I'm following the recommended advice of keeping my steam boiler running at all times. My question is... once it's heated up, does it always consume the same amount of fuel whether or not I'm actually using the steam? For example, if I turn off my industrial steam engines, will it conserve fuel, or does it just continue to burn the same amount whether or not I actually use all the steam?
Question about steam boilers
- Thread starter makeshiftwings
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It will always use fuel whether you are using it or not and always at the same rate when you have it at full heat.
It continues to burn I believe. It uses less fuel once it's all heated up though. That's what I gathered from messing around wirh it. It will always make steam if the temperature is over 100 C. Steam is technically considered a liquid code wise, so you can store steam in tanks.
Any unused steam is wasted fuel. Boilers are for those systems where you need a large, constant power supply. If you're at the stage of only using small amounts of energy in short bursts look towards engines, such as the magmatic ones. Another thing you can do is set up a redstone energy cell. With this you can charge it up using a magmatic engine, then move the cell to another machine to provide it power. This gives the bonus of not wasting lava since the cells can store a massive amount of MJ and keep it stored while moving it.
Edit: The boiler produces the same amount of steam per tick no matter the temp as long as it's above 100C. The only difference is you use fuel slower at higher temps.
Edit: The boiler produces the same amount of steam per tick no matter the temp as long as it's above 100C. The only difference is you use fuel slower at higher temps.
I just put a couple redstone energy cells in the output line from the steam engines attached to the boiler. Once they are full shut it off and you will have lots of MJ unless you are running something huge. Just turn it on once in a while to refill the batteries. Sure it uses more fuel to heat up, but not more than leaving it running forever.
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
Boilers will produce the same amount of steam/tick once they hit 100C, but higher temperatures will be more fuel efficient. If not all the steam is used, then it will keep burning fuel at the normal rate, but will no longer consume water.
How much fuel you save depends on the size/type of the boiler and how often you cook it up.
Generally large/HP boilers are best left running all the time- they use a lot of fuel to cook up.
Something smaller may save a bit if you're not going to use it for a while.
You'll 'save' the most fuel by dumping excess power into a magma crucible and storing up a supply of lava.
(This energy store can be reclaimed in a magmatic (90% efficient) or combustion (roughly 100% efficient) engines. Or used in the IC2 Geothermal.)
How much fuel you save depends on the size/type of the boiler and how often you cook it up.
Generally large/HP boilers are best left running all the time- they use a lot of fuel to cook up.
Something smaller may save a bit if you're not going to use it for a while.
You'll 'save' the most fuel by dumping excess power into a magma crucible and storing up a supply of lava.
(This energy store can be reclaimed in a magmatic (90% efficient) or combustion (roughly 100% efficient) engines. Or used in the IC2 Geothermal.)
Does anyone know how many units of BioFUEL it takes to get a 36 cubic meter boiler to 1000° C? I know it take a lot as it is heating up, 8 time what it takes to maintain it at 1000° C but they don't provide a number.Just trying to get an Idea of how much BioFuel I need to have in storage before I fire up the boiler. I don't want it running out of fuel before it reaches the 1000° C mark.
696.905 Buckets of Biofuel to heat up to 1000 C for a 36 HP boiler. 35.64 Buckets per hour to keep it at that temperature. There was a post sometime ago that had a Lua program that could calculate it for the different base fuels and I saved it to a computer on my test world, don't know where it is anymore.