What does YOUR Power Room look like?

[Daemonblue]

Well that's the problem, a 36HP boiler system really needs all the machines running at full power for multiple boilers (2 boilers per 1 fermenter/4 stills) and this is where the discrapencies lie.

Now if I could only find out how he's getting the pumpkins to enter the centrifuges since they are refusing item entry...

 

[TruculentMC]

Pumpkins are inserted into the top of the Centrifuge, are they not taking for you?

Well that's the problem, a 36HP boiler system really needs all the machines running at full power for multiple boilers (2 boilers per 1 fermenter/4 stills) and this is where the discrapencies lie.

Now if I could only find out how he's getting the pumpkins to enter the centrifuges since they are refusing item entry...

 

[Peppe]

The Carbon Cell is extracted to get an empty cell back. (There is no sustainable way to get energy from Carbon. Turning them into Methane cells consumes one cell.)
Extractor: Carbon Cell + 800 EU --> Empty Cell
Crafting: Compressed Plants + Empty Cell --> Bio Cell

.

Use the gregtech electric crafting table on those carbon cells. It will return empty cells for recipes that normal eat cells. So you can convert that waste carbon cell into carbon fiber and get your cells back. Carbon fiber has many uses in IC2 and worst case can be compressed to diamonds. Or you can combine the carbon with 4 hyrdorgen cells to get 4 methane cells (1 empty cell if done in the electric crafting table).

It cost about 2 of those methane cells to electrolyze water into hydrogen, but that is about 90k EU gained from your current waste product.


You could make 36 methane cells with each cycle of 16 rubber wood (4 from the wood 32 from the carbon). No cells are used in the cycle and the bottleneck that was the industrial centrifuge is blown away.

That should still be a surplus EU potential 1-1.2 million in the gregtech gas turbine -- i don't know its burn value in a liquid/solid boiler. Imagine it is a lot of potential MJ as well.

Needs some testing, but seems a rubber tree farm is a super fuel. Gary's cart is probably the easiest to execute, but you could do a forestry one without having to bring in too many other machines. I think a wheat farm to make compost and macerate the plant balls back into dirt and the tree farm will have an automated source for hummus. Will likely have a large surplus of dirt as well.

I wouldn't even process the resin unless you need rubber. store it or trash it.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

Carbon fiber has many uses in IC2 and worst case can be compressed to diamonds.

Slight correction, Coal can do that, Carbon Fibre is only a component of Carbon Plates.

 

[Peppe]

Right you are. Just noticed that. For some reason i thought all that carbon stuff could be converted into the compressed coal path.

 

[Daemonblue]

Sadly it can't, and I've also done a bit of work concerning the carbon > methane method on the other thread. It does seem that, indeed, the electrolyzers are vastly superior at making methane cells than the centrifuges in both eu cost and time.

 

[666Lumberjack]

A couple of people mentioned the possiblity of a Hydrogen Fuelled boiler setup earlier, and I thought the idea was kinda neat. I had a go at building a 100% automatic system using a single aquaeous accumulator to generate water, which is converted into hydrogen and burned in a 3x3x4 liquid-fuelled boiler. After a considerable warm-up period the system is now generating a hydrogen profit, although there are a few small issues which limit the system's utility.

Spoiler

On the right here you can see the liquid transposer and aqueous accumulator that manufacture water cells for the system. There are around 60 cells in the system at any one time, but I'm fairly certain it could be run with around 30 if you want to skimp on Tin. The Water Cells are pumped into the first industrial electrolyzer, which is where the problems begin. This electrolyzer in insanely power-hungry, and if not give a direct line from the MFE it will simply waste all the power it recieves. This was the source of the system's biggest problem, because a single steam turbine is insufficient to run this electrolyzer constantly. The cells are pumped straight into the next elecrtolyzer, where six E. Water Cells become 4 Hydrogen Cells, one Air Cell and one Empty Cell. This electrolyzer is much friendlier, and barely adds to the overall power consumption, because it is only running a small amount of the time. From the second Electrolyzer, the products are pumped to a diamond pipe. Compressed Air Cells are sent to the autocrafting table and emptied, Hydrogen Cells are send to the Liquid Transposer and the Empty cells from all three lines are sent straight back to the first transposer ready to be filled.

