[0.15.10] Steam Turbines/fluid transport issues

[xBlizzDevious]

Hi all,

I've just started my reactor setup in 0.15 and I love the power potential with it. However, I'm having a bit of an issue with the turbines not working as they should.

Here's a screenshot of the power generation setup:
(I'm impressed your forums allow a 25MB picture! I trimmed it down from 100MB anyways).

HUGE picture warning

Reactor-Turbines Setup.png (24.8 MiB) Viewed 9202 times

As you can see, I have:
> 6 Reactors
> 80 Heat Exchangers
> 138 Steam Turbines (there's actually only 134 in that pic but I forgot I needed to add 4 back in after moving things around).

From what I can see from my research of how the nuclear setups work, that should work, correct?

The issue is that the turbines seem to be running in a bizarre order and not to their full potential.

Initial setup was similar, but with each bank of steam turbines being separated and with no tanks for storing steam. This yielded 570MW - not 800MW.
Then I added a set of 12 tanks with banks of four tanks between each pump. This didn't seem to work too well either (around 600MW) so I switched to one tank between pumps.
When I had four tanks between pumps - 2 above 2, not 4 inline - the two further from the turbines would stay at 6200 steam stored whereas the two closer to the turbines would store 24. This was in each set of four in all of the rows.
I've since tried adding pumps into the pipes between the heat exchangers to make sure they're not limiting throughput, still to no avail.

I've made sure that I'm consuming considerably more than the turbines can produce so that they're not running at required capacity instead of max capacity. My base runs at 1.1-1.5GW at the moment and these should produce 800MW of that. I've set up backup steam engines to fill the gap but they're not limiting the turbines - I've checked by entirely disabling the steam engines and allowing the base to run low on power - where I was producing absolutely nothing more with my steam turbines.



Does anyone have any idea why these aren't working properly and could you advise as to what's wrong and how to fix it? Thanks!

If you need any more info about the setup, just ask and I'll tell you what I know.

Note: Yes, the game is modded, but I haven't got any mods that alter fluid mechanics (as far as I'm aware) nor do any change the power systems.

[Distelzombie]

Theres enough room inbetween the turbine rows to put turbines. Maybe if you decrease the lenght of the rows it would work better. Ratio is good though

[Selvek]

I had a similar issue, albeit on a much smaller scale plant. Putting a pump right before each row of turbines seems to help - after the vertical pipe that connects the 4 rows together, rather than before it.

Factorio fluid dynamics are... weird.

[xBlizzDevious]

Theres enough room inbetween the turbine rows to put turbines. Maybe if you decrease the lenght of the rows it would work better. Ratio is good though

Indeed. I may try it tomorrow but I had no reason to make it smaller so just kept going. Haha! Indeed it's worth a shot, though.

I had a similar issue, albeit on a much smaller scale plant. Putting a pump right before each row of turbines seems to help - after the vertical pipe that connects the 4 rows together, rather than before it.

Factorio fluid dynamics are... weird.

You're telling me. I'll try doing that tomorrow too. Hopefully these two things will be all it is. If not, I'm lost.

[Distelzombie]

If it doesnt work just use my 8 reactor setup. xD

[xBlizzDevious]

If it doesnt work just use my 8 reactor setup. xD

Well I did both things:
> Added pumps before each row of turbines, after the "joining/mixing" pipe.
> Halved the length of the rows of turbines and doubled the number of rows.

That didn't work. My steam tanks were starting to fill and I was only producing 670MW.
So I went a step further and basically removed pipes. Everywhere I could fit one, I placed a pump.

I'm now running at 674MW....

I'll maybe have a look at your setup indeed. But I'm really baffled as to how this isn't working. It seems like the steam isn't getting from the heat exchangers properly so I might have to separate those rows. Who knows!

The only issue with your 8 reactor setup is that I'm only using 6 at the moment but expect in the future to be using nearer 16 in a 4x4 setup; modded inserters are awesome. That's 2.56GW, by the way.


