Posts by Blackpalt

Could you tell me specifically what you want out of the reactor?

Also what transfer mods are you using cause that makes a lot of difference actually. if you have a fluid moving mod that allows you to have higher priority on the heat exchangers used for superheated steam we could probably use your 7 efficiency design to an even higher efficiency than the one above. Then you use 800 heat for superheated steam and you send the rest to stirling generators. in that case your rod configuration would produce 648 eu/tick at an efficiency of 40,5.

Pyure:
In general the higher the efficiency the better it is to go 5x5. 5x5 is almost always more efficient than the regular reactor but the difference increases the higher you go in efficienvy of the design. Just figured out there was a gregtech tab aswell in the reactor planner, oh goodie

I will play around with it tommorrow hopefully

Edit: I found one core design that looks promissing:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…krc87mti2jh5o081xugb4l6gw
Since efficiency is your thing im trying to make it viable for superheated steam ie the heat output has to be evenly divided by 100. My only concern is that it might vary a bit in hot coolant output. You should give it a go in creative and see how it does. If the cooling varies a bit over time it is still not the end of the world, it just means you will need to use a buffer of hot coolant to make sure that the fluctuations never reach the heat exchangers.

Some general numbers
Efficiency 6,04
output: 750 eu/tick superheated (500 eu/tick stirling)

For comparison of a regular reactor this has an efficiency that is 5,4 times higher (750 eu/tick/139 eu/tick) putting it at a an actual efficiency of 32,6

The efficiency is actually identical, the output is 80% of the 6 chamber versions. There are more perks to the 5 chamber version as well. First of all it is A LOT cheaper. The design itself is actually a lot more efficient than the 6 chamber version as it used only 8 heat exchangers compared to 12. Also it uses only 8 advanced heat vents compared to 22 and instead uses 16 really cheap regular heat vents. Of all the mox designs ive done this is the one i'm most happy with.

What i usually do is make two of these that share the side missing a chamber to make one combined large reactor with 12 blocks. Then i can easily blast proof and automate the reactors in the same reactor room with the same cabling for a sweet 1280 eu/tick which is usually enough for my needs.

But the biggest point is that it requires less plutonium (24 instead of 30) and is a lot cheaper to build. Don't know if these numbers are still relevant but if you compare them in the list at page 6 the difference is:
5 chamber

• Building cost: 293 copper, 119 tin, 491 iron, 32 lead, 32 gold, 8 diamond, 24 redstone, 2 glowstone, 2 lapis, 55 rubber

6 chamber

• Building cost: 396 copper, 153 tin, 657 iron, 36 lead, 48 gold, 22 diamond, 32 redstone, 2 glowstone, 2 lapis, 79 rubber

Mechanics have changed quite drastically since those things where posted. Breeders no longer exist to mention one thing. Instead you put your spent fuel rods in a thermal centrifuge and you will get uranium 238 and plutonium. The plutonium can be used for either mox fuel (produces more power the higher the reactor temperature) or turn them into pellets that can be used in radioisotope generators.

Try this one with advanced vents
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…e52x3r4e99jqtta278vqwr30g
This one with overclocked vents
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…45x3yb954gvkfi4zxqk0ygo3k

I had not thought of using two turbines for all the superheated steam and now that i think of it it's a brilliant idea. You just need some mod that can handle moving large amounts of fluids and it should be easy enough. I might just test it with my above mentioned reactor as it is a big concern there considering you have to handle 1600 Hu/s which is 8-16 turbines depending on what mods you have installed. Should make for a really compact system. Might test it out if i find the time.

Of the popular mods im guessing ender io or steve's factory manager should be able to handle 800 mb/tick. Not sure about thermal dynamics thought but it could be worth a try.