The gaseous Hydrogen is sent to the huge tank in the middle to be stored. From there, it is pumped to the liquid boiler behind said tank and burned. Since Hydrogen is not the most energetic of fuels, it takes around 400000mB before the Boiler is hot enough that it eats fuel slower than it is produced. This is the second issue, because running the two Electrolyzers for long enough to produce 400 Hydrogen Cells is going to seriously tax whatever other power systems you have set up. I'm fairly certain you'll end up using more than 20 million EU during the setup phase, which means this is probably only suitable for adding to an existing power network.

Spoiler

This is the other side of the system. Two Steam Turbines generate around 200 EU/t - about 130 of this is consumed by the system, leaving a 70EU/t surplus for the base's power needs. I only have two Industrial Steam Engines hooked up at the moment, but if you don't need the EU for anything you could actually add three more, as the second turbine need only run at 30% efficiency. That gives you around 38Mj/t mean energy production after the two Liquid Transposers have siphoned some off (they only run a small percentage of the time), which obviously pales in comparison to some of the setups in this thread. This design is, however, relatively compact, with all equipment occupying a single room and no external farms required. It also has another very significant saving grace - once you finally get the boiler heated up, you'll be producing a good amount of surplus Hydrogen. Left running for a while with a World Anchor nearby, you could very easily get 1000000mB or so saved up, which is an exceptional thing to have if you would like to produce fusion fuel in the future. With each Deterium Cell costing 9 raw Hydrogen Cells, you could eaven set this up as a Fusion Fuel production plant, using three turbines to havest the steam and sending the power into an array of Industrial Centrifuges. With three turbines you produce 225EU/t, enough to run nine centrifuges continously with a little power to spare. Given a sufficient supply of Tin, a couple of these setups should keep up with the fuel demands of a single Fusion Reactor. That is, admittedly, over 2000 iron, but if you can afford the Reactor to consume the fuel a couple of thousand iron ought to be a drop in the ocean.

Spoiler

This image shows another concept I've been playing around with, which seems to have potential. It also happens to pair with the Hydrogen Boiler design pretty well. Since Steam is considered a liquid by the game, it can be stockpiled in tanks. Given the fact the two Turbines of the previous design are rarely both running at full capacity unless you have aq significant power drain hooked up to them, you can pipe the excess steam into an iron tank (I recommend max size over the 5x5x5 here) and pipe it into Engines when they're required to do work. This gets around the fact that a Boiler must be run constantly, but the energy demand is rarely constant. Piping excess steam into a tank allows this to compete with even the best Biofuel 18x engine setup in short bursts, and potentially even run more engines if power is required in bursts. 25 Industrial Steam Engines produce 299Mj/t - enough to run two 64x64 Quarries at around 10 minutes per layer, Two Fillers or Builders at maximum speed or any combination of the three. This is also ideal for assembly table setups with a large number of lasers. 25 Steam Engines will drain a full 7x7x8 Tank of Steam in around 5 minutes if it is not replenished, but this time is, of course, extended if a boiler is pumping directly into the system as it usually would be. Given the steam output of a large Boiler, it is not unreasonable to imagine several connected tanks filled with steam. Two tanks of steam means 10 minutes of work - not especially impressive for a quarry, but roughly 70000 blocks placed for a pair of builders, and even more material move in the case of two Fillers.

I imagine the steam storage idea is of greater utility to most people than the Hydrogen Boiler setup, but the latter does have potential as a hybrid Power Source/Hydrogen Factory (I'll have to do some testing as my boiler has not reached maximum temperature yet, but it's possible you could run another off the same source. Even if not max size, a second 3x3x3 setup would dramatically increase the viability of this as a genuine power source. It would, admittedly, also cost a whole bunch more steel, but you can't have everything!

