Factorio Forums

Posted: **Mon May 01, 2017 5:27 am**

I've created a Kovarex enrichment process loop that's easily expandable.

You can see on the left I have pairs of centrifuges that perform the process. I loop the U-238 and have a logic cable attached at 2 points on the belt loop. I allow the belt to push U-238 in if the other belt on the link has less than 3 U-238 on it. The train going to get the processed uranium pieces usually has to bring back around 70 each trip right now, but as I expand the loop it will use more at my centrifuge plant.

The output of the U-235 from the process is put into a wooden chest, loaded to a steel chest with logic, then back into the centrifuge. If at any time the steel chest has more than 30 U-235, the electric inserter will activate if there is some U-235 to move toward the output belt. I don't have too much on the belt because I've been using the excess to get more pairs of the process running. Only started with 2.

Posted: **Mon May 01, 2017 2:50 pm**

My design is very simple, i just use another inserter to insert the items back into the centrifuge. Any "profits" gets pushed down the line.

But im breaching the limit one belt can handle, im going to need to use robots i need to make more.

Edit: just noticed you are using efficiency modules, from what i witnessed... dont put anything but productivity in them! It produces 41 but you only get 1 profit, but thd productivity will grant you a net worth of 41 bonus every time.

Posted: **Mon May 01, 2017 3:46 pm**

OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:My design is very simple, i just use another inserter to insert the items back into the centrifuge. Any "profits" gets pushed down the line.

But im breaching the limit one belt can handle, im going to need to use robots i need to make more.

Edit: just noticed you are using efficiency modules, from what i witnessed... dont put anything but productivity in them! It produces 41 but you only get 1 profit, but thd productivity will grant you a net worth of 41 bonus every time.

Can you post a couple screen grabs of your setup?

Posted: **Mon May 01, 2017 7:03 pm**

herkalurk wrote:
OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:My design is very simple, i just use another inserter to insert the items back into the centrifuge. Any "profits" gets pushed down the line.

But im breaching the limit one belt can handle, im going to need to use robots i need to make more.

Edit: just noticed you are using efficiency modules, from what i witnessed... dont put anything but productivity in them! It produces 41 but you only get 1 profit, but thd productivity will grant you a net worth of 41 bonus every time.
Can you post a couple screen grabs of your setup?

Uh.. yea.. Just let .. me.. move it and make it presentable. lol.
So i moved it out of the dirty testing site (which i end up just leaving everything because they work)

Here is the kovarex enrichment process, and my blueprint stampable nuclear reactor line. I have not yet maxxed it out well enough to figure out how many steam turbines should be in the setup, but after reading 60:103, i have 16 heat exchangers in a line and it appears that around 28-30 is indeed the correct area. But i go over a little bit to 32.

The belt isn't dense or has a single item on it yet because the chest is not full. (like i said, i moved it

)
But this setup, that could have some more beacons on it is producing 800 U-235/minute. Lucky me, them nukes are delicious

but the thing i was talking about is this magical thing right here.

The nuclear reactor line, is nowhere near perfect, But it accomplishes its goal.

Posted: **Mon May 01, 2017 7:57 pm**

I built all of this well of my main factory, so I decided to go more with belts than logistic chests. Probably could have just slapped down a few robot facilities and let them move things around.

Posted: **Tue May 02, 2017 6:04 am**

OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:I have not yet maxxed it out well enough to figure out how many steam turbines should be in the setup, but after reading 60:103, i have 16 heat exchangers in a line and it appears that around 28-30 is indeed the correct area. But i go over a little bit to 32.

The ratio per 40MW reactor power is:

Code: Select all

Heat Exchangers : Steam Turbines : 4 : 6.9

That said... the Reactor output depends on the neighbour bonus.

Code: Select all

No neighbour bonus: 40MW
Neighbour bonus 100%: 80MW
Neighbour bonus 200%: 120MW
Neighbour bonus 300%: 160MW
Neighbour bonus 400%: 200MW (since completeley surrounded it can only be filled by hand)

I also highly suggest you adopt a 2*n arrangement of Reactors to get a lot of 300% bonus effects... because with your 1*n design you are wasting Reactor efficiency since you have to place more Reactors which results in burning more Uranium to reach the same power output... since the Fuel consumption doesn't stop when there is no power consumption.

OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:The belt isn't dense or has a single item on it yet because the chest is not full. (like i said, i moved it )
But this setup, that could have some more beacons on it is producing 800 U-235/minute. Lucky me, them nukes are delicious

but the thing i was talking about is this magical thing right here.

[...]

The nuclear reactor line, is nowhere near perfect, But it accomplishes its goal.

I think that the build can be denser, making better use of the beacons, so here is another Kovarex Design from me I experimented with:

: kovarex bots+beacon.jpg (281.07 KiB) Viewed 16156 times

0.15.5 Blueprint String

It's also selfsustaining by backfeeding the U-235 to itself using the chest loop. So once it is past the startup phase it will never require any U-235 from the outside anymore.

The filter Inserter only outputs the 1 excess U-235 to the provider chest... which is pulse-triggered (when U-238 > 0) when the process finishes and the stack inserter (set to read hand contents in pulse) outputs the 2 U-238 to the steel chest. (It's hard to see but there is a green wire between the Output Filter Inserter and the Output Stack Inserter)

The requester chest is set to request new U-238 to make up for the loss each cycle. But also to request U-235 to start the process when there is no U-235 in the cycle yet, so in the beginning it will take a while to fill the requester chest with U-235. But once there is enough in the cycle to fill the Centrifuge Buffer (about ~90 U-235 I think) it will never request any additional U-235 anymore. Thanks to using the buffer it has the benefit that it can start with the next cycle already even if not all of the U-235 from the previous cylcle has been back-looped yet.

I should probably also mention that I'm shutting the entire thing down with a power switch (not shown in the picture/blueprint string, it's outside the picture to the bottom where the power line comes in) once a certain threshold of U-235 is reached in the logistic network. That way I prevent the Provider Chests from being overfilled and also to conserve energy on the beacons.

The excess U-235 could also be output to the far side of a belt of course instead of a provider Chest, while the near side of the belt could be used to bring in new U-238 instead of using a requester chest. That would require an additional Filter inserter with filter set to U-238 that is also pulse-triggered when the U-238 output happens to the steel chest, or otherwise it would start filling the U-238 buffer in the Centrifuge, possibly leading to overfilling the Steel Chests with the U-238 of the recipe output.

Hypothetically the chest loop could also pass the U-235/U-238 down to the next Centrifuge and at the end backloop it to the beginning... but I found my solution better because it involves less robot movements. One could do that with a belt too of course.

Posted: **Tue May 02, 2017 2:11 pm**

You cant underground pipe through 2 reacgors, which is the intent of this current reactor setup. Im playing on the train gen preset and i havnt even needed to set up a train to get uranium yet, just working off the couple 200 to 400k spots around my base. Im fine with wasting the uranium as of right now, the design will be changed eventually, for something probably better as long as it has the blueprint stampable linear design. quite frankly dont think 7gw is gonna be enough.

Ill be sure to upgrade to robots fully for the kovarex process. Just when that system needs it is another question.
ill also remind myself to keep using productivity modules, because its better.

Posted: **Tue May 02, 2017 4:01 pm**

OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:You cant underground pipe through 2 reacgors, which is the intent of this current reactor setup. Im playing on the train gen preset and i havnt even needed to set up a train to get uranium yet, just working off the couple 200 to 400k spots around my base. Im fine with wasting the uranium as of right now, the design will be changed eventually, for something probably better as long as it has the blueprint stampable linear design. quite frankly dont think 7gw is gonna be enough.

Yeah I can see where you are going with that. I also tried to underground pipe through 2 reactors just to find out it isn't possible by just one damn tile or so (I really wish they'd change that because 1-2 tiles more wouldn't really throw off the balance anyways).

But it's also possible to make a stampable design using a 2*n setup. It's just a little bit trickier due to the excessive amounts of Heat Exchangers/Turbines and the limited pipe capacity.

That said I wouldn't try to include the reactors in a stampable design anyways as a personal preference... It's a lot easier to decouple the reactors from the Heat Exchangers/Steam Turbines and connect them using the heatpipes (since they have no length penalty and support up to 1GW power transfers). Then you can make the Heat Exchangers/Turbines stampable... place as many reactors as you want and then stamp the exchanger/turbine blueprint as many times as you need... and all you have to do is to make the heatpipe connection manually.

