Setting up my first oil refinery -- help :O
- Thread starter Siigari
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Good for you. How does this help the discussion, again?
And to restate, how does it helpfully add to the discussion?
You stated that you don't use oil. Cool. Do you use anything for power, or is that not up your alley?
Haha I use different types of power but I find oil a little frustrating to setup, I mostly run of lava which is a little bit cheaty!
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I watched the video.
My engines don't go over 100.01 C and stay in the green stage. They're sufficiently cooled. It would be really nice though if I could get them to shut off when there are no power demands. How can I do that?
(click to expand combustion engine GUI)Yeah, I've done lava, solar, etc. Time to try something new!
Are you good with computer craft? That may help you with your problem
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Man, I swear earlier today I was watching a video of dw20's and he had an assembly table array hooked up to a bunch of engines and he had gates on them to tell them to shut off when there was no work. Now I can't remember what video it was.
edit: Found it, Buildcraft spotlight.
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Yep, got it. So the question now is this: when the extra utilities drum fills up with fuel, will the refinery stop trying to put fuel into the drum (after it stuffs the pipes?)
Yup. Rather, the fluiducts will fill up with fuel, and then you have to find a way to get to somewhere else. Ideally by connecting more drums to this system.
Hmm.
Energy density might be what you're looking at here. Simple IC2 examples would demonstrate this best. 1 piece of coal produces 4k EU @ 8 EU/t in a generator. This is contrary to the 750 EU @ 8 EU/t that a log produces in a generator.
By using fuel, instead of coal/charcoal, you are increasing the energy density of your system. Though, you are not necessarily reducing the amount of energy required to refine your oil into fuel, you are using a more energy dense source, such that you aren't manually feeding it coal/charcoal.
This means you can go do other things.
Also, this means your system is a lot more stable, since 1 unit of fuel lasts a lot longer than 1 unit of coal. This means you have a lot more time to react.
If you want an idea of what I have going...
400 tree spots get auto farmed and turned into biomass, then biofuel. I use a total of 14(?) machines to do all this processing.
I use that biofuel to power 12 full sized HP steam boilers (12x36HP), which equates to 1720 MJ/t. I now use that energy to autofarm my trees, thus continuing the cycle. This will allow you to build up your energy production, since you can continue to produce more fuel than you are necessarily consuming, thus utilize that extra in producing more energy.
You can then use that extra energy to produce more... Fuel? (In my case I produce more trees, so more biofuel), which I can then in turn use to produce more energy, and then more fuel, then more energy, blah blah blah.
Energy density might be what you're looking at here. Simple IC2 examples would demonstrate this best. 1 piece of coal produces 4k EU @ 8 EU/t in a generator. This is contrary to the 750 EU @ 8 EU/t that a log produces in a generator.
By using fuel, instead of coal/charcoal, you are increasing the energy density of your system. Though, you are not necessarily reducing the amount of energy required to refine your oil into fuel, you are using a more energy dense source, such that you aren't manually feeding it coal/charcoal.
This means you can go do other things.
Also, this means your system is a lot more stable, since 1 unit of fuel lasts a lot longer than 1 unit of coal. This means you have a lot more time to react.
If you want an idea of what I have going...
400 tree spots get auto farmed and turned into biomass, then biofuel. I use a total of 14(?) machines to do all this processing.
I use that biofuel to power 12 full sized HP steam boilers (12x36HP), which equates to 1720 MJ/t. I now use that energy to autofarm my trees, thus continuing the cycle. This will allow you to build up your energy production, since you can continue to produce more fuel than you are necessarily consuming, thus utilize that extra in producing more energy.
You can then use that extra energy to produce more... Fuel? (In my case I produce more trees, so more biofuel), which I can then in turn use to produce more energy, and then more fuel, then more energy, blah blah blah.
Okay, so I want to make some steam boilers it sounds like
If 36 HP is the maximum, am I making high pressure or low pressure steam boilers, and is fuel the most optimal fuel source for them? I'm new to this, too Here's a useful tip: RF converts to MJ at 10:1 ratio, meaning your 80RF/t dynamos are outputting the equivalent of 8 MJ/t, more than your 6MJ/t combustion engine. And TE's dynamos don't explode if they can't send energy, instead they throttle down their output to a very low level and keep running.
If you've been using TE's steam dynamos, then a steam boiler is an excellent way to power them, as a fully-heated steam boiler is extremely efficient in terms of total energy output and steam dynamos can accept steam piped in. The heating is costly, of course, but you get a LOT of steam from a large boiler. Because of fuel's energy density, it is an excellent fuel source for steam boilers, and if your oil and fuel ever runs out you can use biofuel or ethanol instead. For other steam-powered options, you can also use the MFR steam turbine, or Railcraft steam engines (I recommend the industrial size if you can get them, but they require a decent amount of steel). Factorio also has a steam turbine which can be powered by piped-in steam, though you might not be able to use Factorio's power for any other mod.
