is there a benefit to turn biomass into biofuel?
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Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
You can only use biomass in a biogas engine or biogenerator.
Biofuel is needed for combustion engines/boilers- and outputs 4x as much Eu per bucket in a biogererator.
Biofuel is needed for combustion engines/boilers- and outputs 4x as much Eu per bucket in a biogererator.
Once warmed up large boilers make a stupid about of energy for the fuel used, which give the best long term output for your biofuel.
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
Steel is high pressure, Iron is low pressure.
High pressure burns twice the fuel to make twice the steam, but takes a lot longer to warm up.
High pressure burns twice the fuel to make twice the steam, but takes a lot longer to warm up.
Converting biomass into biofuel is a zero-sum game. You do not gain or lose any MJ in the process, provided you use the Forestry still (using Buildcraft's refinery is less efficient and will make you lose a little bit of MJ in the conversion).
3 buckets of biofuel give exactly as much energy in a combustion engine as 10 buckets of biomass in biogas engines plus 10 full runs of the still. The benefit, as mentioned before, is being able to use it in other types of consumers.
There are other benefits. Portability, for one. It's a lot easier to transport the same MJ worth of biofuel to your quarry than biomass. Once you start talking boilers, biofuel becomes quite a large MJ profit. A maximum-size boiler increases the MJ value of biofuel by about 45%.
Not really. You would get 5 MJ/t but as was mentioned, you wouldn't get anymore power out of it then using Biomass in the long run. It is also important to note about the boilers: you won't actually get more MJ's from each bucket unless your boiler is 18, 27, or 36. The smaller ones actually produce less MJ's for each bucket than using it directly in an engine. Low or High Pressure doesn't matter.
Sure, why not? You need a pretty large boiler to realistically get more MJ from it than with a combustion engine (27 or 36; an 18-sized boiler needs to get to 97% efficiency in order to do it, which takes some 60+ hours even for the LP variant, and twice that for HP).
Combustion engines are actually really, really good. They're among the most efficient and highest output engines you can have. They just need cooling, and you can do better with maximum size boilers.
Now, is it worth to convert biomass to biofuel just to feed combustion engines? Not really, you can get the same thing done with biogas engines. But if you have the fuel and/or the engines already, it works quite well.
Combustion engines are actually really, really good. They're among the most efficient and highest output engines you can have. They just need cooling, and you can do better with maximum size boilers.
Now, is it worth to convert biomass to biofuel just to feed combustion engines? Not really, you can get the same thing done with biogas engines. But if you have the fuel and/or the engines already, it works quite well.
Well it seems like biomass engines have nearly identical output characteristics using biomass, but without that troublesome need for an on-site aqueous accumulator to prevent explosions.
Yes, that's what I added with my edit 
There's absolutely no need to do the conversion just to feed combustion engines instead of biogas engines. You get exactly the same amount of MJ after all is said and done. But if you are saying "I have this big tank of biofuel, whatever shall I do with it", then combustion engines are a pretty good answer.
There's absolutely no need to do the conversion just to feed combustion engines instead of biogas engines. You get exactly the same amount of MJ after all is said and done. But if you are saying "I have this big tank of biofuel, whatever shall I do with it", then combustion engines are a pretty good answer.
But you don't need too much biofuel. Plus, in Mindcrack (I think it's GregTech, at least,) you can turn Biomass into Biofuel in a Distillation Tower, which I imagine is IC-powered.
I think Stills are slower but more efficient (per unit of biomass) than Refineries for turning Biomass into Biofuel. How about Distillation Towers? I know they turn 16 Biomass Cans into 8 Biofuel Cans and 8 Empty Cans. Are they more efficient for Biomass->Biofuel (per unit Biomass) than Stills?
However he hasn't added a way to pipe the fluids in directly, you would have to put things in cells and use transposers until he finally adds that. But it does give 1 Biofuel for 2 Biomass which I think is better then the normal conversion in a still. Even better it does 16 biomass to 8 biofuel in 20 seconds for only 12,800 EU.
Yes, this is unfortunate. Though 2 Liquid Transposers (1 to fill the Biomass Cans, 1 to empty the Biofuel Cans) don't cost too much to maintain, so it's not terribly hard to automate this.