Biofuel creation question

[Lonewolf187]

Hello everyone:
I was wondering what is more efficient for creating biofuel from biomass in terms of efficiency and power used, the still from forestry or the refinery from buildcraft?

 

[zilvarwolf]

I believe that the still is considered to be the most efficient in terms of efficiency and power used.

I know it's more efficient (10 buckets of biomass give 3 buckets of biofuel, vs 12 buckets of biomass generating 3 buckets of biofuel), and that alone suggests that the power requirements would be better as well, but I don't have hard numbers on power usage for either machine.

 

[Hoff]

If you input multiple types of biofuel creation into a bioreactor(Multiple types of saplings and multiple types of seeds excluding xycraft seeds) you get a really good ratio of biofuel conversion. I don't remember the maximum but it's probably like 300-400 mB per sapling/seed. Oh and did I mention it takes no power and does it at an UNGODLY fast rate?

E: Nevermind on the efficiency. If you have one of each vanilla sapling, all of the seeds minus xycraft seeds it will use one of each, each conversion producing 1200 mB!!!! Adding in either kind of rubber tree sapling pushes this to 1400 mB per conversion. This is slightly less efficient that a still but is much faster, cheaper, and uses no power at all.

 

[Harvest88]

If you input multiple types of biofuel creation into a bioreactor(Multiple types of saplings and multiple types of seeds excluding xycraft seeds) you get a really good ratio of biofuel conversion. I don't remember the maximum but it's probably like 300-400 mB per sapling/seed. Oh and did I mention it takes no power and does it at an UNGODLY fast rate?

E: Nevermind on the efficiency. If you have one of each vanilla sapling, all of the seeds minus xycraft seeds it will use one of each, each conversion producing 1200 mB!!!! Adding in either kind of rubber tree sapling pushes this to 1400 mB per conversion. This is slightly less efficient that a still but is much faster, cheaper, and uses no power at all.

it'll set you back a lot of room and farm automation costs to get that high efficiency rate so idk what's the net gain is actually is for an efficient fully automated setup. (to figure out take all the power consumption costs for everything for a bucket worth of Biofuel then minus that from 50k MJ that a bucket produce in a Combustion Engine then you'll get the net MJ per bucket)

 

[Hoff]

it'll set you back a lot of room and farm automation costs to get that high efficiency rate so idk what's the net gain is actually is for an efficient fully automated setup. (to figure out take all the power consumption costs for everything for a bucket worth of Biofuel then minus that from 50k MJ that a bucket produce in a Combustion Engine then you'll get the net MJ per bucket)

1) You don't need automation for a stack of 9 different seeds/saplings. I normally have at least a stack of each on hand 24/7.
2) They produce 200k MJ per bucket. 5 MJ/t for 40k ticks.

At that point you can use that 18.5 million MJ and get yourself started pretty easy.

 

[Mash]

I believe the Still is the most efficient.

However, it is slow as fuck.

 

[Hoff]

I believe the Still is the most efficient.

However, it is slow as fuck.

Technically the most efficient but won't be for long. The bio reactor, when loaded with 9 types of seeds/saplings/etc., produces 1440 mB using one of each item. This is 160 mB per item. The still, currently, produces 240 mB per sapling(exclusive since they are the only thing that produces 800 mB of biomass). The difference at the moment is that the bio reactor produces it without power and can produce 1440 mB every tick if it were possible to pump it out that fast. The difference in 1.5 will be that saplings no longer produce 800 mB of biomass each unless they are bred for maximum sapiness.

 

[Mash]

Technically the most efficient but won't be for long. The bio reactor, when loaded with 9 types of seeds/saplings/etc., produces 1440 mB using one of each item. This is 160 mB per item. The still, currently, produces 240 mB per sapling(exclusive since they are the only thing that produces 800 mB of biomass). The difference at the moment is that the bio reactor produces it without power and can produce 1440 mB every tick if it were possible to pump it out that fast. The difference in 1.5 will be that saplings no longer produce 800 mB of biomass each unless they are bred for maximum sapiness.

Yeah, I have a bio reactor attached to an MFR farm that grows redwoods.

I produce about 4000 MB/minute. It's not a huge amount, but it serves its purpose.

I prefer the bio reactor because even though I don't use it at maximum efficiency, it doesn't matter because it doesn't use energy per operation. I can be as inefficient as I damn well please. And it's fast, which I love.

 

[Hoff]

Yeah, I have a bio reactor attached to an MFR farm that grows redwoods.

I produce about 4000 MB/minute. It's not a huge amount, but it serves its purpose.

I prefer the bio reactor because even though I don't use it at maximum efficiency, it doesn't matter because it doesn't use energy per operation. I can be as inefficient as I damn well please. And it's fast, which I love.

Your farm doesn't get stuck? Mine is constantly getting stuck, though the more harvesters I add the less it gets stuck.

 

[Mash]

Your farm doesn't get stuck? Mine is constantly getting stuck, though the more harvesters I add the less it gets stuck.

Stuck in what way?

Like, pauses in the Harvester's production? That happens to me, and the Harvesters tend to just kind of idle for up to half a minute after the tree actually spawns, but I imagine it's some sort of overly-slow scanning system, since this pause got longer the bigger my farm was.

 

[Hoff]

Stuck in what way?

Like, pauses in the Harvester's production? That happens to me, and the Harvesters tend to just kind of idle for up to half a minute after the tree actually spawns, but I imagine it's some sort of overly-slow scanning system, since this pause got longer the bigger my farm was.

No I mean when it'll harvest the bottom part of a tree and leave the rest of it floating.

 

[Mash]

No I mean when it'll harvest the bottom part of a tree and leave the rest of it floating.

Oh, you need to edit your MFR configuration file for that.

The setting you're looking for is:

# When searching for parts of a tree, how far up to search
I:SearchDistance.TreeMaxVertical=X

I have mine set at 75, but you can set it at any rate you want, though I believe Redwoods can be like, 40-60 blocks talls.

You may also want to look at,

# When searching for parts of a tree, how far out to the sides (radius) to search
I:SearchDistance.TreeMaxHoriztonal=X

 

[crazy_fab]

I believe than the best way of creating biofuel out of biomass is trough the gregtech distillation power with a two to one ratio. It is however by far the most expensive one to build too.