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Strange Heat Pipe behavior?

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:06 pm
by MassiveDynamic
Screenshot (34).png
Screenshot (34).png (2.42 MiB) Viewed 187 times
In the attached picture you will notice that the heating tower has a constant supply of fuel yet the temperature of the heating tower does not move beyond 514.11 degrees. Also the nearby heat pipes will not move from 501 and 502 degrees while the adjacent boilers continue to register "low temperature".
Any thoughts?

Re: Strange Heat Pipe behavior?

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:30 pm
by Jay_Raynor
MassiveDynamic wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:06 pm Screenshot (34).png In the attached picture you will notice that the heating tower has a constant supply of fuel yet the temperature of the heating tower does not move beyond 514.11 degrees. Also the nearby heat pipes will not move from 501 and 502 degrees while the adjacent boilers continue to register "low temperature".
Any thoughts?
Can you pull back to show more of the setup? How many exchangers are connected, etc?

Re: Strange Heat Pipe behavior?

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:34 pm
by Muche
Heat pipes operate with 1 C gradient. If your heating tower has temperature 514.11 C, a connected heat pipe can have at most 513.11 C.
The 13rd heat pipe will have at most 501.11 C, and heat exchanger 500.11 C, barely above minimum working temperature of 500 C.

Then it's about power production of the heating tower vs. consumption powers of connected heat exchangers.

Re: Strange Heat Pipe behavior?

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:58 pm
by Matheo
MassiveDynamic wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:06 pm Also the nearby heat pipes will not move from 501 and 502 degrees while the adjacent boilers continue to register "low temperature".
That's because a single heating tower generates enough heat for only 4 heat exchangers.
  • Heating tower - generate 40MW of heat
  • Heat Exchanger - consume 10MW of heat
Build more heating towers to saturate the heat pipes.

Re: Strange Heat Pipe behavior?

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 8:22 pm
by jdrexler75
To keep all heat exchangers going, you need to keep the reactor temperature above 500°C + X, where X is the distance of the most distant heat pipe in use. Otherwise the closer heat exchangers suck out the heat and there's nothing left for the further ones.

So this is either (like previous commenters have said) insufficient maximum power output, but with this many reactors more likely a regulation issue by not running all reactors continuously, and possibly when they do run they don't always get the neighbour bonus.