OBAMA MCLAMA wrote:ill also remind myself to keep using productivity modules, because its better.

Which version are you playing with? 0.15.0, 0.15.1?

Because since 0.15.2 it's impossible to use Productivity Modules inside the Kovarex Process. That's why I put Speed Modules inside.

Posted: **Tue May 02, 2017 8:19 pm**

Wow yea i see, im still on 15.1. Waiting for many updates to come out before updating to preserve my phones monthly internet limit.

Looks like im gonna have to make a ton more centrifuges for upkeep when i update.

Also, ill look into a more efficient nuclear reactor design

ive been thinking of turning my pond into exchanger/turbine area, but damn thats gonna be millions of landfill lol. And i dont uss that stuff much at all. And leaving water holes for the pumps. Or robots :p

Posted: **Wed May 03, 2017 5:12 pm**

Instead of piping under my reactors i just went around them. Keeping with the rate of 4 heat exchangers to 6.9 steam turbines, I have 10 heat exchangers feeding 18 turbines. It's a little over subscribed since the exact math is 17.25, but I'm not even using 1/6 the power capacity they can produce.

Posted: **Wed May 03, 2017 5:17 pm**

herkalurk, are you aware that with your setup you spend 1 Fuel Cell per 80 MW?

If you'd use a 2*n design you'd spend a fuel cell only every 160 MW.

So basically you waste half of your Uranium.

That said, an interesting setup nonetheless.

Posted: **Wed May 03, 2017 5:29 pm**

MeduSalem wrote:herkalurk, are you aware that with your setup you spend 1 Fuel Cell per 80 MW?

If you'd use a 2*n design you'd spend a fuel cell only every 160 MW.

So basically you waste half of your Uranium.

That said, an interesting setup nonetheless.

Do you have an example of a functioning 2*n design to show? I haven't seen to many nuke setups posted.

Posted: **Wed May 03, 2017 5:34 pm**

Here are 3:

viewtopic.php?f=208&t=45146

And here's a huge thread about reactor ratios with some people showing examples here and then and a lot of other interesting stuff that might be worth reading up upon as well:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=44778&start=40

Posted: **Fri May 12, 2017 11:03 pm**

Here's a smaller scale setup with each factory looping back on itself. When there's 40 or more in the chest, the circuit-network controlled filter inserter grabs the excess U-235 and sends it down the belt to a logistics chest. When the buffer fills up on the Centrifuge, it will start outputting U-235 to the logistics network.

Posted: **Wed May 17, 2017 9:14 pm**

Anyone figured out a way around needing a buffer of 80 units u238 per centrifuge, since it always tries to grab double the recipe amount?

Posted: **Wed May 17, 2017 9:41 pm**

Jarin wrote:Anyone figured out a way around needing a buffer of 80 units u238 per centrifuge, since it always tries to grab double the recipe amount?

I guess you mean U235.
Yes. Here is a good one. Even without combinators.
viewtopic.php?f=202&t=45871#p274367
For explanation look two posts down.

Posted: **Thu May 18, 2017 12:37 am**

Distelzombie wrote:
Jarin wrote:Anyone figured out a way around needing a buffer of 80 units u238 per centrifuge, since it always tries to grab double the recipe amount?
I guess you mean U235.
Yes. Here is a good one. Even without combinators.
viewtopic.php?f=202&t=45871#p274367
For explanation look two posts down.

I did indeed mean 235. Sorry, brain derped and came up with "higher number better". That's an interesting design; how does it work with lower levels of stack inserter upgrades? It should function as long as the green stack inserters are set to one less than the white inserters, right?

Posted: **Thu May 18, 2017 12:51 am**

Jarin wrote:
Distelzombie wrote:
Jarin wrote:Anyone figured out a way around needing a buffer of 80 units u238 per centrifuge, since it always tries to grab double the recipe amount?
I guess you mean U235.
Yes. Here is a good one. Even without combinators.
viewtopic.php?f=202&t=45871#p274367
For explanation look two posts down.
I did indeed mean 235. Sorry, brain derped and came up with "higher number better". That's an interesting design; how does it work with lower levels of stack inserter upgrades? It should function as long as the green stack inserters are set to one less than the white inserters, right?

I understand there should always be one U235 on the belt thats read from - as long as there is still U235 pulled out.

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