2 questions about steam turbines

[kilbiller]

Hi,
So i've been playing with railcraft boilers lately and found out that you can convert to EU with turbines but the rotor are not cheap and i wanted to know how long they last and if they still use durability when there is no output.
Also how many turbines can i have at 100% ont one 36hp boiler?
Thanks.

 

[Daemonblue]

They last around 41 hours each at full output and since the consumption and output were doubled only 2 per 36HP boiler. Not sure on the other part as the turbine is fairly inefficient in the modpack I'm using so I don't use em.

 

[Peppe]

Turbine output drops to 0 if there is nowhere for the power to go.

At 0 output the rotor takes no damage.

 

[Hydra]

If you want you can also get a 1:1 conversion between buildcraft power and EU by using the power to melt cobble into lava (ign. extruder + magma crucible) and using that to power geothermal generators. I understood gregtech adds an even more efficient generator that gives you an even better conversion. This has the benefit that it does not require you to use craptons of steel on rotors.

 

[Icarus White]

That is true, but even the GT generators only give off 24EU/t, and need a large amount of Nickel/Ferrous. Steel, through GT and TE, is actually a renewable resource, although you have to get very clever about it. Still, if you only need to run a Centrifuge or something, even a geothermal generator should be enough for your needs.

Edit: a hint: obsidian can be processed into, among other things, iron dust.

 

[Omicron]

They last around 41 hours each at full output and since the consumption and output were doubled only 2 per 36HP boiler. Not sure on the other part as the turbine is fairly inefficient in the modpack I'm using so I don't use em.

This was true in the past; newer Railcraft versions updated this to around 60 hours.

If you want to know how long one rotor (99 steel) will last you, calculate: 60 (hours) * 60 (minutes) * 60 (seconds) * 20 (ticks) * 100 (EU/t) = 432,000,000 EU.

432 million EU for 99 steel; in other words, more than 4.36 million EU per steel ingot. For reference, consider uranium fuel cells in nuclear reactors.

 

[Saice]

As much as I hate having to replace blades. (oh all that steel) I wished other power gen types had so sort of wear out mechanic. I think I lot of this argument about what power source is better could be cleared up if they all had some part that needed to be replaced every X hours of use. It would also add a layer that could make balancing easier when just tweaking output.

But this is just my point of view.

 

[Peppe]

That is true, but even the GT generators only give off 24EU/t, and need a large amount of Nickel/Ferrous. Steel, through GT and TE, is actually a renewable resource, although you have to get very clever about it. Still, if you only need to run a Centrifuge or something, even a geothermal generator should be enough for your needs.

Renewable iron/steel?

I see 2 paths pulverized obsidian in an industrial electrolyzer?
Or you pulverizing tin and centrifuging?

Both would be cheaper than UU matter.

Automating pulverized Obsidian i think would be the cheaper and simpler system with the 8 lava being the main cost. 8*99 = 792 obsidian blocks needed. So about 16 million MJ using cobble in a magma crucible over the life of the rotor... I think that is only like 4mj/t?

60 hour cycle would need to use:
8 * 99 cobble in magma crucible to create lava -> extruder to create obsidian = 15,840,000 million MJ
+ 792 * 400mj = pulverize obsidian 316,800 MJ
+ 792 obsidian dust * 5k EU a cycle in industrial electrolyzer = 495k EU
+ 792 * 160MJ smelt iron dust to iron = 126,720 MJ
+ 99 * 4 charcoal to cook iron to steal = ?

~16,283,520 MJ and 495k EU

Looking over other paths for the obsidian blocks. Looks like you can get a chance to double/triple the dust with obsidian in 2 cycles in the railcraft rockcrusher -- on average 1.5 * the dust. I imagine the rock crusher is cheaper to run than the MJ required to make another whole block of obsidian. Says it is 15MJ/t, but not sure how long each crushing cycle is. Might be an actual reason to get the rock crusher

 

[Celestialphoenix]

This was true in the past; newer Railcraft versions updated this to around 60 hours.
If you want to know how long one rotor (99 steel) will last you, calculate: 60 (hours) * 60 (minutes) * 60 (seconds) * 20 (ticks) * 100 (EU/t) = 432,000,000 EU.
432 million EU for 99 steel; in other words, more than 4.36 million EU per steel ingot. For reference, consider uranium fuel cells in nuclear reactors.

Building on this; 166666Eu/UU (IC2) or 16666666Eu/UU(Greg). 5UU makes 4.4 iron (induction smelting*), giving 189,393 or 1,893,398Eu/steel.
Totalling 18,794,925 or 187,499,925Eu/turbine.

(If you get smart with Direpack, you could average 4,499,982Eu/turbine)​

​

As for how much you get per boiler? about 225Eu/t on turbines, or 144Eu/t via magma crucible. (thread- next couple of posts and top of next page are relevant)​

 

[Peppe]

Is the IC2 crop system still in the game? I have never seen anyone talk about it, but came across an old guide that said you can get iron and redstone from crops?

