Big Reactors Cooling

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Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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I know all the stuffs with passively cooled reactors.

My question is about the actively cooled ones. I'm building a 5-rod setup with a turbine (obviously) ,and what I'm wonder is if a reactor producing steam, still needs a coolant between the rods, or I can just leave them bare with no throughput change.
 

Loufmier

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Jul 29, 2019
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I know all the stuffs with passively cooled reactors.

My question is about the actively cooled ones. I'm building a 5-rod setup with a turbine (obviously) ,and what I'm wonder is if a reactor producing steam, still needs a coolant between the rods, or I can just leave them bare with no throughput change.
the major difference between passive and active cooled reactor is the coolant port and water supply. everything else is pretty much the same including cooling blocks and liquids. so yeah, you better use the coolant to surround your rods with.
 
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GreenZombie

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This is actually a rather complicated question.

One thing passive and active reactors have in common is the importance of keeping core temperatures down. High core temps increase the hardness of the radiation as well as just boosting fuel consumption.

So reactor core layouts that maximize fertilization and heat outflow are important to both designs.

The way rf and steam is generated is quite different. So the absorption property seems far less important in active designs.
 

Peppe

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Jul 29, 2019
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This is actually a rather complicated question.

One thing passive and active reactors have in common is the importance of keeping core temperatures down. High core temps increase the hardness of the radiation as well as just boosting fuel consumption.

So reactor core layouts that maximize fertilization and heat outflow are important to both designs.

The way rf and steam is generated is quite different. So the absorption property seems far less important in active designs.

I have not looked at the source code but I suspect it is the same formula. An improvement that would generate more rf passively will generate more steam actively.

Casing/core heat are waste heat and steam is created independent of reactor temperature.
 

GreenZombie

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I have not looked at the source code but I suspect it is the same formula. An improvement that would generate more rf passively will generate more steam actively.

Casing/core heat are waste heat and steam is created independent of reactor temperature.

I have. Looked at the source. The radiation step is run on both instances but in the active case only the temps are kept. The accumulated energy is discarded and plays no part in computing generated steam.

Ive ... not understood the steam generation code as I moved to a 1.7 based pack and big reactors has been tardy at being updated. But a search through the code doesnt show any further access to the absorption property of the coolant.
 
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Peppe

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I have. Looked at the source. The radiation step is run on both instances but in the active case only the temps are kept. The accumulated energy is discarded and plays no part in computing generated steam.

Ive ... not understood the steam generation code as I moved to a 1.7 based pack and big reactors has been tardy at being updated. But a search through the code doesnt show any further access to the absorption property of the coolant.
Java is not my main language, but if I read this code it looks like the amount of RF that would have been produced is a critical piece to calculating how much steam is produced. Maybe the versions I am looking at now are different than when you looked....

CoolantContainer.java the onAbsorbHeat function and the updateServer() function in MultiblockReactor.java looks like it calculates the RFheat available equally and then in passive reactors does some flat math cutting it by 50% and in active lets the absorbheat function calculate how much steam/hot coolant is generated from that amount of rfheat. In either case having more rfheat available translates to higher output.

I don't see where absorbtion is split where an absorption level of a coolant could benefit passive, but not benefit active?
 

MacAisling

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Apr 25, 2013
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My understanding based on hearsay and a few minutes fiddling with the settings is that, once you have your reactor built to whatever design you've chosen, getting enough steam is about having enough water flowing back into the reactor & having adequate casing heat. If you want to just set it & forget it, getting the temp down in the 800-1200 degree range should give you a good boost to fuel efficiency without reducing the steam output. If you are only using a small turbine & really want to maximize fuel efficiency, you can probably set the temp much lower.

But, yeah, coolant in the reactor build is a good thing in both passive & active reactors.
 

Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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Oh boy what have I started here!

I'm finding active cooling a lot more complicated than I expected.

Can't figure out properly the size my turbine should be. Found some spreadsheets but the numbers seem a bit unrealistic.
 

Giddimani

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Jul 29, 2019
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Can't figure out properly the size my turbine should be. Found some spreadsheets but the numbers seem a bit unrealistic.

A. You have a reactor and want to build a turbine for it.

1. How much steam your reactor produces, you have 2 options to get the number.
- Test it by changing it to active and dump the steam in a tesseract
- Calculate it. You will get about your current RF x 0.55 in steam. For example you produce 2500RF/t now, if you change to active it would produce about 1375 steam/t.

Max steam per turbine is 2000/t.


2. How many coils you need.

Each material you can use for coils have a different amount of steam they can convert to RF, from lowest (Iron) to highest (Enderium). Look in the list linked down below (Turbine Testing) at "block

cost" for your material and rpm (900 or 1800).

For example: 1600 steam/t, Enderium Coils (54 steam/block), 1800rpm -> 1600/54 = 30 blocks -> 4 coils (3 full coils with 8 blocks, 1 coil with 6 blocks)


3. How many rotor blades

Each rotor blade needs 25 steam/t.

Example: 1600 steam/t -> 1600/25 = 64 blades

Because of 2000 steam max, 80 blades is the max.

