Posts by Thutmose

On the topic of a "sun generator", this topic was brought up earlier, and as I had said then, the maximum solar power density is about that of a compost heap (about 200W/m3), this is at the center of the core, so making an artificial star is a very very bad way to produce energy.

Magnetically or inertially confined fusion can achieve much much higher temperatures, which allows for more efficient fusion power.

@greg Are you planning on using Inertially or magnetically or combination of both confinement for the fusion? For the first and third type, a large spherical chamber would be best, and for the second a torroidial chamber would be best. Though i assume you will be using magnetically as you mention a plasma liquid (contained in a ring shape), in the inertial types this plasma would be confined to the center of the spherical chamber (looking sorta like a sun, but contained via a very different mechanism)

For efficient fusion, the plasma needs to be at an effective temperature of over 10^8K (the center of the sun is only about 2-3*10^7K)

In magnetically confined fusion, the plasma is actually at this temperature thermodynamically, so the hot plasma needs to be contained, and usually a ring shape is chosen for easy of containment/heating. This is relatively easy to obtain the needed temperature, and no internal components will be affected by the plasma.

For inertially confined fusion, this effective temperature is obtained via a non thermodynamic means. If you accelerate a singly charged ion (say dueterium) with a 1V accelerator, you get an effective temperature of 11,605K, so, using 10kV, you get 10,000 times that, or 116,050,000K, which is over the amount needed. The thermodynamic temperature of the plasma is still very low (relative to the effective temperature), so if there is a containment failure, there would be little to no damage. The problems are using purely electrostatic systems, the central acceleration grid will decay very quickly. using a combination of inertial plasma confinement and magnetic electron confinement, this can be solved by having the inner "grid" be composed of a ball of electrons.

The main advantage of the Inertially confined system is that it will look similar to an artificial star (although working on an entirely different principle), so might placate the people who want one of those.

Quote from Shizz0

Well, if your entire Minecraft-Life is about building automation Facilities, then GregTech is a good the best choice doing it with a Challenge. For my Part, I will use the "cheap" Redpower Pipes. Done.
E.g. I'm mainly interested in Redstone Contraptions... so why should I "waste" tons of Gameplay getting my Sortingsystem?

Similar situation here, and since i plan on making a RP based frame system to move my mainly gregtech/ic2 base around the end, i might as well use RP tubes to sort the ore from the asteroids i bore my way through

I named this thread Thut's Suggestions mainly as it would prevent me from going and posting my suggestions in 20 different threads, with probably 19 different original posters.

Nuclear Reactor Related suggestions:

Allow nuclear reactors in "steam" mode to have an input and an output. This would make it a bit more realistic (need to put in water to get the steam) and would allow for expansion, such as the production of a gas cooled reactor, where the input is say helium, and the output is hotter helium (which then goes into some heat exchange to produce the energy).

Have the amount of steam produced based on the temperature of the reactor, as well as the number of fuel ticks, and the production of said steam cools the reactor. This would make it more enticing to run hot reactors, but the steam cooling the reactor will limit it enough as to not make a 1 cell reactor with huge numbers of plates to be able to produce large amounts of energy. (note: something should probably be changed with the heating cells, maybe remove their ability to increase the heat level, but have them prevent cooling below a certain point instead?)

In this system: for every so many units of steam produced, the reactor temperature decreases. The rate of steam production would be based on the temperature, so eventually the reactor would stabilize at a certain temperature. using the modification to the heat cells where they do not let the temperature drop, you could prevent exploits, as if the temperature is not allowed to drop, you have it not produce steam.

This system would make it much more important to balance the temperature of the reactor.

more to come later.

Quote from nicol bolas planeswalker

1: yeah...
2: No surprises? *facebrick*
3: To some extent...
4 and 5: Wait, there are water/lava blocks you can place in gregtech?

I shouldn't even be on this planet...

@4 and 5, one word: Bucket

not to be confused with the bunch of arranged flowers.

Quote from CrafterofMany

A large sturdy structure would be the only thing that a rocket like that could carry. It may be the fastest rocket in theory. It is a theory.The Orion Project was thought to be successful, but since it was not tested,(or will be tested) we will never know if it was "possible" in the 50's.

