8 replies to this topic

[BlackLightUK]

First off, let's get the modpack details out of the way : 

FTB Loader-installed Mindcrack 8.2.0 for Minecraft 1.4.7

Optifine HD U D3 1.4.7

MinecraftForge Universal 1.4.7 6.6.2.534 (was needed to get optifine to work)

Soartex Fanver texture pack

Survival mode

 

(by me)

OMG WTF it blew up again ?!?!?!?!?

 

This is now the second time I have had this happen to me in the last 24 hours... and quite honestly I am at a loss as to why it has happened at all. 

 

The aftermath (sorry - i dont have any screenies of it before the detonation)

 

 

It's worth noting that I had to fill in the water source blocks with cobble after the explosion so I could salvage what I could from the crater... believe me when I say that there was 8 water source blocks in that area

 

The basic setup was.... 

 

Biofuel tank in the back feeds four combustion engines sitting around (back / left / right / under) a magma crucible.

 

Each combustion engine has it's own Aqueous Accumulator sitting in a X-A-X arrangement (X being water source blocks, A being the accumulator) with unobstructed / non-shared pipework feeding it water for cooling.

 

I have a Chunk Loader sitting about 6 chunks away, set to keep a 10-chunk radius square loaded - this has been visually verified with turning the lasers on.

 

During the startup of this setup, I sat and watched all of the input pipes feed the engines fuel and water with no hassles whatsoever.... the engines built up to the 4900.5 temperature mark and were 'yellow'.... but they were stable for the 20 minutes I sit and watch it, and for the 30-40 minutes afterwards where I wander off outside of the chunkloader area to gather more materials.

 

I get back from foraging, lava is being output just fine, the MFE is filling up nicely from the thermal generator I have on the end of the lava pipe... so I turn my back for 10 minutes, and *BEWM* the engines/crucible arrangement detonates for no apparent reason.  When the smoke clears, one of the combustion engines (the only one left standing) is glowing red.

 

I'm at a loss - I've checked that the chunks are being loaded, I've checked that the water sources / combustion engines are in the same chunk, there were no mobs anywhere near the reactor at the time, it wasn't a creeper,  I've checked the wiki entry.... 

 

 

To use a combustion engine you must first fuel it with Lava, Biofuel, Oil, orFuel and also keep its cooling tanks full of water. Without water the engine will quickly overheat, so it's advised to have an infinite water supply for the combustion engine to prevent explosions. It provides a clear warning when it is overheating: The combustion engine will ONLY become orange or red when there is no water left. While water is present the engine will heat up to 4900.3 degrees Celsius on oil, 4500.5 degrees Celcius on biofuel and 4900.6 degrees Celsius on fuel. The explosion of a combustion engine occurs when its temperature reaches 10,000ºC and is large enough to break 2 layers of stone.

(emphasis mine)

 

I've made sure that there's sufficient fuel and water being fed into the combustion engines.... and I have two other combustion engines literally 10-20 blocks away from the explosion site - being fed from the same biofuel source, each with their own Aqueous Accumulator feeding them water, and they have been running constantly for the last 12 hours... not the 'less than two' hours that it took for my lava production line to explode.

 

Can anyone think of why this may have happened ? Quite honestly, I'm at a loss, so I throw myself on the floor of the court (so to speak)..... Hopefully someone has an idea as to why this has now happened twice.

[digitallyApocalyptic]

If you have your engines connected to your Crucible directly instead of via Conductive Pipes, this may be the problem, as power may be building up in the engines (I've found previously that engines can't transfer power as effectively when directly connected as they can when connected to Conductive Pipes or RE-Conduits) and causing them to gain heat and explode. Try connecting all four engines to a network of either Redstone Energy Conduits or Conductive Pipes and run the machines again. This should fix the problem. I don't know why this is, I just know that it is. It's a quirk that I've found persists with all BuildCraft-compatible engines.

 

If this doesn't solve the problem, I don't know what to tell you :/ The one question I would have would be how does your Crucible receive rocks to melt, and what variety of rock (cobblestone, netherrack, obsidian?) does it receive?

 

Also, I would recommend just burning your Biofuel directly in a Diesel Generator to produce EU, as I believe that since the nerf to Magma Crucibles that makes it take much more power to produce lava, quite a bit of your power is being lost in the chain of production from Biomass to Biofuel to Lava to EU. If you do continue to use lava, however, Thermal Generators are definitely the way to go. Those were my main power source until I went solar, and a pretty good one too. I'm not sure if I have the EU production method described here correct to produce EU in the most efficient manner, but I think that your current setup could potentially be made more efficient.

