The Final Word on Steam Boiler Efficiency

[Omicron]

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in my introduction and closing statements, Hydra. I made this project not because I think you can't run a boiler without this knowledge - you most certainly can. It's trivial even, as I stated myself.

I did this because I love figuring out game mechanics, because nobody has done it before and therefore 99% of all people don't know how it works (even I did not when I started looking into it), because I re-learned a few things about maths I had forgotten, and because I think that there are other people like me who enjoy these things.

If I can help but a few people like lorgan3 clear up some misconceptions, then my job here is done

 

[Ray Herring]

I don't really understand the part about efficiency. People don't really care about the efficiency of their fuel during startup because the fuel is typically infinite. What matters is A) are you going to get the boiler heated up with the stores of charcoal / biofuel you have and B) how much fuel do I need per second after it's heated up to sustain the boiler.

That's why I think the approach in integrating the efficiency during startup and after is wrong: you get nice curvy lines but no one cares about the curve since after about 4.4 hours or so even a 36 HP boiler is at max heat and once you get there you typically have a setup than can be sustained indefinately.[DOUBLEPOST=1362395700][/DOUBLEPOST]

It's not near infinite, it's infinite

I have two 36 HP boilers, 1 solid (charcoal) and 1 liquid. Both are supplied by SC and Forestry farms. This means that this system could in theory last eternally.

Yeah, that's what i found with our coal one, with 1 wither skeleton shard, we had an oversupply of coal and bones, i still have an oversupply of both except i voidpipe all the excess.

With the new 36HP boiler of ours, we have i believe 20 industrial steam engines hooked up to it, and the SC tree farm is producing more than the 2 fermenters we currently have can keep up with. I had to put a holding track on that farm so i could stop it from working whenever i needed the system to clear excess stuff. (not to mention i kept running out of storage room for all those darned logs and so now we voidpipe the excess of those).

As you say with the efficiency, it honestly isn't on the top of the list for things i worry about, i started with hobbyist steam engines, i kept going with those for the longest of times till i got my wither skeleton shard (with regards to that, don't waste your time in the nether, slaughter zombies using a zombie spawner, then go to the nether with another shard, kill 1 wither skeleton then merge the 2 shards in an anvil), once i got that, i set to work.

An iron golem farm helped immensely with the iron to turn into steel.

I find at least with the coal set up, once it was fully heated up, it required a couple of pieces of coal every few minutes, nothing like the amount of coal it initially took though.[DOUBLEPOST=1362396618][/DOUBLEPOST]I do know all too well about boiler explosions though, in my our old world, we switched to using tesseracts, and one of the direwolf20 updates caused all our tesseracts to stop working, the moment i got water back into that boiler, KABOOM!!!!! Man that was a painful mess to have to clean up. This time round, aqueous accumulator really really really close to the boiler with maybe 1 or 2 liquiduct pipes.

 

[Hydra]

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in my introduction and closing statements, Hydra. I made this project not because I think you can't run a boiler without this knowledge - you most certainly can. It's trivial even, as I stated myself.

I did this because I love figuring out game mechanics, because nobody has done it before and therefore 99% of all people don't know how it works (even I did not when I started looking into it), because I re-learned a few things about maths I had forgotten, and because I think that there are other people like me who enjoy these things.

I understand that, and so do I, that's why I did all these calculations myself before. And don't get me wrong, it's great that you share. But you do a lot of "stuff" that IMHO is pretty irrelevant. And basically you're saying that the LP boiler is more efficient than the HP boiler, while this simply is NOT the case. Sure, a HP boiler eats more during heatup because it takes longer, but because people tend to just stuff they read in a summary I think you should clearly separate heatup and 'running' stages. In the running stage a HP boiler produces exactly the same amount of energy per unit of fuel as a LP boiler, it's just 'double everything' in the same amount of space.

Yeah, that's what i found with our coal one, with 1 wither skeleton shard, we had an oversupply of coal and bones, i still have an oversupply of both except i voidpipe all the excess.

