Solar Tower Boiler
The Solar Tower Boiler is an earlygame machine that can use sunlight from heliostat mirrors to boil water.
Crafting
Usage
The solar tower boiler gets heat from heliostat mirrors pointed at it. Aiming a mirror at the boiler can be done using the mirror adjustment tool, right-click on the boiler will save its position to the tool, and subsequently clicking on mirrors will aim them at the linked boiler. The maximum range for mirrors is 25 blocks, mirror efficiency does not degrade with range. A boiler requires twelve mirrors for the temperature to break even, and will start making steam with the 13th mirror.
The boiler has a water buffer of 100mB, meaning it can in theory provide up to 10,000mB of steam per tick. The temperature provided by each mirror is based on sunlight, mirrors with solid blocks above them will not work, and the amount of heat diminishes in the evening. Therefore, the solar tower boiler will not produce any steam at night. The resulting steam can be used in a steam engine or turbine, which produce low-pressure steam that either has to be condensed to recycle the water, or vented.
The solar tower boiler can only handle regular steam, and the steam type cannot be changed using fluid identifiers.