Oil/Fuel usage

[Sumsar1812]

So i have a pretty big supply of oil/fuel and I wanted to know the most effecient way to make MJ

Right now I am using Combustion engines but I saw that there was an engine called Industrial Steam Engine that run on steam. I also have a setup ready to burn fuel to make steam in a steam boiler

My question is which solution would be best to run fuel on- Combustion engines or make steam with Fuel and get that into Industrial Steam Engines?

Sorry for any grammer errors but english isn't my first language

 

[Dark0_0firE]

If you think that you can obtain or create enough oil/fuel, then a steam boiler would create vast amounts of energy. Just remember that a boiler needs a constant supply, it's not something you want to turn on and off because that will eat up more fuel.

 

[rhn]

First off, which pack/version are we talking about?

In terms of efficiency the boiler/steam engine is probably most efficient once the boiler is heated up. But that's the issue, heatup! Oil/fuel is a non-renewable source so you have to constantly be vigilant to keep your boilers stocked with enough fuel. A boiler running out of fuel is catastrophic for fuel efficiency. Once a boiler is started is should NEVER be stopped again. And for this reason alone I would recommend 1 of 2 things:

1: use the oil/fuel for the combustion engines and be happy with that.
2: Set up a ethanol production facility and then use the fuel as supplement for the boilers heatup phase. Fuel consumption in the boiler will be monstrously high in the beginning. You could let it burn the fuel first and then later switch over to the renewable ethanol. Or keep some fuel in reserve should your ethanol production not meet the needs at first.

 

[JoeDolca]

Just grab any kind of automated wood farm and stock up on charcoal until you can do a good startup with solid fueled boilers. Then with a steam oven it's easy peasy infinite energy from there on.

 

[PierceSG]

Didn't railcraft introduced a firestone thingamabob that can help with the heating up of boilers?

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[Vasa]

Didn't railcraft introduced a firestone thingamabob that can help with the heating up of boilers?

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Yeah but you need decent amount of diamonds and you need to find it under lava lakes in Nether , which is problem if you dont have open blocks sponge .

 

[MigukNamja]

Railcraft 8.3.0 completely changed the boiler heat-up algorithm. Fuel now scales directly with temperature and steam output scales with temperature. This effectively eliminates the start-up penalty *for fuel*. However, it still takes hours for a boiler to reach full temp and thus full steam and thus full power.

And, yes, boilers are still the most efficient way to burn most fuels, including oil/fuel. If you're looking for on-demand fuel, TE3 has a nice Compression Dynamo. Like the Combustion, it requires water to cool, but no explosions ! The annoying thing about the Combustions is they eventually overheat and require fancy gates from a BC Laser Assembly Table to manage. Real-life engines don't do that.

 

[MigukNamja]

Yeah but you need decent amount of diamonds and you need to find it under lava lakes in Nether , which is problem if you dont have open blocks sponge .

I think a full IC2 hazmat suit prevents all fire damage, including swimming in lava. But, yeah, need diamonds.

The cool use for these in RC 8.3.0 and beyond is storing 15,000 buckets worth of lava in terms of heat, which is an insane amount of energy in 1 item.

 

[Sumsar1812]

Hmm i looked the formular up on their website and i can´t seem to get this to be more effecient

So i am using a 36 cubic meter hp boiler for this
I am gonna assume that I am at 100% heat(as this is where im gonna be 99% of the time)

The formular goes:

• Base Fuel Usage Per Tick (base) = ( (6.4 - numTanks * 0.08) / ( 16 LP or 8 HP ) ) * numTanks
• Heat Adjust Fuel Usage Per Tick = base + base * (8 - 8 * heat%)

So that is
base = ((6,4-36*0,08) / 8) * 36 = 15,84(round down)
Heat usage per tick at 100% = 15,84+15,84* (8 - 8 *1) = 15,84 fuel per tick

as of my understanding 1 bucket of fuel is the same as "1000" fuel

This means that one bucket at 100% heat can run for 1000/15,84 = 63,1313... ticks

It also says that steam per tick = 20*36 = 720
that is 720*63,1313 = 45454,5454.. steam

The industerial steam engine requires 40 steam for 8MJ ( or 5 steam for 1MJ)
that means we get 45454,54 / 5 = 9090,908 MJ total at a rate of:
720/5 = 144MJ/t

To me that MJ/t seems way to high for such a small amount of MJ, So i guess i did something wrong

Edit1:
I might have found a mistake, so when i say 1000/9,6 i might have needed to do 96000 as the website says buildcraft fuel is:

• BuildCraft Fuel = 96000

This leads to a total new result of 144000 MJ, but this is still less than a combustion engine(1 bucket = 600000 MJ) So something might still be off

Edit2:
Ok as from the comments i fixed some of the calcuations but as you can see i ended up with only 9090 MJ now (if i replace the 1000 with 96000 it is 872727 so i guess that's the solution) so you get a gain of 270k MJ from this compared to combustion engines, pretty decent

 

[Quantum Beast]

In your first calculation, you didn't follow the parentheses from the equation you quoted. You should divide by 8, then multiply by 36, not divide by 8*36.

In the second equation, I'm guessing that the percentage should be expressed as 1.0, not 100. The equation makes a lot more sense that way.

I'm not sure which version of Railcraft these equations apply to, however.