Any devs got any idea what's up?



EDIT: Ok, I've done some more tweaking. This setup now includes a hefty 84 pumps and produces 797MW. So it's still shy of the 800MW but it's a LOT closer. The issue does indeed seem to be getting the steam out of the heat exchangers quick enough, though.

[Distelzombie]

You could use the module I shared there.

Any after fiddling with my setup again I had the idea it could be the weird fluid mechanics: Did you place all buildings and pipes, especially the heatpipes, from start to end in THIS order? Or did you like, started placing the row of turbines from the right to the left, or the heatpipes from the exchangers to the nuclear in this direction? This messes things up.
Try placing heatpipes again first.

[xBlizzDevious]

You could use the module I shared there.

Any after fiddling with my setup again I had the idea it could be the weird fluid mechanics: Did you place all buildings and pipes, especially the heatpipes, from start to end in THIS order? Or did you like, started placing the row of turbines from the right to the left, or the heatpipes from the exchangers to the nuclear in this direction? This messes things up.
Try placing heatpipes again first.

I was aware of the heatpipes issue and made sure I placed them from reactor outwards. As for the heat exchangers, steam pipes and turbines, it was all mix and match. I probably placed the turbines from left to right for row 1, then right to left for row 2, etc. The steam tanks and so on have been moved around so many times I have no idea. And the heat exchangers were placed with bots.

You think that's the issue?

[Distelzombie]

I dont know. Its such a weird issue.
Do all the heatpipes show more than 500°C?

BTW your picture has already produced 1.3 GB of traffic. XD

[xBlizzDevious]

I dont know. Its such a weird issue.
Do all the heatpipes show more than 500°C?

BTW your picture has already produced 1.3 GB of traffic. XD

I don't know about the temperature in the heatpipes. I've just deleted everything while playing around with your setup. I did backup first so if I can't get this to work, then I'll go back and look for you.

Ouch... Good thing I cut it down then, eh? It would be about 5GB by now if it was the full picture!

[mrvn]

I build up a mock reactor using blueprints and I never got above 170 MW from a single heat pipe. Got more when connecting 2 separate heat pipes to the reactor. But maybe that was because I placed the second one manually.

I also had a very hard time getting the temperature up in the reactor (and everything else). What temperature does you reactor peak at? I got mine up to 983° only after removing most heat exchangers by cutting the heat pipe short.

[Distelzombie]

I build up a mock reactor using blueprints and I never got above 170 MW from a single heat pipe. Got more when connecting 2 separate heat pipes to the reactor. But maybe that was because I placed the second one manually.

I also had a very hard time getting the temperature up in the reactor (and everything else). What temperature does you reactor peak at? I got mine up to 983° only after removing most heat exchangers by cutting the heat pipe short.

That heatpipe bug has been fixed with version 0.15.11 that came out a few minutes ago.
Temperature in reactor should always be slightly above 500°C. If its higher then you dont have enough heat exchangers.
Heat exchangers also dont need more that 500°C, but an heat producing source pushing more heat to them like a pump. (reactors on)

[xBlizzDevious]

I build up a mock reactor using blueprints and I never got above 170 MW from a single heat pipe. Got more when connecting 2 separate heat pipes to the reactor. But maybe that was because I placed the second one manually.

I also had a very hard time getting the temperature up in the reactor (and everything else). What temperature does you reactor peak at? I got mine up to 983° only after removing most heat exchangers by cutting the heat pipe short.

That heatpipe bug has been fixed with version 0.15.11 that came out a few minutes ago.
Temperature in reactor should always be slightly above 500°C. If its higher then you dont have enough heat exchangers.
Heat exchangers also dont need more that 500°C, but an heat producing source pushing more heat to them like a pump. (reactors on)

Due to the changes in heat pipe mechanics - or possibly this would have been the case prior - this setup seems to not work very well.