Regarding the distance thing with wind power you can easily work your way around that by transporting the power in item form rather than through power lines. Just make a few MFE charging stations at 160 height that charges energy crystals. With some filtering you can then export the full batteries using item transportation down to your base (costing no power) an then you empty them out in a mfe or mfsu there. Again with some filters you can then export the empty energy crystal and then it up again to be recharged. Requires an item transportation mod that can filter based on meta data which is quite common these days. Both ender io and thermal dynamics should work to name a few

Quote from Natesky9

Anyway, onto your design:
This.. isn't very viable for automation without those few specific mods that can insert into a specific slot. There are only a handful of different combinations of fuel rods that are viable until more possibilities come out for specific insertion

This is true for the 6 chamber reactor. But as i mentioned you dont need this for the 5 chamber version since i uses only dual rods and all the slots in the reactor are used. Any mod with item transport and filters can automate that.

I love the thought of a new tier of fuel rods that consumes plutonium that would be specifically tailored for 5x5 reactors. So you would get a natural progression of first regular reactors, then mox and finally 5x5 reactors. I also agree that IC2 would benifit a lot in having some kind of router for inserting into specific slot as it is necesarry for automating most nuclear reactors.

This is a bit off topic as this thread is about mox, not 5x5 reactors but anyways:
Concerning the 5x5 reactors you can basically use any of the regular reactors found in this thread.
[Official] New Reactors design thread.

They work exactly the same. However with 5x5 reactors you make energy from the heat the reactor outputs which basically scales with the efficiency so its preferable to have a 4+ efficiency design when making 5x5 reactors. so i would say your reactor design is a bit on the low side with regards to efficiency.

Of the old design this is my favourite
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…adh05nlzbpykw84kwczan05q8

As it gives the most heat per fuel rod. Only downside is that it does not give the heat in multiples of 100 which makes it a bit more difficult with superheated steam.

My favourite reactor type is the ones i tested in this thread: The new 5x5 IC² Reactor.

The fact that the 5x5 reactor continues to produce power even while you have turned off the reactor means it works extremly good with fixed cycle reactors where it is on for a while and then you turn it of an let it cool down.

The best one i came up with was this one
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…fofzp975xkw8nn00g0e61um0w

It runs 10 seconds on and then 17 seconds off with a total cycling time of 27 seconds which can easily be done with regular vanilla redstone (you can find more info in the specific thread). It blows any of the other 5x5 designs out of the water both in terms of efficiency and power output and it is suprisingly easy to operate. Only downside is that you need to insert into specific slots to automate it. It is less of a concern thought as it takes 54000 seconds to run through one set of fuel rods as it is only on some of the time.

You can do mox in a 5x5 reactor however i wouldnt recomend it. It requires the nuclear control addon so you can controle the reactor based on temperature but even then the reactor itself is not very impressive. Extremly high efficiency but pretty low output and almost impossible to use with superheated steam as the heat output varies constantly.

It's a decent design, however you are using waaaaay to much heat exchangers. They only move around heat and removes none so try to keep them to a minimum.

My personal favourite mostly due to automation purposes is actually the 5 chamber version of the one you posted pyure. (both are my designs)
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…5qvym46y7aduzb5665bp965ts

Since it only uses dual fuel rods its easily automated by filtering input and output of regular rods and spent fuel rods. So when the rods are spend they are automatically pulled out and then replaced with 4 new ones. wen using a combination of fuel rods you have to insert the fuel rods into specific slots which can only be done with a few very specific mods. Factorizations router comes to mind.

It's a shame they haven't added any more component or fuel rods. Would love getting into building more reactor designs. However the design list found at page 6 can't really be optimized much more than they already are

Have to say that this reactor planner is starting to look really good

Keep up the good work!

Nice design concept there mauvecloud, manage to make some improvements on it thought, by rebalancing the heat i managed to squeeze in an additional 2 rods to 43

6 chamber
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…eii640xlbselijpi9cklt2xog

And a slight improvement on the 4 chamber reactor with 33 rods
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…spqssiyoix29snh0499irnf9c

Also made a few small ones, think this would be the easiest way to produce a lot of plutonium.