With the new 36HP boiler of ours, we have i believe 20 industrial steam engines hooked up to it, and the SC tree farm is producing more than the 2 fermenters we currently have can keep up with. I had to put a holding track on that farm so i could stop it from working whenever i needed the system to clear excess stuff. (not to mention i kept running out of storage room for all those darned logs and so now we voidpipe the excess of those).

A HP boiler feeds boiler size (blocks) / 2 industrial engines, so that would be 18 for a 36 HP. For LP boilers it's halve that. So it's easy to figure out how many engines you need.

 

[Omicron]

I understand that, and so do I, that's why I did all these calculations myself before. And don't get me wrong, it's great that you share. But you do a lot of "stuff" that IMHO is pretty irrelevant. And basically you're saying that the LP boiler is more efficient than the HP boiler, while this simply is NOT the case. Sure, a HP boiler eats more during heatup because it takes longer, but because people tend to just stuff they read in a summary I think you should clearly separate heatup and 'running' stages. In the running stage a HP boiler produces exactly the same amount of energy per unit of fuel as a LP boiler, it's just 'double everything' in the same amount of space.

I beg to differ. The whole point here is underlining that efficiency is indeed a function over the entire lifetime of the boiler, dependant only and entirely on MJ output recieved versus fuel input provided in that time frame. It may be more comfortable for you to think in terms of peak temperature fuel-to-energy conversion rate, but then please don't call it 'efficiency', because it is not.

You don't rate a car's fuel efficiency by the amount it consumes doing 80 km/h in highest gear on dry, even tarmac with no wind and optimal temperature either - if a salesman did that, I'd accuse him of lying to my face, and rightly so. No, you rate it over the entire range of consumption scenarios that are possible, because only then you get a clear picture of how much fuel you need in your tank to get you from A to B, how much visiting the gas pump is going to hurt your wallet, and how much the environment is going to cry if you floor it.

I'd also be careful with generalizations, if I were you. Just because you consider something irrelevant does not mean other people share your opinion.

 

[Hydra]

I beg to differ. The whole point here is underlining that efficiency is indeed a function over the entire lifetime of the boiler, dependant only and entirely on MJ output recieved versus fuel input provided in that time frame. It may be more comfortable for you to think in terms of peak temperature fuel-to-energy conversion rate, but then please don't call it 'efficiency', because it is not.

Yes it is. The efficiency of the part after heatup is still efficiency. Heck, it's the only efficiency people typically care about (because that efficiency is what nets you a certain amount of power and requires a certain amount of input). The efficiency during heatup is less relevant because people simply make sure they have a good amount of fuel so they don't run out halfway (because then you end up with a boiler that will simply be cooling down again).

You don't rate a car's fuel efficiency by the amount it consumes doing 80 km/h in highest gear on dry, even tarmac with no wind and optimal temperature either - if a salesman did that, I'd accuse him of lying to my face, and rightly so. No, you rate it over the entire range of consumption scenarios that are possible, because only then you get a clear picture of how much fuel you need in your tank to get you from A to B, how much visiting the gas pump is going to hurt your wallet, and how much the environment is going to cry if you floor it.

Funny you're making this comparison. Cars efficiencies are provided at different speeds. The datasheet that comes with my car gives typical efficiency ratings on different speeds (50, 80 and 120km/h).

Aside from that you can't compare the two. Boiler efficiency is very simply, there are only a few variables in that equation and none of them are unknown. You can never exactly calculate the efficiency of a car.

I'd also be careful with generalizations, if I were you. Just because you consider something irrelevant does not mean other people share your opinion.

I literally said IMHO, which means "in my humble opinion". So cool down a bit, I am just saying that in my opinion aggregating both warmup and running efficiencies like you did is pretty pointless.

You also made a mistake in how you drew the graphs. The efficiency figures aren't a curve and should not be drawn as such. They are simply linear functions.

 

[Omicron]

It's interesting that you ask me to "cool down" after you come here to insult my work.

I recommend that we agree to disagree, and you exercise your right to not pay attention to this thread anymore. Otherwise, if you'd like to offer criticism, I'd ask that you do so in a manner that comes across as a bit more constructive.

 

[Hydra]

It's interesting that you ask me to "cool down" after you come here to insult my work.

