The negative efficiency comes from the conversion of fuel -> heat -> energy -> heat. Just put the fuel into the liquid heat generator and you gain more fuel, though slowly.
And yes, it is goofy that the fermenter takes heat. The energy is supposed to come from the biomass, not the addition of heat.
So I have worked my reactor design into what I think is a pretty good state. It produces nearly 300 eu ( not sure why it isn't a full 300 ) from 400 heat using dual super heated steam chains from a reactor core that has a single quad uranium rod that cycles on for 5 minutes and off for 5 minutes, and should last about 12 hours. The only problem I have with it is that I have to manually move the distilled water cells from the condenser back to the fluid regulator that keeps the steam generator full. Is there a way to automate that part of the cycle with pure ic2?
My reactor core has a quad uranium rod surrounded by thick neutron reflectors, and 4 columns full of overclocked heat vents and advanced heat exchangers, with a few advanced heat vents thrown in, and a few reactor heat platings. During the 5 minute off cycle, the core temp drops to zero within one minute but the residual heat in all of the components keeps pumping out 400 heat to the exchangers for the remaining 4 minutes.
One odd thing I have noticed though is that the thick neutron reflectors are wearing out faster than the quad uranium rod, which it shouldn't do since it is supposed to be good for 40,000 pulses, and the uranium rods are good for 10,000, so the quad pack should match up with the 40,000 of the reflector.
Display More200 hU/t is exactly the amount of heat needed to start producing superheated steam.
Settings : 220bar pressure valve, 1 mb/t water input.
Output 100mb/t of superheated steam.
You also have to chain two turbines in that setup, as the first turbine running of superheated steam will output regular steam afterwards, which can be further harnessed for more energy.
Isn't the first turbine supposed to also output more energy? Otherwise how is that better than 1 bar and 2 mb/t?
Also I have been looking at the whole uranium life cycle and do I have this right? You enrich uranium, and end up with extra u-238. When the enriched uranium is spent, you centrifuge that for most of the u-238 back and some plutonium. You mix the plutonium with u-238 to get mox. When the mox is spent, you get lots of plutonium, which you can then make into rtg pellets and put them into a lower power output radioisotope reactor, but it lasts forever.
Now I think I read that the mox is supposed to burn hotter than enriched uranium, but it also seems to get used up faster, which is odd. I thought that everything in the reactor ticked at the same time, but the durability on the mox rod is ticking faster than the uranium.
The old reactor system used high core temp in a breeder reactor, but in the new reactor system, the core temp doesn't matter right? Aside of course from a meltdown.
So I have managed to set up what I am sure is a crappy reactor using two fuel rods and producing 200 heat, coupling that with dual heat exchangers each attached to their own liquid port, dumping the heat into a single steam generator, powering a turbine and kinetic generator to produce 100 eu, which seems to be a few times more than a biofule generator. This works as long as I keep the pressure set at 0 or 1 bar, and 2 mb of water per tick. Any other setting and it goes nuts, oscillating between outputting steam and water, causing eu output to drop. It will not produce super heated steam no matter what I do.
From what I have read, I should be able to build a better reactor core to output much more heat, and use that to make super heated steam to produce even more eu per heat, but I don't see how to produce super heated steam, or how to get much more heat out of the reactor and into the steam turbine.
Any word about how it stops accepting heat while it is actually generating steam?
Also how do you keep the heat in the reactor stable? It feels like the fission generates a certain amount of heat and you either vent enough of that heat to the coolant to keep the reactor core cold, which causes it to bounce back and forth between full heat output and not full heat output, or you slowly build up heat in the core until it melts down. Is there no way to reach an equilibrium where it stays at say, 30% heat and maintains full output?
So the steam generator appears to be broken. Whenever it is actually generating steam, it stops accepting heat from the exchanger. As a result, you have to turn it on for a moment, it cools off rapidly, then you have to switch it back off to let it heat up again.
Also why does the turbine constantly say warning: condensation is slowing it down? It keeps making distilled water, which I added a fluid ejector upgrade so it kicks it back to the steam generator, yet it keeps complaining.
Also what is the pressure setting supposed to do? It doesn't appear to do anything at all.
Finally, I thought the redstone signal was supposed to stop the reactor, but it only seems to cut its output in half.
Why there is no way to refill input tank via cells?
Thunderdark: Uni.FluidCell (fill with Fluid) right Click Machine... and never ask Why in a howto Post.
Shift+click
Aha! It was the kinetic generator part I was missing, thanks.
You pipe water in, set the pressure to 0 bar and flow to 1mB/t of water, you'll make 100mB/t of steam. Steam can be used to make power in a turbine or put in a condenser to make distilled water. At a pressure of 220 bars you'll make superheated steam, which goes into a turbine to make EU, and that will output steam, so you can get 3x the amount of power than normal steam. It takes twice the amount of heat to make though.
So I just can not figure out how to get this hooked up. I have the steam generator full of steam and it is spewing it into the air, and next to it I put the turbine and inserted a blade, but it just sits there. At one point I had it apparently sending the steam through to a condenser on the other side, but not generating any eu, and it said its output was blocked. How do you connect them up?
