[MOD 0.16] Realistic Reactors

[ownlyme]

you should get the neighbour bonus if they are just connected by heat pipes, no?
if not, that's a bug we will need to investigate.
even the underground heat pipes should connect reactors to increase the neighbour bonus.

(a reactor doesn't count as neighbour when it's in the startup or scram phase)

[Sorda]

Now re-read everything that I wrote above. It seems that you did not do this, because I explained everything in detail before in three posts and in the very first post with a picture of how reactors in a bundle of heat pipes look like in this case.

[ownlyme]

Sorry, i kinda misunderstood your message "Thus, remaining without bonuses reactors."
But then i still don't really understand the problem :/
When you put all reactors in one place, you have the problem that the heat pipes can't transfer all the heat to all the exchangers.
A solution would be to always pair only a few reactors with a branch of heat exchangers, or have your heat exchangers all close enough by routing just their steam to another complex with the turbines.

[Sorda]

I would ask you to re-read my posts again.

Just according to the scheme that I drew, ONE working reactor will try to distribute heat ON ALL heat pipes (and heat exchangers, respectively), and thus heat the heat exchangers that must be fed from other reactors.
Type - one reactor for 14 heat exchangers (with a neighborhood bonus), but I have eight reactors (according to the 2x4 formula), and multiplying 8x14 = 112 heat exchangers (if you do not go into losses and so on). So, according to the scheme that I drew, ONE reactor will try to power ALL 112 heat exchangers, which absolutely should not be, of course. At least he simply does not have enough heat to run at least a dozen turbines.

And that's why I started to wonder about the “valves” on the heat pipes.

I am writing this for the second time.
Almost the same as in previous posts.
Please read what they write to you. You seem like a smart person, since you created such a wonderful mod.

[Light]

I would ask you to re-read my posts again.

Just according to the scheme that I drew, ONE working reactor will try to distribute heat ON ALL heat pipes (and heat exchangers, respectively), and thus heat the heat exchangers that must be fed from other reactors.
Type - one reactor for 14 heat exchangers (with a neighborhood bonus), but I have eight reactors (according to the 2x4 formula), and multiplying 8x14 = 112 heat exchangers (if you do not go into losses and so on). So, according to the scheme that I drew, ONE reactor will try to power ALL 112 heat exchangers, which absolutely should not be, of course. At least he simply does not have enough heat to run at least a dozen turbines.

And that's why I started to wonder about the “valves” on the heat pipes.

Heat pipes are identical to fluid pipes just with temperature, so it makes sense that any source even as insufficient as it may be, will attempt to handle ALL the stuff that's connected to it in an outward direction. Yes, everything.

That's not something this mod can change, but the aforementioned heat switches can compartmentalize the system to disconnect segments if the source is insufficient with circuit conditions. That way it's heating everything that you chose to have it connected to, instead of the entire pipe network and all connected entities as per usual behavior. This is simply the way the engine works, so you either wait until your sources are sufficient enough before starting the reactors or watch the reactor struggle to heat anything beyond its initial radius.

As for your diagram, you should have your heat distribution spread out and not reliant on a single pipe as output. That is a bottleneck for heat throughput and furthering the distance the reactors have to supply heat outside their initial radius. The reactor on the bottom right corner will heat up everything around it first, then it will move to that single little pipe. The top left reactor will heat the little pipe faster since it's much closer as heat (like fluid) spreads away from the source as it gets filled up. Your system should be more like a web branching off in multiple directions, with switches to each segment if you so desire.

Compact and webbed design

My design splits off four pipelines from the reactors in the corners and then into eight short pipelines for exchangers. The design is crunched together for the very reason that each pipe slows throughput and distance between reactors and exchangers is the greatest detriment. The middle reactors naturally get the hottest (Having no consumption nearby) and the bottom row of exchangers heats up last since it's the furthest and thus gets the remaining heat left over from the processing above it. However, the system doesn't start up unless several reactors are fed simultaneously to ensure even heat distribution and that excess heat can satisfy the furthest exchangers to some extent.

