DW20 Pack Boiler fuel

[hutchkc]

I was using lava cells as a fuel source previously for boilers, they went through fuel relatively slow and seemed the best solid fuel. With the DW20 pack the boiler tears through them like candy and they last about a third as long as coal. Anyone know if this is intentional and if so what fuel seems to be working out the best for you guys.

 

[Meldiron]

Intentional, an example of fuel sources can be found on the railcraft wiki.
But basicly anything that goes in a furnace can fuel a boiler.

 

[Omicron]

Fuel value of lava cells was accidentally set too high in the version of Industrialcraft that Beta Pack A used. More recent versions have fixed this; cells are now equal to buckets once again.

In addition, solid fuel boilers got an efficiency nerf in recent Railcraft versions because they used to be way too good (leaps and bounds better than any other solid fuel burning machine in any mod). Plus there was an exploit that was also fixed by this.

So all in all, due to a combination of a bugfix and a very necessary nerf, I highly recommend using your lava in magmatic engines or geothermal generators from now on. Solid fuel boilers are better serviced by coal coke, charcoal or peat.

 

[hutchkc]

Thanks guys, hadn't heard about that. Using coal until I get enough coke.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Alternatively, if you like liquid fuels, biomass turned into biofuel in a still can be quite efficient at powering a boiler, and a renewable energy source in the bargain!

Peat is a solid choice for solid fuel boilers. It lasts about as long as coal coke and is another renewable resource. Since you're making peat anyways for your forestry automation, you've probably got a stack or ten waiting around you can feed into it. It's much better than Charcoal, which is the other renewable fuel source of choice.

 

[Omicron]

Peat is a solid choice for solid fuel boilers. It lasts about as long as coal coke and is another renewable resource. Since you're making peat anyways for your forestry automation, you've probably got a stack or ten waiting around you can feed into it. It's much better than Charcoal, which is the other renewable fuel source of choice.

Erm, not in a boiler it doesn't Here's my little heat unit cheat sheet I always keep handy:

Solids:
Sugar Cane    50 HU
Cactus        50 HU
Stick        100 HU
Sapling      100 HU
Wood Item    300 HU  (logs, planks, burnable wooden things)
Lava        1000 HU
Charcoal    1600 HU
Peat        2000 HU  (railcraft wiki has it wrong)
Coal        3200 HU
Coal Coke   6400 HU
 
Liquids:
Creosote Oil      3200 HU
Forestry Biofuel 32000 HU
Buildcraft Fuel  96000 HU

Coal coke really is the fuel of choice for solid boilers. And that's only fair, considering you must decide between turning your coal into coke, or turning it into diamonds...

 

[netmc]

Well, before the solid fuel nerf, I went through about 30 or so stacks of peat (and several of coke and coal) getting the temperature up to a decent level on a 27 block high pressure boiler. I also had about 6 peat farms going at one point, then once the boiler was up to temp, I dropped down to about 1 and a half peat farms running. I imagine now, you would need 3-4 peat farms running once the boiler got up to full temp.

Peat is definitely a good fuel to use with solid fuel boilers as you can easily mass produce it, "grows" faster than a tree farm, saves your coal for converting into coke/diamonds and doesn't need diamonds to craft the machines. Also since RP is out now, peat farms can easily be automated. (along with the necessary wheat farm, moistener and carpenter for producing bog earth)

 

[Entropy]

With a Steve's Carts tree farm, and an auto-smelting system, you could produce more charcoal than you will ever use, and it works fairly well in a boiler. That's the way i run my boiler, which is a 27 LP if I remember correctly. It has enough charcoal to run forever, and I'm actually just voiding the stuff now.

 

[Omicron]

The result of a code dive there omicron?

Hah, no, I can't Java myself out of a paper bag

The NEI Plugins mod allows you to display this value if you have it installed. However, after noticing that peat shows a different value ingame than on the wiki, I went and confirmed all these values with a stopwatch to make sure everything is in order.

(In fact I did a whole lot more than just checking fuel values - I went and measured heatup times and fuel cost for every single boiler, devised a formula that takes both into account while computing you an adjusted efficiency-over-time figure, and found a way compare efficiency on two boilers to the point where you can say "after X hours of operation the smaller boiler is still more fuel efficient, but after Y hours the larger one overtakes it". And then Railcraft updated and all my numbers became completely worthless. Such is life )

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Actually lava has had an all round nerf, it only make 9kMJ at 2 MJ/t in a magmatic engine. Save it for your IC2 geothermal.

Its a shame you cant use gunpowder or coal dust as fuel. (IRL coal is ground into dust before being burnt- giving a faster, hotter burn).

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Actually lava has had an all round nerf, it only make 9kMJ at 2 MJ/t in a magmatic engine. Save it for your IC2 geothermal.

Its a shame you cant use gunpowder or coal dust as fuel. (IRL coal is ground into dust before being burnt- giving a faster, hotter burn).

In which pack? In the current version of the DireWolf20 pack, I'm producing the expected 4 MJ/t at 18000 MJ per bucket.

 

[Omicron]

IIRC, King Lemming stated his intention to nerf magmatic engines a few days ago. No such nerf has been implemented/published yet, though... no idea why Celestialphoenix is getting nly half output from his.