Big Reactors: getting one's feet wet

[Ieldra]

Hmm....why would you want low permeability in the outer cooling blocks? People say resonant ender is the best material there, while cryotheum is the best between blocks. The table posted by Chris Becke appears to support those statements more.

As I see it:
(1) Low temperature increases efficiency. Thus you want high heat efficiency, since that generates less heat and more usable energy. High conductivity is good for cooling but high heat efficiency is preferable to high conductivity if the resulting temperature is the same due to differences in absorption since the former creates more usable energy. Enderium cools better but its other parameters are worse than those of cryotheum and resonant ender, so the overall result may not be best.

(2) Overall energy production per fuel unit should be roughly proportional to the product of absorption and efficiency. Higher absorption makes you use less fuel and high heat increases fuel usage, so these factors may cancel each other out to some degree if their product is the same. Which means, there may be only slight differences between resonant Ender and Cryotheum, except where moderation comes into play.

(3) You won't need moderation in the outer blocks so much since that only influences what happens in the next block. It is important in the inner blocks though, so cryotheum is the best to use there. I still don't get the preference for resonant ender in the outer blocks. It appears to me the differences, if any, should be minimal.

 

[rhn]

My recomendation on dense cores is based on theory and experiment. The additional fertilization more than makes up for the obscured heat flow. I have a world with now about 100 reactors in it that shows this consistently.

Next. @rhn. Where did you obtain that table? It does not agree with the numbers I pulled from the .3.3A github source.

Block        Absor Eff%  Mod   Cond
Iron         0.50  0.75  1.40  0.60
Gold         0.52  0.80  1.45  2.00
Diamond      0.55  0.85  1.50  3.00
Emerald      0.55  0.85  1.50  2.50
Graphite     0.10  0.50  2.00  2.00
Glass        0.20  0.25  1.10  0.30
Ice          0.33  0.33  1.15  0.10
Snow         0.15  0.33  1.05  0.05
Copper       0.50  0.75  1.40  1.00
Osmium       0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Brass        0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Bronze       0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Aluminium    0.50  0.78  1.42  0.60
Steel        0.50  0.78  1.42  0.60
Invar        0.50  0.79  1.43  0.60
Silver       0.51  0.79  1.43  1.50
Electrum     0.53  0.82  1.47  2.20
ElectrumFlux 0.54  0.83  1.48  2.40
Platinum     0.57  0.86  1.58  2.50
Titanium     0.58  0.87  1.59  2.50
Enderium     0.60  0.88  1.60  3.00
Water        0.33  0.50  1.33  0.10
Redstone     0.75  0.55  1.60  2.50
Glowstone    0.20  0.60  1.75  1.00
Cyrotheum    0.66  0.95  6.00  3.00
Ender        0.90  0.75  2.00  2.00
Pyrotheum    0.66  0.90  1.00  0.60
Life Essence 0.70  0.55  1.75  2.00
Air          0.10  0.25  1.10  0.05

Absorb = Absorbption - the factor of non-hard radiation that is converted into energy.
Eff% = Heat Effiency - the factor of the above energy amount, that is converted to RF (The rest is just heat).
Mod = Moderation. next blocks hard radiation = hard radiation * 1 / moderation.
Cond = Conductivity. Diamond, Gelid Cyrotheum and Enderium (a block of ender ingots) are best at 3.0.

How is your wiki editing ability? Between the two of us we need to decide who'se table is more correct (mine! ) and get it on a wiki.

An online reference. hosted on my talk page on techincwiki (The "official" Big Reactors wiki).
http://wiki.technicpack.net/User_talk:Farproc

I just did some further testing, building a load of reactors testing the materials purely as either outer layer or between fuel rods. The list I posted is indeed out of date(compared to the version used in Monster 1.1.1 (0.3.0A)).

 

[rhn]

Hmm....why would you want low permeability in the outer cooling blocks? People say resonant ender is the best material there, while cryotheum is the best between blocks. The table posted by Chris Becke appears to support those statements more.

As I see it:
(1) Low temperature increases efficiency. Thus you want high heat efficiency, since that generates less heat and more usable energy. High conductivity is good for cooling but high heat efficiency is preferable to high conductivity if the resulting temperature is the same due to differences in absorption since the former creates more usable energy. Enderium cools better but its other parameters are worse than those of cryotheum and resonant ender, so the overall result may not be best.

