0.15 Reactor Ratio

[factoriouzr]

Thanks for the tips guys. My reactor is still 2 MW away from max this way, but there seems to be no water issues.

I have a 4 reactor system using the 8 exchanger rule for pipes and one pump per 8 exchangers.

I also have 40 buffer tanks, 20 on each side (left and right) but I find that when I shut off the reactor so that I can run on stored steam power, I don't get the full output of my reactor. I think the reason is that the tanks are balancing their steam levels and not outputting fast enough.

I have 4 rows of 5 storage tanks on each side.

How fast can one pump move liquid/steam in a pipe in 0.15 (the linked post isn't fully clear and it's from an older version so now that pumps are bigger hopefully we need less of them too)?

How many pumps do I need to keep up with steam demand from the stored steam in my storage tanks?

[Rage]

Thanks for the tips guys. My reactor is still 2 MW away from max this way, but there seems to be no water issues.

I have a 4 reactor system using the 8 exchanger rule for pipes and one pump per 8 exchangers.

I also have 40 buffer tanks, 20 on each side (left and right) but I find that when I shut off the reactor so that I can run on stored steam power, I don't get the full output of my reactor. I think the reason is that the tanks are balancing their steam levels and not outputting fast enough.

I have 4 rows of 5 storage tanks on each side.

How fast can one pump move liquid/steam in a pipe in 0.15 (the linked post isn't fully clear and it's from an older version so now that pumps are bigger hopefully we need less of them too)?

How many pumps do I need to keep up with steam demand from the stored steam in my storage tanks?

Did some quick and dirty testing a while back.
Far as I saw:
One pump can support 10 heat exchangers.
One pipe can support 13 and some change heat exchangers.

[Fatmice]

Did some quick and dirty testing a while back.
Far as I saw:
One pump can support 10 heat exchangers.
One pipe can support 13 and some change heat exchangers.

If by pump you mean an off-shore pump, then it is 11 heat exchangers. A heat exchanger can at most make (10000/97) ~ 103 units of steam per second. So water requirement is 103 units per second. Therefore, 1200/(10000/97) ~ 11 heat exchangers.
If by pump you mean small-pump, then it is 116 heat exchangers, assuming you can provide 12000 units of water per second to the small pump.

I do not know what you mean by a pipe. The flow rate through it depends on how many pipe preceded it and what was the previous flow rate before that pipe.

By any measure, your quick and dirty testing is way off.

Here's my own 2x2 reactor build. Burstable to 488.8 MW for 40 minutes, maybe more since I only allow bursting until average stored steam lost was 20000 units of steam. Rock stable at 480 MW, indefinitely. Water is supplied by barrels. Maintenance power is ~12 MW: bots, water barreling and unbarreling, operated by solar on a separate grid. Supply distance is about 21 seconds in this build. Add more wagons for further supply distance.

Reactor:HX:turbines -> 4:48:84. WHile tileable, I do not recommend blueprinting and slapping them down. Building reactor is a manual job.
Hook up whatever fuel throttling mechanism. Plenty of space for circuit network processing.

Reactor

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[nuevosojos]

I am having trouble with the preheating. I use a boiler to heat the steam to 165 oC, and then try to feed the steam into a heat exchanger. It does not work. The exchanger simply shows the little water icon on the inputs. It doesn't look the pictures I have seen here. Any tips or ideas? I am using 0.15.10 btw.

[Fatmice]

I am having trouble with the preheating. I use a boiler to heat the steam to 165 oC, and then try to feed the steam into a heat exchanger. It does not work. The exchanger simply shows the little water icon on the inputs. It doesn't look the pictures I have seen here. Any tips or ideas? I am using 0.15.10 btw.

Read the patch notes. It has the tips that you need.

[Cagbee]

FFS, I figured out why the turbines have that odd 5.8 MW rating. You can feed the heat exchangers with steam from boilers (1.8 MW each) and this simply adds to the 10 MW each heat exchanger normally outputs!

Total output is ~57.6 MW. Final ratio is 0.5:10:1:4:10.

How effective is preheating the steam??

[Distelzombie]

FFS, I figured out why the turbines have that odd 5.8 MW rating. You can feed the heat exchangers with steam from boilers (1.8 MW each) and this simply adds to the 10 MW each heat exchanger normally outputs!

