Steam Power Tips and FAQ

[Malloway]

I'm posting this as over the past few days I have not been able to find out that much technical information about Steam, Steam Engines, and Railcraft Tanks number wise. That being so I decided to do a bit of testing myself and log the results, and share them with you all, as to make your Mj generation that much easier =)


Industrial Steam Engines
- 40 Steam/t per engine
- 8 MJ/t per engine

High Pressure Boiler (max size 3x4)
- 1 High Pressure Boiler can output 720 Steam/t
- Enough steam to power 18 Industrial Steam Engines
- 1 Liquiduct connection outputs 80 steam/t
- 9 Liquiduct connections is the max amount needed to extract 720 steam/t

Railcraft Tanks
The bottleneck here is in the valves
- 1 valve can input and output 160 Steam/t
- 1 valve connection sends enough steam to power 4 Industrial Steam Engines
- 4.5 (aka 5) valve connections input and output is the min/max needed to input and export the amount of steam 1 HP Boiler is capable of producing

Liquiducts and Conduits
-Conduits max energy transfer is 500 MJ/t
-Liquiducts max steam transfer is way more then I was able to determine. Durring testing I had 8 HP Boilers all hooked up to a line of liquiducts all powering 144 Industrial Steam Engines, that’s 5760 Steam/t traveling through each liquiduct!

Quick Reference Guide
(This is assuming you are using a max size 3x4 Boiler -> Railcraft Tank -> Industrial Steam Engine setup)
- 1 HP Boiler = 5 valves (in and out) = 18 Industrial Steam Engines = 144 Mj/t
- 2 HP Boiler = 9 valves (in and out) = 36 Industrial Steam Engines = 288 Mj/t
- 3 HP Boiler = 14 valves (in and out) = 54 Industrial Steam Engines = 432 Mj/t
- 4 HP Boiler = 18 valves (in and out) = 72 Industrial Steam Engines = 576 Mj/t

Tesseracts
(Info for Liquid Tesseracts)
- A Liquid Tesseract is capable of sending 160 steam/t per side
- The more sides you connects, the more steam you can send through, if you connect all 6 sides a Liquid Tesseract will send 960 Steam/t
- On the other hand a Liquid Tesseract on the receiving end is not bottle-necked and is capable of receiving any amount of steam with just one side connected … As far as I could tell. (Tested with 8 HP Boilers, connected to 6 Sending Tesseracts, all sides connected of course, linked to 1 Receiving Tesseract, 1 side connected, powering 144 Industrial Steam Engines.)

 

[egor66]

nice work interesting results.

 

[dc0110]

any chance you want to do the same for LP boiler and Commercial steam engines?
I'm in a lazy mood
Very handy reference

 

[MilConDoin]

Didn't now the limits of the liquid tesseracts. Thanks.

dc: LP has half the steam output of HP and commercial engines have half the steam consumption/energy production than their industrial counterparts. Multiplying/dividing by two should be doable all by yourself, no matter the amount of lazyness.

 

[dc0110]

curiosity got the better of me, the wiki's quite good compared to others.
I'm jut starting out with steam, so I'm easing myself in gently

 

[Malloway]

any chance you want to do the same for LP boiler and Commercial steam engines?
I'm in a lazy mood
Very handy reference

For LP Boilers just look at the Quick Reference Guide and divide the valves and the Mj output by 2.
So for instance 2 LP Boilers will take 4.5 (aka 5) valves, can run 36 Commercial Steam Engines, and produce 144 Mj/t

 

[Nightshadow]

I am curious... You say 8 MJ/T per industrial steam engine. Mine are full of steam, and some produce 2.1 some produce .9... Why is this?

 

[Freakscar]

I am curious... You say 8 MJ/T per industrial steam engine. Mine are full of steam, and some produce 2.1 some produce .9... Why is this?

How many m3 does your boiler have? 18 ISE is a 36HP boiler.

 

[Nightshadow]

It is fixed now Freakscar, I learned of the limitations of liquid ducts. I had to supply each 2 engines with a liquid duct instead of all off of one output.

 

[EternalDensity]

The numbers for steam output in liquiducts have been given, but what about water input? How many aqueous accumulators or gregtech water blocks are needed to keep up with a 36HP boiler (or how many 36 HP boilers can share one?), and does a 36LP use half as much water?

 

[egor66]

1 AA can do the job, but I am belt & braces so I use 2.

 

[Noj87]

Hi, thanks for this guide, it's been a great help. I was just wondering if there is any information for use with Xycraft tanks? Do the Valves on these perform different to the ones on the Railcraft tanks?

 

[MilConDoin]

A week ago I tested, with which values in the config an AA can keep a 36HP boiler fed with water. It turns out, that reducing the number from 25 to 5 kept it fed, with 4 it slowly lost water. Since probably no admin of a server will reduce that value below 6 (= needed number to keep a combustion with fuel cool), your boilers will be fine.

That number gives the amount of mB of water generated (and output) per tick.

 

[Shirkit]

Seems that the Railcraft Tanks Inputs directed hooked to a Tesseract inputs infinite amount of Steam. I hooked a 36 HP boiler directly to a Liquid Tesseract (send only) + 8 liquiducts, and then connected a single Liquid Tesseract to the Railcraft Tank (Receive Only) and I was sending the whole steam.

 

[Booker The Geek]

Have you done any testing with the updated Factorization steam boiler? (Not in the mod packs as of yet.)

 

[Shirkit]

I thought that the new Factorization boiler had nothing to do with Railcraft steam/

 

[Booker The Geek]

I know that you can run the steam turbine (half of the replacement for the solar turbine) off of railcraft steam. I don't know if you can pull stream out of the solar boiler. (other half of the replacement.)

I do know that I am running
40 mixers
20 grinders
36 crystalizers (heaters)
20 furnaces (heaters)

Off of 3x3x2 Hp boiler on one steam turbine.


So nice that my massive amount of mirrors are no longer needed. now my roof can actually be used for something other then charge production.

 

[Shirkit]

Does factorization ore process works with modded ores also? Bauxite, tin, monazite etc?

 

[Zjarek_S]

Does factorization ore process works with modded ores also? Bauxite, tin, monazite etc?

Only copper and tin (and of course silver).

Solar boiler eject steam through top, it also can share steam and water with other boilers in the same column.

 

[Booker The Geek]

Does factorization ore process works with modded ores also? Bauxite, tin, monazite etc?

It only works with:

• Iron
• Gold
• Tin
• Copper
• Silver
• ..... You also end up with lead, but the system does not process the lead you mine.

1. ORE -> Grinder = Dirty ORE
2. Dirty Ore -> Mixer = Clean ORE Chunks & Sludge
   • Cook sludge into Clay. More then 1 clay per ore inputed into the system? All my coke ovens, my dreams....
3. Clean ORE chunks -> Slag Furnace = Reduced ORE Chunks
4. Reduced Ore chunks -> Crystalizer = Crystalized ORE