Pump Help please - Building 1GW steam plant w/ solid fuel

[Timmit888]

Hi guys, first post on here (if somebody can explain how to hide attached pictures as spoilers then that would be great). I've got 200+ hours play time but only on this map haha. Getting a bit huge...

My plant currently runs at around 400MW, and, for no particular reason, I just prefer being able to rely on solar during the day and steam during the night, with accumulators only around for backup. (I've got a slightly evil plan for building a laser train at some point too, which will need a lot of juce!). I'm currently relying on the accumulators a fair amount ,so would like to build a beefy steam plant to deal with it.

Screen Shot 2016-06-04 at 13.25.34.png (3.5 MiB) Viewed 5019 times

So why not go for a 1GW steam plant?

Fuel is delivered by train and distributed over robot network. I'm familiar with the 1:14:10 ratio etc. That's basically what I've been building so far but with a load of storage tanks as a buffer, which is all a bit messy tbh. The random long line of steam engines was just me messing around. The performance drops in the middle and improves at the end of the line? Strange...

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I've been wondering if there may be some better method for boiling that utilises small pumps. I've never really used small pumps and they seem a bit temperamental to me. I found some interesting stuff on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=134&t=6066&start=20

For my build, I have more than enough space for offshore pumps (they only have a 2x2 footprint after all), so the issue is how best to boil and store the water in a buffer, and then move it to wherever all my steam engines are, since they use the most space. At present, the storage tanks all seem to linger around 1.5k full because the fluid doesn't move through them very quickly, which is annoying.

So, a few questions/requests...

1. Is it possible to make a better system than 1:14:10 by utilising small pumps?
2. What do I need to build to get the maximum (60/s) amount of water from each pump to boiling temperature? Is 1:14:10 already doing this?
3. What's the fastest/most efficient way to get the boiled water into a storage tank buffer? (I'd like a buffer in case the solid fuel supply dries up.)
4. Since my offshore pump/boiling area is more 'dense' than the steam engine bit. How do I move/store the excess water to somewhere that I have the rest of my steam engines?
5. Could I just connect 5 small pumps to the storage tank and output to 25 steam engines?

All tips/advice very welcome. I still have a fair bit to learn it seems...

[Neemys]

1) I don't know
2) 1/14/10 is the max you can run with one offshore pump.
3) To store water you either run one line of tank or divide into multiple tank using pipe (see screenshot at the end of my post). Don't divide before boiler. If your tank are empty and you have lot's of them, starting the system might be long I don't put more than 2 tank per 10 steam engine.
4) If you want you steam engine not at the same place as the boiler, you will need pipe. Be carefull to correctly heat up the water to 100°with enought boiler. If you want to move lot's of water you can do it with 1 pipe and multiple small pump. (see here for ratio : viewtopic.php?f=134&t=6066, it seem to be 2 pump for 10 engine for 14 boiler every 357 tile)


If you use steam only at night there is better set-up that heat up water during day to use during night, it use less boiler per steam engine :

Steam Engine for night only

boiler_steam_night.jpg (179.32 KiB) Viewed 4999 times

There is 14 boiler for 32 engine. But this setup will only work if you use steam at night and let water refill on day. A friend of mine show it to me and it work like a charm. He said he saw it on the forum but don't know where (Edit : Here the post regarding the night engine set-up : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21543)

[Timmit888]

Thanks for your response. I've done a lot of reading/experimenting and I'm starting to thing my original approach was a bit flawed.

I was trying to go with: As many offshore pumps as possible ------> Huge linked up mass of storage tanks -------> huge block of steam engines

Looks like the modular approach may be more effective, although I want to see if I can make it use a smaller space.

Final question, what's the importance of keeping the storage tanks separated? You mention keeping them in a single line...

[bobucles]

1. Is it possible to make a better system than 1:14:10 by utilising small pumps?

Not really. The main limitation is the maximum flow rate of the pipe. One pump already saturates 50% of a pipe, and the flow rate starts suffering badly at high capacity over short distances. IIRC two water pumps will totally saturate a pipe, but the flow rate slows down after 14 tiles. That's why the ratio is this and not 2:28:20 instead.
Small pumps don't add anything meaningful to the core system. It can be used in strange ways such as installing it backwards as a check valve. Turning the pump off will allow water to flow through.

