Best yellowrite 5*5 reactor

[Kotja]

What is best setting of 5*5 reactor?

Internal layout (I have 4 rod collumns + water) and control rod setting?

 

[crusaderkvw]

before i begin i just want to say i am no expert at all and i'm just suggesting stuf here(still i do hope i can help you with that)

5x5 internal space or total space?

in case of total space that would give you a 3x3 area to work with inside. wich case i would say you should make an X form inside with rods(5 rod collums total) and then fill up the remaining space wth coolant(if needed??). should be pretty effective in my opinion. needed: 5 control rods. 5 fuel rod collums. 1 power tap. 1 interface(the computer thingy). and 2 input/output?? maybe 1 input is enough tho.

[rogueclon946]

From what I've read, if you can get the temp stable at around 950 without using control rods, that's usually the option that outputs the most power. Also apparently gelid cryotheum, liquid ender, and diamond blocks make good coolants.

[Curunir]

So you mean your 7x7 reactor with 5x5 interior looks like this?

 

W = water

C = fuel column

(schematic viewed from topside)

 

WWWWW

WCWCW

WWWWW

WCWCW

WWWWW

 

 

You could try a sparse grid for the columns, like so:

 

CWWWC

WWCWW

WWWWW

CWWWC

WWCWW

 

The columns will only heat the blocks touching their four sides directly, iirc. That way, you can cram six columns into 5x5, and unlike the first setup, you will be using your cooling blocks more efficiently. It is just a theory that I still need to test, though. It might be necessary to lower the control rods on the two corner columns a little, as those have only two sides cooled (or expand your setup to 5x6). All the others have three sides cooled, and the middle one even has all four. Note that no two rods have to share their cooling blocks.

 

P.S.: While running around ~950°C will output the most power, running moderated around ~200°C will output the most power per fuel unit, i.e. run most efficiently.

 

P.P.S.: Colour-coded the schematic to clarify.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Curunir

[Kotja]

I have 5*5*8 (external) 5 rods gelite cryotheum and rednet setting that turn on and off acording to power buffer (10% and 90%) and signaling that looks like power status in cell phone. (CNST = amount in percent)

[Curunir]

I built myself two test reactors to see if my idea about a sparse grid improving cooling is correct. Turns out it is, but there is another factor that plays into the overall efficiency equation: Core Irradiation.

 

My sparse-grid reactor runs relatively cool on just water, but keeps at 100% Core Irradiation while doing so. The other reactor runs a shifted symmetric grid, where several coolant blocks are heated by two columns (the thing that the sparse grid completely avoids). Turns out that this setup runs significantly hotter, but achieves a Core Irradiation level of nearly 400%. And since Irradiation reduces fuel usage, the less cooling-efficient setup is actually far more fuel-efficient. I noted the numbers in my chart, together with the layout. Here is the file:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19893620/misc/BigReactorsLayouts.ods

 

This probably means that efficient cooling layouts are not worth bothering. Better coolants on the other hand might be a good idea. A recent patch has improved the usefulness of Gelid Cryotheum as a coolant, so maybe that is worth looking into. My next experiment will be about coolants, it seems.

 

P.S.: If you are primarily running the reactor to produce Cyanide, you probably want to run the less fuel-efficient setup. It just runs through the yellorium stacks much faster, so Cyanide will also be produced faster.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Curunir

[BlasterMaster555]

Out of curiosity, I made a big reactor full of Yellowrium in Creative to see what happens when you redline the temps. Nothing happens, apparently, but you do get loads of power this way. Over 5k/t with a 3x3.

 

It would be nice to see a IC2 Reactor-like super explosion depending on how big the reactor is.

[Curunir]

According to the developer's roadmap, BigReactors will get a meltdown "feature" at some point. But given the degree of control that you get, it should probably not happen randomly if you keep a sane setup.