"Ferru (for unlimited iron), Redwheat (for unlimited redstone)"

I am hurting for redstone, so off to experiment.

 

[Saice]

NEI shows Redwheat seeds but does not show them as having a use or any crafting way to get them. So that would be a huge maybe?

 

[ItharianEngineering]

Yea, crops are definitely still in the game. There is also one that will generate gold too. They aren't exactly easy to breed and can need really particular settings to have any luck getting a cross breed to have them though.[DOUBLEPOST=1357947353][/DOUBLEPOST]That is because you place redwheat seeds in some crops on the ground. It won't show a recipe or a use since there isn't one that is in a machine directly. You use crops to cross breed plants until you obtain them.

 

[Watchful11]

It is possible, there are some good crop breeding guides on the IC2 forum.

Edit: ninja'd

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Is the IC2 crop system still in the game? I have never seen anyone talk about it, but came across an old guide that said you can get iron and redstone from crops?

"Ferru (for unlimited iron), Redwheat (for unlimited redstone)"

I am hurting for redstone, so off to experiment.

Yea, but crossbreeding them is an extremely time-intensive and micromanaging to keep weeds from eating everything.

I'd suggest looking up the IC2 Agricultural Engineering forum for details.

 

[Icarus White]

Of course, bees can do this too. Be aware, though, that both routes involve a lot of breeding - arguably IC2's system is more straightforward, relying only on 'tiers', but Binnie's Extra Bees can do far, far more impressive feats... eventually. Even without that, vanilla Forestry bees can be used to produce lava at almost zero energy cost, and actually surprisingly simply (Sengir's wiki shows the hellish branch does this, and gives a rather simple hint on how to enter the branch - although getting those hellish bees back into the overworld and into their preferred biome is... interesting.)

 

[Daemonblue]

Building on this; 166666Eu/UU (IC2) or 16666666Eu/UU(Greg). 5UU makes 4.4 iron (induction smelting*), giving 189,393 or 1,893,398Eu/steel.
Totalling 18,794,925 or 187,499,925Eu/turbine.

(If you get smart with Direpack, you could average 4,499,982Eu/turbine)​

​

As for how much you get per boiler? about 225Eu/t on turbines, or 144Eu/t via magma crucible. (thread- next couple of posts and top of next page are relevant)​

Iirc the turbine recipe actually produces 2 turbines, but let me run the numbers real quick:
K, for the iron ore I'm going with the simple 16,666,666 EU for 2 ore > 4 ingots, due to rich slag not being guaranteed and you' have to reprocess it to get the extra ingot anyway.
So for the recipe you'd need 99 ingots, which comes out to 50 ore needed per recipe. However, each recipe makes 2 rotors last I checked, so aboout 50 ingots, or 25 ore per rotor (rounded up of course).

That makes 1 rotor equal to about 416,666,650 eu in gregtech to resupply if only using UUM.

Each rotor can now run for 60 hours at 100 eu/t, this comes out to 432,000,000 eu/rotor.

So using only Gregtech matter fabs to restore the steel needed for the rotor nets you a gain of about 15,333,350 eu per rotor.

I haven't tried the other methods of gaining iron yet, so I'm not sure if they could be considered viable yet or not and thus not sure of about how much energy you would need to resupply the rotors.


Now to run numbers on the system I plan on using: Let's go with a steam boiler fully supplying eu by itself - so 144 mj/t, of which 140 mj can be used for 7 magma crucibles, feeding cobble lava into thermal generators for 24 eu/t each. This comes out to 168 eu/t. Over the course of 60 hours this becomes 725,760,000 eu for a boiler's worth of MJ. You can use the 4 MJ extra to run a rubber tree farm and then use the EU from the system to feed a boiler. To turn rubber logs into methane requires 25,000 eu over 250 seconds, and you would need 2 centrifuges for the first boiler, so 50,000 eu over 250 seconds, or 10 eu/t. This comes out to an upkeep of 43,200,000 eu from the system, so a net gain of 682,560,000 eu over those same 60 hours. Even for Geothermal Generators it's 604,800,000 eu over 60 hours, for a net gain of 561,600,000 eu.