Total output is ~57.6 MW. Final ratio is 0.5:10:1:4:10.

How effective is preheating the steam??

It only combines two seperate power plants into one.

[mrvn]

Cracking ratios in 0.15

Refinery speed: 1
Chemical plant speed: 1.25

Cracking: 40 heavy to 30 light, 3s (2.4s)
30 light to 20 petroleum, 3s (2.4s)
100 crude to 55 petroleum, 45 light, 10 heavy, 5s

3 heavy crack : 25 refineries
5 light crack : 36 refineries
108 heavy crack : 125 light crack

Ratios to guarantee sufficient cracking when only petroleum is used:
(refinery:light:heavy refineries/plants)
7:1:1 3.5
14:2:2 3.5 (*2)
16:3:2 3.2 (bad)
21:3:3 3.5 (*3)
25:4:3 3.57143 (poor)
33:5:4 3.66667
36:5:5 3.6 (poor)
41:6:5 3.72727
43:6:6 3.58333 (bad)
50:7:6 3.84615
900:125:108 3.86266 (exact)

Short list:
7:1:1
25:4:3
33:5:4
41:6:5
50:7:6
900:125:108

Given how much lubricant you need for science packs that ratio is way off. At least while doing science you never need just petroleum gas. I actually switched my refinery back to normal oil processing because that gives more heavy oil. But I saw they changed the recipies again recently.

If you do think you will at some point need just petroleum then go for it. But I recommend adding buffer tanks before the splitters and a pump and run the pump only when the tank is near full. As in split only when you have excess. Advanced use would be to keep a tank of petroleum gas, light oil and heavy oil and split if you have more of the ingredients than the result.

[netmand]

Thanks for the interesting topic here.
I set up a couple of 2x2 reactor setups:
Setup 1) Each reactor heat pipes separately to 16 Heat Exchangers (4 each), all steam output from the 16 heat exchangers is combined across a pipe-row to a field of tanks. The I'm currently running 6 columns of 8 generators in that setup.
Setup 2) Each reactor heat pipes separtely to 48 Heat Exchangers (12 each), 24-a-side, each side of 24 Heat Exchanger output is combined across a pipe-row to a field of tanks. I'm currently only running one side, (Yes the other side's tanks are just sitting there full) but that side has 96 generators in 12 columns of 8.

This is running on normal map so really I'm not trying to baseline or spec these setups since I'm dealing with growing my factory, clearing more area, etc. But I thought I'd post my observations:
- I figured out how to single feed my reactors back in 0.15.9. They feed the reactor only when the steam storage falls to a certain point; I pre-load at a high point, turn off pre-loader at mid-point, then reactor load at low-point. I have 3 kovalex going and my uranium stores keeps growing far outpacing the somewhat efficient use of reactor uranium. I had to tweak my setup when they moved to 0.15.10 since I was measuring steam. Back in 0.15.9 they measured steam by water indicator, but under 0.15.9 steam is measured by... steam indicator.
- In setup 2 the coolest heat pipe never gets hotter than ~323. When the reactors are offline this pipe doesn't lose heat either. The others that go above 500 fall down to 500 but then stay there.
- I've read about heat pipe placement order causing inconsistent and anomalous temps, in setup 1 all heat pipes are pretty much 1000 when reactors are online. But "pretty much" really means that some pipes are like a degree or two below, sometimes just a small fraction. It's no big deal for me so I don't try to pursue these making pipes to be at 1000 when reactors are online and at top temps. This same behavior may be the reason why I have much cooler temps in the longer ends of the pipes in setup 2. I know on that side I built from far end toward reactor.
- During the day, since solar takes priority in fulfilling power needs, nuclear being 2nd priority takes over at night, with accumulators being 3rd priority they are never called-upon since there's plenty of generators to handle my bustling factory.
- I set up one resource outpost to be steam powered, delivering steam to 4 generators to power two large resource fields, logi bots (10 roboports for charging around 600 bots, there's no science here it's all empricial) for mining drill delivery to on-site plate production, and loader stations.

This factory is full-on space development, all logi bots (estimated over 20,000+), very very few belts except when exchanging items between logicistical zones, over-powered laser perimeter wall, production mods applied liberally to almost every assembler, satellite launcher bay, mining drill, etc. The power grid yawns at the demand, although I should say I have a solar field large enough to power everything during the day.