 

I reconfigured my test reactor with 14 fuel rods in a more tightly packed pattern to get Irradiation levels up, which works. Switched to Gelid Cryotheum cooling at the same time, and tinkered a bit with the control rods. I found that this setup maxes out fuel efficiency somewhere between 800 and 900°C, at which point a single yellorium ingot will yield over 97 million RF spread over approximately 22700 ticks (11300RF/t). So a single (!) ingot will fill almost two complete resonant energy cells. I don't even want to calculate how much coal you'd have to burn for that... >_<

That result was with control rods at 70% btw, so my reactor is probably quite a bit larger than necessary. At 50% rods and somewhat lower efficiency, it already outputs 17200 RF/t and can nearly saturate two separate power taps with resonant energy cells all cranked up. Single link limit is 10000 RF/t for both the cells and the redstone conduits.

 

So, Gelid Cryotheum is recommended. I will do a comparison with other common coolants, but in a smaller reactor. Emptying that monster is quite a chore.

[joshuad156]

I really like the updates to Big Reactors, and the Turbines are REALLY COOL!  Can't wait for all the explosions to be built into this mod.  It's going to ROCK.  This discussion got me playing with the reactors and turbines to come up with some good setups. 

 

Here is what I learned:

 

• I'm starting with using Resonant Ender for cooling.  These are easy to farm with MFR grinders, and you only need a few carefully placed blocks to flow over your full setup.
• target temps are about 950 C.  This seems like where power generation falls off, and future danger of meltdowns begins to become dangerous.
• Stacking cores increases efficiency, at the cost of extra heat.
• Cooling more sides of a core keeps temps down, which produces more RF per core, at the cost of efficiency.
• A balance must be struck between stacking for efficiency and keep them cool to increase power output.

 

Anything smaller than a 6x6x4 yielded unacceptable efficiency/power outage, IMO.

 

So far my favorite setup is a 6x6x4 reactor.  Place the 8 cores in the middle (2x2x2), surrounded by liquid ender.  Here are the yields:

 

6x6x4  with 2x2x2 core:  (8 total)   pic

Rods 10%.  Temp 990 C.  3.41 KiRF/t.  392% Fuel Reactivity.  .051 mB/t (~35 hours/stack)

 

7x7x4 with cores in 2 rows of 3, stacked 2 high.  (12 total)   pic

Rods 10%.  Temp 980 C.  4.97 KiRF/t.  419% Fuel Reactivity.  .066 mB/t (~27 hours/stack)

Rods 30%.  Temp 810 C.  4.10 KiRF/t   413% Fuel Reactivity.  .051 mB/t  (~35 hours/stack)

 

This one a variation I made based off Curunir's suggestion: 

9x9x5 with cores in 3 rows of 5 stacked 4 high  (60 cores)   pic

Rods 70%.  Temp 950 C.   11.4 KiRF/t   453%  Fuel Reactivity.  .111 mB/t (~16 hours/stack)

Rods 90%.  Temp 353 C.   4.10 KiRF/t   410%  Fuel Reactivity.  .041 mB/t (~43 hours/stack)

 

There were slight variations when I ran the same test again.  However, hopefully this helps you decide how to build your reactor efficiently to produce the power you need.  As you can see, bigger builds = better efficiency at the same power output, and have the capacity to increase power output during higher demands.

 

 

 

 

[jakalth]

Figured out a decent setup for a high efficiency Big Reactor.  It's a 5x5x7 reactor using 5 yellorite fuel rods and gelid cryothium for coolent.  The reactor it's self isn't high output by it's self.  The reactor it's self is setup with the 5 fuel rods in the center in a + configuration.  Each fuel rod has a control rod on top, with the 4 outer rods set to 80% and the center rod set to 60%.  The reactor runs at only about 260 K, and outputs 1690mb steam per tick on average.  But it runs at 410% radiation and has a fuel burn rate of 0.034.  So it burns through yellorite very slowly.  I have it fed using a transfer node(fluid) with upgrades in it to allow it to transfer 2,000mb/tick from an infinite water source.  The steam is output by connecting a tesseract directly to an output coolant port.