Each rotor shaft can have up to 4 blades. Max length depends on your turbine 5x5->1, 7x7->2 and 9x9->3

Example: 9x9 turbine -> 5 shafts with 4 blades with a length of 3 + 1 shaft with 4 blades with length of 1 -> 5x4x3 + 1x4x1 -> 64 blades


4. RF production

The RF production depends on which coil you use, from least efficient (iron) to highest Enderium.

Look up the material you use in the spreadsheet (steam:RF) and multiply it with your steam.

Example: 1600 steam/t, Enderium coil: 1600x11.7 -> ~18.7kRF/t




B. You want to produce X amount of RF

1. Turbine

Example: You want 17.5kRF/t, Enderium coils

Steam requirement: 17500/11.7 = 1496 steam
Enderium Coils: 1496/54 = 28 blocks (3 full coils, 1 partial)
Rotors: 1496/25 = 60 blades

Choose your size, example 9x9 -> 5 shafts with 12 blades each

Turbine length is shafts+coils+walls -> 5+4+2 -> 11

Turbine is 9x9x11 with 28 enderium coils and 5 full rotors


2. Reactor

Depending on how efficient your reactor design is, you produce about 500RF per fuel rod which is about 275 steam.

Example: 2000 steam/t for the max for a single turbine -> 2000/275 -> 7.3 fuel rods so 8 rods


Build reactor with own design or choose one in the second spreadsheet I linked below (Reactor Testing).


Just as a side note, the most efficient turbine is a 9x9x14 1800rpm with Enderium coils, produces about 24kRF/t @2000 steam/t.
You need about 4 stacks cyanite, 12 stacks iron/steel, 4.5 stacks graphite and 333 enderium ingots. You also need about 700 hardened glass if you play AS or another pack that changes the glass to hardened glass in the recipes.

Hope this helps, numbers could be off because some packs use different multipliers.


Turbine Testing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...lpERWtPMmtGT213bmc&f=true&noheader=true&gid=0

Reactor Comparison:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ckNzzHQhpgGFHkqNxB7ICrodStiq3fmfsyBFy-Z-smA/edit#gid=0

These spreadsheets are not mine but I don't know where I found them or who made them, but not my work.
 
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Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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Blimey! Thanks for the detailed explanation!

So my passive reactor running at full tilt is producing 11,700RF/t .. that would mean ... holy crap! That's a lot of stuff needed to cater for that!
 

Giddimani

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Jul 29, 2019
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Blimey! Thanks for the detailed explanation!

So my passive reactor running at full tilt is producing 11,700RF/t .. that would mean ... holy crap! That's a lot of stuff needed to cater for that!

About 6500 steam, but you can just throttle your reactor to the amount of steam you need. But yes, if you use enderium coils you can get up to ~76kRF with this reactor in combination with turbines. ;)

I edited my post above with the cost for a full size enderium turbine, it's at the end of the post.
 
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Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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Yeah I came to your same conclusions. 9x9x14, probably X 2.

Will start with 1 and take it from there.

Thanks a lot for your help.
 
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Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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Alright ... seems to starting to want to spin, which is an improvement :p

But I hit another wall.

What the hell do you feed water to the reactor with? It's boiling it faster than I can pump it from 8 aqueous accumulator, even with the exhaust vent feeding back into the reactor.

Am I gonna need an army of accumulators to keep it happy?

And before someone suggests it, no I don't have EnderIO installed on this server.
 

Bickers

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Jul 29, 2019
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Alright ... seems to starting to want to spin, which is an improvement :p

But I hit another wall.

What the hell do you feed water to the reactor with? It's boiling it faster than I can pump it from 8 aqueous accumulator, even with the exhaust vent feeding back into the reactor.

Am I gonna need an army of accumulators to keep it happy?

And before someone suggests it, no I don't have EnderIO installed on this server.
transfer nodes from extra utils can pump a massive amount of water with the correct upgrades
 

Loufmier

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Jul 29, 2019
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it may be that accumulator provide enough water but the piping you're using isn't capable of taking all that water.
i had that problem in my AgS world where i foolishly thought that fluid buses could feed my reactor, but regardless of import setting accumulator was always full. so i just switched to fluiducts connected to a tesseracts. 6 connections on tesseracts can take water from atleast 15 accumulators or so,
 

Giddimani

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Jul 29, 2019
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Alright ... seems to starting to want to spin, which is an improvement :p

But I hit another wall.

What the hell do you feed water to the reactor with? It's boiling it faster than I can pump it from 8 aqueous accumulator, even with the exhaust vent feeding back into the reactor.

Am I gonna need an army of accumulators to keep it happy?

And before someone suggests it, no I don't have EnderIO installed on this server.

Good to hear it's coming together.

I used 2 tesseracts on the reactor (steam out, water in) and an additional in for an accumulator, than 2 tesseracts on each turbine (steam in, water out). Worked fine for 8000 steam/t, tesseract have no limit.

You can put the tesseracts directly on the reactor/turbine, no need for fluiducts, I think those would limit the steam you can transport.
 

Shevron

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Aug 12, 2013
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Check out Turbine 1 :D

Rotarycraft pump to the rescue.

I know power is still low .. using gold coils until I can muster up enough enderium blocks.

ntuMzaD.png
 
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