Some fermenting science

[Hydra]

Hey guys,

Since wiki's tend to be outdated or simply wrong, and I saw different conflicting opinions about fermenters, how fast they were and how many stills you could support, I did some testing. I also ran into problems o deciding how to power how many fermenters. So I did some research for myself which might be of use to you.

Basically I used a still/fermenter connected to a RE cell (at 600k charge) and a RC tank (so I could get a good readout on liquid amounts). The cell was set to 50MJ/t output.

First the still: I put in 10 biomass, set it to run, and hey presto. It took 252 seconds to distill and it used 27196 MJ. This means that converting the 10 biomass into 3 biofuel (it did exactly that) took a little over 4 minutes at 5.40 MJ/t. It also means a still needs about 25 seconds to handle a single bucket of biomass.

Secondly; the fermenter. I uploaded a table to dropbox with all the numbers:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20974501/fermenting.htm

One thing that immediately stands out is the amount of liquid produced (under mBuckets): unlike what the wiki says wheat, sugarcane and cactus all produce 144mbucket per item. Also interesting is the power-usage: the fermenter will draw up to 17mj/t when it has work (doesn't draw anything when it doesn't). Because of this, I also did a single test with a RE cell set to 5MJ/t output, and it slows down pretty much by the same ratio.

What is also interesting is the output speed: you can see how much time it takes to create one bucket of biomass and even at full speed it differs per item type. If you divide the time a still takes (25 seconds) with the time it takes a fermenter to produce a single bucket from cane (6.94s) or saplings (5.64s) it shows that you need to set your ratio of fermenters to still depending on your input.

So a fermenter running at max speed can fill a 3.6 stills when running on cane or 4.4 stills when running on saplings. Keep in mind though, a single fermenter at max speed uses a sugarcane per second. 2 complete cane farms will not keep up with that.

Bottom line is: you can easily have a single fermenter running on multiple engines if you have enough items to feed it. If not it's better to use a single biogas engine since it scales with power. If you have a setup like mine where biofuel is powering a boiler you can have a single fermenter supply 3-4 stills. Each still takes 84 seconds to produce a bucket of biofuel. A HP boiler at full heat consumes a bucket per 101 seconds.

 

[Omicron]

Nice work.

If you're interested in some additional fermenter details, try and take a look into the Forestry game mode subconfigs. Not all settings in there are functional, but the fermenter ones are (albeit slightly incomplete). Sengir kind of got distracted by tree breeding while working on this feature

 

[WTFFFS]

A second here for the above I'd love to see the figures on Hardmode forestry config (since that is what I'm playing on and I plan to feed my max size Hp boiler with biofuel)

 

[Hydra]

Thanks you both If anyone has anything to add they're more than welcome. My goal is to learn more about the internals of the Forestry mod (which I really really love) and if anyone has anything interesting to add they're more than welcome

I'll have a look at the configs. This stuff is based on the basic DW20 setup we use on our server.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

A second here for the above I'd love to see the figures on Hardmode forestry config (since that is what I'm playing on and I plan to feed my max size Hp boiler with biofuel)

I think hardmode is only for bee/tree breeding

 

[WTFFFS]

I think hardmode is only for bee/tree breeding

Nope there is a hardmode config option for Forestry itself roughly triples the power requirement of all machines makes farms and producers of other sorts a little less set and forget, nerfs the amounts produced by several producers all in all makes it a lot more fun (to me, ymmv)
I have bees on default though, you'd have to be insane to use the hardmode bee config

 

[MilConDoin]

What is your fuel used? Since your saplings can only feed 4.4 stills, I assume you used mulch. Fertilizer should be able to fill 56/48 as much (5.13).

 

[Hydra]

According to the wiki the compost/mulch/etc doesn't influence how much you get for a single sapling. The different types just last different amounts of times. As you can see different fermentables take different amounts of 'cycles' to process. This is the number that's behind the list on the wiki.

I will check it out tonight and see if it indeed does not have an influence on the amount of biomass per sapling / cane or processing speed.