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

This electrolyzer in insanely power-hungry, and if not give a direct line from the MFE it will simply waste all the power it recieves. This was the source of the system's biggest problem, because a single steam turbine is insufficient to run this electrolyzer constantly.

I don't think that's a problem, only the GregTech multi-block machines require constant 128 EU/t energy, the Industrial Electrolyzer only says "insufficient power line" if it lacks the energy to perform the operation.

EDIT: Ignore this post, I think I'm wrong about it, I have never had an Electrolyzer on a power line that was not perfect/had enough energy.

 

[SilvasRuin]

You'll need to use Liquiducts to pull from a tank fast enough to to get enough Steam to put the better engines to use, and that's assuming a Tank doesn't throttle the output. I haven't yet tried.

 

[TruculentMC]

For EU production from Steam, I recommend Magma Crucible -> Thermal Generator over Steam Turbine.

144 MJ/t will power 7 Magma Crucible, with 4 MJ/t left over being more than sufficient for the Liquid Transposer. Magma Crucible produces 1 lava every 1000 tick, and the Thermal Generator consumes it in 1250 ticks, so they can supply exactly 8.75 Thermal Generator. I guess you can choose to build 8 and have some extra MJ left over, or build 9 to run at not quite full duty for maximum EU - which comes out to be 210 EU/t. So, that will be better than 2 Steam Turbine, and no replacement Rotor to worry with.
Another thought, given the way the TE machines slow down a bit with less power: It may be better to have 8 Magma Crucibles, powering 9 Thermal Generators, or perhaps even a larger number of Crucibles? I don't know, I should test this though, to see how they scale with less power input.

 

[Wabbit]

Like this.

Keeps a fabricator, 8 advanced engines, 9 recyclers and 2 electrical engines powered and then some.

 

[Daemonblue]

Your setup has too many steps and the cost can be cut back for both energy and machines. The biggest change you can make is attach the aqeuous accumulater directly to an industrial electrolyzer. Throw in 5 cells and you get 4 hydrogen cells and a compressed air cell. No need for two electrolyzers, and the energy cost is a couple thousand less per recipe. As for pipes, use liquiducts. Those things are far superior to buildcraft pipes and have a much better throughput. You'll still need to attach the liquiducts to several of the boiler's faces due to each face only supplying 40 steam/t, but you won't need a massive amount of lines coming out of the boiler to carry it all.

 

[Zjarek_S]

Indeed, use liquiducts, see my post a little back where I used liquiducts to transfer steam from a 36 HP boiler to 18 engines.

I've searched your previous post, and you are using liquiducts very inefficient. Liquiducts works a lot more like real life pipes than buildcraft pipes. The only issue with boilers is that boiler has limited output to one liquiduct, but you can connect multiple liquiducts inputs to the boiler. I will post my test picture again http://imgur.com/SBhEQ, this setup is pumping all the steam to the tank from HP boiler (I destroy middle bottom block of tank to get accurate reading from iron tank).

 

[Wabbit]

Your setup has too many steps and the cost can be cut back for both energy and machines. The biggest change you can make is attach the aqeuous accumulater directly to an industrial electrolyzer. Throw in 5 cells and you get 4 hydrogen cells and a compressed air cell. No need for two electrolyzers, and the energy cost is a couple thousand less per recipe. As for pipes, use liquiducts. Those things are far superior to buildcraft pipes and have a much better throughput. You'll still need to attach the liquiducts to several of the boiler's faces due to each face only supplying 40 steam/t, but you won't need a massive amount of lines coming out of the boiler to carry it all.

This post made my mouth fizz.

 

[Daemonblue]

Depends on if it's a liquid or gas - not sure if KingLemming has added different viscosities for the different liquids other than those yet. Since Steam is labeled as a gas it has a lot more throughput than liquids though, which is why they can handle steam so well.

 

[Zjarek_S]

Is there a cap on how much one liquiduct can transfer? I know there is a limit on the output per block side on the boiler.

