Ok. So I'm thinking of making 6 x 36 hp liquid steam boilers. What would be the best set up for making that biofuel? I tried searching for some topics but couldn't find anything good. Maybe I searched badly. I'm playing 1.6 Unleashed. Maybe it's better to run them solid fuel with planters and harvesters? But would a planter with an emerald be enough to provide the charcoal for the 36 boilers once they heat up to 1k? Because that would mean I'd need something to burn the wood. And then I'd just export it constantly from my ME system. I could probably do it with a small tree farm but I'd need fertilizer. Which I tried making in my test world. Even 64 cows weren't producing enough fertilizer to keep up with the production for a 3x3 farm. Or did I do something wrong? I had 3 composters running.
Help with biofuel
- Thread starter doxastic
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Max size boilers need lots and lots and lots of resources stored before you even think about starting it up. You can use http://calculator.towerofawesome.org/ to see how much it would take to even get the thing going. Start there. Once you see how much fuel you need to run it, you can figure out ways of making it. Sewers can take range upgrades. I had a single MFR tree farm (1 block) using fertilizer producing enough charcoal, creosote and biofuel to run 4 max size HP boilers. Mind you, this was back on 1.5.2, and I had lots of extra infrastructure supporting it. Even then, I could only start one boiler up at a time, as It took a long time to heat them up, then more to stockpile enough resources to start the next one.
Edit: I actually sheered the leaf blocks from the tree and converted them to plant balls, and converted that to biofuel. When my saplings ran low, I automatically switched to breaking the leaves to get the saplings.
Edit: I actually sheered the leaf blocks from the tree and converted them to plant balls, and converted that to biofuel. When my saplings ran low, I automatically switched to breaking the leaves to get the saplings.
In 1.6.4, boilers don't use more fuel to heat up. Instead, they produce less steam when heating up.
I really don't understand personally why people want to set up XX of the same type of power generators. Why not set up one liquid boiler, one solid and then try some different other types? The 2 boilers should cover your basis power need and you could then have engines cowering peak usage.
Personally in Unleashed I settled for one solid fuel Boiler running on Charcoal from a Forestry farm. The saplings got made into ethanol that was stored for engines that were automatically enabled when powerdraw was high enough. I just used oak trees in the forestry farm, but if you want OP'ness you could do a small MFR farm with ghostwood.
Btw, what exact modpack are you playing? There is no such thing as 1.6 Unleashed.
I personally setup using a MFR melon farm, turn the melons into seeds with a cyclic assembler and pump the seeds into several BioReactors, store in a tank and fire Liquid Fueled HP boilers from it. Im running 2 full size HP boilers off 2/3 off a 7 radius(I think) farm with plenty of excess.
I cover it in my youtube series (channel in my sig) in episodes 8 to 10. I turn the steam into EU using Steam Turbines, but its up to you what you do with the steam once its being produced.
I run Unleashed 1.1.7
I cover it in my youtube series (channel in my sig) in episodes 8 to 10. I turn the steam into EU using Steam Turbines, but its up to you what you do with the steam once its being produced.
I run Unleashed 1.1.7
Not sure about ghostwood, but magic saplings give huge amounts compared to other trees. I saw Direwolf using them but not sure what mod they are from. Might be the trees from the BOP magic biome.
Ghostwood has an insanely short growth speed so a resonable small MFR farm can support several boilers with charcoal without having to fertilizer. Not actually sure if the saplings work for making biofuel though. But at the rate you get charcoal you wouldn't care. But its so OP it feels kinda cheaty IMO.
They might work in that other... ethanol maker that I cannot remember the name of right now, MFR isnt it? Never tried it tbh.
Bioreactor, and yeah I never tried using them in that. Ever since the production nerf I havent been too inclined to try to get 9 different kinds of plants to try to capitalize on using it. Nor have I figured out a way to inject 9 different types of plants at the same time, so one doesn't deplete before the others.
I've had good luck feeding a bioreactor evenly by using a "clever" mishmash of loaders and unloaders in stock/excess modes (from railcraft), but the more sensible thing to do is probably logistics pipes (supplier pipe)
Honestly, once I had it running, even just 4 or 5 different plants seemed far better than the forestry setup. It takes up less space, requires less intrastructure (no water or energy), isn't lossy (which the fermenter setup was IIRC) and seemed more reliable in terms of the rate of biojuice output.
Mine was fed via a large MFR farm; again using ailcraft loaders/unloaders to ensure it was stocked with X types of saplings I wanted. And again, if I could work my brain around logistics pipes, that would be the preferred route.
This was like 6 months ago. Your mileage may vary.
Ok. So I just did some research and realized that when I was using 64 cow farm with 1 sewer wasn't the right set up. The wiki said that it is only suitable to have 6 cows per 1 sewer. So that's what I did. Set up 4 sewers with 6 cows each pumping to the compost.
Then also I set up a max size harvest and planter farm. It's working out great. I'm turning the wood into charcoal in 2x electrical furnaces with 3 overclockers each and still having surplus of wood coming in. Once I hit enough charcoal to fuel op a solid fuel box I will make it. I'll try to set up the biofuel creation soon as well. Thank you everyone for your answers.
