Posts by Physicist

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    Reposting here after mis-posting on the GT thread:
    Mad glitches:


    Note that the reactor is off. Probably because of the heat exchangers, the core temp keeps fluctuating between 9 and 10%, never varying beyond that. The hU/t, though, remains constant at the value displayed, and continues to produce hot coolant. Infinite power at no further resource cost.


    Edit: Perhaps because I fiddled with things (removed some blocks, wrenched some things, etc.) the condition producing 160hU/t has diminished to merely producing 16hU/t. Consider, though, that it remained at 10%ish core temp and emitted 160hU/t for hours, not mere seconds while the reactor dissipated stored heat.
    Further Edit: After more fiddling, I was able to pump the permanent passive gen up to 40hU/t.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    New for build 534: The power fluctuations in the Steam to EU powertrain have been substantially mitigated. With a boiler I'm constantly replenishing from the turbine, I sit continuously between 106 and 122 EU/t.


    Also, the Turbine displays a new measurement: xkU@xRPT. Looks like a Rotarycraft-like torque@rotationspeed to me.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    Quote from Chocohead

    If it has a full 10000 mb of water in it, and the water is constantly pumped in, it stays at 100 C. It just takes what felt like, but probably was, hours to heat up.


    I don't have numbers, but with a 100/100 Liquid Heat Exchanger, it was far longer than half a reactor cycle. Once it reached maximum temperature, though, I was unable to use all the steam it produced (so that 1.5ish hour was not wasted for power production, just extremely delayed).
    So you have a choice: Run 100mb, get less power sooner then allow distilled to take its place and grow over time, or fill it with 10 buckets, then wait 1.5ish hours to get any power at all. I have a simple experiment in mind to test the total amount of power from this.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    Because the Steam Generator appears to be incapable of exceeding 100C, it doesn't run continuously. It runs in a burst, then as soon as distilled water returns to it from the turbine, it drops below 100C, then has to heat back up, repeat.


    This behavior may self-mitigate to some degree if the boiler is closer to full of water.


    The whole system is behaving strangely, I'm sure because it's still early in its implementation. It's almost like the steam and rotations are delivered in discrete (but large) packets. This leads to long periods where no steam appears to be moving from the steam gen into the turbine, but the turbine is generating RPT. Also, the KinGen EU production is sometimes proportional to the RPT value, but other times it actively decreases while the RPT is at maximum and holding constant.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    This boiler taking so long to heat is quite prohibitive for testing, and makes your first fuel rods useless for any EU gen.


    Edit:


    The condensers can just sit adjacent to the turbine (but not in between any of the stages), which causes the turbine to fill with distilled water when the condenser is in place and powered.<-Nevermind. Looks like distilled water builds up without a condenser anyway. A fluid ejector in the turbine pushes distilled water directly back into the boiler if the boiler does not have regular water in it.


    It seems to be prudent to only put about a half bucket in the boiler so you can get it up to boiling before running through half a reactor cycle.


    Further Edit: Looks like I'm getting more distilled water (growing all the time) than I put regular water into the system in the first place.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    Quote from Chocohead

    Wrong: The steam goes into a Steam Turbine (new in 532) which generates rotation energy (RPT). That goes into a Kinetic Generator which makes EU. The steam turbine needs a turbine rotor, and produces distilled water too.

    Ahh, I see. I searched for a turbine, but I was running 530 for this test yesterday.

    Quote from Chocohead

    Only if you have at least 2 uranium rods touching. Otherwise there is actually a loss.

    Good to know.
    Fixing OP.

  • The new 5x5 IC² Reactor

    I played a bit with the new Reactor Pressure Vessel multiblock. Why use it? This multiblock gets you two times the energy after conversion from heat to EU than most equivalent direct EU setups.


    Picture: The new 5x5 IC² Reactor


    Building the 5x5 reactor vessel (Reactor Pressure Vessel Blocks, Access Hatch, Redstone Port and some Fluid Ports) around a full 6-chamber reactor gives you a new GUI and enables the new cooling mechanics without reconfiguring. The GUI is mostly familiar, but has slots to insert and take up coolant with cells (preferably Universal Fluid cells). It has a new graphic for heat, which appears as blue horizontal lines growing red from right to left.


    The whole power-train goes: Fluid Port > Liquid Heat Exchanger > Steam Generator > Turbine > Kinetic Generator > EU cable or storage. This should produce 1.28 EU per 2 hU, but in practice, I'm only seeing about 1.15 average.
    Alternatively, you could go: Fluid Port > LHE > Stirling Generator > EU cable or storage. This produces 1 EU per 2hU. This setup is simpler and still produces significantly more EU than a reactor without the multiblock.


    When placing internal components and external Liquid Heat Exchangers, you must consider the following:

    • Venting components are the key to transforming Core temp into hU/t. If you don't have enough venting components, the hU/t will not be high enough to keep the core temp neutral.
    • If the hU/t is too low, all the vents in the world won't matter: Core temp will increase because it has nowhere to go
    • If your hot/cold coolant gets clogged or bottle-necked somewhere, the hU/t will drop
    • You can use liquid ejector modules in both the Fluid port and the Liquid Exchanger to use one Fluid Port for both extraction of hot coolant and deposit of cooled fluid
    • Critical: If your steam generator fully calcifies, or your turbine breaks while you are relying on a closed steam/distilledwater cycle, your reactor will overheat


    You can now use multiple heaters to power a steam generator, but be wary of overheating the steam generator: It explodes around 500C.


    Once you get steam from the steam gen, you run it through a Turbine and Kinetic Generator to produce EU. The Steam Generator will calcify over time (the block disappears at 100%), but Condensers and Turbines produce distilled water, which can then be used in a closed cycle to eliminate calcification.


    Building this multiblock has an additional benefit: If you accidentally leave it and it overheats, if the Redstone Port is not directly adjacent to the reactor inside, as soon as one of the Pressure Vessel Blocks turns to lava, the multi-block will break, and signal will no longer keep the reactor on, essentially making it explosion-resistant for mostly-stable setups.


    While there are currently no basic pipes in IC² (the fluid regulators could be chained to make expensive EU-powered pipes), you don't need any other mods than IC² to make all this run. A mod that adds pipes can give you additional flexibility (BC pipes work, but can't handle the steam output). I suspect the Reactor Hatch can be used for inventory automation, and you can use multiple hatches. I have not checked for compatibility of IC² steam with Railcraft/GT steam.


    Data:
    *** LHE now goes to 200/200, so LHE might be 1:1, contrary to this data*** A Liquid Heat Exchanger processes 2 times the hU/t that it seems to indicate it does (A 100/100 Liquid Heat Exchanger can keep a 200hU/t reactor cool, 2 100/100 LHE's can keep a 400hU/t cool).
    The minimum amount of liquid in a Steam Generator required to produce steam that flows into a turbine: 11mb (this allows distilled water to return to the steam gen very early, resulting in only .01% calcification).
    A full Steam Gen recieving 200/200 heat and no water input can fully power at least 5 turbines (but there is no way in default IC2 or buildcraft to route that much steam to more turbines, with the 6-sides-per-block limitation).

  • [1.7.10] Gregtech Hardmode Server (aka Kirara 2.0)

    The PRC from Minefactory was pretty sweet for that. Too bad it isn't standalone. Its cables didn't hug the wall, but they could self-support up a wall or a ceiling.


    The block itself had some neat features that I think Greg's circuit block mostly cover, but it could perform multiple operations per block on up to 16 channels in a bundled cable type thing.