RC boilers help please?

[huldu]

Let's say you run a simple LP 2x2 boiler that is 2-3 high, is it ever viable to run that thing on charcoal/coal/coke? My jaw dropped to the ground at the speed it burned through coke coal. Charcoal was just crazy. You'd need a steady forest supply to even give it enough charcoal to keep it constantly running. As for coke I'd assume you'd have to have quite a few coke ovens set up to meet it's demand on that as well and then we have to actually get the coal needed.

I was just surprised at how fast it went through coal when compared to the little hobbyist engine! If you supply coke coal to the hobbyist engine it'll run forever on just a few pieces.

The problem isn't making a huge tree farm, it's more the fps drop I get when doing it that is the actual problem. I'm not sure what to do, if just to skip the steam boiler altogether?

I was looking at the liquid steam boiler and how efficient is that? Obviously you'd have to compare it to it's counterpart, which I guess is oil/bio-fuel, not sure if it can burn biomass. Why build a steam boiler over a set of combustions engines is basically what I ask

 

[eculc]

The thing with steam boilers is that they take a while to heat up. At the beginning, they will burn through fuel very quickly while producing little steam to output to engines. however, once they are fully heated they are very fuel efficient, significantly more so than combustion engines (liquid boilers cannot use biogas as a fuel BTW)

However, it's best to keep them running, so you should make sure you have the resources required to run one constantly before building it.

 

[huldu]

I let the boiler run for 30 or so min, it was almost at full heat, yet it still went through coal at a very high speed. Might be a bug with some other mod perhaps.

 

[Democretes]

Boilers are expensive to start, but are worth it in the long run.

If you plan on using significant amounts of Buildcraft power, invest in a max size (3x3x4) LP boiler, some coke ovens, a couple powered furnaces, and a Steve's Carts tree farm. The tree farm will supply enough wood for charcoal to keep your boiler running indefintely. I've got this setup in my base and it worked flawlessly until the boiler heated up to max efficiency and I started getting excess charcoal.

If at any point you wish to upgrade to a HP boiler, the LP boiler blocks can be thrown in a blast furnace to make steel for a HP boiler.

Both boilers at max heat have the same efficiency, but the HP boiler produces steam at a faster rate.

 

[Icarus White]

On a side note, the amount of time it takes to heat up a boiler depends on how large it is. You could start with a shorter boiler, say 3x3x2 or even 3x3x1...

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You can also make a liquid firebox to burn Fuel reasonably well. It also runs on Biofuel for sustainable energy.

But at first, it can take up to 8 TIMES the amount of fuel it would need at optimal heat levels. This decreases as the temperature increases in direct proportion to the percentage to optimal temperature. So if you're at 500C (half-way), it would be 5x the fuel consumption, wheras if you are at 875, it would only be twice the fuel consumption.

 

[Omicron]

On a side note, the amount of time it takes to heat up a boiler depends on how large it is. You could start with a shorter boiler, say 3x3x2 or even 3x3x1...

3x3 boilers are much more fuel hungry than 2x2 ones and take much longer to heat up, and there is no 1-high version. What counts is not how short or tall the boiler is, but the total number of tanks present, and whether they are low pressure or high pressure.

@ huldu:

Boilers start at 900% fuel cost when completely cold, then scale back down to normal as they ramp up the heat. Charcoal as a fuel is somewhat inefficient to balance out the fact that it is so easily renewable (a single Forestry farm can keep like 10 coke ovens running 24/7), so it has only 1600 heat units, compared to 3200 for regular coal and 6400 for coal coke (which is also the reason why you should never ever use regular coal in Railcraft boilers without processing it to coke first).

When you run a 2x2x3 boiler, the depending on whether you have low pressure tanks ("12 LP boiler") or high pressure tanks ("12 HP boiler"), a single piece of charcoal will keep burning for 19.6 seconds (low pressure) or 9.8 seconds (high pressure) at maximum heat. While that is a fairly short time, that piece of charcoal will also generate ~9411 MJ worth of steam during this time, whereas if you threw it into a stirling engine or TE steam engine, it would only generate between 2400 and 3200 MJ. That's your payoff for handling a boiler of that size. Even larger boilers will give you even more MJ per charcoal, but will also consume the charcoal even faster.

The question you should ask yourself is: do you actually need 24 (LP) or 48 (HP) MJ/t constantly, 24/7? If your answer is yes, then this is the best way to supply it, and you'll just have to build the infrastructure to produce and supply the fuel. If your answer is no, then maybe you should think about a smaller boiler, or turning your HP boiler into an LP boiler. HP boilers in general are far less fuel efficient because they spend so much longer in heatup gobbling your fuel at increased rates, I would only recommend building one if you absolutely know that it will be permanently on for the rest of your playing time.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Generally boilers take a long while to power up, but the fuel-efficiency for max size boilers pays for itself.

They can make both buildcraft and industrialcraft power, so a decent sized one can run your whole base.

If you dont need all the power now, bleed the excess off into a magma crucible instead of shutting down. The energy can be reclaimed via magmatic (90%), combustion (100%) engines, or a geothermal generator.​

​

As bigger boilers are more efficient, a large LP boiler will outstrip a smaller HP boiler for energy efficiency- so the only time you want a HP is when you go full size.

and on a side note; a T5 blaze shard will run 2x36HP+36LP boilers. Fuel=Sorted.