Extreme Heat Exchanger

The Extreme Heat Exchanger (EHE) is an LuV tier multiblock that evaporates distilled water into superheated steam with the heat from lava, hot coolant, hot solar salt, or plasma. If the input rate of hot fluid exceeds the supercritical threshold, then supercritical steam is produced instead. Plasma always produces dense supercritical steam regardless of the input rate. The EHE 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 EHE is the superior power generation option over the Whakawhiti Wera XL because the WWXL cannot handle plasma and cannot output supercritical steam.

Spreadsheet: GTNH Power Planner 2.9

Construction

The EHE has no tiered components. Insert hot fluid through an input hatch at the front center of the structure and distilled water through an input hatch on the bottom layer of the structure. Extract cool fluid from an output hatch at the back center of the structure and steam from an output hatch on the top layer of the structure. The tiered glass only needs to be EV+ and has no effect on the operation of the machine. 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 with subchannel "glass" to specify the tier of the glass.

Structure

Controller: Front bottom center
25-120 Robust Tungstensteel Machine Casing
72 EV+ Tiered Glass
60 Tungstensteel Pipe Casing
48 Pressure Resistant Wall
1 Maintenance Hatch: Any casing
2+ Input Hatch: Front center casing (hot fluid), any bottom casing (distilled water)
2+ Output Hatch: Back center casing (cool fluid), any top casing (steam)

Wallsharing

EHEs may wallshare each of their sides to save on casings, glass, 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 EHEs still receive enough distilled water and the output hatch has a high enough capacity to support the combined steam output (UV+ for 1,280,000 L/t SC Steam or UHV+ for 2,560,000 L/t SC Steam).

Usage

The EHE evaporates distilled water into superheated (SH) steam with the heat from lava, hot coolant, hot solar salt, or plasma. The EHE does not consume power, but explodes immediately if it ever runs out of distilled water.

The EHE 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 EHE increases linearly while the machine is active and almost immediately resets back to 0% while idle. It takes approximately 1 minute 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.

Heat Exchange

The EHE converts hot fluid into its cooler version once per second and distilled water into steam once per tick. Other than plasma, there are only three types of 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 supercritical (SC) threshold, then the EHE produces supercritical steam instead of superheated steam. However, there is a maximum throughput rate that is always twice the threshold value. Excess input is NOT consumed.

Hot Fluid	Cool Fluid	SC Threshold	Max Rate	Hot Fluid Ratios		Max Input	Max Output
Lava	Pahoehoe Lava	80,000 L/s	160,000 L/s	1 : 80L SH Steam	1 : 80L SC Steam	4,000 L/t Distilled Water	640,000 L/t SC Steam
Hot Coolant	Coolant	8,000 L/s	128,000 L/s	1 : 200L SH Steam	1 : 200L SC Steam	8,000 L/t Distilled Water	1,280,000 L/t SC Steam
Hot Solar Salt	Cold Solar Salt	1,600 L/s	3,200 L/s	1 : 1,000L SH Steam	1 : 1,000L SC Steam	1,000 L/t Distilled Water	160,000 L/t SC Steam

Optionally, a programmed circuit can be placed inside the controller to reduce the SC threshold at the cost of steam. Each value above 1 reduces the SC threshold by 150 L/s and the output rate of steam by 1.5% (additive). For example, an EHE with hot coolant and a programmed circuit of 3 has its SC threshold reduced from 8,000 L/s to 7,700 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.

Hot Fluid	SC Threshold Reduction
Lava	-150 L/s per
Hot Coolant	-150 L/s per
Hot Solar Salt	-150 L/s per

Plasma

Plasma is another type of hot fluid that can be used in the EHE and is slightly different from the rest. Plasma still has a max input rate and returns to the molten version of itself, but it does not have a supercritical (SC) threshold because plasma always produces DENSE supercritical steam regardless of the input rate.

The max input rate of plasma, the max distilled water consumption, and the max steam output all depend on the density of the plasma, as seen in the table to the right and the following equations. These values are also visible in NEI or the planner linked at the top. The ratio of dense SC steam to distilled water is 6.25:1 instead of the usual 160:1 but it is still perfectly recycled at maximum efficiency.

${\displaystyle {\text{Distilled Water (L/t)}}=\lfloor {\text{Plasma EU/L}}\times {\text{Plasma L/s}}\times 9/32,000\rfloor }$

${\displaystyle {\text{Dense SC Steam (L/t)}}=\lfloor {\text{Plasma EU/L}}\times {\text{Plasma L/s}}\times 9/200,000\rfloor }$

Plasma EU/L	Max Rate
≤10,000	100 L/s
10,001 - 100,000	500 L/s
100,001 - 300,000	2,500 L/s
300,001 - 500,000	10,000 L/s
≥500,001	25,000 L/s

Hot Fluid	Cool Fluid	EU/L	Max Rate	Max Input	Max Output
Helium Plasma	Helium	81,920	500 L/s	11,520 L/t Distilled Water	1,843 L/t Dense SC Steam
Tin Plasma	Molten Tin	150,000	2,500 L/s	105,468 L/t Distilled Water	16,875 L/t Dense SC Steam
Niobium Plasma	Molten Niobium	269,516	2,500 L/s	189,503 L/t Distilled Water	30,320 L/t Dense SC Steam
Americium Plasma	Molten Americium	501,760	25,000 L/s	3,528,000 L/t Distilled Water	564,480 L/t Dense SC Steam
Celestial Tungsten Plasma	Molten Celestial Tungsten	720,000	25,000 L/s	5,062,500 L/t Distilled Water	810,000 L/t Dense SC Steam

Power

The steam produced by the EHE is used to generate power with a series of XL Turbo Steam Turbines in the order listed below. All three types of steam and their dense versions 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. Both SC steam and SH steam generate 2x more EU than regular steam at the same optimal flow rate. Dense versions generate 1,000x more EU at 1/1,000th the optimal flow rate.

The XL Turbo SC Steam Turbine generates power from SC steam and converts it to SH steam at a 1:1 ratio.
The XL Turbo HP Steam Turbine generates power from SH steam and converts it to regular steam at a 1:1 ratio.
The XL Turbo 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.