(2) Overall energy production per fuel unit should be roughly proportional to the product of absorption and efficiency. Higher absorption makes you use less fuel and high heat increases fuel usage, so these factors may cancel each other out to some degree if their product is the same. Which means, there may be only slight differences between resonant Ender and Cryotheum, except where moderation comes into play.

(3) You won't need moderation in the outer blocks so much since that only influences what happens in the next block. It is important in the inner blocks though, so cryotheum is the best to use there. I still don't get the preference for resonant ender in the outer blocks. It appears to me the differences, if any, should be minimal.

Dont use the table I posted, it is out of date.

But the table Chris posted is basically telling the same story, just with slightly different names and values.

So first of there is one thing we need to get clear! Even though the mods own GUIs fucks this up, we need to get the terminology right:
Temperature is the measure of the energy level of the core and casing in the reactor. High energy level(temperature) in the core is bad and reduces efficiency.

Heat is a measure for transfer of energy(in this case from the rods to the casing). The core produces energy. This energy stays there and raises the temperature of the core unless the energy is transferred out to the casing(where we can tap the energy). The transfer of energy is what is defined as "Heat"


So the reactor works like this:
Fuel is put into the rods. Having fuel in rods and activating the reactor will on its own create a fixed base amount of energy per mB that can directly be tapped.

In addition to this the rods will produce energy that will flow out from the rods in form of Heat. This energy has to be absorbed by the casing to be tapped and used and the best way of doing this is to place high conductive materials inside the reactor. Extremely efficient cooling materials and configurations will allow you to almost equalize the core and casing temperature, which means that all the energy is directly transfered out to the casing(nothing is being halted and causing the core to raise its temperature). Bad or no coolant materials will "bottleneck" the energy transfer and cause the Core to raise in temperature.

A third form of energy that the reactor puts out is Radiation. This comes in two flavours:

• Slow Radiation: This can be absorbed by materials with low Permeability in which case it will produce Heat(energy transfer to the casing resulting in more power output).
• Fast Radiation: This cannot be absorbed by materials with low permeability, but can be Moderated into Slow radiation and thereafter be absorbed to produce Heat.

Key point to remember here:
Heat is Good!
Core temperature is Bad!



On Chris' list slightly different terms are used, but they mean just the same:
Absorption: The inverse of Permeability. Blocks that have high absorption will have low permeability and vice versa.
Efficiency: this is what was listed as the Heating on the list I posted I think. Just a factor of how much power you get out of the reactor when using these blocks.

 

[GreenZombie]

I did a pull from the Big Reactors GitHub repo and double checked the numbers in my table vs bigreactors\common\BigReactors.java so my table describes 0.3.4a2

The table Ive copied @ http://wiki.technicpack.net/User_talk:Farproc has a line for each call to BRRegistry.registerReactorInteriorBlock. The terminology i've used maps to the parameter names of that function. For completeness I've even listed the fantasy, and comedy materials that can be optionally disabled/enabled via config. Some blocks - such as snow - are registered at this point in the code but still cause a reactor to fail to build, but this should be a superset of every possible reactor interior block.

Just above this is the list of coild part registrations. I could/should extract that too

 

[Pyure]

This thread is now so far beyond me its not even funny

Dunno if I mentioned this previously, but the InfiTech author has indicated that he's made very few changes to anything BR related.
So, while I'm concerned about the balance impacts (skipping treefarm and fuel tech levels), the good news is that I may be able to test this earlier than anticipated.

Which is to say either tonight or tomorrow night.

 

[GreenZombie]

This thread is now so far beyond me its not even funny

Dunno if I mentioned this previously, but the InfiTech author has indicated that he's made very few changes to anything BR related.
So, while I'm concerned about the balance impacts (skipping treefarm and fuel tech levels), the good news is that I may be able to test this earlier than anticipated.

Which is to say either tonight or tomorrow night.

The official BigReactor wiki page http://wiki.technicpack.net/Multiblock_Reactor
has screenshots showing step, by step, how to build the smallest possible reactor. Surrounded with a lot of discussion that tries to make the process seem more complicated than it is

 

[rhn]

This thread is now so far beyond me its not even funny

Dunno if I mentioned this previously, but the InfiTech author has indicated that he's made very few changes to anything BR related.
So, while I'm concerned about the balance impacts (skipping treefarm and fuel tech levels), the good news is that I may be able to test this earlier than anticipated.

