Are bio generators inefficient when their EU buffers are full?

[kcbanner]

I have a large tank of biofuel (almost 300k) and I'd like to have multiple bio generators filled and hooked up to an MFE. When the MFE is full and is slightly emptied, will they be burning exactly enough biofuel to fill that up, or will they be burning more? I'm concerned about leaving my biofuel pumps on because I don't want any biofuel being wasted, like how coal gets wasted in generators that just have a tiny bit of room in their buffer.

If anyone has detailed information on how the bio generators consume fuel that would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Tylor]

Biogenerators are inefficient regardless.

 

[kcbanner]

Can you elaborate?

 

[noah_wolfe]

He means that they are inefficient by design and there is currently a better way to produce EU from the potential of the Biofuel, although it requires more setup.

As of right now, with the power that the IC2 Geothermal Generator and GT Geotherm convert lava to EU, you are much better off burning that biofuel in a boiler, powering Magma Crucibles.

The biogen directly will convert one bucket of biofuel to 30,000 EU. Similarly, the GT Diesel Generator produces 32k EU from a bucket of Biofuel.

A max-heat 36HP boiler would convert that same bucket to around 581,000 MJ (a combustion engine would make 200,000), spend 20,000 MJ for a cycle of lava in the crucible (on free cobble), which ends up being worth 20,000 EU for the Geotherm / 30k EU for the GT Geotherm.

In other words, your one bucket of biofuel would generate a whole bunch more EU if you turn it in to lava indirectly.

I can't imagine this is going to last much longer, as it is currently trivializing 4 conversion systems in the pack: The biogen, the petrogen, the steam turbine, and the GT gen (though conversion isn't the sole purpose of the latter).

 

[Tylor]

Also, "300k" is actually just 300 buckets, because tanks measure in millibuckets.

 

[Chance]

I have been playing around with it, and I agree that it will produce more eu overall, but I dont think it provides the same amount of eu per tick. Magma crucibles are slow with cobble even at 20mj per tick. So I would base what you do on your needs!

 

[noah_wolfe]

I have been playing around with it, and I agree that it will produce more eu overall, but I dont think it provides the same amount of eu per tick. Magma crucibles are slow with cobble even at 20mj per tick. So I would base what you do on your needs!

No, not really. With 500k MJ to spare, you are running multiple crucibles / multiple geogens, which is far outstripping the rate of a single block biogen.

 

[Korenn]

Nobody actually answered his question though. And I don't know either. The bio-generator is part of forestry, not IC2, so we can't assume it works the same as the geothermal does. Though forestry is generally somewhat smart about energy consumption, so I'd hope so?

I guess you'd have to test it - set up a filled MFE with a biogen attached - put one bucket of bio fuel / mass in the generator, drain a tiny bit of eu and see if it drains the whole bucket or not.

 

[Tylor]

Nobody answered because nobody use those things, so nobody knows.

 

[kcbanner]

I'm going to investigate this in a creative world then, I need to know!

 

[kcbanner]

Alright, I looked into this. The bio generator buffer seems to hold 30,000 EU. Given one bucket of biofuel, this buffer fills and the bio generator's tank shows "Biofuel" even though you can't see any (just a tiny amount left). If I let a little EU out, then break the cable, then a little more, then break the cable (emulating an almost full MFE being drained slowly), all the biofuel gets burned and the buffer fills. Upon replacing the cable and letting the bio generator drain its EU buffer, the storage shows exactly 32000. So it appears that the generator does not waste fuel when its EU buffer is full! Good news!

An additional note, the EU buffer in the generator drains at 32 EU/t, not 16 EU/t.