 

I have two 40 blade "Big Reactor" turbines setup near it that are fed steam by tesseracts hooked directly too their input ports.  Each turbine turns two rings made of Enderium Blocks.  Each turbine is set to use 845mb/tick of steam and runs just at the minimum efficiency band near 1800rpm.  and output a little over 9900RF/tick, each.  It's a pretty solid setup that isn't quite as powerful as an atomic science fission reactor, but is a lot easier to run and is a bit more efficient.

 

I noticed that my turbines are not overly efficient.  They could probably do the same amount of work with only 36 blades due to the turbine only using 845mb/tick.  36 turbines should be able to handle 900mb/tick without any loss.

Edited March 23, 2014 by jakalth

[TheFired3mon]

Figured out a decent setup for a high efficiency Big Reactor.  It's a 5x5x7 reactor using 5 yellorite fuel rods and gelid cryothium for coolent.  The reactor it's self isn't high output by it's self.  The reactor it's self is setup with the 5 fuel rods in the center in a + configuration.  Each fuel rod has a control rod on top, with the 4 outer rods set to 80% and the center rod set to 60%.  The reactor runs at only about 260 K, and outputs 1690mb steam per tick on average.  But it runs at 410% radiation and has a fuel burn rate of 0.034.  So it burns through yellorite very slowly.  I have it fed using a transfer node(fluid) with upgrades in it to allow it to transfer 2,000mb/tick from an infinite water source.  The steam is output by connecting a tesseract directly to an output coolant port.

 

I have two 40 blade "Big Reactor" turbines setup near it that are fed steam by tesseracts hooked directly too their input ports.  Each turbine turns two rings made of Enderium Blocks.  Each turbine is set to use 845mb/tick of steam and runs just at the minimum efficiency band near 1800rpm.  and output a little over 9900RF/tick, each.  It's a pretty solid setup that isn't quite as powerful as an atomic science fission reactor, but is a lot easier to run and is a bit more efficient.

 

I noticed that my turbines are not overly efficient.  They could probably do the same amount of work with only 36 blades due to the turbine only using 845mb/tick.  36 turbines should be able to handle 900mb/tick without any loss.

 

Huh, that actually answers a bit of what I was going to ask. I was over-complicating my setup by trying all kinds of combinations using the transfer nodes from Extra Utilties, didn't think of a solution as simple as the tesseract connected directly to the output. Though, I do have a few more. What do the % values on the control rods actually do? I was also wondering if you could give tips for my smaller reactor/turbine combo. The highest I've been able to get my turbine to is ~1580 RPM. If you have the time of course. Pictures of both are at http://imgur.com/a/JmaDE . My reactor is cooled by Resonant Ender and at the back of the reactor not shown in the picture is another coolant port with a tesseract pumping out steam as an attempt to boost the RPM. On the turbine, I originally only used one tesseract but again I added a second in an attempt to boost the RPM. At this point, I'm stumped. Any help would be appreciated

EDIT: Just in case this comes up, my reactor is generating excess Steam, therefore wasting some. I was planning on getting multiple turbines going to 1800 RPM, but since I can't even get one up, it seems to be out of the picture for now.

Edited March 23, 2014 by TheFired3mon

[Curunir]

You mean that is a 5x5x7 reactor frame with 3x3x5 interior, jakalth? Or a 5x5x7 interior?

 

I am running 5x5x8 interior setup now, also with Gelid Cryotheum, only my five columns are arranged in an X shape, not a +. I reproduced your setting with 80% on the four outer and 60% on the inner rod, and the efficiency seems a little lower. But I cannot get a clean consumption reading, because the number oscillates between the 80% and 60% values.

Overall, this setup peaks in efficiency around 60-70% control rod setting (I usually set them all to the same level), At 60%, it will run ~812°C, with ~10100 RF/t output and 0.108 mB/t consumption.

 

I will build myself an identical five-column test reactor using the + shape for columns and see if that improves performance.