Which is to say either tonight or tomorrow night.

Tbh it is not that complicated. Build a frame of a certain size, add fuel rods, controller, power tap, item input/output blocks etc. and fill in ANYTHING or nothing from the list of items and it will produce power without risk of blowing up etc. Anything else is optimization. Nerd'ing about getting the most out of every ingot of fuel(which is usually totally nonsense as if you are running just a single MFR laser drill with focus you will be drowning in Yellorium).

I would also recommend just watching this:

Give you the basic understanding about what the blocks do etc. Don't take anything it says about the different cooling materials etc on faith.

 

[GreenZombie]

Yeah, but InfiTech doesn't include MFR.
So Yellorium and Uranium ores would be precious, precious, non renewable resources.

 

[Pyure]

Fortunately it does have the good old basic trusty Quarry from BC

 

[Pyure]

I got my first BR up and working; I'll scandalize everyone and say I built it out in the middle of nowhere specifically to power a BC quarry, which its doing an OK job of at 450RF/T.

I would not have been able to build a 5x5 tonight I suspect, mostly due to lack of steel.

What concerns should I have about waste? Should I set "auto eject" mode or not so much?

I have only one access port, as per the link from Chris Becke.

 

[Padfoote]

I got my first BR up and working; I'll scandalize everyone and say I built it out in the middle of nowhere specifically to power a BC quarry, which its doing an OK job of at 450RF/T.

I would not have been able to build a 5x5 tonight I suspect, mostly due to lack of steel.

What concerns should I have about waste? Should I set "auto eject" mode or not so much?

I have only one access port, as per the link from Chris Becke.

Depends on the fuel efficiency. If it's a rather efficient reactor, I'd just check it every once and a while. If it's inefficient, I'd setup some sort of auto extraction method.

 

[rhn]

I got my first BR up and working; I'll scandalize everyone and say I built it out in the middle of nowhere specifically to power a BC quarry, which its doing an OK job of at 450RF/T.

I would not have been able to build a 5x5 tonight I suspect, mostly due to lack of steel.

What concerns should I have about waste? Should I set "auto eject" mode or not so much?

I have only one access port, as per the link from Chris Becke.

Honestly never really understood the point of not letting it auto eject waste.

If you leave it to run for long periods of time alone and the access slot fills up with cyanite and the core fills up with waste I think the reactor just stops working(you would have to fill in more fuel as well to replace the cyanite pushed out into the access slot, so..). But seriously doubt that will happen while just running one quarry even with the least efficient reactor you can make.

 

[Pyure]

Honestly never really understood the point of not letting it auto eject waste.

If you leave it to run for long periods of time alone and the access slot fills up with cyanite and the core fills up with waste I think the reactor just stops working(you would have to fill in more fuel as well to replace the cyanite pushed out into the access slot, so..). But seriously doubt that will happen while just running one quarry even with the least efficient reactor you can make.

That's what happens? It just ejects to the access slot?

I take it the access slot should be set to output mode then when I'm not using it.

Edit: yay, confirmed, it does. Got me some cyanite.

 

[Pyure]

As a thanks, a screenshot of my sad, little achievement.

Believe it or not, this is a bit of an accomplishment in InfiTech



Out of curiousity, once I have a bit more steel (darn slow blast furnaces), would my logical next step be a 5x5 of some sort?

 

[Succubism]

While this is somewhat relevant, is there a non-video tutorial guide for big reactors?

 

[GreenZombie]

As a thanks, a screenshot of my sad, little achievement.

Believe it or not, this is a bit of an accomplishment in InfiTech

View attachment 11826

Out of curiousity, once I have a bit more steel (darn slow blast furnaces), would my logical next step be a 5x5 of some sort?

1. Your BR in Infitech seems to be using non default settings. At the default power multiplier (1x) your reactor should produce approx 250RF/t, down to 180 as it fills with waste.

2. On its default, autoeject waste, a br automatically ejects waste cyanite from the core into an available access port and refuels from any spare fuel in an access port. It should take a mc day and a half for this to happen with your reactor so automating this is not important.

