[0.11.x] Uranium Power

[leeknivek]

Its unfortunate the way steam engines are that you need 93!! to keep up with the 50MW plant.

[n9103]

Well, there are non-stock steam engines that are more energy dense. Pretty sure both DyTech and Bob's Power both have improved steam engines.

That aside, at least this is almost a magnitude more dense than the equivalent in solar panels

[Fatmice]

Nice refining chain. Way neater than mine ever ends up
I'm curious though, why did you use beacons instead of radars for the power load?

I used beacon because it doesn't reveal more of the map and they use more power than radars. =)

Its unfortunate the way steam engines are that you need 93!! to keep up with the 50MW plant.

Yuoki mod, one of my favorite, has many varieties of generators that are very powerful. I didn't use them because I wanted example build to leverage only vanilla items as well as not requiring people to download another mod just to play with the savegame.

[building44]

Thank you very much.

[n9103]

oh, right, I forgot that the radars I used for a load last time weren't stock.

[Liquius]

I have had this lying around for a few days. It should hopefully work for multiplayer. However I haven't been able to test it. It would be nice to know if it still doesn't work. It also changes the method for adding fuel so that it's more accurate and a bit smoother.

It won't be compatible with 0.4.3 if you have started building reactors.

0.4.4

[Fatmice]

Hi, I just tested the new release in multiplayer mode. It still complains about 1 player not existing right after placing the reactor structure and reactor chest. Esc the notice and the game continues otherwise crash.

The more serious bug has to do with rolling desync that will ensue when you fill the reactor chest with even one fuel assembly. I do not know why the desync occur... The only way to stop the rolling desync is to mine either the reactor structure or chest.

[Fatmice]

Updated example build to 0.4.4.

See here for details.
-Save game is in sandbox mode, single player only!

Savegame
http://www.mediafire.com/download/c6c13 ... mple-2.zip

[Liquius]

A new update is out. The main focus of this one is to allow closed loop reactors. That means two new buildings. A heat exchanger and a fast pump.

Setup for an 18MW reactor

Screenshot 2015-01-10 12.57.09.png (955.86 KiB) Viewed 9829 times

Setup for a 50MW reactor

Screenshot 2015-01-10 15.35.26.png (953.37 KiB) Viewed 9829 times

I am currently using the wall as a placeholder image for the heat exchanger.

To get heat exchangers to work, you will need to place them in between two pipes. If at any point one of the pipes is removed, you will replace the heat exchanger. If you use these with fluids from other mods, you may get some strange results. If the fluid isn't water or pressurised water, it assumes the liquids default temperature, max temperature and heat capacity are the same as standard fluids. Lastly, if you have more than one heat exchanger using the same square of pipe, results can be strange.

0.5.0

People can update from 0.4.0+ if you haven't started on reactors, however you will need to type /c game.player.force.resettechnologies() when continueing with an old save.

This update should be mostly multiplayer compatible, however if your reactor is under too much stress (ie the fuel is dipping to 0) then you get rolling desyncs. Its simple to fix, either mine the reactor or the pipe next to it. You will then need more fuel assemblies or less steam engines.

[n9103]

Had me wondering wtf was the point of your setups, until I read the part about the walls being stand-ins
I'm still wondering though, are you using longer steam engines on the outer middle rows for the 50MW setup?
I ask because you have four pipes on those rows getting heat exchanged, but only 2 pipes on the other rows.

[Liquius]

Had me wondering wtf was the point of your setups, until I read the part about the walls being stand-ins
I'm still wondering though, are you using longer steam engines on the outer middle rows for the 50MW setup?
I ask because you have four pipes on those rows getting heat exchanged, but only 2 pipes on the other rows.

All six are connected to chains of ~25 steam engines, although the water cuts out at 20. The middle 4 pipes temperature ranges from 87 to 97. The left outer pipe is 33 and the right outer pipe is 58. This set up only produces 41MW, however there's plenty of room for improvement.

[n9103]

Oh, so you're using poor examples as your examples?

[Fatmice]

Well I don't know about poor, but that is the most you can expect. Factorio fluid simulation is to be desired. Close loop systems do not work very well at the moment because the fluid do not actually behave like a real fluid. It is more like a bunch of finely divided chests so fluid can get "stuck" in the pipe even when there is clearly room for them to move. This is clearly what is happening now. The close loop of the reactor does not function well if it's more than 80% full. Furthermore, strange behavior happens to the pipe throughput in the secondary loop. I'm loosing more throughput than normally accounted for pipe length!

The most that I've managed to pushed out of the 110 MW boiler is 45MW of generation. IMO, this close circuit fluid loop is not worth pursuing. It would be nice to have primary and secondary coolant loop, but it's really not necessary and isn't much of immersion breaking without it. When the Factorio devs can improve fluid a bit more, I suppose this line of investigation would be worth it.

