Combustion engine blowing up

[Heiðar]

Hey guys

I just had a combustion engine blow up half my house :/
It's connected to a waterpump from the ocean driven by 3 redstone engines. Just before the water pipes reach the combustion engine, it hit's a T section when a line goes to a steam engine and a Carpenter. The Combustion engine was running a laser for an assembly table.

Carpenter and the Steam engine was shut down.
Laser was still working, so wasn't idle.

Should this really have happened ? Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong ?

 

[Edoc]

That's probably because some chunk on the way didn't load, probably the one with the water source. Since the modpack has thermal expansion I would recomend using the Aqueous Accumulator instead of a pump.

 

[Invaders]

When chunks unload, machines stop all operations and occasionally lose their state, the only solution being to to put a chunk loader down. In the newer versions, many of the modders have added chunk loading capabilities to machines (such as turtles and quarries).

 

[Pawz]

Also note that the aqueous accumulator (and also a regular pump) do NOT supply ENOUGH water to a combustion engine once it heats up! I thought my setup was just fine until it exploded...

 

[potter]

It will supply enough if you put two water source blocks next to the Aqueous Accumulator. It is vastly faster this way.

 

[Pawz]

Unfortunately, it doesn't. At least not in my setup. It seems to run just fine for a while (about 5 minutes) and then the engine suddenly uses up all the water and overheats.

I had a 6 engine setup like this:
- W -
W-X-W

Where each combustion engine was stacked on top of an aqueous accumulator which was surrounded by 3 water sources. It consistently overheated until I abandoned the project in favor of steam boilers.

 

[Heiðar]

Well the thing is, I was working in the area, so there's no way the water source wasn't loaded, in fact I was closer to the water source then the engine until I went to the house to sleep. Lay in in... BOOOOM

 

[baka123]

Use buildcraft gates to shut the engines down when they are overheating

 

[makeshiftwings]

I always had the worst luck with Combustion Engines. The water flow is just too easily broken by server lag and chunk loading issues. After several explosions that shouldn't have been possible, I eventually had one that had two separate pumps and a huge reserve water tank and gates that would shut off the engine if water stopped flowing through any of the pipes, and it STILL managed to explode. I don't trust them anymore.

 

[Daemonblue]

Unfortunately, it doesn't. At least not in my setup. It seems to run just fine for a while (about 5 minutes) and then the engine suddenly uses up all the water and overheats.

I had a 6 engine setup like this:
- W -
W-X-W

Where each combustion engine was stacked on top of an aqueous accumulator which was surrounded by 3 water sources. It consistently overheated until I abandoned the project in favor of steam boilers.

I've gotten a single accumulater to supply three engines with water fairly easily myself, with it struggling to put water in a fourth. That said, I've had a ton of issues with combustion engines in my small test world, such as them turning off with full water and fuel just cause the water pipe isn't filled with water (no gate on the water/fuel pipes).

 

[TheSandwichMakr]

When you setup any sort of engines or other machines make sure every part is in the same chunk so if it does get unloaded the whole thing is unloaded not just the water pump or what's using the energy. You can make sure they're in the same chunk using the debug screen (F3).

 

[Omicron]

Well the thing is, I was working in the area, so there's no way the water source wasn't loaded, in fact I was closer to the water source then the engine until I went to the house to sleep. Lay in in... BOOOOM

If it's not a chunkloading issue, then it's because you built it wrong... there's some behavior of waterproof pipes that hardly anyone pays attention to, even when they should be intimiately familiar with it from using Redpower tubes. I am talking about backflow.

When liquid traveling along a waterproof pipe hits a dead end, it doesn't stay there. It reverses direction and flows back. Why is this a problem? Because each individual pipe section can have only so much liquid flowing through it at any one time. When you are relying on water flowing from A to B, but half the pipe's capacity is taken up by water backflowing from B to A, then B is only getting half as much water as you think it does. Only when the pipe is completely full, meaning no air left anywhere along its length, then the liquid stops sloshing back and forth and stabilizes. When you then start drawing water, it will flow forward in just the required speed and never cause backflow. Also, if the pipe is empty and any arriving water finds a machine to flow into, then it won't backflow either (even if the machine consumes water much slower than it arrives).