I haven't made extensive testing yet, but cap for steam is really high, as expected (it is gaseous and in TE it counts). I'm sure that one liquiduct can get all steam from 420 EU/t nuclear reactor with steam reactors turned on in config, also in this case you need only one connection to the reactor, but two inputs per turbine. http://imgur.com/gVutj, there is more connections in this picture, but after deleting them it worked fine with only one output from reactor. I don't have pictures, because I didn't copy reactor design well enough

Edit: yes, there is different viscosity for liquids, you can pump water faster than lava.

 

[Daemonblue]

So basically this would be the better solution: http://i.imgur.com/p9GpQ.jpg
I can agree with you though, it seems to work well.

You could either do that or attach the engines directly to the boiler and have them pump into conduits. It'\s more of a question of how you want your system to look and if you don't mind using conduits over liquiducts.

edit: Also, I believe you would need to attach the pipes to 4 more faces since iirc each one outputs 40 steam max.

 

[Daemonblue]

Those are the industrial engines right? Not familiar with that texture pack so I'm uncertain. But if what you say is true them they might have changed the max output per face on the boiler. I'll probably have to try it out later to be certain, would be easy to test it using the hobbyists engines since they use only 10 steam/tick.

 

[warfighter67]

The Nether:

Spoiler

Here's the first lake i emptied:

Second:

and here's a third one I started on. For some reason only a wall is left standing -.- No wonder I wasn't getting any lava at home.

Overworld:

Spoiler

My main room:

Mystcraft room (I name my ages starting with age number for technical reasons, and yes, I did get my first crystals age at 16):

Power for my Assembly Table (12 lasers) and a magma crucible. I have some complex red wiring going on to only activate how many engines are needed (5 for crucible and all 12 for the table-which go to an energy cell):

IC2 room:

Scrap producer:

Nuke room (Current nuke uses a setup with plutonium cells that generates 400 eu/t):

Behind all that cool stuff in the nuke room is a layer of reinforced stone:

Non-automated farm, mostly for looks:

Quarry simple sort system:

 

[joseff amador]

Ok since I just finished my new steam boiler today, I figured I should participate in this thread by showing off my new base that I've been building the last few days.



Up here, you can see the majority of the crafting area. It has the walls of barrels containing base ingredients, as well as a complete IC2 power station and core machine setup. There is also a UU-Matter production line here.

Here's a close up view of the IC2 station. You can see the Nuke, which has 3 reactor chambers attached to it and produces 160EU/t when switched on.
The output goes to the MFSU on the right, and the Mass Fabricator on the left. The Fab does not drain from the MFSU, which is intentional.
On the right, there are the four base machines (Induction Furnace, Rotary Macerator, Singularity Compressor, Centrifuge Extractor) which face the crafting area.
On the back side of those is an array of four Recyclers, each with 5 Overclocker Upgrades in them.
The Logistics Pipes network here tries to fill the Recyclers with Cobblestone, and provides Scrap out of the sides.
On the left, the Logi pipes try to put Scrap in the bottom of the Mass Fabricator, and UU-Matter into the chest.

Above the Nuke area, the Logi pipes then go to the top level of the base, where they pull Cobblestone from an array of Barrels along the wall. The chest in the middle holds Scrap as a buffer, from the Recyclers.
This means I can dump huge amounts of Cobble into the row of barrels from remote Quarries. I haven't set up an Ender Chest system for that yet but its on the list of things to do.


Lastly, here is my main crafting area, where all the important stuff is stored, with the main idea being easy access to the central crafting table.
Note the use of Wrath Lamps throughout the base, as well as Sandstone floors, which have a high reflective rating, making everything bright and preventing mob spawning with a minimal number of lights.

That's pretty much it so far. The top level has an enchanting area, and access to the roof via steel door and obsidian pressure plate.
There is also an array of solar panels on the roof connected to the MFSU via tin cable along the side of the building. This provides the EU necessary to run the four advanced IC2 machines at idle without draining the MFSU.
It may seem strange given the presence of a Nuke, but this is important because with the World Anchor, those four machines running at idle will drain a fully charged MFSU in only 13 hours and 53 minutes.
Here's what the base looks like from above.

What are the green digital signs from, displaying the information?