Using those numbers you can probably see no matter how you slice it the steam boiler > lava conversion has a much higher return rate than turbines can at the moment due to the simple fact you can produce more eu by turning mj into lava than if you turn steam directly into eu. This is why lava power is difficult to balance as well :X

Edit: I did leave out a liquid transposer there, but tbh I'm not even sure if the steam boiler consumers the cells so I might not even need it. Considering how long each cycle is though I'd say that you could limit the rubber farm to 2 mj/t and use that to power the liquid tranpsposer and not see any significant difference in the system. I also forget to mention the plantballs > dirt cost, but I can't be sure how much I'd need to do that, and the eu cost comes out to iirc 100 eu per dirt with no upgrades on the macerator.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Of course, bees can do this too. Be aware, though, that both routes involve a lot of breeding - arguably IC2's system is more straightforward, relying only on 'tiers', but Binnie's Extra Bees can do far, far more impressive feats... eventually. Even without that, vanilla Forestry bees can be used to produce lava at almost zero energy cost, and actually surprisingly simply (Sengir's wiki shows the hellish branch does this, and gives a rather simple hint on how to enter the branch - although getting those hellish bees back into the overworld and into their preferred biome is... interesting.)

It takes a bit of luck, cross breed with the right cultivated bee, and you should get one for a slightly cooler environment. (or just alviary it).

Your mid tier bees should be the level you want to perfect all the genetic traits, aim for fast working, short lived, docile bees.​

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Now to run numbers on the system I plan on using: Let's go with a steam boiler fully supplying eu by itself - so 144 mj/t, of which 140 mj can be used for 7 magma crucibles, feeding cobble lava into thermal generators for 24 eu/t each. This comes out to 168 eu/t. Over the course of 60 hours this becomes 725,760,000 eu for a boiler's worth of MJ. You can use the 4 MJ extra to run a rubber tree farm and then use the EU from the system to feed a boiler. To turn rubber logs into methane requires 25,000 eu over 250 seconds, and you would need 2 centrifuges for the first boiler, so 50,000 eu over 250 seconds, or 10 eu/t. This comes out to an upkeep of 43,200,000 eu from the system, so a net gain of 682,560,000 eu over those same 60 hours. Even for Geothermal Generators it's 604,800,000 eu over 60 hours, for a net gain of 561,600,000 eu.

Using those numbers you can probably see no matter how you slice it the steam boiler > lava conversion has a much higher return rate than turbines can at the moment due to the simple fact you can produce more eu by turning mj into lava than if you turn steam directly into eu. This is why lava power is difficult to balance as well :X
.

You're comparing the full output from a boiler to the output from a single turbine.

A 36HP boiler makes enough steam to run 2 1/4 turbines, or 225Eu/t.

Or working the numbers backwards, the steam from a single turbine will produce about 74Eu/t running via a magma crucible.​

​

If you want the extra ~25%, Peppe's method for Gregtech or Cheap UU in Direpack will cover the extra cost of worn out rotors.​

​

 

[Daemonblue]

Derp, forgot about that part >< Still, it comes out to about an average gain of about 38.3m eu when you factor in the UUM cost afterward with GT. And yea, I know about the whole smelt in induction smelter, pulverize it into dust, and re-smelt with the rich slag thing, it's just that it's not something that can be fully relied on to make sure you meet your goals, so basing your system so it will use the most required resources and still be profitable is something you should start off with, so anything above your bare minimum profit margin is just extra gain. It's like going to a store expecting to buy about $150 in groceries, so you bring at least $200 just in case.

The point still stands though that the cobble to lava method generates more "profit" outside of having a massive surplus of iron to turn into steel and with very little player input outside of the initial setup if you're using gregtech like I am, hence why I mentioned that the turbines wouldn't be all that great for me. For those of you not using Gregtech though, it's about 864m eu for two rotors with an upkeep of 8,333,333 Eu + ore processing, or a net profit of 855,666,667 eu, with 80 steam left to work with, so it's a more profitable system for vanilla IC2.

 

[Peppe]

A fair comparison between system using gregtech should not use UU as the standard of measure. You talking about running the rotor for 60 hours to get a net of 15m EU. That is like a 5% efficient power system with 95% going to resupply itself.

In IC2 UU works ok using the base rate of UU matter and pretty good using the scrap rate, but in gregtech the UU path is nowhere near efficient for anything other than rare resources.

Gregtech UU matter is 10x more expensive you can't use it for cheap materials like iron. Really the only thing you can use it for is things that use UU matter in their recipe and iridium. Most other materials have way more efficient means of getting the resource -- some added by gregtech itself.

Like if you are comparing the copper used in a quad or dual cell reactor. In IC2 you would just say it need 16 UU matter each cycle eating like 5% of your output -- non scrap UU. In gregtech at 10* the cost that 5% now eats like 50% of your output. No one should run a reactor with that low an efficiency, but gregtech adds lava -> copper, so now copper is near free. To compare to another system you would just calculate the cost to make lava renewable (20k MJ) and subtract the cost to maintain the loop.

The same is true for the rotor. The renewable iron path is not that complicated and is renewable. The rock crusher would be like adding scrap to the calculation in IC2 -- as by my math it is just a ~50% boost to obsidian production. You can take the base rate and show an efficient process. Like i said ~16 million MJ over the 60 hour life can be run on a portion of the spare MJ you have from the boilers. That flips the whole rotor output to 95% efficient with 5% to maintain the loop.