is there a benefit to turn biomass into biofuel?
- Thread starter Azurl
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Biomass burning in a Biomass engine gets you the same MJ per engine, but requires much larger quantities of biomass to keep fueled and burns lava if you have an auto-shutoff to prevent wasted fuel. Combustion Engines with Biofuel make for a convenient and portable power source. Boilers are more efficient, but you have to commit to burning something like 1500 buckets of biofuel before you see a profit in terms of MJ production. It's only useful for long-term constant-use high-draw applications. As far as i know, steam turbines are the only thing that can really use that kind of power.
I was delighted to find that MFFS blocks can be powered by MJ directly, so now my base is protected by a forcefield which requires 50 industrial steam engines to maintain (coming off four biofuel boilers). I had 8 turbines ready to power it, but why go through the rotors?
I like biofuel. I think I'm biased.
I like biofuel. I think I'm biased.
aqueous accumulators are cheap and one anywhere will create far more than you need.
1 will be way more than enough. I have one feeding my entire base including a 36hp boiler.
As to the topic- like others have said, you get a MASSIVE benefit using HP boilers. I have a 2 floor reed farm and 2 floor cactus farm throttled down to 1 MJ/t for the farms themselves running 2 36 HP boilers in separate dimensions, and have the capacity to run 2 more at least. The downside is it takes ~300 buckets of biofuel to heat them up but they have been running non-stop and zero maintenance for over a week now. I check on the system every once in a while out of habit, but it's running just fine.[DOUBLEPOST=1359773583][/DOUBLEPOST]
I was delighted to find that MFFS blocks can be powered by MJ directly, so now my base is protected by a forcefield which requires 50 industrial steam engines to maintain (coming off four biofuel boilers). I had 8 turbines ready to power it, but why go through the rotors?
I like biofuel. I think I'm biased.
I may do something along those lines to power shields for my spaceship
Biofuel takes 697 Buckets for a 36HP boiler to heat up (35.64 Buckets/hr after heat up). A 36LP would require 170 for heat up (17.82 Buckets/hr after heat up). BC Fuel in a 36HP is only 232 buckets to heat up so it is nice if you have access to some in your early game while you are still generating biofuel.
Well for start up you are looking at twice the amount of biofuel used by the HP boiler over 2 LP's. In the long run it won't matter except for the amount of area you need to set up everything, twice the area for 2 LPs over 1 HP for the same amount of MJs produced. So it is really dependent on if you care about the amount of space/iron used for the boilers over the initial inefficiency of the HP boiler.
What Itharian said. The 36HP boilers are more space efficient, while the LP boilers take less fuel to heat. My personaly preference would of course be te more space efficient HP boilers. As for Omicron saying 60 hours for 97% efficiency, I have no idea where he pulled that number from. Maybe he's counting the heat up cost and how long you'd have to have it running to overcome that cost, but I know that for a 36hp boiler it should only be maybe 2-3 hours to heat it up to max temp, where its fuel efficiency is around 45% higher than other methods, as was mentioned earlier by someone else.
Also, while you would need something like 600 buckets of biofuel to heat up a 36HP boiler, you only need around 100-200 buckets of it already made - as long as your boiler powers your bifouel production process once it starts producing steam it can keep itself warm even without having so much biofuel, but having that many buckets ready beforehand makes it heat up faster than not having that windfall.
Another thing Itharian mentioned was Fuel, and I'll agree with him that it's very effective at heating up a boiler. In my post here I show how you can setup the new liquid tesseracts to act as a fuel switch for boilers as well as how you have to hook them up to railcraft tanks. This works by having different liquids assigned to different frequencies and then when you want to swap fuel types you just change the frequency on the boiler's tesseract. This works very smoothly as well so you shouldn't have any problems swapping from one fuel type to another.
Edit: Something else to note, I hope the tesseracts get some form of extraction mode like the liquiducts so I can connect it directly to an iron tank valve instead of having to have a 2 long liquiduct pipe between them, but until that happens (if it happens) I'll sadly have to use that design.
Also, while you would need something like 600 buckets of biofuel to heat up a 36HP boiler, you only need around 100-200 buckets of it already made - as long as your boiler powers your bifouel production process once it starts producing steam it can keep itself warm even without having so much biofuel, but having that many buckets ready beforehand makes it heat up faster than not having that windfall.
Another thing Itharian mentioned was Fuel, and I'll agree with him that it's very effective at heating up a boiler. In my post here I show how you can setup the new liquid tesseracts to act as a fuel switch for boilers as well as how you have to hook them up to railcraft tanks. This works by having different liquids assigned to different frequencies and then when you want to swap fuel types you just change the frequency on the boiler's tesseract. This works very smoothly as well so you shouldn't have any problems swapping from one fuel type to another.
Edit: Something else to note, I hope the tesseracts get some form of extraction mode like the liquiducts so I can connect it directly to an iron tank valve instead of having to have a 2 long liquiduct pipe between them, but until that happens (if it happens) I'll sadly have to use that design.
I thought the size wouldn't change fuel efficiency, but after working the numbers a bit it does seem the large boilers are indeed more fuel efficient than the smaller ones by a fairly large amount. An 8 block boiler would only produce around 177,778 mj for a bucket of biofuel, while a 36 block boiler would produce around 290,909 mj for a single bucket of biofuel, making it about 64% more efficient at burning fuel.
What he said. An LP boiler uses fuel at half the rate, but produces half the steam and thus half the MJ/t, an HP boiler uses fuel at twice the rate of an LP boiler, but with double the steam and thus double the MJ/t output. So while a bucket lasts longer in an LP boiler due to it being consumed at half the rate, it still produces as much MJ over the course of a bucket as an HP boiler of the same size.
The only efficiency differences between LP and HP boilers of the same size is the fuel cost to reach max temperature. Once they reach max temp the HP boiler wins out in the long term due to requiring less space (as long as you aren't wasting steam/MJ).
The only efficiency differences between LP and HP boilers of the same size is the fuel cost to reach max temperature. Once they reach max temp the HP boiler wins out in the long term due to requiring less space (as long as you aren't wasting steam/MJ).
Boilers can't get too hot, they simply stay at the highest temperature where they are the most efficient so you want them to heat up. They will do this if they get enough fuel. You simply need to make sure it has water at all times. If it runs out and you then give it water it will explode but only if you give it any water. Keeping it hot and dry is safe and it still works against all reason. IRL steam is generated from water after all and a dry boiler would not do much else but heat up to the point it melts and gives way to the pressure and exploding without being triggered by water.
No chance of overheating. Just don;t let it run out of water, and if you do wait for it to cool off before attempting to restart.
And get rid of your refinery. Stills turn 10 biomass into 3 biofuel, refineries turn 4 into 1 which is 12 into 3. Unless you like waste!
As for the HP/LP decision- I wouldn't waste the iron on a LP. Build a HP even if you don't need all the MJ. It's better to have excess capacity than find out you don't have enough.[DOUBLEPOST=1359795294][/DOUBLEPOST]
Keeping it hot and letting it cool down naturally is the best thing to do even IRL. Adding relatively cold water will crack a hot boiler. I've seen it happen.