Is it possible for the heat to transfer this far or is it just going to be really slow? Because this has been running nearly an hour and you can see how far the temperature has gone.

ReactorsSetup.png (7.08 MiB) Viewed 9080 times

[Distelzombie]

It is impossible. Look at this!
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47556&p=275659#p275562
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47556&p=275659#p275659

[xBlizzDevious]

It is impossible. Look at this!
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47556&p=275659#p275562
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47556&p=275659#p275659

Damn it! I'm really NOT impressed with the vanilla implementation of nuclear. It sounded really good - and I still think the principle is great - but the limits and irrational issues just make it unworkable.

I thought I'd solve the issue myself by modding the maximum transfer rate of reactors and heat pipes. While I was there, I thought "might as well increase temperature in case that helps extend things further". So I upped temperature on heat pipes and reactors to 1500 (from 1000) and increased the "max_transfer" on heat-pipes to 10GW from 1GW and reactors to 100GW from 10GW.
No errors show up, but the reactors don't go past 1000, nor do the heat pipes seem to be transferring quicker or further. I thought it'd maybe be that they'd need replacing but that made no difference either. I didn't leave it running long but there was ZERO change in the few minutes I left it running. Like, not even 1MW from a 1.1GW setup.

[mrvn]

Heat pipes seem to consume an awfull lot of heat to heat up. They have an awfully high capacitance. The pro side is that you can use heat pipes as heat capacitors and only occasionally turn on your reactor to get them reheated. The con side is that turning on the reactor takes a long time to heat up lots of heat pipes.

For a test I build a single reactor in the middle of a 15x15 field of heat pipes. The idea was to later surround that square with heat exchangers. It had it running continiously through maybe 20 fuel cells and it barely got up to 300° with the heat falling of by 1° for every meter distance from the reactor. But it did keep rising steadily.

I guess for practical purposes (fast reacting, producing steam before you finished the game) the goal is to use the minimum number of heat pipes.

[xBlizzDevious]

Heat pipes seem to consume an awfull lot of heat to heat up. They have an awfully high capacitance. The pro side is that you can use heat pipes as heat capacitors and only occasionally turn on your reactor to get them reheated. The con side is that turning on the reactor takes a long time to heat up lots of heat pipes.

For a test I build a single reactor in the middle of a 15x15 field of heat pipes. The idea was to later surround that square with heat exchangers. It had it running continiously through maybe 20 fuel cells and it barely got up to 300° with the heat falling of by 1° for every meter distance from the reactor. But it did keep rising steadily.

I guess for practical purposes (fast reacting, producing steam before you finished the game) the goal is to use the minimum number of heat pipes.

I left that system running for about 3 hours. I was well under capacity for a long time and let over one million steam build up. I then switched the rest of the base back on and my power draw went up to ~1.2GW. The steam must have been dropping at about 20k/s until it ran out - where the entire system then sat producing a mere 340MW. It did so for about half an hour before I gave up.

[Distelzombie]

I wasnt joking when I said it is impossible.
It took me nine! tries to build one that works as good as before 0.15.11

It is very complicated now.

[xBlizzDevious]

I wasnt joking when I said it is impossible.
It took me nine! tries to build one that works as good as before 0.15.11

It is very complicated now.

Well I'm using two of your "old" style setups for now. Two separate banks of 8 reactors. I'm not happy that I can't use reactors as I want to - but if I can't edit the way heat transfers with mods, I've got no choice!

EDIT: I'm now using your V2.0 design but the startup is wired wrong. Posted in your thread but you just need to check the output of the startup constant combinator. Thanks for the awesome design - though I've not thoroughly tested it yet.

[Xeorm]

Hmm, did a test in Freeplay mode (wow, so useful for things like this) and found the main issue with your setup was the fluid rate. Shortening the amount of pipes between the heat exchangers and turbines resulted in more energy produced. Adding on more heat exchangers in the line also increased power, but at vastly marginal rates.

On a side note, 1000+ radars makes the minimap look quite odd.