ReactorCraft - clever reactor setups?

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Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Speaking of pressure, is there any way to gauge how much pressure (or steam) is in a steam pipe?

When designing reactors, its difficult to know what effect -- if any -- my changes are having. If pressure is high, I'd consider adding a second turbine. If pressure is maxed (possible?) I'd investigate adding more steam lines to compensate.
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
FTB Mod Dev
Sep 3, 2013
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Speaking of pressure, is there any way to gauge how much pressure (or steam) is in a steam pipe?

When designing reactors, its difficult to know what effect -- if any -- my changes are having. If pressure is high, I'd consider adding a second turbine. If pressure is maxed (possible?) I'd investigate adding more steam lines to compensate.
I am toying with this.
 

Xarlas

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Jul 29, 2019
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I really like how in the newest version (V20f) lava Placed next to an heat exchanger turns into stone and also they exlode when there is lava next to them when they are working (above 100°C ) :)
@Reika It would be perfect if fires (like on netherrack) would be destroyed when they are next to the Heat exchanger because with fire under them instead of lava my OP build still works :p
But because of other fixes the Turbine can "JUST" produce 0.8 GW of power
 

SaintLucifer

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Jul 29, 2019
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Beeing fiddling with HTG setups but i can't seem to figure somethings, so i'm curious if someone know a answer for those:

-Is there a advantage of adding more "floors' to the reactor? A 9x2x9 reactor seem to reach the same temperature as a 9x4x9 one, so i'm curious if there is a use for making it taller.

-How many Heat Exchangers i can hook to one HTG? By what i could test, it seems to be only able to handle 1 HE hooked to 1 turbine, is that right or did i mess something?

-Is it intentional that you can't use ammonia anymore? Every test i did to try and use it in place of water ended the same way, aka a huge crater.
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Sep 3, 2013
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Beeing fiddling with HTG setups but i can't seem to figure somethings, so i'm curious if someone know a answer for those:
-Is there a advantage of adding more "floors' to the reactor? A 9x2x9 reactor seem to reach the same temperature as a 9x4x9 one, so i'm curious if there is a use for making it taller.
More steam production.

-How many Heat Exchangers i can hook to one HTG? By what i could test, it seems to be only able to handle 1 HE hooked to 1 turbine, is that right or did i mess something?
That depends on the HTG design.

-Is it intentional that you can't use ammonia anymore? Every test i did to try and use it in place of water ended the same way, aka a huge crater.
I have no changed ammonia physics; if you exceed 450C, it autoignites and explodes.

I really like how in the newest version (V20f) lava Placed next to an heat exchanger turns into stone and also they exlode when there is lava next to them when they are working (above 100°C ) :)
@Reika It would be perfect if fires (like on netherrack) would be destroyed when they are next to the Heat exchanger because with fire under them instead of lava my OP build still works :p
But because of other fixes the Turbine can "JUST" produce 0.8 GW of power
I can fix this.
 
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SaintLucifer

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Jul 29, 2019
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The setup i'm trying to make is just a basic 9x2x9 like the one bellow:

2014-04-21_21.06.15.png


2014-04-21_21.26.36.png


How many Heat Exchangers could i possible hook to that? And how many boilers per HE i can connect?

Maybe i should make it taller or alter the design?
 
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HarperZ

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Jul 29, 2019
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figures this could be here instead of starting a new topic as its well fitted to the reactorcraft reactors, anyhow enought jabbering.

Iam currently building a larger reactor and turbine complex for mine and a friends base on our server and while most of the reactors and behind the scene logistics are mostly done iv run into a bit of a snag, my problem is the following, when building a centeralized control rooms to manage the complex iv been trying to make a valve or shutoff for the steampipes useing different block breakers and placers and while most breakers can deal with the pipes i cant seme to get that part to work (been trying engineers toolbox, MFR and openblocks sofar)

The reason for this is a semi automatic PLC setup to route steam between a number of turbines and a overflow stack to prevent waste of my amonia for when the turbines aint or cant run.

So essentialy in my massivly roundabout way iam asking if anyone have come up with a decent way of routeing the steam in the form of a valve or if iv missed and inherent function in Rotary/Reactor/Electri Craft
 

Kotaro

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Jul 29, 2019
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The steam grates can be turned on/off via a redstone signal, at least in v21.

If you're breaking the steam pipe, I remember Reika mentioning that you'll lose a large amount of steam you already produced if you're producing more than you're using due to the near-infinite storage of the pipes.
 

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Waterloo, Ontario
The steam grates can be turned on/off via a redstone signal, at least in v21.

If you're breaking the steam pipe, I remember Reika mentioning that you'll lose a large amount of steam you already produced if you're producing more than you're using due to the near-infinite storage of the pipes.
Do you know if the pipes eventually blow up if they're not released? Or does excess steam (you said "near" infinite) theoretically just get lost?

@Reika mentioned at one point that he might look into the feasibility of letting us gauge the pressure of a steam line. If that happens I wouldn't be surprised if we see stricter pressure limits imposed on the lines.

I for one would kill for this ability: I never know how much steam I'm producing and whether its enough to justify another turbine.
 