[edit] as of 0.15.11 in both setups all heat pipes are now at 500 or above at all times after attaining that temp.

[mrvn]

As of 0.15.11 does it still make a difference what order you build stuff in? Does the orientation matter?

I played some more with reactors in a sandbox yesterday and had 2 unconnected heat pipes going from west to east with heat exchangers and steam turbines going both south to north and north to south. Everx heat exchanger had 2 steam turbines and I noticed that always the north steam turbine was running low. So on the northern psrt the second steam turbine but on the southern part the first steam turbine of each pair.

Seems like steam passes through a steam turbine going south first, getting used locally next and going north last or something.

[Fatmice]

Order for fluid pipes matters. Order for heat pipes no longer matters as of 0.15.11

[mrvn]

I forgot to check last night but now that steam isn't just hot water can you bottle steam in an assembler?

[Aeternus]

There is no recipy for barelling steam. You can however put it into fluid wagons.
Preheating steam used to be possible from 0.15.1 through 0.15.9, but was broken in 0.15.10 when steam became a separate type of "fluid". Heat exchangers do not take this as input. Steam can still be mixed between high and low energy, averaging out in temperature.

[tk0421]

something changed with this mornings update. (0.15.12 build 29834)
happened to start a new game yesterday and had started refining and gotten enough stock to start a new reactor when i began today.
only to discover when i started that a single reactor can barely keep up temp with even a single boiler and 2 turbines.?!?!?!?

as soon as you connect any more to the system the temp just plummets and will never get back up high enough to produce any power.

just me? no mods btw.

[Cagbee]

I got something really strange going on in my factory: I have six reactors in two rows making a 232 bonus or a max output of 800 MW which should mean that it should support 80 heat exchangers. I however have almost twice that 160 heat exchangers feeding off of those reactors and all my reactors are still at 1000 degrees. its not decreasing and every time i add some the temp goes down but then back up. im producing the correct amount of steam, which is cool, not sure if bug is involved or anyone got suggestions on helping me figure this out?

[Rage]

I got something really strange going on in my factory: I have six reactors in two rows making a 232 bonus or a max output of 800 MW which should mean that it should support 80 heat exchangers. I however have almost twice that 160 heat exchangers feeding off of those reactors and all my reactors are still at 1000 degrees. its not decreasing and every time i add some the temp goes down but then back up. im producing the correct amount of steam, which is cool, not sure if bug is involved or anyone got suggestions on helping me figure this out?

are you at continuous full load?

[Cagbee]

I got something really strange going on in my factory: I have six reactors in two rows making a 232 bonus or a max output of 800 MW which should mean that it should support 80 heat exchangers. I however have almost twice that 160 heat exchangers feeding off of those reactors and all my reactors are still at 1000 degrees. its not decreasing and every time i add some the temp goes down but then back up. im producing the correct amount of steam, which is cool, not sure if bug is involved or anyone got suggestions on helping me figure this out?

are you at continuous full load?

Are your referring to the temp of the heat exchangers? Yes none of them go below 960 for more than a moment.

[Rage]

I got something really strange going on in my factory: I have six reactors in two rows making a 232 bonus or a max output of 800 MW which should mean that it should support 80 heat exchangers. I however have almost twice that 160 heat exchangers feeding off of those reactors and all my reactors are still at 1000 degrees. its not decreasing and every time i add some the temp goes down but then back up. im producing the correct amount of steam, which is cool, not sure if bug is involved or anyone got suggestions on helping me figure this out?

are you at continuous full load?

Are your referring to the temp of the heat exchangers? Yes none of them go below 960 for more than a moment.

I mean do you have enough steam engines to use all the steam the heat exchangers are making, and are those steam engines trying to run at max power? Is the power setup producing the maximum amount of of power it can?

[mrvn]

Or in other words: Are you getting out all and using that power? If all that power is just potential and you are using only 50 MW in for factory then this is normal. No steam being used, no steam generated, no temperature lost for most of the heat exchangers.

[Cagbee]

Or in other words: Are you getting out all and using that power? If all that power is just potential and you are using only 50 MW in for factory then this is normal. No steam being used, no steam generated, no temperature lost for most of the heat exchangers.

Normally im at half demand, but after artificially creating demand (i.e. placing and deconstructing accumulators) i still have my reactors going at near full capacity, seem to hover @ 930.