Best Yellorium reactor design

[TOSU1]

I just started playing around with the Big Reactors mod. I wanted to know what the best and most efficient design for a reactor is.

[jakalth]

Most efficient = big.

 

otherwise, I could recommend a small build for starters.  5x5x3 dimensions.  can start out with water as the internal coolant.  with water it produces around 400RF/tick while using 0.024mb/tick of fuel(that's about 1 bar every 30 minutes) @ a little over 900C.  as soon as you have enough resources, switch the water too resonant ender.  Ups the output too around 700RF/tick and drops it's fuel usage down too 0.016mb/tick(that's about 1 bar every 50 minutes) with it's control rods set at 60%.  Not a high output reactor, but enough to run some equipment without taking forever to get setup.  Note: this compact design does not work as well with gelid cryothium, but it only looses about 10RF/tick, so if that's actually easier for you to make, use it.

 

Once you have enough resources to make the conversion.  Build yourself a small 18-20 blade turbine with either a single enderium block ring(8 blocks) for power, or two gold block rings(16 blocks).  This will give you about a 4-6 times increase in power once you switch your reactor to steam generation.  Use the enderium blocks for power, in your turbine, as soon as you can, they will give you by far the most power output.  The enderium ring setup will output 5,101RF/tick @ 439mb/tick of steam.  The twin gold ring setup, will output around half as much.

 

As for the reactor, you'll need to make 18 aqueous accumulators for piping in water, or a length of extra utilities pipe and a fluid node with 16 of both speed and mine upgrades installed.  The aqueous accumulators will need 4 coolant ports added too the reactor to pipe the water in, using fluiducts.  and you'll want two more coolant ports added to the reactor to output steam to your turbine, also using fluiducts.  With the control rods set to 60%, your reactor should be able to output about 440mb/tick of steam consistantly.  It's output will vary quite a bit, as it uses fuel, due to it's small size.

 

This is the layout I recommend for your reactor:

 

X = reactor casing

C = coolant

F = fuel rod

P = power port

N = controler

A = access port for fuel and waste.

H = control rod

 

first layer:

 

XXXXX

XXXXX

XXXXX

XXXXX

XXXXX

 

second layer:

 

XXXXX

XCFCX

AFFFA

XCFCX

XXPNX

 

third layer:

 

XXXXX

XXHXX

XHHHX

XXHXX

XXXXX

 

When you convert it to steam generation, you place two liquid ports on the back and two on each side.  Leaving the rest the same.  Just a quick swap out from casing too coolant port.

 

You can also increase the outside diameter of the reactor too 7x7x3, filling in the rest of the space with coolant. This will give you about a 15-20% boost in output.  Note: with this alteration, gelid cryothium becomes the best coolant for the design.  Using gelid cryothium, you can tweek the rods to about 50% and still only use 0.016mb/tick, but it will output nearly 1,100RF/tick.  With this change you can also run it full hot, with the coolant rods all set too 0%, the reactor will double it's output for the cost of barely over double the fuel burn.  So, basicly the same efficiency.

 

The most important thing too remember here.  There really is no single "best design".  Each person will need their reactor to do something a little different, either more efficient, or higher power.  So what one person thinks is the best design, will not be true for the next.  Who knows, you may not even like the design I suggested here.  Or might have enough resources to go bigger right away. 

Edited April 5, 2014 by jakalth

[Curunir]

Given enough materials, you can of course build it higher than just one layer of fuel, which will increase output and efficiency from the start. Apart from that, what jakalth said.

[m0nk]

I found this document some time ago. Seems the RF/T has increased at all designs. Making around 10000-11000 RF/T with the 7x7x7 + diamond blocks between the fuel rods + water as cooling.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An54qOfSiXfJdEcyaHAxWURaZTR2eEpEWEFaU0xydXc#gid=0

Edited April 7, 2014 by m0nk

[Curunir]

That looks severely outdated, most likely for 0.2 or even earlier. Cryotheum is the best coolant now, closely followed by Resonant Ender. Diamond blocks are also good, but usually not worth it unless you have a surplus of them to fill your reactor with.

[jakalth]

Cryotheum is the best coolant now, closely followed by Resonant Ender.

Not 100% true.  True in most cases though.  the small design I stated above had a loss of power and efficiency while using cryotheum.  The cryotheum worked a little tool well and prevented the reactor from heating up enough to be effective.  But pretty much any reactor larger then the one I stated will benefit by having gelid cryotheum used as the coolant.

 

That spreadsheet is no longer valid, sadly.  From tests I have run, the output and temp readings do not match up at all with what is stated in the tests.  Seems to be from an older version of big reactors.

Edited April 7, 2014 by jakalth

[Curunir]

Right, that was assuming a sufficiently large setup. But even the base Plus-shape reactor benefits from Cryo if you make the columns at least three or four blocks high and retract the Control Rods far enough.

