RF to EU Conversion with Lava Fabricators (pls help lmao)

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Y

Yobby

Guest
Modpack: Direwolf20 1.7.10, latest release

I got tired of moving my pumps around the nether every 6 hours and decided to fully automate the production of EU by powering 36 lava fabricators with a yellorium reactor (there's a capacitor bank acting as a buffer between the reactor and fabricators), then pumping all the lava out into reserve tanks, then into a cluster of 64 geothermal generators. These output both directly to my UU-matter setup and IC2 machines, and to an MFSU.

So, to be clear, the "tree" of power is as follows:
Yellorium reactor > capacitor bank > lava fabricator (x16) > 720 mB of lava per second > storage tanks > geothermal generator (x64) > IC2 machines

Now for the problems...

Issue #1: I'm definitely not making as much EU as 64 geothermal generators should, based on the numbers described on the wiki. 64 of them should make 1280 EU/t, but I'm failing to make a surplus of it when only powering the mass fabricator, which has a maximum input of 512 EU/t. Why might this be?

Issue #2: I have two rednet ports on my (very large) reactor monitoring the buffer and the insertion in order to automatically use just enough yellorium for whatever is being powered at the time, which is almost always a quarry and the lava fabricators. With this set, it produces about 5000 RF/t. Without this, the reactor is capable of producing 13000 RF/t. I want to run it as low as possible to save on fuel. My question is, would a capacitor bank bottleneck my lava production since it can only receive and output 5000 RF/t? With the way I have it set up right now, I can't fuel my geothermal generators with enough lava to keep them satisfied, despite the immense amount of lava I'm capable of creating. I'm using resonant fluxducts, so no need to worry about a bottleneck there.

Problem solved! The output rate of the bank was limiting my lava creation by a LOT. This is way more fuel-consumptive, unfortunately.

Issue #3: To carry the lava from the fabricators into the reserve tanks, I'm using super-laminar fluiducts. To carry it from the tanks into the generators, I'm using signalum servos on hardened fluiducts (4 tanks and 4 ducts for extraction). I've noticed that, despite the lava filling all of the ducts evenly, it refuses to fill all of the geothermal generators evenly, always emptying into ones that already have lava in them. How can I prevent this?

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Thanks in advance for any help. It's appreciated. I can offer images if anyone needs to see exactly how I have things set up or if they're just curious.
 
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Inaeo

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Quick question: why spend RF to make lava to spend lava to generate EU? Why not just use something like MFR Rednet Energy Cables or Immersive Engineering wires to convert the RF direcyly to EU without loosing power in conversion?

I'm a visual guy, so pictures are always helpful. I'm also always curious to see how other engineers design their systems, so show us what you'be got.
 
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Y

Yobby

Guest
I was under the impression that there was no efficient conversion method within Direwolf20 1.7.10. How exactly does that work?
 

Inaeo

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,158
-3
0
RedNet Energy Cables autoconvert RF<->EU without loss. They have limits on throughput, but using then to power the few EU needing machines I've felt were worth my while has never run into the cap.

Immersive Engineering wires also convert, although that functionality disappears in 1.10.

Otherwise, Steam is a good converter between many different power systems. It's easy to make (five MFR Steam Boilers will run a max sized BR Turbine, for instance), it's simple to transport and store (Tesseract, Drums, Liquid Transfer Nodes), and is universally accepted as fuel for many mods (RailCraft Steam Turbine for EU, TE Steam Dynamos, BR Turbine, MFR Steam Turbine, etc.). Lava is also a good converter, but it is generally more expensive to make.

It's worth noting that a closed loop of buckets traveling between a Lava Fabricator/Fluid Transposer and five MFR Steam Boilers can easily create enough steam to generate more RF than the Lava Fabricator needs, creating a positive feedback loop. I'll see if I can find my old pics...

Edit: Something like this. Use the extra RF to power a dedicated Lava Fabricator just for your Geothermal setup if you want sustainable EU generation.
http://m.imgur.com/a/DtS0G
 
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Y

Yobby

Guest
RIP the dozens of hours I've spent automating my power creation with what I've got right now. Thanks for all the info.