Kotaro

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Jul 29, 2019
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I haven't had the steam pipes explode, so I don't think they can. I build reactors on a test world before I build it on survival just to make sure there are no.. unfortunate accidents, and that has not been a source of the pretty catastrophic failures I've made learning how to make reactors. Hint: Make sure your water source for steam boilers is chunkloaded...

I agree that it'd be great to see how much steam I'm actually producing. I bet some of the reactors I've made produce way more than I'm using. One of my first reactors would run for about 2 hours after the fuel was spent just on the backed up steam.
 

viveleroi

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hey everybody, just a few numbers for those interested:

Making the most basic fission reactor possible, with 3x3 fuel cores surrounded by boilers in the cardinal directions, I’m able to about max out (I think) 1 turbine for around 920MW. As I don’t really have a use for that much rotarycraft power just yet, its fed trough a 8:1 gearbox and then distributed evenly over 16 rotary dynamo’s using a bunch of shaft junctions set to 1:1. Each of these dynamo’s gets about 57-58MW. A dynamo connected to a TE3 energy conduit maxes out the conduit at a little over 10.000 RF (I believe this is the limit of a conduit) (BTW the dot is a thousands separator). Total RF output from this 1 reactor adds up to 160.000 RF. Freakin awesome. I also don’t have a use for this much RF, so much of this is transformed into EU using pneumatic craft as a in between (don’t have power converters installed). Sorry about that Reika, I know you don’t like EU but I need to supply 8k EU/t to my Molecular Transformers from adv. Solar. Reactor- en especially rotary craft are my absolute all-time favorite mods as finally units of power make sense to me, I so enjoy torque and omega values.

This setup was tested for a few hours yesterday before my wife started bothering me, I think output was stable.

Anyone got any idea on fusion reactor output?


Do you have any pics/more details about this setup? I tried to replicate it - been learning rotary/reactorcraft the past few days. I have a 3x3 grid of fuel cores, with 1 layer of boilers on the sides like you describe. I finally got the turbine working, it's going through an 8:1 gear to a power shaft bus controller/line of buses to 16 rotational dynamos. In early tests without anything connected I saw it hit 450MW, but that wasn't common. It mostly hovered around 300MW. With everything connected it mainly jumps between 50MW and 300MW. Some of the boilers hover around 97 degrees and steam starts/stops in spurts.

I'm trying to find what might be different with yours... I'd settle for 450MW constant, hitting 920MW would be excellent.
 

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Waterloo, Ontario
Do you have any pics/more details about this setup? I tried to replicate it - been learning rotary/reactorcraft the past few days. I have a 3x3 grid of fuel cores, with 1 layer of boilers on the sides like you describe. I finally got the turbine working, it's going through an 8:1 gear to a power shaft bus controller/line of buses to 16 rotational dynamos. In early tests without anything connected I saw it hit 450MW, but that wasn't common. It mostly hovered around 300MW. With everything connected it mainly jumps between 50MW and 300MW. Some of the boilers hover around 97 degrees and steam starts/stops in spurts.

I'm trying to find what might be different with yours... I'd settle for 450MW constant, hitting 920MW would be excellent.
Are you in a colder biome, viveleroi? I think I noticed that on a "beach" my reactor was 10C cooler than on a plains, and my reactors tend to just barely crack 100C required to make steam.

Important: if you don't clean up your steam blocks with condensers, it can really affect your cpu performance which impacts the game and your output. Make sure you're condensing 100% steam as close above the turbine as you can.

Lastly, fwiw, you can get by with 7 reactor cores easily, if you use Neutron Reflectors in a ring outside of your boilers. Reflectors are expensive in steel but greatly increase the number of chain reactions you get. I get the 920MW from my reactor design below:

C - Core
B - Boiler
R - Reflector

___RR____
___BB____
_RBCCBR__
_RBCCCBR_
_RBCCBR__
___BB____
___RR____

I suspect you could get by with a 6-core reactor easily in a desert.

 

firebreaker2262

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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wonder if i missed it but what about this build instead?

C - Core
B - Boiler
R - Reflector
T - Control Rod

___RRR___
__RBBBR__
_RBCCCBR_
_RBCTCBR_
_RBCCCBR_
__RBBBR__
___RRR___
 

MajPayne21

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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That control rod wouldn't stop the reactor if inserted. In fact, it would only affect the 4 cores it is touching. They would still receive neutrons from the additional cores and reflectors. The best usage of control rods is in between all cores to stop neutron interaction as much as possible.

However, if your reactor boilers hover just above 100 C and you insert the rod, you might be able to drop it below 100 C to cut steam output.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk
 

YX33A

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Jul 29, 2019
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So Reika has basically given me the info I need to attempt to make a HTGR with ammonia steam production. Gonna get started on that ASAP. Once I have a working build, I'll share with y'all.

As a reminder, guys, this is stupid. HTGR means High Temperature Gas Reactor. They're hot enough that the ammonia will explode if you use it in them. But a clever man I occasionally am, and I shall find a solution, and it involves Heat Exchangers as it turns out. It will likely be expensive and poorly designed, but elder evils as my witness, I shall make it work!
 
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