If you've been using TE's steam dynamos, then a steam boiler is an excellent way to power them, as a fully-heated steam boiler is extremely efficient in terms of total energy output and steam dynamos can accept steam piped in. The heating is costly, of course, but you get a LOT of steam from a large boiler. Because of fuel's energy density, it is an excellent fuel source for steam boilers, and if your oil and fuel ever runs out you can use biofuel or ethanol instead. For other steam-powered options, you can also use the MFR steam turbine, or Railcraft steam engines (I recommend the industrial size if you can get them, but they require a decent amount of steel). Factorio also has a steam turbine which can be powered by piped-in steam, though you might not be able to use Factorio's power for any other mod.
Okay, well I have 512,000 mB of Fuel right now and another 512,000 mB of Oil on standby. If I set up a 36 HP steam boiler, would what, 18 Steam Dynamos be the best way to obtain power? Also what would be best for early game, a slower burning LP boiler or just go for the HP boiler? I don't have heaps of ways to store power right now so what happens when the boiler gets full of steam?
one 36 HP boiler = 18 TE steam dynamos or 9 MFR steam turbines
When the boilder gets full of steam nothing happens, the steam is just wasted. The boiler will continue to burn fuel at a constant rate. You won't want to shut your boiler down as it takes long to heat up so you might not want to get the full sized boiler right away. Do note that the boiler has to heat up from scratch if you change its size.
When the boilder gets full of steam nothing happens, the steam is just wasted. The boiler will continue to burn fuel at a constant rate. You won't want to shut your boiler down as it takes long to heat up so you might not want to get the full sized boiler right away. Do note that the boiler has to heat up from scratch if you change its size.
Oh fantastic, that's kind of what I thought.
Here's my current setup at the moment. Note that I can build a serial Redstone Energy battery if I want to, but yeah.
Note the gates on the combustion engines? Is there any way to throttle fuel going into the boiler (I guess) to make it so it doesn't just guzzle down my fuel when the system isn't in use? Also how much fuel are we talking here, being consumed? I can easily go plop down a pump on another oil spout and gather more resources but min-maxing is more entertaining. Anyway thoughts are appreciated.
Okay, so I want to make some steam boilers it sounds like
HP uses twice the fuel per time as LP but produces double the energy per boiler block. I use HP because I have an energy sink (MFR laser drills).
Do it this way. You need 2 HP blocks to support 1 industrial steam engine. 1 industrial steam engine produces 8 MJ/t. Alternatively, you would need 4 LP blocks to support 1 industrial steam engines.
Though, I don't know anything about dynamos, or w/e the fuck those are. I am playing 1.5.2 currently, so there might be better alternatives there.
Fuel is the most optimal source, but it is non-renewable. I don't know if producing oil from the oil fabricator is a positive feedback loop, I strongly doubt it.
It also depends on who you are as a player. I am an engineering student, so creating massive systems is sorta what I do. What's nice is that I can plug any machine into my energy network and it can run indefinitely, regardless. I have 1720 MJ/t (or 17 200 RF/t) running through my system. It makes it fun because now I can make ridiculously scaled projects that use 5-10x the machines that people usually go for. I'm a junkie in that sense.
If you are just starting off, I would suggest that you try and get at least one full sized boiler up and running. 144 MJ/t is enough for you to run a machine out of every mod that uses RF/MJ. This will allow you to get your feet wet, without worrying too much about energy. The antics of sustaining a single boiler, indefinitely, is an exercise in scaling. Once you know what one needs, you can begin to go for 2, 3, 4, eventually 12 like me.[DOUBLEPOST=1398019851][/DOUBLEPOST]Once you energy stack is sustained and scalable, your horizons are endless, aside from resources. But infinite energy equals infinite resources in the realm of FTB, if you have mystcraft & quarries or laser drills.
I decided to use EmashersMods (Engineer's toolbox) refinery instead of the tried-and-true buildcraft refinery. Fracking a bedrock shale oil block instead of pumping an oil geyser. Just to be different this time.
The oil comes out of the shale block at 1 bucket per second (I made a full steel tank of slickwater) and it seems the refinery is going at about 1 bucket of fuel every minute. LOL Well, it isn't very different from the slow pace of the BC refinieries, but those are much easier to make, to set up, and forget about em while they do their thing.
I had hoped to eliminate the need for an oil tank, but clearly those hopes are now dashed. There's no way I'm making a bunch of Engineer's Toolbox refineries, I'm going back to a max size steel tank of oil, a row of about 10 BC refineries, and a max size steel tank of fuel.
The oil comes out of the shale block at 1 bucket per second (I made a full steel tank of slickwater) and it seems the refinery is going at about 1 bucket of fuel every minute. LOL Well, it isn't very different from the slow pace of the BC refinieries, but those are much easier to make, to set up, and forget about em while they do their thing.
I had hoped to eliminate the need for an oil tank, but clearly those hopes are now dashed. There's no way I'm making a bunch of Engineer's Toolbox refineries, I'm going back to a max size steel tank of oil, a row of about 10 BC refineries, and a max size steel tank of fuel.