Maximum Flow of Steam and Heat

[darkscaryforest]

I read the page at https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Nuclear_power#Heat_pipes

I understand the basic concepts, but am hung up on a specific in the table listing "some rough limits on transfer distance." I interpret the table to say that up to '160MW' may be distributed by a heat pipe up to '45' tiles long. I tested this and was able to produce more than 160MW on a pipe going out 45 tiles. I was using 4 reactors in a square setup for 480MW potential and had about 28 heat exchangers, 14 on either side. So I think I missed something, do you know what the table is talking about?

Also there's an excellent table talking about maximum flow in pipes and other entities that hold liquid/gas: https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines

I didn't see any entries on maximum flow rates between turbines. Testing suggested that turbine to turbine not count as a pipe and there's no slowdown?

Thanks for any help

[Nonotorious]

When you have it running at max capacity all the time you will see the heat only goes a certain amount of exchangers down the line because the heat is being used for steam.

[knighttemplar1960]

Each Turbine counts as a single entity for steam flow so if you have 4 of them end to end for example it would count as if the steam passed through 3 pipes to get to the 4th turbine.

[astrosha]

480 MW heat, divided by 5.82 MW per Steam Turbine yields about 83 Steam Turbines. Since each one uses 60 Steam, this means you need to supply call it 4948 Steam/second. With each Heat Exchanger providing 103 Steam/second, this means you need about 48 Heat Exchangers. In fact, checking the factoriocheatsheet.com/#nuclear power shows these numbers. Good place to look stuff up.

Reactors can heat up to 999C. That they heat up to over 500C is important, as there must be a 1 degree difference between Heat Pipe pieces for the heat to flow, including the difference between the Heat Pipe and the Heat Exchanger. This puts a hard ceiling on how far you can transfer Heat via Heat Pipe. If the Reactor is 999C, and you lose 1C per tile of Heat Pipe, then you have a range of less than 500 tiles before your heat loss prevents the Heat Exchangers from running. That, however, is not the full story.

Heat Exchangers pull Heat from the Heat Pipe, and if there is not enough Heat flowing through the Heat Pipe to satisfy the needs of the Heat Exchangers along the Heat Pipe, then the ones towards the end will be left starved of that Heat. This dramatically shortens the effective length of fully loaded, fully used Heat Pipe.

Personally, I get by with 13 Heat Exchangers in a series. I feed water right into both ends of the Heat Exchanger row (in theory, I could have 23 Heat Exchangers in a row, water-wise; I have not considered how effective that would be from a Heat perspective, nor from a Steam perspective). I don't find longer Heat Exchanger arrays necessary.

[bluemonkey]

Somewhere on Reddit I was reading about the relative advantages of 2 or 3 lanes of heat pipe (rather than 1) if you really want to pull heat far & fast from the reactor and feed multiple exchangers efficiently. Afterwards, I started doubling up my heat pipes down long runs of heat exchangers (also takes advantage of the energy storage potential of the heat pipes). I've been really happy overall with the outcome.

I think this is the reference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/ge4y6c/heat_pipe_throughput_and_a_bonus_note_on_parallel/

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by darkscaryforest:

I read the page at https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Nuclear_power#Heat_pipes

I understand the basic concepts, but am hung up on a specific in the table listing "some rough limits on transfer distance." I interpret the table to say that up to '160MW' may be distributed by a heat pipe up to '45' tiles long. I tested this and was able to produce more than 160MW on a pipe going out 45 tiles. I was using 4 reactors in a square setup for 480MW potential and had about 28 heat exchangers, 14 on either side. So I think I missed something, do you know what the table is talking about?

Also there's an excellent table talking about maximum flow in pipes and other entities that hold liquid/gas: https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines

I didn't see any entries on maximum flow rates between turbines. Testing suggested that turbine to turbine not count as a pipe and there's no slowdown?

Thanks for any help

As far as I'm aware, there are no specific numbers regarding heat pipe distance, but I did find this post. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/a6v2zy/heat_pipe_maximum_throughputlength_from_reactor/
I might do the test myself using mods.

I did some testing on turbines and boilers, and from what I could find on forums, fluid capacity is directly correlated to flow. Pipes have a fluid capacity of 100, while boilers and turbines have a capacity of 200, making it so they allow for twice as much flow for the same number of units. Combine that with the fact the a single turbine unit is five times greater in length than a single pipe unit, and you get tons more flow for the same distance.