[BlackLightUK]

First off - thanks for replying - it's sincerely appreciated as I've been pulling my hair out for the past couple of hours trying to figure this one out for myself >_< 

 

 The one question I would have would be how does your Crucible receive rocks to melt, and what variety of rock (cobblestone, netherrack, obsidian?) does it receive?  

 

As it was a 'work in progress' build for me to get some slowish but steady EU supply out of my sugarcane production line, I had simply mounted a hopper on the top of the Magma Crucible, and had filled the hopper + the crucible input slot full of Netherrack.   

 

I'll be honest here, I'm not in the mood to start rebuilding my powerstation for the second time today... I will however take your suggestions under advisement  

 

Oh - just a thought that literally popped into my head... regarding 'unspent' power buildup. Early in the Magma Crucible 'cold startup' cycle, it takes a while for the four combustion engines to overcome the 12,000 MJ requirement for a block of Netherrack to start melting.... however, after 3-4 blocks have been chewed, the engines have caught up (probably through increased output due to increased heat or something - hey, am a MC noob here ) 

 

Eventually the crucible's power buffer tank fills up, and then MJ starts to build up in each of the four engines. Can this buildup cause detonations in the engines ? 

 

Additionally, if I move away from 'direct connection' between the engines and the magma crucible, and move to conductive pipes, won't this explosion be simply delaying the inevitable, as the pipe can only hold 10k MJ (is this per block or per pipe ? it's never quite defined in any wiki i have seen). Do Redstone Energy Conduits have a maximum energy capacity ?

 

Gah - so many questions.... so little time  

 

Thanks again for your reply tho - appreciate it.

 

[TurningBreeze]

In the bad old tekkit days, I developed a certain malice for waterproof pipes which seemed to do naughty things from time to time when hooked up to combustion engines. Hence any time I've used combustion engines in FTB, they've been hooked directly to the accumulator. It's probably a long-fixed bug though.

 

I can verify that combustion engines kersplode if the power they produce has nowhere to go. I've had this occur in the past when the redstone energy cells they were pumping into filled up and production outpaced draw. So if the engines have nothing to fill up other than the crucible's buffer, yeah, likely suspect.

[Iamtk421]

If you're simply trying to produce EU from fuel, can't you just use petroleum generators instead?

 

With regard to combustion engines, as has been mentioned, your engines are overheating due to energy overproduction.

Combustion engines should not be run orange as this indicates they're not getting enough cooling or are building up stored energy, and use way more water than necessary in this state.

 

If you want to ensure your engines don't explode you can place a gate on the fuel or water line of each engine set to output a redstone signal to turn the engines on the condition 'engine safe'. This will ensure engines only run in the blue and green states and turn off as soon as they get to the unsafe orange state.

 

A redstone energy cell can help as a buffer and with gates and pipe wire can be connected up to turn the engines on and off depending on load (technically whether the cell is full or not).

 

Re energy conduits, I've read that they simply dissipate excess energy. They also have a fixed 5% or so loss. Together that's not exactly the most efficient system, but preferable to frequent explosions.

[digitallyApocalyptic]

If you're simply trying to produce EU from fuel, can't you just use petroleum generators instead?

 

He's using biofuel, which is a bit of a different story, as petroleum generators only burn fuel made from oil (I think? never had cause to burn bio/fuel for EU.) He would have to make a GregTech Diesel Generator, centrifuge the Biofuel into Fuel Cans via Industrial Centrifuge, or something of that nature.

In the bad old tekkit days, I developed a certain malice for waterproof pipes which seemed to do naughty things from time to time when hooked up to combustion engines. Hence any time I've used combustion engines in FTB, they've been hooked directly to the accumulator. It's probably a long-fixed bug though.

 

Waterproof Pipes are infamous for their low capacity and low transfer rate. This is most likely your problem when using them and most likely why placing the Accumulator directly adjacent has fixed the issue, as doing so would have allowed maximum transfer rate.

 

The moral of the story is, Liquiducts > Waterproof Pipes by a long shot. They are more expensive to make but all kinds of worth it in the long run.

 

 

If your engines are actually keeping up with the Magma Crucible, you may want to either A ) add one or more crucibles or B ) halve the amount of engines that are producing power. Regardless, you should probably use conductive pipes, as I believe this is a more efficient method of power transfer. If you add more Crucibles, the total amount of average EU generated over time should remain the same, but it would prevent regular explosions. You could also add more engines as you add more crucibles until you reach an optimum balance, allowing you to burn even more biofuel if you so desire.

 

If your engines are actually storing excess power, eventually this power that is stored within the engine will cause it to produce more heat/burn coolant at a rate greater than an Aqueous Accumulator can provide it/break past the barrier of 4,900.something degrees Celsius, eventually exploding when they hit 10,000.