 

P.S.: As for the question about the Control Rods: They are moderators, i.e. they slow down the reaction. This leads to less energy produced, less heat generated and usually also less fuel consumed. It is a means of throttling a setup to fine-tune its efficiency. Once meltdowns are possible, it will also be a means to keep the thing from blowing up. Note that 0% means "fully retracted", so the reaction runs at 100%, while 100% Control Rod means "fully extended", which should slow the reaction to a halt. The higher the number, the more throttling.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Curunir

[jakalth]

As Curunir said, the control rods only control how fast your fuel rods heat up.  They act as a governor that keeps the rods from heating up faster then the coolant can pull the heat away from them.  The % on them is roughly how much the heat is being suppressed.  The higher the % on the control rods, the cooler your fuel rods will run, and the less fuel they will use up in a given time.  The difference in fuel usage will be small though since fuel usage is controlled more by how irradiated the rods are then by how hot they are running.  But, running the rods cooler does increase irradiation levels, but at the cost of total power/steam output.

 

Another thing that effects heat is how much steam in buffered in your reactor.  The more steam backed up in the reactor, the hotter the reactor will run.  As well as, if your coolant tank, in the interface, is empty, your reactor will heat up quickly.  so inputting enough water/coolant to keep this tank mostly full will also keep your reactor running cooler.

 

TheFired3mon:

 

Are you pumping out the condensed fluid building up in your turbine?  If not, you should be.  Otherwise the condensed fluid will act like a break, keeping your turbine from speeding up.  And might just cause the turbine too shut down entirely.  You'll need a separate fluid port for removing the condensed fluids from your turbine.  In your case, that's just water, so you can just have it dump into a void fluid pipe.

 

You should only need the one tesseract inputting into your turbine.  The tesseract its self can transfer huge amounts of steam without any trouble, but, will only transfer the amount being used.  My guess is your turbine has its internal steam limit set too low to speed up to full speed.  In the turbines controler interface, there are two blue arrows and a steam input amount next too them.  Your turbine might not have enough internal steam flow too speed up too 1800 rpm right now.  Turning up steam usage in the interface should allow it to speed up quicker.  Once it's nearly at 1800, you'll want to drop steam flow down to an amount that will stabilize your turbine's speed.  With only having the 8 blades in your turbine, the most it will be able to use efficiently is 200mb/tick...

 

Your second option isn't as nice of one...  Your turbine might just have too much drag for the 8 blades to spin the turbine at 1800 rpm efficiently.  The turbines I have required 437mb/tick of steam to run at 1800 with a single ring of enderium blocks.  I haven't played with a smaller turbine so I don't know if the amount of steam needed will stay the same or not.  If it does, then your turbine actually needs 8-12 more blades, or 2-3 more blade sets, to spin at a high enough speed to fully power up your enderium coil and still be efficient.

 

The type of material used for the coil changes how much drag there is on the blades and how much total steam the turbine will need to run at a given speed.  If you were to replace the enderium blocks with say gold blocks, the turbine would output far less power, but would require far less steam to do so since gold blocks cause less drag.  Iron blocks would produce even less power and would also require less steam as well.  So your option 3 would be to try different metal blocks for the coil, instead of enderium blocks.  even using more then 1 coil might be doable.

 

Curunir:

 

The 5x5x7 is the external size.  3x3x5 is the internal size.  The reactor only has 4 colums of cryothium coolent, 1 in each corner.  with the 5 fuel rods taking up most of the space inside the reactor.

 

It's probably not the most efficient setup, size wise, but it seems to work quite well.  And I can always retract the control rods more and crank up its total output by quite a bit.  I just need to match the steam usage with how much steam the reactor can generate with it running hotter or it will overheat and loose efficiency.

Edited March 23, 2014 by jakalth

[jakalth]

Hmmm, when using steam from a big reactor, it seems the turbine has a lot more to say about power production then the reactor it's self.

 

further testing has found the correct solution for your issue TheFired3mon.  Your turbine needs to have at least 18 turbine blades to be able to spin the coil of enderium blocks at around 1800 rpm.  so option 2 is the answer.  if you can build a turbine with 18 blades instead of the 8 you have in your turbine, you'll be able to fully power the turbine too 1800+rpm and output over 5080RF/tick while using around 436mb/tick of steam.  otherwise you'll have to stick with other metals for the coil and/or run your turbine at 900 rpm instead.