How does backflow happen?
- A machine that consumed water before from a pipe that was not 100% full suddenly stops consuming water (a carpenter running out of materials, a combustion engine switched off by a lever).
- No destination exists for the water to go to (during construction, before you add machines that consume water).
- A T-junction exists in the system. This is a big no-no in critical cooling lines because as soon as the side arm experiences backflow, it will always, always choke the pump down to a fraction of its output even as the main arm continues to draw water, starving it. All cooling lines should be dedicated pipes.
- Not using golden pipes. While golden waterproof pipes experience backflow just as much as any other pipe, they have four times the capacity, and as such, even when choked with backflow they will still have a reasonable throughput forward. It's a band-aid solution, but it can be enough.

So what should you do?
- Use golden pipes for important cooling lines.
- Use dedicated cooling lines without junctions. If you must supply your carpenter from the same pump, lead a second individual pipe from the pump.
- Make sure the combustion engine only starts requesting water when the pipe is 100% full.
- Use local aqueous accumulators instead of remote pumps.

 

[Heiðar]

Thats some great advise right there. Thx alot, I'll start implementing this when I start re-building my house

Can you have remote pumps pumping water into tanks and Aqueous accumulators use the tanks as source ?

 

[Daemonblue]

The accumulaters make the water out of thin air, the water blocks around them only speed up the process. Basically, with the accumulaters set up properly you don't even need a water storage tank.

 

[Mikey_R]

You wouldn't have to do that. The aqueous accumulator doesn't have an input, just an output. It will automatically generate it's own water and, by putting 2 water sources next to it, will generate that water very quickly. No need for an iron tank at all.

Seriously, just use pumps to pump oil and lava and leave the water accumulation to the aqueous accumulator.

 

[Bagman817]

Combustion engines are just asking for trouble, imo, particularly with all the alternatives now provided by Thermal Expansion and Railcraft. Steam engines directly connected to a boiler should provide all your power needs down the road, in the short term Magmatic engines are cheap and reliable.

 

[Antice]

If you really want to use the combustion engines, (they are very powerful after all) then attach them to your water network trough small buffer tanks, and use a circulating system for filling these. (basically you use a loop that feeds water from a central reservoir and passed/into all the buffertanks you have set up, the end should feed back into the central reservoir or into a void pipe. this way you ALWAYS have forward flow in the main pipe. The buffer tanks could constantly be pumping water into the engines, and be set up with a gate that sends a shutdown signal to the engine in case the tank runs dry. that way you have an extra layer of margin before the engines go kablowie on you.
Issue solved.

 

[Zjarek_S]

I like combustion engines, now that they output is buffed and with TE aqueous accumulator they make really good power source. However you are never too careful with them. Here is my small power plant:

Ignore lasers, they are here only temporary, I'll build better place for them later. Each engine is connected to Iron gate with condition "if red pipe wire is off -> redstone signal". Conductive pipe is connected to 2 energy cells (one can't accept whole input), which are then connected to larger storage (10 cells ATM). At the connection with cells there is another gate with "energy full -> red pipe wire signal". There is cobblestone structure pipe covered with facades in the wall which goes to manual shutoff lever.

Here is the back and water source, liquid is not displayed due to bug (but is flowing):

The middle golden waterproof pipe (between engines) is actually empty, but it has another set of gates, which activate red wire if engines are red or orange. It is a bit messy now, because during testing I found out that 1 aqueous in this setup could supply only 3 engines with constant water, and I had one for 4 engines, so I had too modify it. However I already fully refueled the engines, so I will just wait before expanding it to 24 engines and making it pretty again. Waterproof pipes are weird, and I wouldn't suggest mixing combustion cooling with anything else (even with cooling of nearby engines). With a little bit of work there is no risk of explosion. You just have to use gates, they are not so expensive, but they take a lot of time with undeveloped infrastructure.

One more thing. Combustion engine outputs 6 MJ/t (when powered with fuel), lasers accepts 4. I don't know if combustion engines can blowup from energy overflow if it is cooled, but it could be the case.

 

[Zelfana]

Magmatic engines are a better choice, they do not need water, only lava. They also cannot blow up and slow down if full power is not needed.

 

[b0bst3r]

Combustion engines have a little devil controlling them, when you aren't looking it presses the boom button for no apparent reason just to cause destruction they are evil things to which I don't use anymore.