 

I'd assume that Golden Conductive Pipes can hold 10,000 MJ apiece, e.g. a network of only two pipes would be able to hold a theoretical maximum of 20,000 MJ before the whole thing explodes. However, due to the nature of Buildcraft power and its tendency to move around in a seemingly random fashion (hook your engine of choice up to a medium-sized solid grid of conductive pipe, turn the engine on and wait and you'll see what I mean) this is only a theoretical maximum as energy is liable to move around in a random fashion, resulting in there being >10,000 MJ in a pipe at a given time even if the total energy level of the network is, say, 11,000. Therefore, explosions. I've done no testing on this, but this is the result of me thinking about the problem for a good 30 seconds or so.

 

Oh, by the way, if you choose to change nothing but how your engines are connected, that may be somewhat fine as well. If a Golden Conductive Pipe blows up, it can only blow up itself and blows up none of the surrounding blocks. This I've tested extensively, although many of the tests have been accidents involving me leaving one or more Magmatic Engines running which are direct-connected to machines long-since finished with their operations.

 

You would be able to hear the explosion, alerting you to the situation as long as you are somewhat near (the range of the explosion's audio is several dozen blocks, at the least), but it would do no damage to your engines/resources and you could easily replace the pipe, making it necessary to only replace pipes every so often instead of replacing an entire setup due to violent Combustion Engine explosions.

 

Hopefully that answers your questions

[BlackLightUK]

Been doing a bit of thinking about this one over the last 24h... 

 

My first thought, and the one I _was_ going to go with was to use a single combustion engine to jumpstart the magma crucible, and then switch over to a cluster of electrical engines when sufficient lava had been pumped through the thermal generator, leading to the combustion engine being turned off before it reached critical temperature.... 

 

I get home, check up on this thread and see this : 

 

 

If you're simply trying to produce EU from fuel, can't you just use petroleum generators instead?

 

 

 

He's using biofuel, which is a bit of a different story, as petroleum generators only burn fuel made from oil (I think? never had cause to burn bio/fuel for EU.) He would have to make a GregTech Diesel Generator, centrifuge the Biofuel into Fuel Cans via Industrial Centrifuge, or something of that nature.

 

 

Yeah, done a bit of research on this and I can't use Petroleum Generators due to them needing oil or fuel as the fuelsource.... however, due to the wonders of the Forestry mod which is in the MindCrack modpack, I do have access to the....

 

Bio_Generator !!!!

 

I know it's nowhere near as efficient or fast as the original Biomass -> Biofuel -> Lava -> EU production chain, but I do have a relatively large supply of biofuel on standby.... so... we have this : 

 

 

a 720-bucket iron tank that will slowly fill with biofuel from the biomass-to-biofuel production line, feeding 3 bio generators which will output 16 EU/t each and fire it down glass-fibre cables to the MFE I have behind where this pic was taken.

 

There's space there for 7 - perhaps 8 if I rejig something - bio generators which will output enough power to keep the MFE charged without it exploding... there will probably be some degree of inefficiency regarding the output of biofuel from the tank and keeping those engines supplied with biofuel, but that's a problem for another day, I think.

 

Seriously folks - much appreciated for burning the neurons on working out why this happened for me =) Kudos to the lot of you

[TurningBreeze]

 

Waterproof Pipes are infamous for their low capacity and low transfer rate. This is most likely your problem when using them and most likely why placing the Accumulator directly adjacent has fixed the issue, as doing so would have allowed maximum transfer rate.

 

Nyeah... I remember identifying that back in the day though, and using a series of dedicated golden waterproof pipe systems, I don't remember that being the problem. I think it was more of a chunk issue, with engines continuing to run after the pipes had unloaded or some such.

 

Either way, yeah, liquiducts all the way.

[McGreed]

I always has gates on the fuel or water pipes connected to the engine (ONE engine, not two, because it can make engines explod still, because the gate will only check the condition on one of them), and set it to only output redstone when the engine is green or blue. This way, no matter if you got water or not, it will always disable the engine if it gets too hot.

 

The biggest problem I do seem to have, is energy buildup in the powerpipe, if there is not enough drain, which makes the pipe explode. I kinda got a work around, by putting an gate on the pipe that goes out of the power station, with the condition that if there is power in the pipe, it will output redstone to activate the engine, and if there is no power, it will disable redstone. Of course it does require that you put in a lever to "kickstart" the engines, until the power flows, but it works quite well.

However you will still have the problem, if your power drain isn't enough (like if your quarry finish its work, but your refinery is still using power, the engines will keep on producing the power and the power not used by the refinery will build up). But at least its only a pipe that blows up, easy to replace and doesn't damage anything else (which is also why I put the gates on the water/fuel pipes instead.)