2 chamber with 23 rods
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…xml5tfvx13sqf6z6som0b0zr4

0 chamber 14 rods
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…b85gvb0jlanua04g6c1od4r9c

This one is slightly better with 23 rods instead of 18. in eu mode (which is the one i would use) it produces 250 eu/tick or 648 Hu/s in 5x5 mode. It is quite a lot more expensive thought.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…bd39j9bov3xnrwe3y0il9hxc0

or prntscreen if thats more up your alley
http://prntscr.com/7kauls

althought if i where you i would make a shittone of 0 chamber reactors and just chain them with a similar design as you are using
something like this perhaps?
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…3zlfzgm8xjgam97gznv8cdji8
http://prntscr.com/7kaz0y
or just this if you wanna be cheap
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…7rm20jakv5nnb21da4y0c7hfk
http://prntscr.com/7kazgv

It Works! i just screwed upp the redstone timing a little bit before.

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…fofzp975xkw8nn00g0e61um0w

Here is the setup in action
http://prntscr.com/7bxkhq
Its a mark 5 reactor running on a fixed cycle where the overclocked heat exchangers work as heat buffers.

it runs for 10 seconds every 27 seconds on a fixed cycle and it produces 1600 hu/s without fail. while i haven't hooked it upp to a superheated steam i am confident it would work perfectly, especially if you had a buffer of hot coolant althought i havent seen any variation so far so im not even sure thats needed. Ive had it running for at least one hour now and no problems in sight

Here is the redstone timing i did to controle it
http://prntscr.com/7bxxzf
It should work with vanilla redstone repeaters as well as long as you can have something produce a pulse every 27 second. 1 redstone pulse every 27 seconds produce a 10 seconds long redstone signal using redstone repeaters

How is the efficiency you might ask? it produces 4320 hu/s when its activated, which would produce 4320*20 tics *0,75 (0,5 if stirling)=64800 eu/ second its activated. over one cycle it would produce 64800*20000s =1296 million eu or 43,2 million eu per fuel rod/cycle.

so 1200 eu/tick, efficiency 43,2 5x5 reactor
Not gonna lie, im quite pleased with myself

Next im gonna check how effective a biogas setup with this is...

Edit: Using 5x5 reactors to produce heat for biogas power was a project in futility im afraid. 1600 hu produces enough biogas in fermenters to give about 1250 eu/tick which is barely better than using it directly in superheated steam except then you wont need lots of biomass and semifluid generators (i was using about 79 to keep up with 1600 hu worth of biogas). So i can definetly say that ive put the nail in the coffin for 5x5 biogas nuclear reactors from an energy efficiency point of view. it is just as effective and less of a hassle to use superheated steam rather than biogas.

The setup
http://prntscr.com/7c0h6w
Fermenters are behind the semifluid generators (16 in total for 1600 hu)
eu production of the setup
http://prntscr.com/7c0hz3
the total number should become slightly higher as it has not equalized fully yet.

I've finally started testing of my new 5x5 reactor typ and presently the results are promising. I am not entirely sure i will get the superheated steam cycle reactor to work but if it does it will produce 1600 hu/s at an extremly high efficiency (a lot higher than previous designs) utilizing fixed cycle mark 5 reactors. I made some post of this previously and the preliminary testing ive done so far seems to indicate that it works very well but might be sensitive to lagg as the redstone controle needs to be extremly precise not to make the reactor components accumulate heat over cycles or vary in heat production. Worst case scenario it will still work out as a stirling generator but im still hopefull that i will get it to work with a superheated steam cycle.

The second concept ive looked into i am quite certain will work will work for stirling setups but primarily for biogas to power production at insane efficiencies. The efficiency of this reactor will likely be far beyond anything that has ever been posted so far and it might make me reconsider the usage of 5x5 reactors depending on the numbers i end up with. I know the efficiency will be extraordinary however i have yet to find out the power output this design.