If "I think you got it wrong" is insulting to you I assume you don't have a job or anything? Like I said: I respect the time you put into this, I just think you made a mistake in not separating heatup phase from the running phase. That's all. But if this thread is just about getting craptons of likes then fine, have a few.

 

[GearSB]

If "I think you got it wrong" is insulting to you I assume you don't have a job or anything? Like I said: I respect the time you put into this, I just think you made a mistake in not separating heatup phase from the running phase. That's all. But if this thread is just about getting craptons of likes then fine, have a few.

I think you're wrong to not count the heat up as part of the lifetime efficiency of the boilers.

Heat up is not an insignificant amount of time, it's basically an all day operation, and significantly effects fuel efficiency.

That's like saying that airplane fuel efficiency should only be calculated while the plane is at cruising altitude and speed, and ignoring the fuel use for takeoffs and landings.

And no one is saying that HP and LP boilers don't have the same fuel-to-power ratio when their both running at full heat, but the long journey to full heat is a significant factor here.

I'm going to set up a test, two 36 LP boilers vs one 36 HP boiler, both sides fed by a diamond chest of charcoal (One chest for both LP boilers, one chest for the HP boiler). At full temp, both sides will provide the same amount of steam, but we're looking at the warm-up.

It takes several hours for a boiler to reach max temp, And I'm not going to have the time to finish the warm up right now, since I'm at work, but just starting, I can already tell you that the HP boiler, while just starting heating up just as fast as the LP boiler right now, is using about 2.5 - 3 times more fuel than the two LP boilers combined.

After 10 minutes of heating, the LP boilers are starting to heat up faster than the HP boiler by about a degree, and we're producing steam.

Both sides are powering 18 industrial steam engines, and filling 13 empty TE energy cells.

Lunch is over right now, so I'll provide more later, once I get onto my desktop at home.

 

[Omicron]

That ought to be a quite resounding win for the twin LP boilers

 

[MilConDoin]

If you want higher overall efficiency (meaning: including the heatup phase), then go for LP boilers. If you want less space used and/or less iron/steel used, then go for HP boilers.
With infinite fuel (as is normally the case with biofuel, charcoal, blaze rods or planks), the heatup phase is irrelevant, if you have big enough tanks to last you through the heatup phase. Without infinite fuel: Why are you using boilers? Multiple heatup phases are bad enough with infinites, but way worse with finites and will drain your non-infinite ressources even faster.

 

[GearSB]

If you want higher overall efficiency (meaning: including the heatup phase), then go for LP boilers. If you want less space used and/or less iron/steel used, then go for HP boilers.
With infinite fuel (as is normally the case with biofuel, charcoal, blaze rods or planks), the heatup phase is irrelevant, if you have big enough tanks to last you through the heatup phase. Without infinite fuel: Why are you using boilers? Multiple heatup phases are bad enough with infinites, but way worse with finites and will drain your non-infinite ressources even faster.

Unless you have a steel industry already set up, each HP boiler will take over an hour and a half to build.

And the point of boilers, either one, is to not need to constantly restart them, which is why, if you don't have infinite fuel, you go for the duel LP boilers, as it costs a lot less fuel and time to get to the point of optimal efficiency, compared to a single HP boilers.

The real problem is, that Minecraft has furnace's. They are OP when you look at all that they can do. Combined with Minecraft trees, which grow fast and easy, and you've got infinite fuel with nearly no work.

If trees took even one and one third of a RL day, which is about a year in game, due to Minecraft's 14 minute 'days', much less the more RL times like 15 years (Nearly 21 RL days) to grow then this would be a lot less of a problem with infinite fuel, and then efficiency would actually matter in the game.

But since the Minecraft we got is the one we got, Boilers should probably be rebalanced as LP boilers providing more steam per fuel (Or less fuel per steam), while HP boilers continue being two LP's in one, while being slightly worse off in steam per fuel.

 

[Hydra]

But since the Minecraft we got is the one we got, Boilers should probably be rebalanced as LP boilers providing more steam per fuel (Or less fuel per steam), while HP boilers continue being two LP's in one, while being slightly worse off in steam per fuel.

