Powering Oil Refinery

[samstar]

My oil refineries are running really slowly even though I have three commercial area engines powering them but I was wondering how others are powering them and what is the best set-up to do so?

 

[Omicron]

Where did you read that? I can't remember hearing anything like that...

 

[Whovian]

Do you mean commercial steam engines?

 

[Xaviorm]

You need 2 combustion Engines to run a oil refinery at full speed. And Sorry it's never going to be fast. It doesn't work that way.

 

[Spasticon]

Yea. I find refineries to be too much of a pain to be useful for power generation.

I find it a lot easier to build a forestry tree farm, ferment that into biomass and just run bio engines. It's easier to run a few more bio engines than it is to refine biomass or oil for use in combustion engines.

 

[Harvest88]

Plus Biogas engines will never explode and you actually want them at the red stage to produces the max MJ/t out of them. Refining oil and getting it is too much of hassle for an automated factory biomass is far easier and cheaper to automate and use.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well, if you wanted to run a steam boiler, you'd have to have a refinery for biofuel, since it won't run on biomass. Then again, considering the tremendous amount of power a boiler can produce, I'd say it was worth it. Might want two or three of 'em though, they do run slow, even when fully powered.

 

[INCSlayer]

you dont need to use a refinery to get biofuel you can also use a still

 

[Squigie]

Plus Biogas engines will never explode and you actually want them at the red stage to produces the max MJ/t out of them. Refining oil and getting it is too much of hassle for an automated factory biomass is far easier and cheaper to automate and use.

If they're red they're in forced cooldown, wasting fuel. Forestry engines, like BC engines, always produce at their full rate. Higher temp makes them cycle faster, outputting smaller, more frequent energy pulses which are more efficient with conductive pipes. For maximum efficiency use power conduits.

 

[Jugg3rV]

you dont need to use a refinery to get biofuel you can also use a still

You should use a still, because it is more effective to produce biofuel.

My setup at this point is a tree fram ( just a logger, i plant the sablings myself around it ), a fermenter, a still, connected to a 2x2x4 steam boiler. They boiler powers 3 commercial steam engines, 2 of them run the pump for water, the fermenter, the still and a rolling machine plus a carpenter . The 3 engine is for the logger.
I produce massive amounts of wood, sablings and some apples, keep the boiler running all time. i can even set up one industrial steam engine, but then steam will eventually get drain very slowly.

 

[Jugg3rV]

BTW once you have access to GATES you should use compustion engines, since you can shut them down with the gates automatically, if they reach yellow / red stage. I use them in my old test world to power a IC² mass generator and the still to convert the oil.

 

[Hydra]

Plus Biogas engines will never explode and you actually want them at the red stage to produces the max MJ/t out of them. Refining oil and getting it is too much of hassle for an automated factory biomass is far easier and cheaper to automate and use.

I like to distill some biomass into biofuel because although it's not improving the amount of energy you get, a bucket of biofuel in a combustion engine lasts 4 times as long so it's a convenient of powering my querries in my mystcraft quarry age.

A single bucket of biomass lasts 10000 ticks (little over 8 minutes) in a biogas engine and produces 50000 MJ. A single bucket of biofuel lasts 40000 ticks (over half an hour) in a combustion engine and produces 200000 MJ. Since you need 3.33 buckets of biomass for one bucket of biofuel and you also need to power the still other than the duration there isn't much of a benefit of distilling to biofuel.

I personally think combusion engines are just as 'easy' as biogas engines really now we have the Aqueous Accumulator from thermal expansion. I never had one explode.

 

[Jugg3rV]

Aqueous Accumulator instead of pumps ... hmm, should try that ....

 

[b0bst3r]

I personally think combusion engines are just as 'easy' as biogas engines really now we have the Aqueous Accumulator from thermal expansion. I never had one explode.

Careful when FTB 1.4.2 updates as the Aq Acc has had a serious nerfing to it.

 

[Hydra]

Careful when FTB 1.4.2 updates as the Aq Acc has had a serious nerfing to it.

Really? Crap!

Is one still enough to power a single combusion engine?

Edit:

Actually, looking at the changelog:
2.1.3:
-Changed: Aqueous Accumulator's non-submerged speed has been dramatically decreased.
2.1.2:
-Changed: Aqueous Accumulator now outputs more water, less often. Time average rate is the same, server overhead is slightly lower.

So it seems that the way I use them (submerged) actually hasn't changed at all.

 

[b0bst3r]

People using the magic pack noticed a big difference, like engines exploding difference.

 

[Hydra]

I'll go give it a spin...

Edit: Actually, that pack has version 2.1.1 and I saw a launcher message explaining Aq. accum. were fixed in later versions. I just started a testworld with the magic pack and it seems to work just fine with one accumulator per engine.

 

[Zach Haviland]

What I'd do to power a refinery is to hook it up to conductive pipes powered by steam engines. Safer and more reliable than combustion engines.

 

[Jugg3rV]

I'll keep my pumps then

EDIT: 4 MJ steam vs 6 MJ combustion ... i want to see the setup where you can have like 20-30 steams online

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Commercial Steam has 8 MJ output. Handy for things like quarries.