How do you handle the difference between reactor output and heat exchanger? It is probably impractical to get a reactor to exactly match the nominal heat exchanger output / boiler input exactly, unless you are using H2O and have no boiler. Some ways I could think of:
Maintain a buffer of hot coolant and toggle the reactor to maintain flow at the rate consumed by exchangers (maybe with hysteresis to minimize the fraction of time spent ramping up the reactor)
Have extra heat exchangers under the (multiblock) boiler and let the reactor run a little bit hotter than the boiler’s rated input. I think boilers were made to output extra steam when their pressure gets high, so you just need a turbine that can handle the range of steam output
Run a little bit hotter but throw away the extra heat in an exchanger with no boiler, and just try to minimize the overflow
Can any experienced reactor users describe their approach?
you can run the boiler at slightly higher temps safely, once the bar reaches yellow the boiler will output more steam to alleviate the pressure, so it wont explode.
Reactor output >= boiler throughput. Gibbl-o-meter on boiler to auto-shutoff reactor when pressure in boiler is too high.
This way boiler output is stable, so it can be directly used for centrifuge or other machine.
It’s worth noting that the gibbl-o-meter, even in hex mode, isn’t able to read even the base operating pressure of the large tungstensteel boiler, as the highest pressure levels exceed the maximum read limit of the sensor. I think it may even be the case of the large titanium boiler.
I personally don’t use those sensors in the control logic of my reactors, and instead focus purely on making sure the nominal heat output, and subsequent steam output, is never too much for my system to handle. It’s basically impossible for a reactor to spiral out of control in GT6, and it’s also significantly easier to monitor the reactor itself for irregularities rather than the auxiliary equipment (although I would recommend a water monitor at the very least)