Then also I set up a max size harvest and planter farm. It's working out great. I'm turning the wood into charcoal in 2x electrical furnaces with 3 overclockers each and still having surplus of wood coming in. Once I hit enough charcoal to fuel op a solid fuel box I will make it. I'll try to set up the biofuel creation soon as well. Thank you everyone for your answers.
You might be better off with "more furnaces" instead of "faster furnaces" if you're at all interested in efficiency.
Me, I use massive arrays of coal coke ovens since they create charcoal for free plus creosote oil (burnable in liquid steam boilers) as a byproduct.
Granted, with a decent tree farm, efficiency is irrelevant.
Me, I use massive arrays of coal coke ovens since they create charcoal for free plus creosote oil (burnable in liquid steam boilers) as a byproduct.
Granted, with a decent tree farm, efficiency is irrelevant.
One single Ic2 Induction Furnace will be enough.Granted there is a 1EU/t upkeep, but when running it is much much much faster and cheaper than anything else. If you are clever you can use AE ME network to automate it and add wood as needed, but in large portions at the time. That way you get full benefit of both slots of the Induction furnaces.
I'm thinking my last tree farm (max radius minefactory) might have outrun a single induction furnace (which, agreed, are lovely); other than that, can't argue. They're so win.
If you want an excuse to breed trees, one(1) 5x5x4 Forestry Multifarm with saplings bred for:
Saplings : High
Sappiness : High
Growth : Fast
Height : Large or Largest
..plus another 5x5x4 farm with saplings bred for:
Maturity : Fast
Height : Large or Largest
Fruit : Lemon
Feed the lemons into one(1) squeezer. Feed the saplings, mulch, and fruit juice into one(1) Fermenter. Feed the biomass (green output) into approximately 4 Stills to make the orange biofuel (ethanol) per 36HP boiler, assuming you're using Railcraft 8.3 . So, six(6) boilers is approximately 24 Stills. With good saplings and juice, you can keep 32 or more Stills happy from 1 Fermenter.
The hardest part is breeding the saplings for traits. See my signature for Omicron's advice on this topic. But, if that's too tedious/involved, install Gendustry and enjoy the Sampler and Imprinter. @bdew did a nice job with Gendustry.
Saplings : High
Sappiness : High
Growth : Fast
Height : Large or Largest
..plus another 5x5x4 farm with saplings bred for:
Maturity : Fast
Height : Large or Largest
Fruit : Lemon
Feed the lemons into one(1) squeezer. Feed the saplings, mulch, and fruit juice into one(1) Fermenter. Feed the biomass (green output) into approximately 4 Stills to make the orange biofuel (ethanol) per 36HP boiler, assuming you're using Railcraft 8.3 . So, six(6) boilers is approximately 24 Stills. With good saplings and juice, you can keep 32 or more Stills happy from 1 Fermenter.
The hardest part is breeding the saplings for traits. See my signature for Omicron's advice on this topic. But, if that's too tedious/involved, install Gendustry and enjoy the Sampler and Imprinter. @bdew did a nice job with Gendustry.
I haven't checked out Gendustry yet, and I know I should.
I used to do forestry multifarms before I decided MFR ones were a bit more hands-off. Not sure which one is more efficient in terms of trees-per-energycost.
I also switched to bioreactors instead of fermenter/still because 1) powering the forestry machines is annoying since they consume energy doing nothing, and 2) somewhat better feedback on how well its producing its output.
You can work around the energy consumption with various trickery (power switch pipes, gates, etc) but the bioreactor is so much simpler, its hard to make an excuse not to use it....unless your saplings are not bioreactor-friendly (which I believe is still the case with bred trees)
I used to do forestry multifarms before I decided MFR ones were a bit more hands-off. Not sure which one is more efficient in terms of trees-per-energycost.
I also switched to bioreactors instead of fermenter/still because 1) powering the forestry machines is annoying since they consume energy doing nothing, and 2) somewhat better feedback on how well its producing its output.
You can work around the energy consumption with various trickery (power switch pipes, gates, etc) but the bioreactor is so much simpler, its hard to make an excuse not to use it....unless your saplings are not bioreactor-friendly (which I believe is still the case with bred trees)
Idle power consumption for Forestry and Railcraft machine is annoying, yes. However, since you'll be running a Fermenter and Still 24/7, they will never be idle, so no worries there.
As for bred saplings, they only work in Forestry machines and Gendustry. MFR does not use the metadata in the saplings and won't care if they are Sappiness : High or not. In other words, even if bred saplings work in MFR's Bioreactor, you won't get any advantage over regular saplings.
In terms of density and server load, it's hard to beat bred saplings. Plus, it provides a very good excuse to breed trees ! A solution looking for a problem indeed, but it's a good solution, IMHO
As a side effect, you will gain access to a large variety of wood types for building that just to happen to look nice.
This argument alone wins.
But if you're not doing a perfect fermenter-to-still ratio, one or the other will probably be under-worked.
Maybe its just me, but I'll honestly take a huge hit to my industry just to avoid the annoyance of the power loss. Perhaps its super-personal or something. On the other hand, bioreactors are just so simple, I might as well switch to solar or lava power *shudder*.