How can I run my Boiler and steam engines indefinably?
- Thread starter TheHoblit
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Build a automated tree farm with forestry or steve's carts than either feed the wood though a thermal expansion sawmill to fuel a solid fuel boiler or build a biomass to biofuel system to fuel liquid boiler. If you go bio fuel you can also use a reed farm or cacti farm or two to get the biomass needed to make the bio fuel.
There are a lot of ways to have a constant amount of fuel for the boilers.
You could also go with peat, blaze rods...
Basically, any kind of solid or liquid fuel that you can produce in large enough quantities.
I mean, some people even do a zombie trap and use the flesh to produce gas and feed that to the boiler (greg tech)
You could also go with peat, blaze rods...
Basically, any kind of solid or liquid fuel that you can produce in large enough quantities.
I mean, some people even do a zombie trap and use the flesh to produce gas and feed that to the boiler (greg tech)
I'm going to (slightly) necro this rather than make a new thread. Hooray for search!
Um, so, I had a low pressure boiler being fed by a SC tree farm and converting the logs to charcoal for fuel. Timers and filters moved the logs to a pair of Thermal Expansion furnaces, which dumped to a chest, which then outputted to the boiler's firebox.
This worked fine, with only a few logs and charcoals ping-ponging around in the tubes.
A couple of weeks ago I added a high pressure boiler, initially intending to feed it creosote from my coke ovens... but that is crap fuel. So I built a solid fuel firebox for it and switched from charcoal to a sawmill and planks to feed both boilers. I'm using gates and redstone signals to tell filters to send stacks of 64 planks to the boilers -- works OK, but I am noticing my log supply is actually starting to decrease now.
All this to say -- should I / can I add a second cart to my tree farm (it seems to be large enough, although if I add another cart I will probably add another 4 rows of track and trees)? Will two SC carts share the same tracks and cargo manager, or do I need to build a second tree farm?
I have not been making use of the Sawdust as fuel -- I am not convinced that Compressing 9xSawdust for the equivalent of one piece of Charcoal is going to make the difference. That's just a single charcoal bonus for every 9 logs sawed, and I spend energy to compress it... seems it might be a wash.
Um, so, I had a low pressure boiler being fed by a SC tree farm and converting the logs to charcoal for fuel. Timers and filters moved the logs to a pair of Thermal Expansion furnaces, which dumped to a chest, which then outputted to the boiler's firebox.
This worked fine, with only a few logs and charcoals ping-ponging around in the tubes.
A couple of weeks ago I added a high pressure boiler, initially intending to feed it creosote from my coke ovens... but that is crap fuel. So I built a solid fuel firebox for it and switched from charcoal to a sawmill and planks to feed both boilers. I'm using gates and redstone signals to tell filters to send stacks of 64 planks to the boilers -- works OK, but I am noticing my log supply is actually starting to decrease now.
All this to say -- should I / can I add a second cart to my tree farm (it seems to be large enough, although if I add another cart I will probably add another 4 rows of track and trees)? Will two SC carts share the same tracks and cargo manager, or do I need to build a second tree farm?
I have not been making use of the Sawdust as fuel -- I am not convinced that Compressing 9xSawdust for the equivalent of one piece of Charcoal is going to make the difference. That's just a single charcoal bonus for every 9 logs sawed, and I spend energy to compress it... seems it might be a wash.
New farm, two carts don't work all that well. The first one does all the work, the other one follows right behind it without doin' anything. Make sure your tracks have the right size, the fabled E setup is the most efficient one.
If it's a SC tree farm, can't you just extend the track? It's unlikely that the harvesting cart is the bottleneck.
Alternatively, you could go the liquid route with biomass/fuel. You could add another cart, but it would only do something more than simply adding extra track if your current cart is harvesting trees at every increment.
One of the main advantages of an SC farm is that it's so easy to extend (especially if you run a loop system).
Alternatively, you could go the liquid route with biomass/fuel. You could add another cart, but it would only do something more than simply adding extra track if your current cart is harvesting trees at every increment.
One of the main advantages of an SC farm is that it's so easy to extend (especially if you run a loop system).
More than one cart per track won't work. After a not too long time they would catch up on each other.
How big is your farm? Mine in the form of an E and a track footprint of 16x16 can feed three 36HP boiler (when on max heat). The biggest problem here is, that the sawmill is just a tad too slow to keep them fed, so I have to add the charcoal from the compressed sawdust (had to switch the GregTech change back to produce TE sawdust). I'm making a very small plus on logs with this. With two boilers you should need exactly 22 logs per 62.5 seconds. Feeding your sawmill more than that will just produce too many planks.
How big is your farm? Mine in the form of an E and a track footprint of 16x16 can feed three 36HP boiler (when on max heat). The biggest problem here is, that the sawmill is just a tad too slow to keep them fed, so I have to add the charcoal from the compressed sawdust (had to switch the GregTech change back to produce TE sawdust). I'm making a very small plus on logs with this. With two boilers you should need exactly 22 logs per 62.5 seconds. Feeding your sawmill more than that will just produce too many planks.
There is a renewable way.
If you're using mindcrack.
Look at the electrolyzer recipe for enderpearl dust.
Feed the apples from the farm into squeezers, you'll get the occasional piece of mulch (which can be used in fermenters) in addition to the apple juice that boosts biomass production. If that isn't enough, for whatever reason (the mulch produced from a tree farm's apples should roughly keep up with the mulch consumed processing that farm's saplings), you can add a moistener and feed any spare wheat you've got into it to get even more mulch.
You missed the new Forestry update with multiblock farms that require fertilizer to work it seems.
Don't need a multiblock farm for biogas. You do if you want to use an orchard to keep up a more consistent apple supply for maximized output, but you can still run a biogas system without using fertilizer.
I would suggest what Direwolf used in his SMP, which is distilled bees (they produce oil). I have a 36hp high pressure boiler running on fuel with a full large iron tank of fuel. I'm about to add a second boiler b/c I have so much fuel. It's also very easy to setup and forget about it.
You will in a while.
How many bees do you have producing for the boiler?
Just 2 in alvearys. I would suggest finding an oil well to get started since the boiler will need more fuel to heat up
I've got two 36HPs running (with a small deficit) off of sixteen 9x9 sugarcane farms set up in layers of two by two (four layers in total). It is not very effective, but it is extremely easy to do and keep up. I'm about to program a turtle to build the rest of the layers for me so I don't have to build any more layers myself. All I'll need to do is set up the pipes in the middle for outputted sugarcane, and power wiring to input power into the farms (which is time delayed, and barely uses any MJs to work, thankfully).
By efficient, do you mean space-efficient, or do you mean a layout that allows the cart to actually collect wood faster? My setup is a zig-zag with two blocks of dirt between each zig/zag. It's quite large and the cart never has to wait, it is constantly cutting and shuttling wood back to the manager.
For now I'm just going to rework my fueling setup and start piping the secondary output from the sawmill (sawdust) to a compressor, then to the fuel supply chest. Hopefully that added fuel will tip it back to a slight log surplus.
Also -- I have an absolute glut of saplings (over 1000 stacks). I don't have the space to set up a biofuel system, nor the time or desire to convert one of my boilers to liquid. So is there something sensible I can do with the saplings? I was thinking about using them to fuel a generator supplying EU to the dedicated sawdust compressor. Could also burn them in the (steam engine powering) sawmill. I wonder if that will even dent my supply