@ gas generator, how do you get energy from nitrogen? Its not flammable is it? Neither air.

Most of the systems were tested, why do you think over 900 nuclear weapons of low yield were tested in the 1950s-1960s?
There was extensive testing of the required systems, that is how they knew about the fact that an oil layer prevents any degradation of the steel pusher plate.

Also, it was not the fastest rocket, it is the quickest to design and build, i miss worded that.

Also, the fact that it was a THEORY means that it was a lot more likely to work than most of the current designs which are only HYPOTHESES. Quantum mechanics is "just a theory" but without it we would not have modern computers.

I would be nice if Heat capacity was related to the speed, as the way it currently is, there is no point in having more than about 6 advanced machine casings on a furnace.

Quote from CrafterofMany

The "Orion Project" was no easy way to space,you would have to make such a stucture that would handle the blasts. it is "High tech".

I consider anything that was possible in the 1950s to be "low tech" compared to the stuff that ic2 and gregtech introduces as it is.

The orion project was designed to be made using technology from the late 1950s, or early 1960s, it is about as low tech of a system for getting off the planet as you can get.

As of now, the Orion project is the simplest, easiest. fastest and cheapest way to get a large structure into space, the only downside is that it damages the environment too much (the approximately 800 small nukes would result in considerable fallout, estimated at killing a total of 1-10 people)

For a low tech way to get to space, which you mentioned planning on adding, see Orion Project

My suggestions for implementing it:

you make your base on a large rubber plate which is then on a steel plate (with optional oil coating the bottom for realism), make sure your entire base is completely incased in an aluminium and reinforced glass box, then have some sorta propulsion structure shaped as a tube in the centre of the steel/rubber plates. You then feed the propulsion structure a few stacks of nukes, and turn it on.

Shortly thereafter, your base is situated in space, and your base on the ground has been replaced by a rather large hole.

For those who do not want to completely destroy the area around where they go into space, you use whatever high tech method greg was originally planning to implement.

A few unknown "Thingies"

Best source of thorium is a breeder, 8 re-enriched uranium cells -> 4 thorium, 3 near depleted and 1 plutonium. Use the plutonium in smaller reactors (or as main power for something), re-enrich the 3 depleted, and use the thorium in your main reactors (and some for the breeder)

I know that you can get it from a blaze farm as well, but this method also produces the plutonium, which can be quite useful (for rapid, mass excavation)

edit: Note that with gregtech base settings, UUM is 100x more expensive, therefore, unless you get your copper from lava made from netherack with TE, then you will still need to be mining an awful lot of copper to make those quad cells.

once RP is out, I will probably move almost entirely into the end, with just a mystcraft portal back to the overworld for whenever I need iron or more uranium.

Check the new recipe with the machine parts, you can use aluminium machine hulls now

Quote from silentdeth

When running from MJ it uses the PetrochemicalGeneratorLowEURate config option. The conversion is the same as for oil. To do what you want it would need to be set at 25, with some error due to rounding.

ok, thanks, I will probably set to a bit lower (20-22), to add some more loss (not losing steel like the RC turbines would) then not burn anything in them besides fuel (else would make other things op to burn)

Rather than fictional Adamantine, why not use carbon instead....

Types of Carbon that i suggest to add:

CVD Diamond: (Chemical Vapour Deposition )

The current diamonds made in IC2 are made using the HPHT method of synthetic diamond production. I propose adding CVD diamonds as well. These have the main advantage of being able to be grown in large sheets (relatively cheaply as well), which are perfect for industrial applications such as Heat resistant windows, heat sinks, etc.

The thermal conductivity of diamond at room temperature: 3320W/(m-K)
Peak Thermal conductivity of Diamond (104K): 41000W/(m-K) (note: perfect diamond is calculated to be closer to 200000W/(m-K)
Thermal conductivity of copper: 385 -401W/(m-K)
Note the list below (Helium II is cheating, it is a quantum fluid, so does not listen to classical thermodynamics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities

Note that even impure diamond still has almost 3 times the peak thermal conductivity of copper.

