Big Reactors: Not enough steam

[BLAMM!]

I'm playing Agrarian Skies 2.1.6 which is currently using Big Reactors 0.3.3A.

I'm trying to upgrade from passively-cooled to actively-cooled. My passively-cooled reactor is a 7x7x7 with 5 rods in a X pattern and resonant ender as a coolant. I'm getting 11.7 KiRF/t out of it.

When I add the reactor coolant port, I get 360 mB/t out of it. That's only enough steam to get about 2 KiRF/t out of a properly configured turbine. From the reading I've been doing, I expect to get a lot more steam out of my reactor. Nothing I've done seems to have any effect on this output. On top of this, the temperature skyrockets. Both the casing heat and core heat indicators are maxed out.

I'm using tesseracts to transfer water and steam between the reactor and turbine, though with 360mB/t it's hardly necessary. I only did it because I thought the fluid ducts I was originally using were restricting the flow. 360mB/t is the limit of fluid ducts. Apparently that wasn't the issue.
Also, I'm using a small farm of Aqueous Accumulators and AE with ExtraUtilities to move water into the system. Lack of water is also not the problem.
Ignore the resonant ender. I've found that an internal coolant makes no difference in an actively-cooled reactor.

So what am I doing wrong?

 

[MacAisling]

The reactor will only output the amount of steam that is actually being used, so I'm guessing your turbine is set to 360. To lower the core temp, raise the # on all the control rods. The core temp determines how much fuel is being used, the casing temp how much water it can convert to steam per tick. Getting the casing temp down to 1200 should still provide all the steam you need. The internal coolant does make a difference, it allows more of the core heat to be transferred to the casing, evening out the temp difference so you can lower the core temp more than otherwise.

 

[BLAMM!]

I can't believe it was that simple. I had tried changing the input value on the turbine, but that must have been while I was still using the fluid ducts. I had assumed that the hot fluid output would indicate what the system was capable of, not what was being used. Especially since when I shut off all output, the value stayed the same.

Now my problem is keeping up with the water input. Even with the return from the turbine, I keep running out. Experiments with the Aqueous Accumulator farm are underway. I'll also be playing with the internal coolant to see if that has a difference now.

Thanks for the assist.

 

[trajing]

I can't believe it was that simple. I had tried changing the input value on the turbine, but that must have been while I was still using the fluid ducts. I had assumed that the hot fluid output would indicate what the system was capable of, not what was being used. Especially since when I shut off all output, the value stayed the same.

Now my problem is keeping up with the water input. Even with the return from the turbine, I keep running out. Experiments with the Aqueous Accumulator farm are underway. I'll also be playing with the internal coolant to see if that has a difference now.

Thanks for the assist.

IMO ExtraUtils transfer nodes are better

 

[madnewmy]

IMO ExtraUtils transfer nodes are better

And create the mother of lag

But they are better for sure

 

[BLAMM!]

I believe you, but Agrarian Skies seems to have those disabled. I can't create them.

I'm wondering if I'm doing something else wrong though. I've had to create a pretty big AA farm top keep up with the water requirements.

I started with the EC Fluid Bus. With the moving mode set to it's highest, it will move 1000 mB/t or 20 buckets a second. The Aqueous Accumulators only put out 500mB/second. That means I need to have 40 AA to fully load a Fluid Bus. Just one of these setups, leaves the reactor starving for water. I have three of these setups working now, that's 120 AA and 3 Fluid Busses pushing 60 buckets a second into reactor, and it's just barely holding its own.

 

[trajing]

And create the mother of lag

But they are better for sure

Only when you have too many transfer nodes.

 

[BLAMM!]

Well, I solved the water problem, though I'm not sure what the problem was to begin with. I added more coolant ports on the reactor, and used additional Fluid Export Busses to increase the amount of water I was inputting. Apparently, that didn't scale right. Instead, I attached the Fluid Export Busses to a tesseract tuned to the same channel I was returning water from the turbine. That did the trick.

I've got 2000 mB/t of steam out of the reactor and the water level is holding steady. Now, finally, I get to play with the turbine.

 

[MacAisling]

They just need a heck of a lot of water. Here's a quote from another thread that may help. Note that a redstone powered fluiduct set to pull should double the flow.

