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how to calculate ammount of Heat Pipe heaters?

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2019 6:58 pm
by andre2
Hi,
the offshore pump can handle 50 iron steam turbiness and 25 heat exchangers. 1200 l/sec / 24 l/s. But how to calculate the number of needed heat pipe heaters? So that the heat exchangers have enough energy to fuel the power set.

Re: how to calculate ammount of Heat Pipe heaters?

Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2019 12:47 am
by DaleStan
andre2 wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 6:58 pm
the offshore pump can handle 50 iron steam turbiness and 25 heat exchangers.
Yes and no-but-it-doesn't-matter, respectively. The calculation is similar to that for nuclear power plants:

A single heat pipe heater consumes 200 kW, and produces at 500% efficiency, so it produces 1MW.
Then count how many you effectively have. If the heater has no neighbors, count it as 1. If it has one neighbor, count it as 11 effective. Two neighbors count as 21, and so forth. A 1x4 line is 2 heaters with 1 neighbor each (2*11) and 2 heaters with 2 neighbors each (2*21), for 64 effective heaters and 64 MW.
Then divide that by the power consumed by each exchanger; in our example you need 64MW/10MW = 6.4 exchangers.
Also divide the heater power by the power consumed by each turbine; in our example you need 64MW/4.7(28)MW† = 13.536... iron turbines.

The ratio of pumps to exchangers is irrelevant because exchagers are always 1-to-1. If you have enough pumps for your turbines, you have enough pumps for your exchangers.

†This assumes that you are using heat exchangers that spit out at least 1000° steam. If you're using 500°C steam, use (500°C-15°C) * 0.2kJ/°C * 24/second (2.328MW) as the power production of a single iron turbine, instead of 4.728 MW.

Re: how to calculate ammount of Heat Pipe heaters?

Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:21 am
by andre2
Thank you.
I figured it out now.

Neighboubonus, Efficiency..... it is still not easy to make the right numbers appear easily in your face in Factorio.