The Final Word on Steam Boiler Efficiency
- Thread starter Omicron
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This is my current setup:
6 36HP Boilers (Chunkloaded on a server for at least 4 days now)
6 Steam Turbines
Powered by Fuel (8 refineries)
Currently I'm getting 51 UUM/day (GregTech is installed), is there any way to improve the efficiency of my boilers? Or maybe a way to add 6 more turbines? I'd be thankful for any advice on the design.
6 36HP Boilers (Chunkloaded on a server for at least 4 days now)
6 Steam Turbines
Powered by Fuel (8 refineries)
Currently I'm getting 51 UUM/day (GregTech is installed), is there any way to improve the efficiency of my boilers? Or maybe a way to add 6 more turbines? I'd be thankful for any advice on the design.
If things haven't changed much in the latest versions, you should without any issues be able to connect 6 more turbines to your setup. Each boiler outputs a total of 40*36=720 steam per tick, each turbine only need 320 steam per tick, so with two turbines connected to each boiler you actually still have a slight surplus, enough to fuel 6 industrial steam engines you can use for MJ needs.
That's a lot of steel though... Are you automating steel production in any way?
That's a lot of steel though... Are you automating steel production in any way?
This got me thinking, what other ways of converting the steam you get from boilers to EU? After all, it's not a completely autonomous setup that can run indefinitely if you still have to mine the iron for the steel...
I did some testing(Probably a well known way, but still), and one way is to connect your steam to industrial steam engines producing 144MJ/t, then use this to power 4 thermal generators fed by cobblestone igneous extruders. The lava produced is just barely enough to power 6 Thermal generators, which generates an ironic 144EU/t.
This way of doing things is obviously much less efficient than using the steel turbines. Even in Ultimate 1.4.7, two turbines is 200EU/t, and in 1.5.2 the same setup is 400EU/t, but at least it's a completely closed system which doesn't require any external resources. Are there other ways? I guess it's quite possible to automate steel production instead, maybe by using bees.
I did some testing(Probably a well known way, but still), and one way is to connect your steam to industrial steam engines producing 144MJ/t, then use this to power 4 thermal generators fed by cobblestone igneous extruders. The lava produced is just barely enough to power 6 Thermal generators, which generates an ironic 144EU/t.
This way of doing things is obviously much less efficient than using the steel turbines. Even in Ultimate 1.4.7, two turbines is 200EU/t, and in 1.5.2 the same setup is 400EU/t, but at least it's a completely closed system which doesn't require any external resources. Are there other ways? I guess it's quite possible to automate steel production instead, maybe by using bees.
-Redacted- Look below for an excellent explanation for how Liquiducts work :3
Actually, you can just do this, Linky, which is probably the best way for your setup, you don't even need to change anything, just throw in the new turbines at the bottom.
That's not quite how liquiducts work. There is no limit on how much an unpowered liquiduct connection can input into the system. The 80 mb/t bottleneck in that system comes from the steam boiler itself. Each block face of a boiler actually pumps out 80mb/t.
However, if you power the input connection, then it will suck liquid at a rate of 160mb/t. So if you want to save on connections, you can power the connection to the boiler and only need 4.5 connections instead of 9.
Correspondingly, the unpowered output connection also pumps out 160mb/t. This is why you only need 2 connections on a turbine to get the maximum 320mb/t input. There is no such thing as a powered output connection.
Granted, for the system you describe none of that actually matters, but I just thought it would be good to clarify things in case OP decides to alter the system or mess around with stuff where being more accurate would matter.
Also.
GT has added a steam Turbine that takes approximately 2.22222 36 go boilers to run at full capacity, and features
Various rotor types, with varying efficiency, lifespan and etc on each.
It's a huge multiblock with various parts (like the fusion reactor in context) which makes it cool.
GT has added a steam Turbine that takes approximately 2.22222 36 go boilers to run at full capacity, and features
Various rotor types, with varying efficiency, lifespan and etc on each.
It's a huge multiblock with various parts (like the fusion reactor in context) which makes it cool.
Pretty much anything that can use biofuel will trounce MFR bioengines over long periods of time -- even with the buff in the 1.5.x packs, they only get 80% of the energy from the stuff that Combustion Engines do. Only 1-sized boilers are less efficient, and that only because of heat-up times. A full-size boiler stack will eventually get almost twice the energy that a bioengine would, /if you can use all the energy./
The exchange, however, is that bioengines can turn on and off instantly, and have rather extremely high energy density, especially since they don't need external engines or water sources.
good point. for placeables and emergency power supplies, bioengines are second to none, with all the faces available for connecting, you can build a highly compact portable setup. but for long term needs, it seems worthwhile to set up at least a medium sized boiler.
density wise, however, (assuming unlimited fuel, which, with the bioconverter and carrot farm stacks is a very easy possibility) as well as initial construction costs, for intermittent power needs it appears that 'biofuel generator stacks' trump boilers, and break even with combustion (assuming you use TE tech instead of BC pipes)
Seems to make biogens the go-to option for early needs, and boilers a longer term solution. I guess integrity is maintained. of course, if you use extrautilities pipes instead, a lot of calculations have to be redone.
of course, you could always just set up a tinker's construct smelter/magmatic lava loop, but that seems cheatery, and will most likely get fixed when KBI figures out what his recovery addon is allowing.
density wise, however, (assuming unlimited fuel, which, with the bioconverter and carrot farm stacks is a very easy possibility) as well as initial construction costs, for intermittent power needs it appears that 'biofuel generator stacks' trump boilers, and break even with combustion (assuming you use TE tech instead of BC pipes)
Seems to make biogens the go-to option for early needs, and boilers a longer term solution. I guess integrity is maintained. of course, if you use extrautilities pipes instead, a lot of calculations have to be redone.
of course, you could always just set up a tinker's construct smelter/magmatic lava loop, but that seems cheatery, and will most likely get fixed when KBI figures out what his recovery addon is allowing.
In the time and with the iron it'll take you to make the combustion engines, you might as well build more farms.
By the way, energy density measures MJ/block, and doesn't make sense for engines, only for fuels. The thing bio generators have lots of is power density.
If you're running Ultimate, then Power Converters will convert a 36HP boiler to 350 EU/t.
Uh, yeah, but that's just boring. Powerconverters remove all ingenuity in creating energy in my opinion, so I won't ever use them. They are good for people who don't want to bother with such things I suppose, but I was more wondering what obscure ways of generating power one could come up with if you started with a Boiler and a couple of Turbines. That probably didn't come off very clearly from my post, sorry.