We got the reactor temperature to read. But with the classic steam buffer approach, the reactor temperature is vastly changing. The more power consumption, the hotter the reactor needs to be to make enough heat reach all heat exchangers.
So I'm interested if you worked out a new approach that's now working as good or even better than with 1.1! How did you do it now?
My solution is to keep the reactor temperature above a threshold all the time, so that all heat exchangers always stay in the "working" state. However, it's not sufficient to just insert a new cell if the temperature is below that threshold. You still need a buffer, at least with some bigger multi-reactor setups, because without buffer the temperature would reach 1000°C with low power consumption very soon and the rest of the fuel cell is wasted.
So we need a steam buffer. Directly connecting everything (heat exchangers, storage tanks, steam turbines) doesn't work, because with this the buffer is full when we need it empty, and empty when we need it full.
We need a steam buffer control. A control that's operating as a valve between the heat exchangers on one side of the valve and storage tanks + steam turbines at the other side. The valve is an array of pumps, as many as required to overcome the 1200/s limit per pump.
Example:
- 01-17-2025, 17-24-48.png (2.32 MiB) Viewed 629 times
We need the valve open, if the temperature is above our temperature threshold and we don't have enough steam.
This way we ensure the required minimum reactor temperature. But if there is low power consumption, the steam buffer stays empty and the reactor temperature rises.
So we need the valve also open, if the temperature is above a high threshold and it's about to go over 1000°C. Only now the steam buffer fills. This way the reactor is cooled and stays slightly below 1000°C until the buffer is full. This way we also make sure the heat pipes and heat exchangers get as much heat as possible to heat up and additionally buffer heat directly as heat. Only if the steam tanks are full, the reactor overheats and we waste our fuel. To avoid this, we need enough steam tanks.
We need a 3rd criteria for the valve. What happens if power consumption is above what the whole power plant is able to provide? The steam buffers eventually run empty, and in this instant (in the same tick!) all steam engines don't provide any power any more. The pumps we use as valve don't have power as well, so it's an immediate blackout (from 100% to zero) without previous brownout. You can provide alternative power to the pumps, but then it toggles between 0 and 100%. To avoid this, we add a 3rd valve condition that's opening the valve if steam is below a very tiny threshold, just big enough to make the turbines operate throttled, so we have our emulated brownout instead of the blackout.
I designed a 2x6 tileable plant, my thresholds are 750°C as minimum reactor temperature, 950°C as high reactor temperature, 1000 steam as regular buffer, 200 steam as brownout buffer (read from a single storage tank), 80 storage tanks as steam buffer. 80 tanks might appear excessive, but 12 fuel cells in a 2x6 setup provide enough energy to fill ~160 tanks! So half of it goes to the tanks, and the other half gets into the reactor and its components as heat. It's still not enough if you don't consume less than about 400 MW, but I would not build a 2x6 setup if I consume less than 400 MW.
If you use the map editor to explore, you just need to provide a bunch of logistics robots. The plant will bootstrap from zero and power up on its own.
The logic is a single combinator.
The low temperatur threshold is T=-750 in the constant combinator, the other thresholds are hardcoded in the combinator and have the -750 subtracted (sorry for that). The array of electric energy interfaces at the bottom are simulated consumers.
To create a second tile, just place the blueprint (minus the simulated consumers) on top of an existing tile, with the reactors lining up. If you force-build, the overlapping entities just required for the initial tile are left out and it's perfect. Don't super-force. 2 more offshore pumps per tile.
Fascinating the new fluid mechanics is not a "dumbed down" version of the old one but instead has new and different challenges on its own.
