So I'm looking to upgrade my basic pumping station in the Nether, which currently consists of a BuildCraft pump, 4 redstone engines, and an ender tank. My idea is to still use the BuildCraft pump, but to power it instead with Magmatic Engines (since they have quite a high output and their fuel source is readily available in the Nether. So basically, I will have the pump with a standard 16-bucket tank on top, then with some liquiducts pumping out of that tank. Two of the liquiducts will pump lava into the Magmatic Engines, and an unknown amount will be used for pumping the excess lava into an unknown amount of geothermal generators. Basically, I'm wondering how many liquiducts and geothermal generators I will need to keep up with the amount of excess lava being pumped. I would prefer that you assume the max output rate of the Buildcraft pump (16 buckets/sec @ 10 MJ/t) instead of solving for the amount being pumped by the two Magmatic Engines at 8 MJ/t. How many liquiducts will I need to pump out 16 buckets/sec, and how many geothermal generators will I need accordingly?
Lava Pumping Station in Ultimate?
- Thread starter SpartanBlockhead
- Start date
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I don't recommend using a Magmatic engine to power a buildcraft pump. Pumps require barely any energy, and magmatics use up most of the lava you get. I do however recommend you use the GregTech Thermal Generators. They are way cheap and output 50% more EU p/mB of lava. According to my current set up 30 Thermal Generators is not enough, I have tons of lava stored in the liquiducts. My best recommendation is to keep using the redstone engines, make as many thermals as you can (and keep building them until you don't need anymore. 30 Thermals gets me an okay amount of EU, but since I started using GregTech I use combination of thermal and solar power), and just make a shit load of liquiducts, you will probably need a lot in the future anyway.
I am looking to get mass amounts of power out of this (perhaps eventually more than 2048 EU/t, and 4 measly Redstone engines just aren't going to cut it. A Buildcraft pump can accept up to 10 MJ/t to pump 16 buckets/sec (you need to have a storage vessel adjacent to the pump to see this rate, as not even gold waterproof pipes have enough bandwidth for 16 buckets/sec). Also, in my experiments in creative mode, there is still plenty of excess lava even with both magmatic engines running.
UPDATE: Alright, I did some math and it turns out that I don't need 2 magmatic engines, but I also need more than 4 Redstone engines. First I'd like to point out that a thermal generator can process a bucket of lava in roughly 63 seconds, determined by 30000 EU / 24 EU/t = 1250 ticks = 62.5 seconds. Based on this:
Pump under full load (10 MJ/t, 16 buckets/sec)
-----------------------------------
16 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 1008 thermal generators (15.75 stacks)
1008 generators * 24 EU/t = 24192 EU/t
2 magmatic engines (8 MJ/t, 12.8 buckets/sec)
--------------------------------------------------
12.8 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 807 thermal generators
807 generators * 24 EU/t = 19368 EU/t
4 redstone engines (0.2 MJ/t, 0.32 buckets/sec)
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0.32 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 21 generators
21 generators * 24 EU/t = 504 EU/t
Obviously it would be far too expensive to build enough generators to keep up with 2 magmatic engines, so I think I will just use 1. I'm fairly rich in my survival world so 400 or so thermal generators won't cause too much of a problem for me.
Now for the other question, how many buckets of lava can a liquiduct pump out per unit of time? I can't seem to find a number anywhere.
Pump under full load (10 MJ/t, 16 buckets/sec)
-----------------------------------
16 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 1008 thermal generators (15.75 stacks)
1008 generators * 24 EU/t = 24192 EU/t
2 magmatic engines (8 MJ/t, 12.8 buckets/sec)
--------------------------------------------------
12.8 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 807 thermal generators
807 generators * 24 EU/t = 19368 EU/t
4 redstone engines (0.2 MJ/t, 0.32 buckets/sec)
---------------------------------------------------
0.32 buckets/sec * 63 secs/bucket = 21 generators
21 generators * 24 EU/t = 504 EU/t
Obviously it would be far too expensive to build enough generators to keep up with 2 magmatic engines, so I think I will just use 1. I'm fairly rich in my survival world so 400 or so thermal generators won't cause too much of a problem for me.
Now for the other question, how many buckets of lava can a liquiduct pump out per unit of time? I can't seem to find a number anywhere.
I just have mine automatically feeding into industrial centrifuges w/ liquiducts.
It eats it up pretty quick, and you get a nice supply of copper, tin, electrum, and tungsten from it too.
It eats it up pretty quick, and you get a nice supply of copper, tin, electrum, and tungsten from it too.
Alright, further testing shows that a single liquiduct can extract 16 buckets of lava in around 10-12 seconds (about 1.33 buckets per second).
A Magmatic Engine isn't too bad. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't actually eat up as much lava as you think because it will auto-throttle itself, particularly if you have a couple of Redstone Energy Conduits so that it is feeding into the conduit instead of straight against the pump.Two liquiducts and two conduits are all you need. Liquiduct goes on top, then to a direction over the engine. Above the first liquiduct goes your liquid tesseract. Conduct runs parallel to the liquiduct, but on the side of both engine and pump.
Well turns out that I'm not as rich as I thought so I just made 25 to start and I'll add to it later. I'll still use a magmatic engine but the excess lava will be stored in a massive iron tank.
Seems like it's not worth it since a Buildcraft pump can move mass amounts of lava pretty cheaply.
BC pumps also leave flowing lava everywhere which is very bad for servers (unless this was fixed very recently).
I guess, but it's not a problem for me in a singleplayer world. How exactly does the advanced pump collect lava without creating spaces that other lava blocks will fill in to?
Gregtech magic. As long as you don't prompt a block update next to a given lava source, you'll have clean walls of lava at the edges of the pump's range.