[Liquius]

Well I don't know about poor, but that is the most you can expect. Factorio fluid simulation is to be desired. Close loop systems do not work very well at the moment because the fluid do not actually behave like a real fluid. It is more like a bunch of finely divided chests so fluid can get "stuck" in the pipe even when there is clearly room for them to move. This is clearly what is happening now. The close loop of the reactor does not function well if it's more than 80% full. Furthermore, strange behavior happens to the pipe throughput in the secondary loop. I'm loosing more throughput than normally accounted for pipe length!

The most that I've managed to pushed out of the 110 MW boiler is 45MW of generation. IMO, this close circuit fluid loop is not worth pursuing. It would be nice to have primary and secondary coolant loop, but it's really not necessary and isn't much of immersion breaking without it. When the Factorio devs can improve fluid a bit more, I suppose this line of investigation would be worth it.

I agree that the fluid system can get be a little strange at times, but that's no reason to give up. All that's needed is a fluid with greater max temperature and a larger heat capacity. I just have to figure out what I want that to be.

[n9103]

I would think that molten salt would be the fluid of choice. I'm not particularly sure how you'd implement it's initial creation, though I suppose just running enough water through a filter would get you the salt and remove the impurities, and a pre-heater to get it to a molten state to be used as a fluid. Or just abstract all that with the Start Reactor command.

[Fatmice]

Be hold, the 8th iteration and at last I've clutch 50.4 MW in my hands.

-Counter-flow heating.
-Buffer liquid theory.
-6.2 MW of upkeep.

Counter-current-1.jpg (933.72 KiB) Viewed 9758 times

Counter-current-3.jpg (663.94 KiB) Viewed 9758 times

Now the details of the build.

-Green box marks the input for primary coolant loop. This is serviced by 1 water pressurizer. Why only 1? It is because the performance of the primary loop is sensitive to the amount of liquid being sloshed around in the pipes. Add only enough liquid such that the reactor has no more than 19 units of fluid. Add more and you will suffer poor performance.
-Arrows mark direction of flow and temperature. Red is hot, green is cool, purple intermediate. Green arrows also mark secondary coolant loop. This is the loop that service the steam generators. The purple arrows showing flow between the storage tanks are necessary and needed to promote even heating of the primary coolant loop.
-Purple circles are storage tanks holding returning liquid of primary coolant loop. Since storage tanks are large pipes, they can accommodate all of the volume of the preceding pipes. The coupling of fast pumps to dump liquid into storage tanks promote flow with directionality. In light of this, special tanks should be made that have higher priority than pipe such that pumps are required to empty them. This will bolster uni-directional flow and improve reactor performance.
-Return fluid is dump into reactor using 5 fast pumps. This is done to maintain positive flux so that the three fast pumps removing liquid from the reactor, orange triangles, will always have fluid.
-Secondary coolant loops are serviced by many water pressurizer banks. They are rectangular boxes colored to correspond to the steam generator banks that they service. The throughput of the water pressurizer should be increased. They are currently the main source of upkeep.
-Only fast pumps are used in this build. Small pumps lack sufficient throughput.
-Pipe to ground must be used whenever possible to reduce pipe length and prevent unnecessary reduction in pipe throughput.
** Given that this build produces 50.4 MW and that the upkeep is ~6.2 MW. The net is of course 44.2 MW. Improvement to the water pressurizer will improve the net power production. Furthermore, this build is capable of producing 52 MW, but this is only quasi-stable. Long term use at 52 MW will cause very strange power fluctuations.

Counter-current-2.jpg (811.81 KiB) Viewed 9758 times

Edit: Some more tweaking of the water pressurizer. I've reduced them to the minimum number needed to service the steam-generators. 12 in the middle, and 12 on each side, a total of 36. So the new upkeep is ~6.2 MW.

[glowfactor]

This is a really enjoyable mod - it seems quite realistic and provides a good challenge to get the fuel processing working.
I can get a normal staright 18MW reactor working but when I've tried to use the heat exchanger idea I could not get any heat to transfer across to the secondary circuit.
Do you mean us to use ordinary wall units or am I missing something in the build?
I'm using buikd 0.5 with factorio 0.11.10

[Liquius]

This is a really enjoyable mod - it seems quite realistic and provides a good challenge to get the fuel processing working.
I can get a normal staright 18MW reactor working but when I've tried to use the heat exchanger idea I could not get any heat to transfer across to the secondary circuit.
Do you mean us to use ordinary wall units or am I missing something in the build?
I'm using buikd 0.5 with factorio 0.11.10

The heat exchanger is a separate building. You should be able to find the recipe next to the pumps. I used the wall image as a placeholder, but perhaps I need to make a better place holder.

[glowfactor]

I've searched in vain for this heat exchanger - all I have are the 2 pumps -Water Pressuriser and Small Pump.
Do I need any more research other than your Uranium Processing.?

[Liquius]

I've searched in vain for this heat exchanger - all I have are the 2 pumps -Water Pressuriser and Small Pump.
Do I need any more research other than your Uranium Processing.?

It should be there. Could it be that you didn't start the save with 0.5.0? You might want to try typing "/c game.player.force.resettechnologies()".