I will be making more extensive tests of both concept reactors the following days and posting setups and some theoretical efficiencies and power outputs of the setups.

Finally got around to have the time to write this (its probably gonna be long) As a generall background i could mention that i work as a PhD student in Energy technology specializing towards combustion and ash chemistry (hence the geekiness)

Before i get to the pyrolizer and gasifier i would like to go over the fuels first to give a suggestion on how we would make the energy content of the different fuels more realistic. The unit i will use is Mj/kg for solids, Mj/dm3 (liter) for liquids and Mj/m3 (cubic meter) for gases. its presented as : Suggested value (typical value). I will go over the fuels quickly with regards to energy density and bulk density
Solids
Coal - 30 Mj/kg (24-30) 600-950 kg/m3,
Lignite - 10 Mj/kg (5-10) 650-850 kg/m3, Moisture content 40% (30-60%)
Dry lignite - 20 Mj/kg (10-20) special, read below,
Coke - 30 Mj/kg (28-30) 500 kg/m3,
Fresh wood - 10 Mj/kg (6-10) 600-1300 kg/m3 moisture content 40% (40-60%)
Dry wood - 20 Mj/kg (15-21) special, read below,
Charcoal - 30 Mj/kg (24-30) 150-200 kg/m3,
Liquids
Pyrolysis oil/creosote - 20 Mj/dm3 (18-22) 1200 kg/m3,
Gas
Low energy syngas - 5 Mj/m3 (3-7) 1 kg/m3,
Medium energy syngas - 10 Mj/m3 (7-14) 1 kg/m3,
High energy syngas - 20 Mj/m3 (15 plus) 1 kg/m3

On moisture content: Both lignite and fresh wood contain a substantial amount of water which reduces the energy content a lot. You can burn them if you already have a hot furnace as you need a large buffer of heat to dry off the water before the wood actually starts to burn. This also makes it almost impossible to use it in a pyrolizer/gasifier as it simply wont produce enough heat. Preferably we should need some kind of industrial dryer to dry the fuel or alternatively leave the lignite/wood out to dry in the sun before it can be used. Since we wont be mining dry fuels the bulk density is of less importance, just remove the weight of the water from the bulk density of the wet wood/lignite and you should have the weight of the dry fuel left. Since ive assumed about 40% moisture content on both lignite and wood just remove 400 kg from its starting bulk density and you should have close to its new bulk density.

You might also notice that we have 3 different qualities of syngas. This is because depending on the fuel and how we gasify we will get substantially different energy content of the gas. Air gasification of biomass for instance produces a very low energy content syngas due to a substantial amount of N2 (from the air) and the high ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide so using oxygen will increase the energy content of the resulting gas quite alot (althought the total energy content is the same, it just takes less space). In generall the energy content of syngas from coal will be higher than the syngas from wood and lignite due to higher amount of hydrogen. Also due to the low energy content of the low energy syngas it cannot be used in a turbine but can only be used in a gas burner. Medium and high can be used in a turbine and high can be used in performance turbine.

Before we go on to the gasifier/pyrolyzer i would also like to suggest som vanilla nerfs. Charcoal should still be possible to make in a regular furnace, we could think of this process as a low tech charcoal pit which usually have a horribly bad efficiency. I would suggest that 8 chunks of wood becomes 1 chunk of charcoal or something similar. The thermal efficiency of the process should be about 25% and the mass l should decrease by 85-90% or so (you put in 100 kg of dry wood, you get 10-15 kg of charcoal out with an energy content of 25% of the original fuel)

