Has anyone figured out an optimal setup with Big Reactors yet?

[JoeDolca]

I've done a regular 1*1*4 with cryotheum but that cooled it way too much. I tried a 3*3*5 with water and it easily overheated. Has anyone found the key to ridiculous RF production? It'd work exceptionally well with some sort of universal converter to turn it into EU and MJ and stuff.

 

[Dark0_0firE]

I'm a little confused by your dimentions... how could you have a reactor thats 1x1x4? Or are you just describing the fuel rods themselves? What I can say for sure is that I built a 7x7x7 reactor with 5 fuel rods and cooled with water. It was producing a constant 1300 RF/tick

 

[JoeDolca]

Yeah, I was describing fuel rods. Odd, my reactor with those dimensions (and even one less height) Overheated in a matter of seconds, had to control rod it... Did you use the control rod?

 

[Dark0_0firE]

I only used the reactor control rods to throttle the power back because it was producing too much. I had no problem with heat.

 

[JoeDolca]

"Too much power" A concept that shouldn't exist... You should store it and find some use for it, asap. I'll use my surplus power to power as many quarries as necessary in the Deep Dark or some other digger dimension.

 

[Dark0_0firE]

I did store it , but after filling up 5 Redstone Energy Cells (10mil RF each) I was trying to preserve some yellorum for when I might need it later.

 

[un worry]

I only used the reactor control rods to throttle the power back because it was producing too much. I had no problem with heat.

would you mind briefly outlining your setup and results?

 

[Dark0_0firE]

Hrm... I thought I had pulled the design from a post on here a few weeks ago. Anyhoo it's a 7x7x7 frame with 5 fuel rods in an X shape in the center. Filled with water. I automated the insertion of yellorum and extraction of cyanite which I reprocessed into blutonium. It produced a constant 1300 RF a tick, so a bit under a 36HP boiler, but that was more than enough for my needs at the time. The cost was reasonable for me, if I recall correctly it was about 2 stacks each of iron, charcoal, and yellorum. After filling up 5 Redstone cells I decided to use the control rods to throttle down the output to about 10% for each rod, which was plenty to run my basic processing and AE system.

 

[Methusalem]

Somebody from Resonant Rise put the following doc together, that lists a lot of possible configurations and their output: http://tinyurl.com/bigreactortesting

The output numbers are with the RR configs, which buff the reactors quite a bit. But Ako built a 7x7x3 reactor in one of his latest FTB Monster videos and this reactor delivered between 130-180 MJ/t.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCXHnmFFNg8)

 

[Vircomore]

I've been playing with BigReactors extensively on my Monster server, so I'll give you my points:

• Liquid Ender is the top coolant, bar none.
• Making a reactor taller rather than wider is better. With liquid coolant, you only need source blocks along the top. So a 5x5x5 reactor needs the same ender as a 5x5x20.
• Temperature is the biggest factor in efficiency. Keeping your heat below 1000* is my personal preference, because at 1000* the fuel penalty is only 10%, but as you approach 2000*, the penalty goes up to 66%.
• The ComputerCraft controls are impressive. HERE - http://pastebin.com/JCa6CmhL - is my own custom script. It displays vitals to a connected monitor, and dynamically controls the reactor rods to maintain a running temperature of ~820*.

I produce about 1800RF (180MJ)/t at the running temp. of my current setup = 8-rods, 7W x 11L x 15H. That's with rods at about 81% removed. During a cold start (computer sets rods to all in) I've seen numbers as high as 8500RF (850MJ)/t.

 

[YX33A]

I've been playing with BigReactors extensively on my Monster server, so I'll give you my points:

• Liquid Ender is the top coolant, bar none.
• Making a reactor taller rather than wider is better. With liquid coolant, you only need source blocks along the top. So a 5x5x5 reactor needs the same ender as a 5x5x20.
• Temperature is the biggest factor in efficiency. Keeping your heat below 1000* is my personal preference, because at 1000* the fuel penalty is only 10%, but as you approach 2000*, the penalty goes up to 66%.
• The ComputerCraft controls are impressive. HERE - http://pastebin.com/JCa6CmhL - is my own custom script. It displays vitals to a connected monitor, and dynamically controls the reactor rods to maintain a running temperature of ~820*.

I produce about 1800RF (180MJ)/t at the running temp. of my current setup = 8-rods, 7W x 11L x 15H. That's with rods at about 81% removed. During a cold start (computer sets rods to all in) I've seen numbers as high as 8500RF (850MJ)/t.

Yoink! Much thanks, very good.

 

[Lordlundar]

I did store it , but after filling up 5 Redstone Energy Cells (10mil RF each) I was trying to preserve some yellorum for when I might need it later.

You don't have a kill switch in place? Odd. Mine's set up to start a 5% internal capacity and stop at 95%.

And the numbers from that table is odd. I just built the one on line 16 which is the 7x7x7 with the 5 rods in x formation and diamond and ender coolant. The stable temp is accurate but I only pull off just over 1900 RF/t, not the 5900 RF/t that the table claims.

 

[Senseidragon]

My apologies if I'm inadvertently necro'ing this thread, but is this spreadsheet massively out of date now?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An54qOfSiXfJdEcyaHAxWURaZTR2eEpEWEFaU0xydXc#gid=0

According to the sheet, the line 16 7x7x7 reactor put out like 5900RF/t at ~970C but when I tested it I got closer to around 10KiRF/t and that was with the powerProductionMultiplier=1.22, NOT at 3.0 like the spreadsheet says.

If I tweak the powerProductionMultiplier up to 3.0, the RF jumps to 25.4KiRF/t which is just stupidly high.

So I figure I have to be missing something here.

This is the control panel at 1.22 powerProductionMultiplier
https://imgur.com/vvPHs1s,CNv2ydG#0

This is the control panel at 3.0 powerProductionMultiplier
https://imgur.com/vvPHs1s,CNv2ydG#1

Note: I did alter the design by removing the diamond blocks and just using the ender fluid instead, but I'm not positive if that did a whole lot for the efficiency. I also have my control rods inserted to about 60% to get the temp down.

 

[GreenZombie]

http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/the-little-big-reactor-that-could.46481/

The key points are:
1. You need 3 blocks of coolant / moderator between the core and the reactor casing to capture radiated energy.
2. You want the core as densely packed with fuel rods as possible to maximize fertilization.
3. However: Fuel rods that don't have at least one face exposed to a coolant block generate a lot of core heat, but very little energy.
4. Cyrotheum is better than all the other coolants, except resonant ender along the edge of the reactor that can capture fractionally more RF from the remaining radiation. Critically it has the same heat conduction as diamond, but far better absorption and moderation characteristics so STOP USING DIAMOND DAMNIT!
5. From a fuel effiency point of view (RF/ingot), flatter is better than higher.

 

[Methusalem]

My apologies if I'm inadvertently necro'ing this thread, but is this spreadsheet massively out of date now?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An54qOfSiXfJdEcyaHAxWURaZTR2eEpEWEFaU0xydXc#gid=0
According to the sheet, the line 16 7x7x7 reactor put out like 5900RF/t at ~970C but when I tested it I got closer to around 10KiRF/t and that was with the powerProductionMultiplier=1.22, NOT at 3.0 like the spreadsheet says.

Yes, the spreadsheet is from V0.12A and rather outdated now. Big Reactors V0.30 made a lot of changes to the energy output (and added active cooling), this link should have the new numbers.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ckNzzHQhpgGFHkqNxB7ICrodStiq3fmfsyBFy-Z-smA/edit#gid=0

Your spreadsheet is not useless though. The best reactors in the old version are in most cases still the best choices, just the numbers have changed.