The reactors closest to the exchangers are being siphoned for their heat while the central reactors help to keep their temperatures stable and high enough to satisfy the exchangers minimum heat requirement. Your design has two reactors near consumption with six providing stability with the corner ones having to satisfy everything else long before them.

Example

Hopefully all of that makes some sense. It has been one hell of a night and I need something to eat to reboot my brain.

[Sorda]

Underground pipes do not work. They collide with objects. Hackwork in general.

[ownlyme]

You only need to place 1 underground pipe at the reactor and 1 at the target destination, they simply synchronize their temperature among all underground heat pipes every tick.

[Sorda]

I assumed that it looks like underground conveyors or pipes, although they can be connected from the side parallel to the direction side. That is, if the "descent" and "rise" of the pipe are directed from top to bottom, then you can connect only above or below these "ascents" and "descents", but not on the same horizontal line.

However, underground pipes work in such a way that entails the need to shift all the equipment one more cage so that there is no mixing.

[Sorda]

In addition, the idea of "teleporting" heat, even if the heat pipes are not in the same line, is a bad, very bad idea, which is unrealistic. And in general, the impression that this idea with tubes is not your idea is so strange it is implemented.

[ownlyme]

it has the advantage that you can use it across surfaces
please consider that these aren't my only mods and i have to evaluate value/cost for adding features to existing mods.
if you really want this feature, consider making a commission and i'll happily add this for 5€ per hour
otherwise i'm currently only adding features that i'd consider useful myself. (for example mod support for amator's phasma which i added today)
btw: this normal pipe behaviour would require 4 different underground heatpipes to support every orientation. drawing heatpipes without collision boxes would probably make more sense in that regard.

[Sorda]

it has the advantage that you can use it across surfaces

Which ones? Ice, lava, and dark matter?
Underground pipes in this implementation are absolutely incorrect.
I ask you to remake them on the example of ordinary underground pipes, which work perfectly in all other modes and do not cause any problems.

[aka13]

Lel this is somewhat obnoxious. I wanted to throw in my 5 cents, that I very much value the time you have stuck into this mod. It has provided me great additional circuit gameplay on par with AAI vehicles, no less.
Don't let yourself get damned for small nuisances.

[aka13]

@ownly Something terrible is happening, the reactors take fuel cells, which vanish into thin air, without ever landing in the reactors inventory. Seems that the latest version provoked that behaviour.

To add to that, it seems that I can not load a save which used the new version, which means, I can not play by simply rolling back a version...


EDIT
It seems that this happens exclusively when inserting into the circuit interface at the bottom middle of the reactor.

EDIT 2

Extraction of fuel cells seems to work even from the circuit interface.

[Mernom]

Is making underground heat pipes that behave like normal heat pipes even possible? To my understanding, there is no prototype that can transport heat AND act like an underground pipe. This type of thing would me to be implamented in the source code, or be done via script (like it was done here, except the directionality was eliminated)

[roze]

Hi,
I just noticed a bug when running Realistic Nuclear together with Bobs. When burning Thorium (thats as far as I've gotten), I still get Used Uranium Fuel Cell as a waste.

Please look into this.

//Regards

[ownlyme]

it automatically calculates the burnt cell from the currently burning cell.
sorry but neither of us is using bob's and it's too much work to install everything and fight through the jungle of prototypes and different sub-mods.

[Sorda]

Hah, I "love" developers who ignore 2\3 user posts.

In the end, just make normal underground pipes, please.

[roze]

Hi,
I just noticed a bug when running Realistic Nuclear together with Bobs. When burning Thorium (thats as far as I've gotten), I still get Used Uranium Fuel Cell as a waste.

Please look into this.

//Regards

Thank you for the input. Apparently, something is not compatible between bob's revamp mods Nuclear Overhaul-setting and Realistic Nuclear reactors.
Not expecting a fix, just adding input.
Its not totally incompatible, just with the nuclear-overhaul sub-setting.