Quoted from "psusi"
What about the canning machine problem?
Which canning machine problem?
The canning machine extracts the fluid cells to its *output* tank rather than input. I finally figured out that if you just shift right click on it with the cells, it empties them into the input tank and fueled up the jetpack.
Quoted from "psusi"
Also do you have recipies for these new machines? I'd like to try making them in survival mode.
I could if you really wanted, but just getting NEI or Craftguide would make it so much easier
I tried getting NEI from somewhere earlier but it crashed. Can you link a specific version that works with the current builds?
Quoted from "psusi"
I also was trying to play with the steam generator but couldn't figure it out. It seems to want you to pipe water into it to boil into steam, but how do you do that, and what do you do with the steam you get?
You pipe water in, set the pressure to 0 bar and flow to 1mB/t of water, you'll make 100mB/t of steam. Steam can be used to make power in a turbine or put in a condenser to make distilled water. At a pressure of 220 bars you'll make superheated steam, which goes into a turbine to make EU, and that will output steam, so you can get 3x the amount of power than normal steam. It takes twice the amount of heat to make though.
How do you pipe the water though? AFAICS, IC2 has no pipes.
Quoted from "psusi"
Also is there any other use for the bio gas? Like can you burn it in a heater or generator?
You can burn it in a semifluid generator to make EU
I found that one in creative mode. I first set up a fluid heater to drive the fermenter and burned 4 buckets of bio gas in it and got 6 buckets out of the fermenter. Then I tried burning the 6 buckets of gas in the semifluid generator to power an electric heater, which seems to have the ability to heat much faster ( but one generator can't keep up if you install more than one coil ), but did not even get back the 6 buckets of fuel spent on heat. It feels like the fermeter just takes too much heat. If it were cut in half then you could still end up with a net gain in fuel with biomass input using the electric heater.
Because that's all you really need. The only heat needing machine which can accept heat from more than one face is the steam generator, which can take hundreds of heat units to make steam.
Solid heat generators are the lowest tier of heat generator, you can get EU powered ones which are much better so will let the fermenter run faster for example.
That makes sense; the electric heater seems to upgrade with coils to produce more heat. What about the canning machine problem? Also do you have recipies for these new machines? I'd like to try making them in survival mode.
I also was trying to play with the steam generator but couldn't figure it out. It seems to want you to pipe water into it to boil into steam, but how do you do that, and what do you do with the steam you get?
Also is there any other use for the bio gas? Like can you burn it in a heater or generator?
You need to provide the fermenter heat on the copper coloured square side.
Ok, so I used a solid heater to provide heat once I got them facing the right direction ( why does it only accept heat from one face? ). It seems to take a lot of heat, and if it only accepts heat from one face, I guess you can't use multiple heaters to speed it up? But I did get some bio gas made. The problem is that the canning machine unloads it into its output tank rather than its input tank, and so it won't pump it into the jetpack.
To make biogas put your biofuel into a fermenter and provide the fermenter with heat.
How do you do that? Also what is the recipe to make the fermenter?
I had 624, just upgraded to 628 and now it accepts an empty cell on the right side, I guess to store the output in, but the conversion process won't take place; the biomass just sits there.
So how do you build and use the fermenter? I tried using one in creative mode and it looks like it wants some sort of fluid on the right before it will ferment the biomass, but it won't accept any of the fluid cells.
1. You fuel the jetpack using biogas in a canning machine. Biogas is made from biomass in a fermenter. Biomass is made from water + biochaff in a canning machine on fluid enrich mode. Biochaff is macerated plant material.
2. No, coal doesn't have a better form to burn (that I'm aware of). That gives me an idea for a suggestion...
3. There is no way to process the coal first, so no.
4. The biofuel cell was removed, and replaced with biomass and biogas cells
How do you make the fermenter? And more importantly, how do you learn this stuff? I thought I could figure it out from reading the git change logs on jenkins but they seem to be extremely vague.
There's your first reason why it doesn't work
It was removed about 100 experimental versions ago! Hydrated coal dust is only useful for single use batteries or smelting back into coal dust now.
So how do you fuel the jetpack, and does that mean there's no better way to fuel a generator than just tossing the coal straight in? No reason to process the coal first? Was the biofuel cell also removed?
The wiki says to make coalfuel cells, you have to make hydrated coal dust and put it in the compressor, but the compressor won't take it. I have tried several other methods, like enriching water in the canning machine with the coal dust, but none seem to work. Is this broken, or can I just not find the new recipe?
If you use a small amount of energy from your batbox, your generator will start up, recharge it, and then waste the remainder of its fuel cycle. It would be nice if you could connect a redstone signal from the batbox to the generator to inhibit its startup until the batbox is low/empty.
It looks like the batbox has a nice ui to configure its redstone behavior. It would be nice if rather than outputting a full on signal when empty/full, it could output a signal whose strength was proportional to the eu contained in the batbox.