3. Id recommend the next step to be a 5x5 with 4 blocks of the best coolant you can afford. Refer to my previous table and choose iron blocks or better. This should double the power output. I havn't built any reactors between 3x3 to 5x5 so there might be marginal improvements that are possible, but going to a 5x5 is going to allow you to harvest some of the radiated energy that is being totally lost at the moment.

4. Resource constrained as you are, having doubled the output, right click on the control rod block and change the fuel rod insertion to lower the output. This will further improve your fuel efficiency and allow you to tune the power output to your needs.

5. The lack of TE in the pack is really really interesting in the Chinese curse sense: I don't recognize any mod in that pack that can make a liquid coolant other than water. So your larger reactors are going to be, well, a very interesting excursion into entirely uncharted territory.

6. Additionally, the lack of MFR or CC means that automatic control of the Big Reactor is going to be driven by redstone only. With 2 redstone control ports you can get the reactor to turn off if it exceeds a internal energy stored level. With 3 you can build a latch to turn it on when it goes below (say) 20%, and off when it exceeds 80% internal energy reserves. This is not so important with a quarry which just chews loads of energy. But you could use a BC gate and a redstone control port to turn the reactor off when the quarry is done to avoid wasting yellorite if you can't babysit the quarry.

7. You should plan on loosing one ingot of fuel/waste each time you rebuild the reactor. Make sure to use the access port to eject the existing fuel and waste as ingots before rebuilding. However, the remaining millibuckets of fuel and waste won't form complete ingots and can't be ejected/saved. However, I have noticed that rebuilding a BR does not automatically flush its existing fuel stores so you might be able to expand a running BR without loosing any fuel.

 

[GreenZombie]

While this is somewhat relevant, is there a non-video tutorial guide for big reactors?

Other than the - presumably Authors own - documentation on the techinc wiki Big Reactor topic - none that I know of.

 

[Pyure]

@Chris Becke, this should be required reading for anyone doing an unconventional BR game.

Ok so:

1. Your BR in Infitech seems to be using non default settings. At the default power multiplier (1x) your reactor should produce approx 250RF/t, down to 180 as it fills with waste.

I'm a bit surprised at that and will have a look in the configs. Its not in the modpack's nature to give us nice things. If I find an inflated multiplier, I'll tone it down.

4. Resource constrained as you are, having doubled the output, right click on the control rod block and change the fuel rod insertion to lower the output. This will further improve your fuel efficiency and allow you to tune the power output to your needs.

I was really hoping something like this would be possible and had planned on asking. At this point I'm obviously less concerned with RF/T and way more concerned with RF/Y (Yellorium)

5. The lack of TE in the pack is really really interesting in the Chinese curse sense: I don't recognize any mod in that pack that can make a liquid coolant other than water. So your larger reactors are going to be, well, a very interesting excursion into entirely uncharted territory.

If I find an alternative, I'll let you know. IC2 has some weird liquids, but I think its unlikely any of them qualify.
Btw, bizarrely, I'm really enjoying disconnecting from TE for once. A scary first for me really since it came out.

6. Additionally, the lack of MFR or CC means that automatic control of the Big Reactor is going to be driven by redstone only. With 2 redstone control ports you can get the reactor to turn off if it exceeds a internal energy stored level. With 3 you can build a latch to turn it on when it goes below (say) 20%, and off when it exceeds 80% internal energy reserves. This is not so important with a quarry which just chews loads of energy. But you could use a BC gate and a redstone control port to turn the reactor off when the quarry is done to avoid wasting yellorite if you can't babysit the quarry.

Plan to do exactly this in the short term. In the long term I'll have to do something similar with an intermediary since I want to send power wirelessly eventually. Probably a capacitor bank since we have Ender IO.

 

[rhn]

Looking over the list that Chris posted, I think I would personally try out Silver blocks if you have that available. At least to start out with. Decent all-round performance and it tends to be not that useful for other things in other packs at least.

 

[Pyure]

Looking over the list that Chris posted, I think I would personally try out Silver blocks if you have that available. At least to start out with. Decent all-round performance and it tends to be not that useful for other things in other packs at least.

Ironically, silver is one of my most scarce resources. I have more diamonds and gold than silver.

There's no native silver ore. For the most part I have to find Galena ore, which seems to be pretty scarce (I haven't found any in days)

I'm also desperately trying to develop an IC2 argentia crop to mitigate the problem.