[Sorda]

Hey. It seems that I don’t understand something at all.
What is the default reactor power for this mod? I do not rise above 23, and the temperature never rises above 480 degrees with turbines connected.
If you turn off the heat pipes, then in about five minutes the temperature rises to 1000 degrees, but when you connect the pipes, heat exchangers and turbines, the temperature drops quickly, and the power again does not rise above 23 megawatts.

[aka13]

Hey. It seems that I don’t understand something at all.
What is the default reactor power for this mod? I do not rise above 23, and the temperature never rises above 480 degrees with turbines connected.
If you turn off the heat pipes, then in about five minutes the temperature rises to 1000 degrees, but when you connect the pipes, heat exchangers and turbines, the temperature drops quickly, and the power again does not rise above 23 megawatts.

You are misinterpreting the results you are getting. If you look at the diagrams in the first post here, you can see that depending on how warm your reactor is, you get different efficiency and power outputs.
Here is the link to the diagram - https://i.imgur.com/J5dyOGr.png, alternativly there are tables in .ods format in the mods archive.

Now what that means in practice -

I assume that you play with the dewfault formulas by ownly, so I will explain it based on them. I myself enjoy Ingos formulas more.
To simplify the explanation, I will do it based on 1 single reactor with no bonusses based on ownly formula.

The two values, that interest us, are temperature and power output.
We see that below 500 degrees the reacctor outputs about 23 MW, and runs at 75% efficiency. That means, that a fuel cell in that temperature segment will have a fuel value about of 8GJ * 0,75 = 6GJ, and will last for about 6GJ/23MW = 260 seconds.
All that heat is dumped into the temperature of the reactor, and it starts to rise. At the same time, all your heat pipes and heat exchangers connected to the reactor take it away, to heat themselves up to the same temperature as your reactor. In factorio, heat capacity equals to 1MJ/C in heat pipes and to 10MJ/C (10000000J/C) in reactors.

Now for simplicitys sake lets ignore the heat exchangers and pipes, and focus on the reactor. 23MW output means that you get 23000000 Joules per second, meaning that a running disconnected reactor will heat it up by 23000000/10000000= 2,3 C per second.

Now what happens then is a funny thing. Since you have your heat exchangers connected to the reactor, and a way for the steam to be consumed, as soon as the reactor gets to 500C they turn on (this is a vanilla mechanic obviously).
And what happens then, they start to consume the energy stored in way of temperature of the reactor. The question is, how much do they consume?

The answer is, as it is stated in the tooltip, 10MW. But at this very moment our reactor is outputting only 23MW. This means, that as soon as you have over 2 heat exchangers, they start to actually cool down the reactor, since they each consume 10MJ/s, and our reactor is only outputting 23MJ/s, which means, that the temperature starts dropping.

For example's sake lets say we have 3 heat exchangers. That would mean, we have a consumption of 30MW, or 30MJ/s. Our reactor is outputting 23MW, or 23 MJ/s. That means, our delta is -7MJ/s, which then translates to -0.7 C/s in reactor temperature. That in return means, that instead of heating up more, your reactor cools down instead!

Since heat exchangers do not run under 500C, as soon as the temperature in your system (in pipes, exchangers, and ther reactor itself) drops to 500, the consumption ceases, and the reactor starts warming up again. Now since pipes are realtively slow in transmitting heat, the longer the pipe, the longer it takes for the heating-cooling cycles to commence.


Now that you understand how it all works, the question is what to do about it. The answer is - manage heat consumption according to reactor power output and temperature! This can be done by either cutting off the water inlet, or by cutting off steam output. Since the heat exchanger gets disabled by either of those, it means, that it does not in fact consume heat at all!
As a direct result of that, all the power and heat that reactors produces, does not get consumed, and instead heats up the reactor. And then, if we look at the diagram, funny stuff starts happening - the hotter your reactor is, the higher is the output, and the higher the efficiency.

As soon as you reach 500C, your output is at 29MW, and efficiency is at 76%. That means, that the cell now has a fuel value of about 8GJ*0,76=6,08GJ and will last for about 6,08GJ/29MW = 209 seconds.
The reactor is heating by 29J/s = 2,9C/s.