Now on to the pyrolyzer. This process typically operates between 500- 1100 degrees C depending on what is produced. at 500 degrees it produces syngas, creosote and charcoal/coal. and at 1100 degres we produce coke and syngas (all the fluids evaporate). Its usually a batch process where the syngas produced from the process is burned in a seperate burner to heat the process. for 500 degrees the energy balance is usually 50% solid, 25 % gas and 25% liquid. for 1100 deggrees (coke production using coal or charcoal) it is about 75% solid and 25% gas The efficiency is about 80-90% so if we input 100 Mj of fuel we would get 50 Mj of solid fuel, 25 Mj of creosote and 25 Mj of syngas of which 15 Mj would have to be burned to heat the process (with 87% thermal efficiency 1/0,87= 1.15). or att 1100 it would be 75 Mj of solid coke and 25 Mj of high energy syngas. I think a good implimentation of this machine would be a multiblock structure with an external heater (liquid or gas burner). Higher tiers would be faster with the first tiers being very slow. Time should be a large restriction in this process. The machine uses no air or oxygen for the process but uses the oxygen in the fuel itself (wood is about 40-50% oxygen on a elemental basis) Here is a suggestion of possible recepies

500 degress
dry wood/dry lignite into medium energy syngas, creosote and coal/charcoal something like 3 chunks of dry wood becomes 1 chunk of charcoal and x mb of creosote and y buckets of syngas.
1100 degrees
Charcoal/coal into high energy syngas and coke.

Now for the gasifier. The gasifier partially combusts the fuel into gaseous form using either air or oxygen. It should have a thermal efficiency of about 75% so if you input 100 Mj of fuel you would get 75 Mj of energy out as a gas. Depending on if you use air or oxygen and fuel you get either low, medium and high energy syngas. air gasification of wood/lignite would result in a low energy syngas and charcoal/coal and creosote would yield medium energy syngas. Notice that the total energy content of the syngas would be the same, however the volume would be half of the medium energy syngas. Now if we do the same thing with oxygen we dont dilute the syngas with nitrogen so the energy content is bumped one step. So oxygen gasification of lignite/wood gives medium energy syngas and high energy syngas. The amount of oxygen needed to gasify 1 kg of fuel would be about 0.2-0.4 cubic meters. you usually need about 1 cubic meter of oxygen to completly combust 1 kg of wood for instance and with gasification you would give the process between 20% and 40% of this to gasify it.
The gasifier would preferably be a large tall multiblock structure with higher tiers requiring less oxygen to gasify the fuel( tier 1: 0,4 cubic meter/kg, tier 2: 0,35 cubic meter/kg, tier 3: 0,3 etcetc) with each tier also being a bit faster.

I would also like to point something out about ashes. Ashes should not contain carbon unless you have a really crappy combustion process where you fail to fully combust the fuel. In a decent combustion application the remaining ashes would be the inorganic elements in the fuel that wont burn or evaporate at the combustion temperature. The major ash forming elements during combustion is usually K, Na, Ca, Mg, P, S, Cl, Si Fe, Al and trace amounts of various metals in various concentration depending on fuel type. Also the amount of ashes vary greatly between fuels. In heart wood the ash content would be less than 1% by weight while coal can have substantial amounts of ashes in the order of 3-20% with the major part usually being Si. So ashes should contain a variation of the major ash forming elements rather than carbon.

Greg: If you consider implementing all or parts of this suggestion i wouldn't mind giving you a hand in energy/mass balance calculations and making flowcharts for the process

Sorry for the overly long post

TLDR:
Suggestions for how to have a more realistic energy content of solid fuels in minecraft based on actuall bulk densities and energy density
a few new fuels including 3 types of syngas, creosote and drying of wood and lignite
Nerfs to vanilla so that 8 wood gives 1 charcoal (or something similar)
A indirectly heated multiblock pyrolyzer that can either make biomass and lignite into charcoal/coal, creosote and syngas and charcoal and coal into coke and syngas with realistic efficiency and energy balance
A multiblock gasifier that turns solid or liquid fuels into syngas using either air or oxygen to partially combust the fuel with realistic efficiency
Rant about how ashes should contain trace elements rather than carbon