2. What do I need to build to get the maximum (60/s) amount of water from each pump to boiling temperature? Is 1:14:10 already doing this?

Read above. In short, don't worry about maximum flow rate. You can't make use of 60/s over more than a handful of tiles (an underground pipe is always 2 tiles).

3. What's the fastest/most efficient way to get the boiled water into a storage tank buffer? (I'd like a buffer in case the solid fuel supply dries up.)

Just like feed it in should be good enough. The thing about 1:14:10 is that you DON'T NEED STORAGE TANKS. It is completely functional all the way to 100% load and the only limitation is staying happy on fuel. So obviously the only thing you need to store is fuel!

4. Since my offshore pump/boiling area is more 'dense' than the steam engine bit. How do I move/store the excess water to somewhere that I have the rest of my steam engines?

Yeah. Read above. Don't worry about storing excess water. It is only meaningful for running extra steam engines beyond the proper 10. In this way the hot water+extra engines are acting as a fake accumulator. So just like maek accumulators? Your core energy generation should still be based on the pump:boiler:engine ratio, as all 3 things are required in tandem to produce steady electricity. The extra water/extra engines can only help as their own separate addon.

5. Could I just connect 5 small pumps to the storage tank and output to 25 steam engines?

Tanks have an outgoing flow rate based on their capacity, sort of like pressure in a water tower. I'm not sure if you can force more water out with a pump? Either way a tank has 4 connection points that can be in or out.

P.S. Do to various lag factors you may not be able to store perfect 100 degree water in your tanks. If this is the case try using 15 boilers.

[Neemys]

Thanks for your response. I've done a lot of reading/experimenting and I'm starting to thing my original approach was a bit flawed.

I was trying to go with: As many offshore pumps as possible ------> Huge linked up mass of storage tanks -------> huge block of steam engines

Looks like the modular approach may be more effective, although I want to see if I can make it use a smaller space.

Final question, what's the importance of keeping the storage tanks separated? You mention keeping them in a single line...

No you can have storage tank on single line OR on multiple line has long as :

- ratio steam engine/boiler is respected.
- You let the water flow through boiler BEFORE splitting it (if you split it).

In my previous screenshot, see that for each 14 boiler, I split the water in 4. I don't do the boiler ratio because I don't use steam engine in the day.

If I understand well, you want to do huge offshore pump+boiler area (14 boiler for 1 offshore pump). Take all this heated water, store it. Then lot's of steam engine.

Yes it is possible see the next screenshot :

boilers1.jpg (114.47 KiB) Viewed 4940 times

I put 4 group of offshore pump + 14 boiler. Mix all output heated water into storage tank (all storage tank are connected to each other so all water from 4 offshore pump are mixed). And use it to feed 40 engine, I could do more boiler and engine but it is enought to make my point. The only thing you need to observe is no more than 20 engine per line. 1 pipe can't feed enought water for more than that.

you can have multiple line of engine, not all of them at 20 as long as you have enought boiler. (see 1/14/10 ratio) so if you want 100 engine after the tank, you must have 140 boiler heating water before.
In the screen I could have done 8 row of 5 steam engine instead of 2 row of 20.

As you can see I merge some pipe after boiler but before storage tank, you can do that but NOT before boiler (it might work, but will surely fail to heat water to 100°).

You can move heated water over distance if you want your steam engine someplace else but remember 1 pipe = 20 steam engine so if you want 100 steam engine you will need 5 different pipe to bring heated water. And if your steam engine is far, you will need pumping station as explained here : viewtopic.php?f=134&t=6066


So you can have 1 storage zone for heated water, but beware, as water flow slowly into empty tank, you might need to fill them up a bit before linking steam engines. And put fuel into boiler before linking them to tank (if you don't do it, cold water will be in the tank)

[Timmit888]

OK I've done a load of reading and experimenting and the whole idea of bulk storing/boiling/moving water with pumps seems futile. The main thing I'm aiming for is efficient use of space and, since everything can be done without pumps anyway, then there's no point in using up space with them.

