New Big Reactors

[brilliantjoe]

I've been experimenting with the new version of Big Reactors, and I'm wondering if anyone has played around much with the active cooling? 

 

Right now I can't seem to get active cooling working with anything but water. Is this normal? I also can't seem to supply enough water to the reactor to keep it from going nuts in temperature.

 

Also, do you absolutely have to drain water from the turbines to keep them running? 

[rogueclon946]

There is likely no point in not draining water from the turbines since they run on heated liquids.

[jakalth]

no, you don't have to drain water from the turbines to keep them running, but they do seem to run a little slower if there is water in them.

 

Biggest problem with active cooling(steam production) is getting enough water into the reactor to keep up with steam production.  The solution I saw used in a video, that seems to work quite nice, is to use fluid transfer nodes and transfer pipe from extra utilities.  Just add both mining and speed upgrades to the node to increase its transfer rate and it will easily be able to keep up with the reactor's demands.  If the water stored internally, in the controller's interface, runs out, your reactor will jump in temperature.

 

The second biggest problem is removing the steam quick enough to pull the heat out of the reactor.  This is either done using, once again, fluid transfer nodes with upgrades, or hooking a tesseract strait to your output coolant port.  tesseracts can move vast amounts of fluids, like steam, but only if they are hooked directly to a device that can output automatically.  You'll then need something that can use the amount of steam your reactor is producing.  If the steam gets backed up, your reactor rises quickly in temperature.

 

The third thing is tweeking the settings on the control rods above your fuel rods until the temp comes into balance.

[SemiPr0]

You can actually use the steam your reactor is creating by....creating a turbine reactor to harness the steam power. I've been building them in creative to get my head around them and so far Big Reactors is really coming along as a very nice long term power solution as long as you set everything up correctly and feed a main reactor to a blutonium, then push steam from both of those to a turbine reactor using gold blocks for the conductance coil (there may be better blocks for it....AE crystal blocks might be even better but not sure if its supported yet but the main idea here is conductivity and when it comes to conductivity you go to crystal silicon or gold as an electrical engineering standard).

 

Once you get an array of these running, the power potentials are largely through the roof. The new Turbine reactors are actually pretty interesting multiblock experiments and require some fine tuning to keep them performing optimally.

 

Overall I've been a fan of Big Reactors for awhile and it just seems to be getting better as it matures.

[brilliantjoe]

So far I have a 7x7x7 reactor with 5 fuel columns running two turbine setups. The reactor has all of the rods almost fully inserted and it's producing more steam than the two turbines need. One turbine (my first attempt) is running off 600 mB/tick of steam and is producing 3500 rf/tick. This turbine has 24 blades and two enderium block rings. The 2nd one is producing 10500 rf/tick on 1000 mb/tick of steam. This turbine has 40 blades and 4 enderium rings. I'm going to build a few more of these and see how many I can run off the single reactor.

[jakalth]

brilliantjoe, try the following: single turbine with 20 turbine blades and a single ring of enderium blocks.  Feed it 439mb/tick of steam.  if it works the same for you as it does for me, you should eventually get 5101RF/tick from the turbine with it spinning just over 1800RPM.  It should self stabolize after about 15 minutes of running.  For two enderium block rings, try using 36 blades and feeding it only 846mb/tick of steam.  This should get you about double what you got from the single ring setup.  if not, slowly boost it's steam use up too 850mb/tick.  more then that and it starts too lose efficiency.

 

Depending on how you have the fuel rods setup in your reactor, it should be able to power 2 of the twin ring turbines I mentioned, AND 1 of the single ring setups.  All 3 of them at once.  You might be able to replace the single ring turbine with a third double ring if your willing to run your reactor hotter and burn through more yellorium.

[brilliantjoe]

I just built a 7x7x16 turbine, running on 1800 mb/tick steam with 4 rings of enderium. It's producing almost 21k rf/tick. That gives me a 100% increase in power generation at a 80% increase in steam usage and 50% increase in size. Going to try a 9x9x16 next. By the way, 16 is the longest you can make a turbine.

[jakalth]

do note that 2000mb/tick is the most steam you can use in a turbine.  there is no way to increase this amount limit.  So build accordingly.

 

also, you can go up to 13x13 for the diameter of your turbine.  possibly larger, haven't tried yet.  Still get the same power efficiency no matter how large in diameter you go.

[brilliantjoe]

I think the test is going to be getting 80 blades and as many enderium blocks until it starts throttling the rpm of the turbine too much. I've got a 9x9x16 spinning up right now with 5 rings of enderium, We'll see how that goes.

[d3athbysp0rk]

i have a reactor set up to a turbine that runs perfectly. i'm getting around 3,200 RF a tick from it i'll post some pictures in a few (it's has a gold ring) but you can use enderium blocks for a ring? i though it had to be a metal. and the size of the ring changes power output? i didn't think of this. 

Edited March 25, 2014 by d3athbysp0rk

[brilliantjoe]

It looks like 80 blades running on 1800 mb/tick of steam with 4 enderium rings is a sweet spot. Just shy of 21,000 rf/tick after it stabilized. I'm still playing around a bit with longer blades and more enderium blocks, but it takes a long time for these to spin up to full speed so it takes awhile to get a result.

[brilliantjoe]

i have a reactor set up to a turbine that runs perfectly. i'm getting around 3,200 RF a tick from it i'll post some pictures in a few (it's has a gold ring) but you can use enderium blocks for a ring? i though it had to be a metal. and the size of the ring changes power output? i didn't think of this. 

 

You can use any "metallic" block in the game. Each ring can only be 8 blocks immediately encircling the shaft, but you can have multiple rings.

[HeatHunter]

It looks like 80 blades running on 1800 mb/tick of steam with 4 enderium rings is a sweet spot. Just shy of 21,000 rf/tick after it stabilized. I'm still playing around a bit with longer blades and more enderium blocks, but it takes a long time for these to spin up to full speed so it takes awhile to get a result.

 

what do you use to connect this to your energy grid?

are you using multiple connections to get the energy out (as one redstone conduit can only transport 10k RF/t)

or do you use a tesseract directly?

[brilliantjoe]

I just slapped a tesseract onto the output port. 

[jakalth]

I just slapped a tesseract onto the output port. 

That's an elegantly simple way of transferring that much power.  The output tesseract would only need 3 outputs from it or 3 separate output tesseracts to connect this much power too your grid.

 

otherwise, 21,000RF/tick would require 3 power taps for redstone energy conduits, or many more if you use anything lesser, like hardened leadstone conduits(27 power taps).

 

of the different metals you can use for the coils...

 

iron is cheap, but not very effective.

 

gold is a bit more effective, produces roughly 2-3 times the power of iron.

 

electrum is far better then gold, cheaper to use then enderium, and outputs nearly 2 times the power of gold, or about 5 times more then iron.

 

enderium is hands down the best you can use in tekket for the coils.  expensive to use, but outputs roughly 7 times more power then iron and at least half again more power then electrum

Edited March 26, 2014 by jakalth