EDIT: Found this page which gives equations for 8.3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38558957/Minecraft/Railcraft/boiler_changes.txt

 

[Sumsar1812]

Ah yea i missed that, my bad

Thanks makes more sence now

 

[Sumsar1812]

Oh i got one more question though, is there no difference in steam per tick depending on the temperature ? The reason i ask is if the temparture doesnt matter for how much steam there is generated i could make something with a few gates that will disable flow of fuel when its very hot and therfor save fuel(and enable when low temp or medium temp) ?

 

[kaovalin]

Oil/fuel is a non-renewable source so you have to constantly be vigilant to keep your boilers stocked with enough fuel. A boiler running out of fuel is catastrophic for fuel efficiency. Once a boiler is started is should NEVER be stopped again.

A few caveats to these statements. Oil and fuel is renewable if you have extra bees, and if you have the latest buildcraft which adds renewable oil via (really slow to output and uncommon) oil springs. These springs will put out 1 bucket of oil at a rate depending on the setting in the buildcraft config. They are found rarely under generated oil springs that reach to bedrock.

Additionally you can "stop" boilers and keep the effciency up. Put the boilers in a chunk that can be unloaded away from all your other stuff (included you in case you walk nearby). Then control the boilers by controling the loading of the chunk. Just make sure your fuel generation and batteries are in the loaded chunks so they can get ahead of the boiler's demands. I like to stockpile my energy needs.

 

[Albeleo]

Oh i got one more question though, is there no difference in steam per tick depending on the temperature ? The reason i ask is if the temparture doesnt matter for how much steam there is generated i could make something with a few gates that will disable flow of fuel when its very hot and therfor save fuel(and enable when low temp or medium temp) ?

Old Railcraft: steam per tick was constant regardless of temperature.
New Railcraft in the 1.6 packs: steam per tick rises with the temperature of the boiler, so it will not output max steam if it's not at max temperature.

If you're concerned with fuel conservation, you're better off going to compression dynamos. Boilers are not fuel efficient when heating up, but the efficiency increases as the temp rises. I could be wrong about this, but as I understand it a max temp boiler can support 18 steam dynamos and also is (more or less) exactly as fuel efficient as burning the same fuel in 18 compression dynamos cooled by water. Given that you can far more easily fluctuate the number of compression dynamos you're using, dynamos automatically throttle themselves to conserve fuel when your energy storage cells are maxed, and boilers basically have to have constant fuel regardless of whether you need it...I have a difficult time justifying using a boiler at this point. Seems wasteful to me.

 

[kaovalin]

I have a difficult time justifying using a boiler at this point.

All the cool kids build boilers

 

[Albeleo]

All the cool kids build boilers

I did too, until 1.6.

 

[Bagman817]

So i have a pretty big supply of oil/fuel and I wanted to know the most effecient way to make MJ

Right now I am using Combustion engines but I saw that there was an engine called Industrial Steam Engine that run on steam. I also have a setup ready to burn fuel to make steam in a steam boiler

My question is which solution would be best to run fuel on- Combustion engines or make steam with Fuel and get that into Industrial Steam Engines?

Sorry for any grammer errors but english isn't my first language

If you're concerned with efficiency, you shouldn't be producing MJ, you should produce RF, then convert to MJ via energy cells/conduits. Buildcraft power can be interesting and complex, but it is no way as efficient or flexible as TE. Also, unless you have a (near) infinite supply of oil, e.g. a Mystcraft age, I'd suggest creating an Ethenol farm and start stockpiling that with an eye to replacing Fuel when your oil reserves begin running low.

 

[PsionicArchon]

I did exactly as Bagman suggested. Heat up your boilers using fuel then, use that power to run a farm or two for biofuel production. Don't be afraid to adjust the fuel values in the Railcraft.cfg file. Liquid fuel received a bit of a nerf, which I personally augmented by giving liquid fuels an increased burn time inside of boilers.

I've been running a single boiler for two months now on oil/biofuel which has been happily powering quite a large AE system and, two quarries without a hitch. They're still one of the smallest power/square block producers in the game especially if you're attaching your steam dynamos directly to the boiler.

 

[kaovalin]

I did exactly as Bagman suggested. Heat up your boilers using fuel then, use that power to run a farm or two for biofuel production. Don't be afraid to adjust the fuel values in the Railcraft.cfg file. Liquid fuel received a bit of a nerf, which I personally augmented by giving liquid fuels an increased burn time inside of boilers.

I've been running a single boiler for two months now on oil/biofuel which has been happily powering quite a large AE system and, two quarries without a hitch. They're still one of the smallest power/square block producers in the game especially if you're attaching your steam dynamos directly to the boiler.

Have to make sure you are including all the stuff that makes the raw materials and all the stuff inbetween that does the processing into fuel. I almost forgot that when I discovered reeds > sugar > sugar charcoal > sugar coke > coal coke > coke block > RF.

The real killer is the number of coke ovens requires to convert the sugar charcoal into sugar coke. One redstone furnace (TE4) can process sugar into sugar charcoal as fast as 10 coke ovens can convert that sugar charcoal into sugar coke. Although in my case, I'm going to need the creosote for the massive rail system so no real worries there.

 

[Juanitierno]

you're better off going to compression dynamos....as I understand it a max temp boiler can support 18 steam dynamos and also is (more or less) exactly as fuel efficient as burning the same fuel in 18 compression dynamos cooled by water.

Can you somehow confirm that? That would really change my plans for power generation lol