That night steam guide was very informative. So is this thread about fluid dynamics: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=19851 (Basically, linking lots of storage tanks is a bad idea.)

Since efficient use of space is what I'm after, I've managed to do a more compact version of the setup used in the night steam guide. That one is something like 51x15 tiles with 32 engines and mine is 46x15 tiles with 33 engines, without the need for gaps between placements. Just need to figure out water delivery and where I'm gonna put my roboports, then I'll post the fruits of my labour...

[bobucles]

There is no need to place storage tanks in front of the boilers. In fact it is probably more advantageous to place them somewhere after the standard 10 engines and mix them in every few engines. This way the first 10 engines can be fed entirely from the boiler system even at peak demand, while the tanks are free to do what they need down the line. But beware if you max out the water line, because steam engines without water mean nothing. There's a lot of starving steam engines in this thread.

I do not recall if a tank has 60/s max output or only 30/s. Either way I'm fairly sure the flow rate is proportional to the tank's % level. You should lose peak power output as the tank dries out.

[BlakeMW]

I made a more optimized design recently:


Also on a larger scale, a 200MW plant I recently built:


The basic idea for highly stackable (long) designs is you make long chains of steam engines and place storage tanks in-line using this pattern:

That design uses what I call a "short-circuit pipe" or "bypass pipe", tanks have extremely high flow resistance so you don't want to have them blocking the main flow, better to have pipes go around or under them. These bypass pipes will do incredible things, more than small pumps can, they will allow all the tanks to fill almost evenly even in a long design. You never want a storage tank to be more than 1 storage tank away from a pipe leading to the boilers (i.e. 2 storage tanks in series is probably okay, but 3 or more is something you want to avoid).

A suitable pattern would be something like:
1 offshorepump - 14 boilers - 10 engines - 3 tanks - 10 engines - 3 tanks - 10 engines - 3 tanks - 5 engines

The idea of intermixing the tanks and steam engines is that when the steam engines are under load they are always close to a storage tank to draw water from.

[Neemys]

@Timmit888 yes moving water is bothersome Your set-up is great and 33 engine is the best ratio for night usage. Kudos With this set-up one thing you need to be careful : don't let the engine working during the day, they willl slowly drain water and when there will not be enought water it will not be able to work fully during night. All the time have enought solar panel for your daily need.

[BlakeMW]

I couldn't resist designing an optimized "long" design - this one has 33 steam engines in a line and generates up to 100MW. The boilers will operate at 100% until the tanks are 2k full and tanks equalize extremely well.


(blueprint)

[Timmit888]

OK it's taken my logistic bots a good couple of hours to clear up that mess - mainly because I had over 150k fuel in the system

@Blake - that "long" design is bloody long haha. Really good though! Unfortunately I don't really have room for it The place I would use is reserved for a huge ore warehouse.

I've been fiddling around with that design I posted as it lacked water input (kind of important) and I prefer delivering the fuel over a logistics network instead of belts. After a lot of unsuccessful messing around with feeding pipes through the center, I ended up just making the whole thing a row higher and putting water through the top. Tanks are at the back end now as well.

First one is with the roboport, which is only needed every 3rd block, so the second design is with a steam engine in place of the roboport. Water comes in on the top right, so all you need to worry about is hooking it up to a pump. The rest is PnP.

Screen Shot 2016-06-05 at 13.50.53.png (789.07 KiB) Viewed 4705 times

Screen Shot 2016-06-05 at 13.51.52.png (883.99 KiB) Viewed 4705 times

*Just noticed I missed a pipe on the top steam engine*

The maximum steam engines is 34 (replacing the top right tank with an engine and using no roboports). I just went with extra tank capacity. The design uses 46x16=736 tiles, so energy kW/per tile is...

32 engines = 22.17
33 engines = 22.87
34 engines = 23.56

I think that's about the best possible in terms of space efficiency.

If nobody spots any glaring mistakes then I'm gonna go ahead and build this. Need 60 blocks of it for my 1GW plant

[bobucles]

Test load your blueprint by placing a single line down and hooking up to beacons. Run it at max capacity, then let the storage completely fill up, then run it over max capacity. A full boiler line should have steady power for 15 beacons or so.

