Steam turbine?

[JudgeCrane]

Yeah I tore down everything so I can get the piping better. Like I said im good on iron but steel takes too long with just 1 blast furnace so I gotta get a few more running. I been using a few 2x2 boilers one high and other low pressure just to see the capacitys. So you think bigger HP boiler will give me bigger output?

 

[Guswut]

Like I said im good on iron but steel takes too long with just 1 blast furnace so I gotta get a few more running.

If you automate your coke oven and blast furnace (easy to do with BuildCraft gates), you'll end up having more steel than you'll know what to do with (assuming you've got the area chunkloaded).

I been using a few 2x2 boilers one high and other low pressure just to see the capacitys. So you think bigger HP boiler will give me bigger output?

The larger the boiler, the more efficient it will be in regards to the steam produced. You'll get a larger amount of output for larger boilers, but they also require more fuel. You should try and make sure you have a system set up to power them (either solids required, or liquids) throughout the warmup phase so they don't end up using all of the fuel and dying halfway.

 

[Peppe]

Yeah I tore down everything so I can get the piping better. Like I said im good on iron but steel takes too long with just 1 blast furnace so I gotta get a few more running. I been using a few 2x2 boilers one high and other low pressure just to see the capacitys. So you think bigger HP boiler will give me bigger output?

From earlier in this thread:

To get to 100% on your turbine you need to supply 320 Steam per tick.

Every low pressure tank is 10 steam per tick. Every High pressure tank is 20 steam per tick.
....
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/steam-turbine.15531/#post-177305


High pressure vs low pressure is just a tradeoff of double the output for double the fuel consumption. So if you can use all the output then make 1 HP boiler instead of making two low pressure boilers -- you will use half the iron total, but the HP requires iron processed into steel.
HP vs LP Boilers are equally fuel efficient with the largest 36 tank boilers being the peak of efficiency -- the 1x1 and 2x2 boilers are a little less efficient than some engines (combustion, biomass), but boilers have greater fuel flexibility. 27 and 36 tank boilers should be more fuel efficient than anything in the packs.

 

[MilConDoin]

Just remember this:
All this talk about bigger is better regarding fuel efficiency is only valid, if runtime is high. If you let your 36LP boiler run only for 5 hours with fuel (+ cooldown time after that, which will still produce steam while the temp is >100°), the 1LP is still more efficient. It takes 11 hours of running with fuel (+ cooldown time after that) for the 36LP to beat a simple combustion engine running (bio-)fuel and even longer for the 36HP.

These numbers are for MJ production. If you use the steam with a steam turbine for EU production vs combustion engine->magma crucible->thermal generator (from GT), the break even will be a little bit earlier, since the turbine is a bit more efficient (at the cost of needing iron every 60(?) hours).

 

[masterventris]

Another thing to consider is that the minimum size boiler for running turbine is 18 HP, and this produces enough for 100eu/t. If you use powerconverters the same size boiler will run one MV producer and one LV producer, so 160eu/t. A 60% increase and without the steel requirement is something to think about, although it is fair enough to consider it cheaty.

 

[KirinDave]

Here, have a wiki.

http://railcraft.wikispaces.com/Steam Turbine (Device)

Basically build the 3x2x2 right next to a suitably humungous steam boiler, chuck your ridiculously expensive turbine rotor into it, and then put an IC2 cable next to the machine.

What do you do with all this raw power? GregTech has a recipe for centrifuging lava that yields bars of copper, tin, electrum plus tungsten dust. Thermal Expansion lets you make infinite cobble and then melt it into lava, allowing you to summon metal from nothing using MJ and EU. There's also an energy tesseract that will let you power a quarry remotely and some other stuff from Forestry to mess around with.

100 eu/t is a lot of power? I'm pretty sure that the steam turbine is a trap unless your nuclear reactors are outputting steam (or maybe with this new stuff from factorization? I've heard numbers from 1mb to 10mb per mirror per tick... the former is significantly less compelling than the later). The competition is a big array of generators eating the same fuel fed by a router. That is tough competition.[DOUBLEPOST=1363630651][/DOUBLEPOST]

Another thing to consider is that the minimum size boiler for running turbine is 18 HP, and this produces enough for 100eu/t. If you use powerconverters the same size boiler will run one MV producer and one LV producer, so 160eu/t. A 60% increase and without the steel requirement is something to think about, although it is fair enough to consider it cheaty.

Ahh, beat to the punch. Steam turbines are a trap.

 

[hotblack desiato]

In almost all cases, yes, that is the case. Steam is produced so quickly that you're much better off using it instead of storing it, as storage is a form of buffering, and steam is not very efficient in that regard. You may be better off storing lava, created by steam using magma crucibles, as that stores much more efficiently.

if you're playing on ultimate, you should take a look on the oil fabricator. at the moment, it's a bit cheaty, but I guess, that will be nerfed soon.

basically, the oil fabricator produces 1 bucket of oil for 600.000 MJ or 1500000 EU. at the moment, you can get over 850000 MJ out of a bucket of fuel when using the largest boiler. but even after a nerf down to producing 1 bucket of oil for burning 1 bucket of fuel in a 36-boiler, it's still the most promising storage for MJ besides the redstone energycell.