I did some testing on throughput using fluiducts and transfer nodes today. Here's what I found:

With fluiducts and steam, on the output face of a reactor, you only need one connection, but on the input face of a turbine, you need many connections. Each fluiduct connection on the turbine can handle 320 mB/t of throughput, so divide your required throughput by 320 to determine how many connections you need (maximum of 6 because turbines have a limit of 2000 mB/t). So you will reach max steam throughput with just 1 connection on the reactor and 6 connections on the turbine. For waste water output on the turbine, again it's one to many; e.g., one fluiduct connection on the turbine's output, many connections to wherever you're sending the water. I found that for a turbine handling 2000 mB/t, 15 connections on the receiving end of the waste water line was enough to not backstuff the turbine.

For transfer nodes, the length of the line massively affects their efficacy. A length of 2 (one node, one pipe, reactor input block) with 64 speed upgrades and 192 mining upgrades easily supplies a 7x7x7 25-core reactor. Go above 5ish length, however, and the reactor begins to stutter unless a 2nd is added. With a length of more than 5, you're better off with 128 speed upgrades and 128 mining upgrades, but you will still need more than one node on the source.

This is off the top of my head and I am unable to verify the results again until tomorrow, so there may be errors.

Note: All fluiducts were configured to default, as they are when first placed. No wrenching or servo-ing was needed.

 

[BLAMM!]

So, I've got a mystery, but at least its a good one.

I built two turbines off my reactor, each one running on 1750 mB/t of steam. They generate just over 20KRF/t each. Wonderful. Just what I was hoping for.

So I decide to throttle back on the water input to my reactor to find out just how much is needed to support the system. Initially, I had gone overboard just to get things setup, and now it was time to find out the specifics. I took out all but one of the 6 Fluid Export Busses I had attached to the tesseract. Everything was stable. Ok, interesting, it only takes one to keep things stable. Then I take out the last one to see how the system reacts. Nothing happens. Apparently, the system has gotten to the point where the return from the turbines is all it needs. I'm flabbergasted. It looks like it just takes a massive amount of water to get things running, but once they are, the entire system is stable. I will report more if things change.

 

[GreenZombie]

The Steam <-> water system is a closed loop. i.e. Big Reactors convert 100% of the water to steam, and Turbines convert 100% of the input steam to water. If your flow system can transfer all the steam & water, once running there is no further need for input.

 

[Giddimani]

You basically need only 2 inputs and 1 output on the reactor, on the output and one input you put a tesseract for transfer to and from the turbines and on one input put a accumulator. Had no problem running 4 full size turbines with this (8k steam/t).

 

[Logan The MInecraft Pwner]

I also have the exact same design down to the res. ender but i only get 120 mb. per tick. Any help?

 

[GreenZombie]

I also have the exact same design down to the res. ender but i only get 120 mb. per tick. Any help?

How are you supplying water?

 

[Logan The MInecraft Pwner]

How are you supplying water?

With around 100 aqueous accumulators tesseracts and fluiducts

 

[Logan The MInecraft Pwner]

How are you supplying water?

may seem overkill but im in the "End Game" stage so i have lots of everything. Including 10000 blocks of yellorium in my AE system.

 

[Zaflis]

I'm using about 11 aqueous accumulators for producing 6000mB of steam per tick shared for 3 max size turbines. All the turbines are sending excess water back into reactor, through same water channel in tesseract. The whole system is actually not consuming much of the water, but circulating nearly all of it. Reactor has only 1 steam output and 1 water input port, each turbine also has only 1 each with tesseract directly attached.

 

[Logan The MInecraft Pwner]

I use the direct tesseract method for steam (too many tesseracts for all the aqueous accumulators) but it just will always stay at 120mb of steam per tick and no more no less. I can use 1/4 of that yellorium to produce 20x as much power in just my normal 7x7 reactor (turbine 1k per tick reactor 20k)

 

[Zaflis]

You can use fluiducts from aqueous accumulators to send into single tesseract, but you can wrap the pipes around it so it touch at least 3 sides.

Could it be turbine design problem then? The usual is 9x9x14 size, 80 blades and 37 enderium blocks as coil, for 24k RF/t (if i remember right).

 

[Logan The MInecraft Pwner]

No its the reactor that wont produce enough steam