I am on a 7x7x8 frame / 5x5x6 interior now with a 3x3 middle block of fuel columns and a mantle of Cryo. Gives me nearly 10k RF/t at 70%, which is perfect for my base.

[Tuxmelv]

Right, that was assuming a sufficiently large setup. But even the base Plus-shape reactor benefits from Cryo if you make the columns at least three or four blocks high and retract the Control Rods far enough.

I am on a 7x7x8 frame / 5x5x6 interior now with a 3x3 middle block of fuel columns and a mantle of Cryo. Gives me nearly 10k RF/t at 70%, which is perfect for my base.

 

I am running the same only with a hollow ring of fuel rods. Running 4 control rods at 80% and 4 at 90%. This is running an 80 blade turbine at max steam and getting 22k RF/t using 36 Enderium blocks. Currently building a 2nd one, maybe up to 4 just off this design. Using Cryo as coolent.

[jakalth]

It's only on the very small scale where gelid cryothium doesn't help much, the bigger the reactor, the better it works.

 

btw: it's entirely possible to build a 16x16x16 reactor.  And it is possible to push said reactor to over 80K RF/tick without red lining the temp, barely...  90% control rod setting.  And in this monster, anything less then gelid cryotheum would lead too instant meltdown.

[Curunir]

In the current build, it would just lead to gross inefficiency. Meltdown is on the roadmap for Big Reactors, but not implemented yet.

It sure is nice that you can build a "city power plant" sized reactor, but it only makes sense if you have an actual city to power.

 

P.S.: Big Reactors roadmap

Edited April 8, 2014 by Curunir

[Gorian]

doesn't mean it's not useful. I am actually working on building a city, and after having rows of dynamos (magmatic and compression), MFR biofuel generators, and a medium 7x7x7 yellorium reactor, we are still needing more power (setup an additional AS Fusion Reactor last night). So, we are actually using power at that scale, meaning it makes sense to allow for builds that big

[Curunir]

7x7x7 is not actually big as in "Big" Reactors. It says here that in the default config, they can be up to 48x32x32. Although it might be tricky to set up a power grid for that.

 

Btw, does anybody know a light source in Tekkit that actually uses energy? The questions sounds strange, but just about anything I used so far, including my favourite floodlights, just run on Glowstone or some form of Redstone current. I remember using (IC?) Luminator panels in Tekkit Classic, but I have never seen another powered light since that.

It would make sense to use at least part of that power to light up streets and buildings, instead of ignoring it and scraping tons of Glowstone from the Nether for that purpose.

[jakalth]

Not sure if what is stated in that wiki page is correct.  I've tested turbines, the biggest they can get is 16x16.  any bigger then that and they fail to assemble.  The wiki page says 32 though...

 

EDIT: ok, double checked the config for tekkit, turbines are set to 16 max, while reactors can be 32 wide, by 48 tall.  so yeah, 32x32x48 should be possible.

Edited April 8, 2014 by jakalth

[Gorian]

yeah, we are using floodlights and redstone p2p tunnels for the street lights atm

[jakalth]

hmmm, so even a 7x7 reactor, when brought up to a height of only 32 outputs quite a sizable amount of power. O_o  And it's efficiency continues to climb as you make it taller.  But you do need to up it's control rod settings as you go up in height, until you reach about 12, from that point too 32 tall, it no longer needs any changes done it the control rods.  Interesting.

 

Using just the + shape layout of fuel rods.  And the 7x7 outside dimension, vs the 5x5 design I stated in the second post.  Temp around 900.

 

7x7x3 = about 72 RF/0.001mb fuel or 72,000,000RF per ingot (control rods = 0%)

7x7x9 = about 102 RF/0.001mb fuel or 102,000,000RF per ingot (control, rods = 50%)

7x7x32 = about 127 RF/0.001mb fuel or 127,000,000RF per ingot (control rods = 60%)

 

The 5x5x3 reactor design does not scale up well past 9 tall.  It gets too hot to be efficient/effective.

 

edit: I missed a few zero's in the figures...  sorry...

Edited April 10, 2014 by jakalth

[TOSU1]

What outputs more power, the Big Reactors turbine or pumping steam into a bunch of steam dynamo's?

[jakalth]

Turbine.  Definately the turbine. Steam dynamo conversion ratio is 2RF/1mb steam.  A big reactors turbine goes from 3.28RF/1mb steam with Iron all the way up to 11.68RF/1mb steam for Enderium blocks.

[randomchance]

jakalth, your post made me finally launch in and start a bigreactor on the server I am on.  I had enough resources from the nightly quarries, so jumped straight to 7x7x5 OD.  I have run across a few questions and problems.

 

1. Does reactor glass/vents/controllers have the same heat dissipation as reactor wall?  I try and locate the controller/ports as far away from the fuel as possible.

2. Cryo is still a bit of a limit.  At the moment I have used 4 buckets of liquid ender tipped in at the top of each corner of the star.  Does flowing ender count as cooling or only the source block?