Reaching the temperature of 510C, your output is at 30MW, efficiency at 78%. Your fuel cells are now worth 8GJ*0,78=6,24GJ, and last for 6,24GJ/30MW = 208 seconds.
The reactor is heating precisely by 3C/s.
If we go back to our 3 heat exchangers that we had, and enable them, they would consume exactly 30MW; That means, that we consume all the heat reactor is producing, and the reactor temperature stays unchanged. We can now run the reactor at stable 510C outputting 30MW at miserable 0,78 fuel efficiency.

But since we are not stupid, we will not be doing that. Instead, we will let the reactor heat up further.
Reaching 900C, the reactor is outputting whopping 74MW, efficiency is at 142%! That means, the fuel cell is now worth not 8GJ anymore, but is instead worth 8GJ*1,42 = 11,36GJ! We are actually making free energy from nothing now. The cell now lasts for 11,36GJ/74MW for 153s.

We do have a small problem now though. Running with 7 heat exchangers means, we use only 70MW, running with 8 means we consume 80MW. That would mean that either the reactor is still heating up in the first case, or is cooling down in the second. Running at fixed 900C is not possible anymore, since we have to juggle our heat echangers, always running 7, and shortly turning on the 8th as soon as we start reaching 80MW output, to be able to drop temperature.

We could wait even more though, to get even more power and efficiency!
At 945 to 950C the reactor outputs exactly 80MW at 149% efficiency. Try calculating the fuel cell value and how long it will last yourself, to see if you have grasped how it works by now. Running precisely 8 heat exchangers would allow us to consume all the heat generated and keep the reactor stable.
Sounds pretty good, right? Start the reactor, disable heat exchangers, let it heat to 945, enable heat exchangers, boom, you got yourself a stable 80MW single reactor.

Not so fast.
Our theoretical model ignores a couple of things. First, we have "temperature inertia". Our pipes do not transmit heat instantly, which means, until the whole 80MW of heat consumption "travel" to the reactor, it actually could already have heated up to much higher temperatures, since 80MW of power production at this point mean that we are heating the reactor by 8C/s! It means it would take ONLY A SECOND for the reactor to get from 945C to 953C! Depending on your heat pipe layout, this may be nowhere enough time for the exchanger consumption to reach the reactor. That means, to be absolutely, positively sure that the reactor will stay at the stable temperature it might be actually more sensible to turn the exchangers on gradually, even before reaching 945C, to not let it heat up so fast, beginning with the ones furthest to the reactor, so that the las ones start consuming throug as little heat pipe as possible, to get the desired temperature control as quickly as possible. It also might make sense to have 9 heat exchangers, to be able to "catch" our reactor, if it manages to get to over 80MW, to cool it down again.

The second problem is, well, factorio's electrical system. Can you guarantee that your factory actually consume all the 80MW? If it does not, steam gets stockpiled, until the inventory of the exchanger and the turbines are full, and then the exchanger actually stops heating, and in turn, stops consuming heat, in turn meaning, your reactor unexpectedly starting to heat itself to the point of meltdown. It might be sensible to implement steam buffering, and turn the reactor on, only if you have space left for steam buffers to store the energy of at least one fuel cell. Don't forget, that due to efficiency, it may have a fuel value of over 8GJ, as shown before. Alternatively, or just to be save you can build the ECCS, to cool your reactor down, should the necessity arise.

Also, heating up the reactor means, that all the heat you produce in that time is in fact "wasted", since when stopped, the reactor will cool back down again, so it might be sensible to run a reactor only if you can burn through a reasonable amount of fuel cells, before turning it back on again.

This is as short an explanation of how to use the reactor, as it gets. Additional factors as neighbouring reactors, transmitting energy through accumulators, mox power plants, are still yours to discover. Maybe I will run a video on that later.
Also, @ownly and @ingo you are more than welcome to put my explanation in the first post, for better understanding of the mechanics.