Polycrystalline diamond makes near perfect bearings for devices where magnetic bearings are unfavourable. The polycrystalline diamond bearing will produce a layer of graphite on its surface, which will act like a lubricant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond

Note: the impurity issues of CVD can be solved by using more expensive vacuum equipment.

Graphene Sheets:

These are very strong sheets, with numerous applications due to the strength, thermal and electrical properties (see the link above).

Carbon Nanotubes:

These are very strong, electrically conducting tubes, usually made using CVD. They have applications in both structural and electrical engineering. They can be used to make high quality displays (FED displays), as well as can be made into transistors, diodes, and other electronic devices.

Carbon VS adamantium:

First of all, Carbon actually exists.
Carbon is exceptionally strong, very hard, and very light. Making it suitable for most things which adamantium is used for. (DF adamantine is also very light, therefore any noble who asks for warhammers made of it get to go lava diving)
Making carbon in a useful manner is extremely difficult (but materials are cheap once machine is built)

The only properties carbon does not have that adamantine does are the "indestructable" and the possibilty for adamantine to be dense.

Quote from nalivai

Hi all. I'm really like thorium, and automatisation. And i like small count of reactors (because of automatisation) and big counts of EU (because...never mind). So i'm using this one if i have no a lot of copper input, this, if i have copper (or this to get more EU at a time) or this, if i have recourses for it.
I can't imagine how to improve efficiency of it without reduction of power output. And i think, it's can be a way for it.

take a look at my thorium based "portapack" design. try that, it produces 1/3 the power of yours, but is only 1 block, so stick down a couple lines of them (redstone in bottom, fuel in side, power out top, spent fuel out other side) you can fill the empty slots with reactor plates or something. That would be easy to automate, and will produce a higher power density than your current system.

Simlarly, you could use my 70EU/t single block plutonium design.

could you add a config for the MJ - > EU ratio in the petrochemical generator? I wish to set it to 33EU/t per 21 MJ (to match the RC steam engine -> nuclear reactor steam output), but there does not seem to be a config option. atm it seems to take 16MJ/t to make 16EU/t

edit: or add a steam generator that works on the same ratio as the RC steam turbine, but a lower maximum output (say 4-8EU/t)

about the coolant and steam pipes problem: couldn't it just be set such that coolant only goes in/out say the bottom/top of a reactor/chamber, and steam only goes out the sides? then no steam trying to go out the coolant pipes.

Quote from Sirbab

Hey Greg, Could you add methane and hydrogen as "Liquids" (flagged as a gas of course) so that they would work similarly to steam (from railcraft)? i would like to be able to pump gas to power my base. Also, your mod is my favorite by far out of all the ones in FTB!

I am still waiting for them to allow coolant to be pumped into the nuclear reactors, Would be great if you could have a helium coolant system (i guess use pressurized water for non-gregtech reactors), and have a closed cycle steam system to run turbines.

Quote from rohrschacht

bug or feature translocator is ignoring second side from doubble chest?

probably bug, i assume due to a similar reason why if you break one side of the chest the stuff will drop, the other side, it will not drop

The main reason why aluminium is used for power Transmission is the conductivity/mass (sigma/m) ratio. It may be less conductive than copper, but it is also much less dense. This makes it a better choice for long distance transmission on power lines, as even if the total volume of aluminium needed is bigger (i.e. thicker cable) the total mass of aluminium needed is much less. This coupled with the fact that per mass, aluminium is much cheaper, means it makes a much better choice for long distance transmission of power.

Note: even if silver (the best pure metal, room temperature conductor) were as cheap as aluminium, aluminium would still be used for long distance transmission, due to the density consideration above. The only atmosphere friendly metal that would do better than aluminium is Beryllium, which is not used due to a combination of toxicity and rarity. the other metals with a better sigma/m than aluminium are all highly reactive and will burn in rain. Due to the impedance issue mentioned earlier, long distance transmission cables should be uninsulated, so the better metals (sodium for example) cannot be used due to the need for insulation.

For internal wiring, copper is a better choice, as the density is less relevant, and there is an advantage to thinner wires when running them in walls.