A quick question about the units used in minecraft which is somewhat diffuse. How many liters/dm3 is a bucket, and how much volume/weight is a chunk of coal/ block of wood? I guess you could say that a block of wood is one cubic meter of wood which would be between 150 kg to 1300 kg depending on wood type. While a chunk of coal should be 1/9 of a cubic meter of coal which is something like 700-950/9 or 78-106 kg. preferably i would want 1 chunk of coal to have the same weight as 1 block of wood

By chance charcoal/coal has about double the energy content of wood (15-21 Mj/Kg to 24-30 Mj/Kg) so im thinking the best solution is to assume that 1 chunk of coal/charcoal is the same weight as 1 block of wood so that we do not need to change the energy calue of coal/charcoal and wood in game. Because then 800 tics for wood and 1600 for coal kinda makes sense from an energy perspective.

Likewise is 1 bucket also 1 cubik meter of volume?

Steve sure is a strong guy

Mass and energy balance under way, think this is gonna be good

I'm thinking of doing a lenghty suggestion on pyrolysis and gasification for the production of coke, charcoal, producergas/syngas and creaosote oil/tar. Anyone think that would be interesting? What i'm hoping to do is do something about the imbalance between charcoal and coal and make the process more realistic than chucking a chunk of wood into a furnace and getting charcoal out of it with a higher combustion value

I had a lot of problems with this previously. One of the main reasons i stopped using 5x5 due to the instability of the superheated steam cycle. Don't remember if i managed to solve it either, i think it mainly happened when it loaded the chunk. I encountered the same problem several times using both lava and hot coolant so in the end i started using stirling instead as the boost in efficiency was not worth the risk of blowing upp the reactor.

Sadly it is impossible to make mark 1 mox reactors in the 5x5. They are all mark 5 actually since they are either at 0 heat at which point it is not a mox reactor or spiraling out of controle because the heat they produce increase with their temperature. so they are either cooling down or spiraling out of controle. Nuclear controle works pretty well to turn the reactor on and off depending on temperature. If i remember correctly this was the best design i did that time

http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…pbcurq980tcmzfs7pujc8faps

The controle i had look something like this
http://prntscr.com/4qga7x

As i mentioned previously i cycled it between 60-80% heat. All the plating is to make it less sensetive to the insane amount of heat it produces at high temperature. at 80% temperature it produces 4 times the normal amount of power so that makes it insanely unstable. the heat the reactor produces scales linearly from 1x to 5x from 0-100% heat.

It worked very nice in practice and i sucessfully used it for several cycles in survival so as long as you set up a good system to make sure it doesn't go booooom it's quite nice-

The efficiency they have is insane thought. I think that one was about 100 million eu per fuel rod. However they can never have very good output as it is still dependent on how much cooling you can have which is way less efficient when you are doing mox in 5x5.

Got to much irl stuff right now to test out the mark 5 reactor but will try to get around to it during the week.

To me your designs are vastly superior to the ones i posted earlier. the first reactor would produce 992 eu/tick (600*1,5+92) with 12 fuel rods while the second would produce 1058 eu/tick (700*1,5+8)using 14 fuel rods. Both reactors are EXTREMLY good as mark 1 reactors and i consider both of them better than any of the previously posted 5x5 reactors. However the 692 hu design is still superior to the second one as its efficiency is higher. the 704 gives 30,2 million eu/fuel rod while the 692 gives 33,1 million eu/rod. (which is something like 5-8 times better than regular reactors depending on efficiency)

Perhaps i should have mentioned this in my previous post but my point was that reactors above 1300 was not unheard of before your post, not that they where better than yours.

My new mark 5 designs should be about 20-30% more efficient if they actually work. They should be controllable with ic2 only as they are run on fixed cycles. 10 seconds on and 19 off is veery easy to set up. However im still a little bit concerned what will happen in the last second during the cycle which i will have to test in practice.

The biggest difference is the power output thought. 1058 eu/tick vs 1200/1350 eu/tick is substantial difference. if they actually work i might be arsed to calculate the material costs so we can compare. Don't think the reactor planner is any good in this case.