 

I have found some interesting things with turbines.  the longer you make it, the less efficient it becomes.  And, you can stack the blades making your turbine much wider then just 5x5.  I've gone all the way up too 9x9 with 12 blades per rotor shaft.

 

HERE: is the original design I've been running off my reactor.  It has 9 sets of blades with a total of 36 blades, 4 blades per shaft.  these turn the shaft through 2 sets of enderim coils.  The turbine uses 845mb/tick of steam to produce just shy of 10,000RF/tick.

 

HERE: is a compact 7x7 design with only 1 coil of enderium.  It has 2 shafts with 8 blades each and 1 shaft with 4 blades for a total of 20 blades.  the turbine uses 436mb/tick of steam and produces over 5,080RF/tick.  it could have 2 less blades and still be able to spin the enderium coil at full power.

 

HERE: is a test turbine that is 9x9 in dimensions.  I tested setting the turbine vertically as well as making it 9x9.  both work just fine.  it has 1 shaft with 12 blades on it and 1 shaft with 8 blades for a total of 20 blades.  this turbine also uses 436mb/tick of steam and produces over 5,080RF/tick.  It also shows how versatile the big reactor turbines really are.

 

Now if only I knew as much about setting up the reactors themselves as I do about the turbines...

[TheFired3mon]

Jakalth:

 

Ahh, thank you. I knew tesseracts could transfer huge amounts but I wasn't sure if they changed it. Turns out the problem was that I needed an extra set of blades. I greatly appreciate the help.

 

EDIT: Huh, maybe I should mess with mine a bit more. I'm able to generate around 5100 power but I'm using 630 steam to do so. Thanks for the additional info.

Edited March 23, 2014 by TheFired3mon

[Curunir]

Interesting. I have yet to try turbines, as the plain reactor already produces much more than I can waste, but they sure look nice.

 

I duplicated my reactor, with the only difference being the five fuel columns being arranged in a plus shape instead of an X. The power curve is similar, but efficiency is a little higher from Rod90% to Rod40%. After that, i.e. at higher power levels, if falls below the X reactor a little, but not dramatically so.

Overall, the Plus Reactor is more efficient. At 80-60%, it actually burns a single yellorium ingot for over 100 million (!) RF. That is two Resonant Energy Cells, filled with just one ingot. It will output ~10000 RF/t around its optimal state at 60% and ~850°C. So I guess that is indeed the best 5x5 setup the topic asked for.

 

To clarify, what I call a Plus Reactor is this arrangement:

GGGGG

GGFGG

GFFFG

GGFGG

GGGGG

 

 

G = Gelid Cryotheum

F = Fuel Column

 

The reactor frame is 7x7x10, for a 5x5x8 interior.

I guess packing columns tightly has no downsides as long as your coolant is potent, and you will profit from the added heat and irradiation. So until somebody comes up with a vastly better idea, I will stay with this one.

[jakalth]

The reactor setup I'm using is:

 

GFG

FFF

GFG

 

G= gelid Cryotheum

F = Fuel Column

 

Running the outer control rods at 70% and the inner at 60% now.  higher temp, uses fuel faster, but outputs about 2100mb of steam a tick now.  that much steam gets me about 25,000RF/tick through 3 turbines. 

 

I tried making a single large turbine that could use 2,000mb of steam per tick.  but it turned out too be lackluster and could not reach optimum RPM.  Even with that, it was able to churn out over 21,000RF/tick.  But it's max RPM never exceeded 1680RPM...  Too slow to be truly efficient.  it's outside dimensions were 9x9x14 blocks.  It had 7 sets of 12 turbine blades and spun 5 enderium power coils.  the thing was truely massive in scale.  But... it was too big...  There is no way to feed a turbine more then 2000mb/tick of steam, and it really needed at least 2050mb/tick to reach optimum speed...