3. Eventually I will want to go to a turbine system.  The idea of bonding the reactor output straight to the turbine input has merit, but I am honestly unsure on how to start with a turbine or if this is a good beginner step.  It is something that is future works at this point as I don't have huge loads to supply at this stage.  Once I get 2 or 3 AE bridges going I can see this changing.

 

Also not sure what you mean by 72RF/0.001mb.  That is a rate per mB not a generation rate in that configuration correct?  Somewhere around 10k RF/t I'm guessing.

[jakalth]

1: The reactor doesn't seem to care if you use glass of metal casing for the sides of the reactor, as long as the corners and pillars are made of metal casing.  Once it combines, it all acts as a single block at that point.  Only fuel rod placement and coolant will have a noticable effect on how the reactor runs.  The controler and ports are treated the same as metal casing when it calculated power and heat.

 

2: flowing coolant works exactly the same as stationary coolant.  As long as all the coolant areas are filled, it treats it all as source blocks.

 

3: Bonding the two together can be done at a later date.  I've found that if you build the turbine later, you can open an access hole and step inside the turbine.  Once inside, if you close the hole, letting the turbine combine around you, you can adjust the input/output on the turbine from inside it.  Then just knock a hole to get out and fill it in again.  the settings will stay the same.  Otherwise, using tesseracts to move the steam and water back and forth between the reactor and turbine works just fine.  But it requires 4 tesseracts to do this.  Though if you have the materials to make them, this is a good option since it allows you to upgrade your reactor and add more turbines using the same tesseract channels.

 

72RF/0.001mb is just how much power you get per tiny amount of fuel your reactor converts to waste.  The reactor measures fuel use in fractions of a mili-bucket(mb).  1,000mb is how much you get from a single yellorium ingot.  So a figure of 72RF/0.001mb is the same as saying your reactor produces 72,000,000 RF from each ingot of yellorium

Edited April 10, 2014 by jakalth

[randomchance]

Excellent.  Total glass case it is!

 

Going to have to sort out my coolant then.  The 4 blocks leave air gaps in the corners that I will have to deal with.  I assume the best strategy with ender is to place a complete layer across the top of the reactor?  Cryo would require a source block in every space?

 

I have the resources for tesseracts, so that is probably the easiest way to join them together.  I will have to do more research on how to actually assemble a turbine.  Do you then take the coolant out of the reactor and use the external cooling only?

 

My power system is currently not set up to handle more than a redstone energy conduit worth of power 2k RF/t, so I would most likely cycle this on and off by monitoring an ender cell.  Once I get higher loads, I can look at running it on a more permanent basis.  Does the reactor/turbine have a limit to its output or is it infinite RF/t?

[fulvus]

When I switched my cryo filled reactor over I just threw a pump up top to empty it into a few enderium tanks.

Glad I did, i set up two turbines off the one reactor: one at 1800rpm & the other at 900. Went from ~9k RF to 15k and can probably go higher... now I can run my laser drills and tend to my prison camp, I mean village

I put two outputs on each turbine. Only one feeds my base then lasers, the others go directly to lasers via tesseracts.

Edited April 10, 2014 by fulvus

[Gorian]

i've seen Steam Dynamos and Big Reactor Turbines listed here. Does anyone have numbers to compare Thermal Expansion Steam Dynamos, Minefactory Reloaded Steam Turbines, Atomic Science Electric Turbines, and Big Reactor Turbines?

[jakalth]

Steam Dynamo: 40mb/tick of steam 80RF/tick of power  or 2RF per 1mb of steam

 

Big Reactor Turbine: 3.28 - 11.68RF per 1mb of steam

 

Atomic Science Turbine: 3995RF for 1800mb steam(give or take a few 100)... or 2 - 2.2 RF per 1mb steam

 

Mine Factory Reloaded Turbine:  40mb/tick of steam 80RF/tick of power or 2RF per 1mb of steam

 

Big reactor turbines have the highest steam to power conversion of any steam device available in tekkit.  Most, not all, other steam power devices have the same formula 2RF per 1mb steam.  Even those in mods that are not in tekkit, like railcraft.

 

In theory, it should be completely possible to run a big reactors turbine from an atomic science plasma generator(aka: fusion reactor).  Would be an interesting monster to see.

 

@randomchance

 

Leave the coolant inside and just add coolant ports too the reactor when you start using turbines.  The internal coolant healps greatly with efficiency and heat transfer.  Otherwise the steam generation will be severely hampered.

Edited April 10, 2014 by jakalth

[Gorian]

Sweet, thanks!

 

yeah, that's what I'm doing actually, running an Atomic Science fusion reactor with Big Reactor turbines

[jakalth]

Gorian, how did you stabilize the steam flow from your fusion reactor?  just running the turbine so it uses slightly less steam then the reactor can produce?  Or using a buffer to sabilize it?