 

[MilConDoin]

The problem is not biomass/sapling (which is only changed by the fluid used (water/apple/honey)), but biomass/time (or: how long does it take to convert one sapling into biomass).
Fertilizer produces 56 mB per work cycle, mulch produces 48 mB per work cycle. So using fert will increase your output/time by factor 7/6.

 

[Hydra]

Ah, didn't know that, thanks! I based it on compost because that's what I use (a single grain farm supplies everything I need to make compost). I'll go test and see if it indeed speeds up the system.

 

[Peppe]

...
So a fermenter running at max speed can fill a 3.6 stills when running on cane or 4.4 stills when running on saplings. Keep in mind though, a single fermenter at max speed uses a sugarcane per second. 2 complete cane farms will not keep up with that.
...

Cool thread.
One question, what are the cane farm sizes? Forestry default layout or the ~80% efficient layouts? or row layout of X size...

I was searching for some math on ratios of fermentors to stills to boilers.

I have seen some wild ranges like 6 stills to one fermentor, but that could be saplings+honey or something. They did not have math and you do, so I think i will trust you. Trying to decide on automating a cane or cacti farm and whatsize to max out 1-2 fermentors. Planning to only keep a 3x3 set of chunks loaded (48x48 blocks).

Looks like each still can support a 36 tank HP boiler with 10-15% to spare. Does that ring true?

 

[MilConDoin]

One still per 1.212121... 36HP boilers.
6 stills per fermenter is only viable with honey or apple juice to boost output by x1.5.
Using fertilizer instead of mulch/compost boost output by 56/48 = 7/6.

 

[Hydra]

My farms just have rows of cane. I know you can get a higher efficiency but the extra complexity of building them was not worth it for me. Planting rows of the stuff is much faster than the offset 80% efficiency one. It's faster just to add another layer to the tower [DOUBLEPOST=1360232957][/DOUBLEPOST]And yes, a single still can feed a single 36HP boiler as long as it's at 100% heat. Before that you might want to make sure you have a lot of biofuel to spare. You can also see in the table that if you use applejuice instead of water you get a higher output. With saplings + apple juice a single fermenter can supply 6.8 stills with biomass.

 

[Summit]

The problem is not biomass/sapling (which is only changed by the fluid used (water/apple/honey)), but biomass/time (or: how long does it take to convert one sapling into biomass).
Fertilizer produces 56 mB per work cycle, mulch produces 48 mB per work cycle. So using fert will increase your output/time by factor 7/6.

This is interesting and caused me to go look at the config files because I use mulch rather than fertilizer or compost. Alas, the config file says noting about mulch. Any idea if mulch is the same as one of the others or entirely different? I'm curious if it is better or greatly worse than fertilizer or compost.

 

[Adonis0]

This is interesting and caused me to go look at the config files because I use mulch rather than fertilizer or compost. Alas, the config file says noting about mulch. Any idea if mulch is the same as one of the others or entirely different? I'm curious if it is better or greatly worse than fertilizer or compost.

I thought mulch was equivalent to compost. They're pretty close in reality in any case though. Mulch just composts on the top of your soil when you put it down, compost is already degraded by microbes.

 

[Hydra]

This is interesting and caused me to go look at the config files because I use mulch rather than fertilizer or compost. Alas, the config file says noting about mulch. Any idea if mulch is the same as one of the others or entirely different? I'm curious if it is better or greatly worse than fertilizer or compost.

According to the wiki mulch is the same as compost.

 

[Summit]

According to the wiki mulch is the same as compost.

Cool thanks! I didn't see anything about that on the wiki, I must have missed it. So fertilizer has some good points, but as mulch is so cheap to make and renewable forever I think I will carry on using it and tossing the apetite in the fire.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Has anyone else tried the GT distillation tower?

Even running itself on biofuel, it gives a better conversion ratio than the still/refinery.

 

[Summit]

I haven't got the resources for it quite yet.

 

[infernalinfernos]

Awesome! I've been trying to figure out exact numbers for my energy production using fermenters, compressed plantballs, and biogas engines, and this is a lot of help! Nice job collecting all the info