Obviously do this on a small power network to test out.

[BlakeMW]

Radars are better than beacons. Beacons use no power if they have no module. Also 17 radars draw exactly the same amount of energy as 10 steam engines produce so you can do an exact load test too.

[Timmit888]

Right I've built it. I can't begin to describe how much easier this was than my previous setup, which had pumps and boilers following the contour of the coastline.

I made a template blueprint that just had the outside corners from each block on it, so layout of the whole construction was quick and easy to plan. The whole thing then builds itself thanks to the robot network. The advantage of having a robot network for this is that they deliver fuel evenly between all the chests, and with space for something like 2.5m solid fuel that's definitely better than messing around with belts imo. I've got 500 logistic bots constantly running around.

Here it is...

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I've only got half of it running as there's a few more pipes to hook up. Just waiting for the last few to stock up on some fuel. Some of the pipes were a bit fiddly to the more nested blocks so I needed a couple of pipe 'highways'. At final count there's 77 blocks, so roughly 2500 engines.

[Finndibaenn]

regarding the logistic bot vs belt one could say that the belts consume no power ... well actually a little bit as the inserters can't use stack bonus for belts (yet), but probably much more than bots, especially if you need to transport over long distances

[bobucles]

Interesting setup! Do keep in mind that each boiler line can only run 10 engines at steady power. If the system is meant to provide night energy while solar handles the day then it's no problem, but once you get above about 30% steady use it will eventually crash.

A fully compressed express belt with solid fuel should be able to provide just about a steady 1GW of fuel. Burner inserters will reduce the value significantly but you can save a good chunk of energy by not using drone energy to deliver energy.

[Qon]

1. Is it possible to make a better system than 1:14:10 by utilising small pumps?

The main limitation is the maximum flow rate of the pipe. One pump already saturates 50% of a pipe, and the flow rate starts suffering badly at high capacity over short distances. IIRC two water pumps will totally saturate a pipe, but the flow rate slows down after 14 tiles. That's why the ratio is this and not 2:28:20 instead.
You can't make use of 60/s over more than a handful of tiles

In this way the hot water+extra engines are acting as a fake accumulator. So just like maek accumulators?

False. At least 150 water/second is possible and can drive 25 steam engines. It is not as easy to set up, requires lots of power and space for small pumps, but it is possible. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6066
15 steam engines/pipe is fairly simple and more compact (W/tile) than 10.

3-42-30 is superior to 1-14-10.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8854&start=130#p164025
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8854

Water tanks can hold 42 times more energy than than an accumulator and storage tanks are much cheaper. But you might not need either if you run on coal since steam can run day and night. But if you only use steam at night then storage tanks are something to look into.

A fully compressed express belt with solid fuel should be able to provide just about a steady 1GW of fuel. Burner inserters will reduce the value significantly but you can save a good chunk of energy by not using drone energy to deliver energy.

False. Burner inserters will not reduce the value significantly. On solid fuel and fuel taken from logistics chests their energy usage is about equal to basic inserters. And both inserter types use about 0.1% of your GW plant so it will not be significant no matter how you bend it. And burner energy usage is negligable when fuel is take from belt also. Even if you use coal it isn't anything to worry about either.

An express belt carries 1GW of solid fuel energy, yes. But if he wants a 1GW steam plant he needs to use boilers with 50% efficiency. So he needs 2 blue belts. The way you phrase it makes it seem like a blue belt would be enough for a 1GW power plant.

The advantage of having a robot network for this is that they deliver fuel evenly between all the chests,

How is this an advantage? Belts don't really store that much so the fuel will spread to all engines fairly quickly. And bots only spread items equally to all requesters if the requested amount is small and all requesters are equidistant from the storage area since they count bots on their way as fulfilled requests. But the most important part is that spreading out fuel equally to all steam engines is fairly pointless since it is the same amount of energy no matter where it is used. 50% of your steam engines working at 100% or 100% of your steam engines working at 50% gives you the same amount of GW output.

Since I haven't seen a link to BlakeMW's own thread (maybe I missed it) I'm going to plug it here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21543
Useful stuff.