says that every tick you're spending 100 eu a tick to produce 95, a 5% loss in eu which is acceptable in my books. So why would you use 5 cells (comparing your two designs) for less eu output, and on top of that you're losing 30% of your energy for a minimal gain in cell life (which is almost definitely outweighed by the fact you're losing more eu than you'd gain in overall life?).

::EDIT:: and thank you for the explanation of SUC, I've been wondering for days what this 'CASUS' and 'SUC' are. That actually explain a lot.

If the reactor overheats in 8 minutes and needs two minutes of cool down then it is "effective" 80% of the time. So if your rector produces 70EU/t:
70/100 * 80 = 56
Thus the effective EU is 56EU/t :).

Rick · Feb 27th 2012

Quote from ff255away

I read the first post, but seem to have been so drawn back by the inefficiency of the generators in the first post that I assumed it was a closed thread! Thank you, I am reading through the posts now.

I can safely say that the reactors in my topic belong to one of the best possible design there are. Alot of ppl contributed to it including myself. Its a very active topic XD. Currently iam busy moving everything to the new layout but i dont have much time because of university :).

If you really want high efficiency (that is above 3 eff) you need to go mk3 or higher. Through they explode before they ended their cycle you can redstone them and they can be as safe as mk1's. Through they generally have lower average eu output than mk1's and mk2's. Before you start making mk3+ you have to know how reactors work or you probably will get some nice craters in your map.

There also CASUC design which uses ice or water buckets to cool. These are not included in my topic since they require other mods like BC and RP2 to be used effectively. Other ppl make pretty detailed topics about them through.

gorzak · Feb 27th 2012

BBQRoast already covered it, but I wanted to say the same thing a different way.

Active EU is what the reactor produces when it is on. You don't get a 95.60 eu output out of 100, you get a 100 eu output while it is on and consuming uranium.

Then it shuts off, and you get a 0 eu output while it doesn't consume uranium.

If it was NEVER off, it would explode, and you'd get 0 eu output anyway, along with loss of all initial resources. This is true of any heat positive design (mark II +)

So if it is required to be off for some amount of time, it's overall output will be lower than the 100eu/t output that you would expect if it was on all the time. That is effective eu/t. Over a long span of time, the eu/t you would get if you ran it as much as the design would let you.

Note that this does not affect the efficiency of uranium consumption. When we are talking about efficiency, that is what we mean. The more the reactor is off, the longer it takes to consume the uranium. A design like this: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…1k101010037ps011111101110 really does get much more energy out of the urianum... however it takes ~5x as long to do so. It is off every 4 seconds out of 5. Which is why even though it spits out 330 eu/t, you should expect an average of 67.8 eu/t. If you planned to consume 330eu/t, the active output of the reactor, your machines would be off 80% of the time like the reactor is. If you plan to consume 64eu/t ( 2 batboxes in parallel), your machines could remain constantly powered with a small surplus, for 5x as long as a normal cycle, as long as you have redstone shutting down this reactor at the appropriate intervals. Energy efficiency, fuel effieciency, consumption efficiency, all have to do with how much total energy you get from each uranium. Output is energy delivered over time. Efficiency and output are separate and distinct.

There is a trade off between efficient consumption of fuel and power output. Generally you can get more effective eu/t by using less efficient designs, as they require less cooling downtime. More fuel efficient designs have higher active EU/t but must be shut down for cooling more frequently and thus have lower power outputs when averaged over time. Check out this thread http://forum.industrial-craft.…page=Thread&threadID=3660 for crazily inefficient very high effective eu/t designs.

Pick a point where you like the trade off between output and consumption efficiency. If you want 4u, I'd suggest duezmans for fuel efficiency (it is the maximum efficient mark II) or ragan's for output. If you are willing to bump it up to 5 or 6 u, Ragan has a couple good mark II's with higher output with 2 - 2.33 fuel efficiency in the first post that rick maintains .

Don't forget you can always double both output and consumption by making a second reactor. That should slide you more towards efficient consumption, as you gather more resources. If you are willing to produce more reactors, Ricks mark 1 with 40eu/t , and my mark II with 78eff eu/t scale energy production up more cheaply than anything fancier. 2 of my 4u designs cost almost the same as ricks slightly more efficient 5u design. Those would burn 8u for slightly more than 150 eu/t... but I don't recommend just scaling up with multiple reactors that way. I'm a fan of shielding the reactor, and that really changes the cost equation. If you wanted to roll unshielded, multiple reactors is the way to scale up uranium consumption for more EU output. That is still true including shielding, but the cheap designs make a lot less sense when you are sinking tons of alloy into reinforced stone as overhead.

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