 

HERE: is a picture of my whole test setup after my old test world crashed...  reactor in front, giant turbine in rear right.  the rear left turbines are 9x9 with 3 sets of turbine blades and 2 enderium coils each.  the front left one is a 7x7 with 2 sets of 8 and 1 set of 4 turbine blades spinning a single enderium coil.

 

My giant 9x9x14 turbine caused my old world to get corrupted due to having 3 fluid ports for exhaust fluids.  That is a bad thing apparently...

Edited March 23, 2014 by jakalth

[jakalth]

More useful information.  the number of blades needed for a single power coil of a given metal is as follows.  Note: this is when your running the turbine between 1700 and 1800 RPM.

 

Iron: requires 5-6 blades per coil.  ~125 - 150mb steam

Gold: requires 11-12 blades per coil. ~275 - 300mb steam

Enderium: requires 17-18 blades per coil. ~425 - 450mb steam

 

The amount of steam required to run the turbine at this speed varies quite a bit.  but the rule of thumb seems to be, multiply the number of turbine blades needed for that speed(the smaller number) by 25.  then add about 5% and that is a good number to start with for finding the 1700-1800 rpm sweet spot of your turbine.

 

it is also better to have more blades then is needed then to have less.  If you have less then the amount needed, you'll have to push a lot more steam through your turbine to reach the same speed making your turbine far less efficient.  If you have more, then the only difference is it cost slightly more to make it, your turbine will still remain efficient.

Edited March 24, 2014 by jakalth

[Thrombo]

Can materials other than water be used as the pumped-in coolant? Has anybody experimented with that? I would be curious if GC pumped into the coolant ports in the reactor 'knew' to recondense to steam after egressing the turbine.

[jakalth]

Hmmm....  I'll have to give that a try Thrombo.  Not sure how well it'll work, or how much gelid will be needed.  Might require more then is pheasable to make it work though.  but I'll give it a try anyways.

 

Edit: nope. only works with water.  no other fluid that I tried was accepted by the reactor as coolant.  I tried gelid cryothiam, resonant ender, and destabilized redstone.

Edited March 24, 2014 by jakalth

[Sulhythal]

since this seems to be -the- thread for Big Reactor testing at the moment, I'm wondering if anyone has any information about a few things.  Is a reactor+turbine that much better than just a passively cooled reactor by itself?  is Gelid Cryotheum better than Resonant Ender as a coolant?  I was under the impression that Resonant Ender was the better one and I've been using it in my passively cooled reactor builds. 

[jakalth]

Gelid Cryotheum is the best coolant in 1.2.8d.  You get a small improvement over resonant ender.  Doesn't seem like much, and in a small reactor it really isn't and may not be worth the extra cost.  But in a large reactor, the difference can be quite noticeable, and well worth the time it takes to gather enough cryotheum.

 

As for steam + turbine vs passive reactor.  my test reactor build, using just passive, outputs about 3,810RF/tick.  the same reactor, set to output steam into turbines, allows the turbines to output a total of just shy of 25,000RF/tick.  That is over 7 times more power from the turbine setup then from the reactor its self.  Of course, the turbines are all using enderium blocks for their power coils, which are the highest output blocks you can use in a turbine.  Using gold blocks for the power coils gives you about 2 - 3 times the power of your reactor.  And using iron blocks for the coils gives you about the same power as the reactor its self can output.

[Curunir]

I think Big Reactors 0.3 had the change that elevated Cryotheum to "slightly better than Resonant Ender" level. This was only recently, and before that, Resonant Ender was the liquid to go.

With an EE3 setup, getting Ender Pearls is trivial (4x iron ingot with Minium Stone), so it is easier to obtain than Cryotheum. But with the infused snowballs recipe, the latter takes just large amounts of Redstone and Niter. Which also becomes trivial at some point, just a little more complicated to set up.

[HeatHunter]

or you just use mystcraft to create oceans of any liquid ^^

 

(yes, it's like cheating, but who cares )

[Curunir]

I have not even had a look at Mystcraft, but from what I hear, it is not really an alternative to anything. Tekkit is about building machines and factories, not wizarding other dimensions. EE is skirting the edge, but Mystcraft is clearly miles over it.