Large Heat Exchanger

The Large Heat Exchanger (LHE) is an EV tier multiblock that evaporates distilled water into steam with the heat from lava, hot coolant, or hot solar salt. If the input rate of hot fluid exceeds the superheated threshold, then superheated steam is produced instead. The LHE does not consume any power or fuel but still runs the risk of exploding if not supplied with enough distilled water. 100% of the hot fluid is recycled back into its cooler equivalent at all times and 100% of the steam is recycled back into distilled water by Large Steam Turbines at maximum efficiency--forming a sustainable closed loop system. The Large Heat Exchanger is superseded by the Extreme Heat Exchanger and Whakawhiti Wera XL in LuV.

The LHE is very similar to the Thermal Boiler. The difference is that the Thermal Boiler has a lower throughput, grants byproducts, can use regular water, and accepts pahoehoe lava. In other words, use the Thermal Boiler for resources such as tantalum, tungstate, or gold and the LHE for power.

Spreadsheet: GTNH Power Planner 2.9

The LHE has no tiered components. Insert hot fluid through an input hatch at the bottom center of the structure and distilled water through an input hatch anywhere else on the structure. Extract cool fluid from an output hatch at the top center of the structure and steam from an output hatch anywhere else on the structure. There is no energy hatch or muffler hatch because the machine does not consume any power or fuel, but there is a maintenance hatch. Use the Multiblock Structure Hologram Projector to visualize/build the structure.

Structure

• Controller: Front bottom center
• 20-28 Stable Titanium Machine Casing
• 2 Titanium Pipe Casing
• 1 Maintenance Hatch: Any machine casing
• 2+ Input Hatch: Bottom center casing (hot fluid), any machine casing (distilled water)
• 2+ Output Hatch: Top center casing (cool fluid), any machine casing (steam)

Wallsharing

LHEs may wallshare each of their sides to save on casings and buses/hatches. However, that does not include the input hatch for hot fluid or the output hatch for cool fluid due to the restrictions on their locations. Ensure that all LHEs still receive enough distilled water and the output hatch is large enough to support the combined steam output (MV+ for 32,000 L/t SH Steam).

The LHE evaporates distilled water into steam with the heat from lava, hot coolant, or hot solar salt. The LHE does not consume power, but explodes if it ever runs for longer than 100 seconds without distilled water. It is perfectly safe to add distilled water or break the controller while it is actively running. Steam is NOT produced without distilled water.

The LHE has its own efficiency value that is directly proportional to the output rate of steam and therefore the amount of distilled water recycled back into the machine in a closed loop system. The efficiency of the LHE increases linearly while the machine is active and almost immediately resets back to 0% while idle. It takes approximately 2 minutes to reach maximum efficiency so it is very important to maintain a steady supply of hot fluid. Maintenance issues reduce the maximum efficiency by 10% each.

The LHE converts hot fluid into its cooler version once per second and distilled water into steam once per tick. There are only three hot fluids available, listed below in the following table, and each one is perfectly recycled regardless of the current efficiency. If the input rate of hot fluid exceeds the superheated (SH) threshold, then the LHE produces superheated steam instead of regular steam. However, there is a maximum throughput rate that is always twice the threshold value. Excess input is NOT consumed.

Optionally, a programmed circuit can be placed inside the controller to reduce the SH threshold at the cost of steam. Each value above 1 reduces the SH threshold by 3.75% (additive) and the output rate of steam by 1.5% (additive). For example, an LHE with hot coolant and a programmed circuit of 3 has its SH threshold reduced from 800 L/s to 740 L/s for 97% of the original steam output. The biggest downside of doing this is that a closed loop system can no longer perfectly sustain itself with distilled water.

The steam produced by the LHE is used to generate power with a series of Large Steam Turbines in the order listed below. Both types of steam have the same conversion ratio so the output of one can feed directly into the input of the next. At maximum efficiency, 100% of the steam is recycled back into distilled water--forming a sustainable closed loop system. Later on, the XL Turbo variants of each can be used instead. SH steam generates 2x more EU than regular steam at the same optimal flow rate.

• The Large HP Steam Turbine generates power from SH steam and converts it to regular steam at a 1:1 ratio.
• The Large Steam Turbine generates power from regular steam and converts it to distilled water at a 160:1 ratio.

If the steam throughput is too high for steam valves or fluid pipes, use fluid P2P tunnels instead. They have no transfer limit and evenly distribute all fluids between all output connections.