HP boilers don't give less steam per fuel. That 4.4 hour or so warm up time is completely irrelevant with easy to setup steve's cart farms. The only thing that's important is if you want to spend 'space' for LP boilers or spend 'time' for HP boilers (due tot the steel you need). That's the ONLY difference between the two.

 

[MrZwij]

Without infinite fuel: Why are you using boilers? Multiple heatup phases are bad enough with infinites, but way worse with finites and will drain your non-infinite ressources even faster.

I dunno. Firing up an HP boiler running on fuel displays a cheeky self-confidence that I think gives the game a bit more urgency. It's fun not being 100 percent sure you're going to be able to keep the boiler fed and happy.

 

[noskk]

Unless you have a steel industry already set up, each HP boiler will take over an hour and a half to build.

And the point of boilers, either one, is to not need to constantly restart them, which is why, if you don't have infinite fuel, you go for the duel LP boilers, as it costs a lot less fuel and time to get to the point of optimal efficiency, compared to a single HP boilers.

The real problem is, that Minecraft has furnace's. They are OP when you look at all that they can do. Combined with Minecraft trees, which grow fast and easy, and you've got infinite fuel with nearly no work.

If trees took even one and one third of a RL day, which is about a year in game, due to Minecraft's 14 minute 'days', much less the more RL times like 15 years (Nearly 21 RL days) to grow then this would be a lot less of a problem with infinite fuel, and then efficiency would actually matter in the game.

But since the Minecraft we got is the one we got, Boilers should probably be rebalanced as LP boilers providing more steam per fuel (Or less fuel per steam), while HP boilers continue being two LP's in one, while being slightly worse off in steam per fuel.

Actually the op thing is automatic tree farm and the tree mechanism itself (what you said about how tree grows), try cutting those tree yourself without steve cart, forestry or any automatic device lol, I just recently gave up cutting trees for my bee stuff and ended up making a forestry tree farm.

 

[Damoklesz]

As I am going to show you below, the actual impact in gameplay is not trivial at all.

I've read it all, and you're right about everything, except this.

IMO this whole deal is pretty much trivial:

If fuel=infinite then
build(36HP boilers)
else
build(any engines)
end

You consider situations that don't exist, and show some fancy graphs about how great the overal efficiency of the other boilers are. But those are not survival gameplay scenarios, and you admit that. So where is that non-trivial impact on gameplay?

The main reason why people choose the 36HP over the two 36LP is more psychological than anything. It's human nature to always want the best instead of having two average. The fact that the words 'high' and 'low' are in the name, don't help either. But they are not losing out on much, cosidering that they plan for the infinity. In there, they are infinity close to the maximum overal efficiency. And I still don't see any impact on gameplay...

 

[Omicron]

Yeah, there's a reason why I nerf Forestry significantly in the config (especially the broken fermenter), and don't even include Steve's Carts in the first place for my games. Makes things way too easy and boring Still, having some form of automated wood production is nice, and the new multifarms deliver that in a halfway reasonable form factor, if configured correctly. Too bad the energy use modifier setting still doesn't work.

On the topic of why anyone would use boilers in a finite fuel setting: because if you pick the right boiler, you might still get more energy out of your fuel than conventional engines and generators would be able to give you. Whether or not that's possible applies to the specific situation though, and you can't make blanket statements. For example, in my Mindcrack v6 world, I ran a 27 LP boiler + steam turbine quite successfully off of a tank of methane created from bauxite electrolysis. A very finite resource, but using the boiler still allowed me to produce quite a bit more EU than I would have gotten if I had thrown the methane directly into a gas turbine. I was even able to extend the boiler's lifetime by a couple more hours with leftover creosote oil (equally non-infinite).

EDIT: Didn't see your post before, Damoklesz, but as you can see, there are indeed situations where a boiler in a non-infinite fuel setting makes sense. You also forget that while combustion engines are extremely efficient, they are so only for Buildcraft fuel and biofuel (and lava, to a lesser extent). There are many fuel types, especially solid ones, where the available engines are far less efficient. Last I tested, a stirling engine didn't even reach anywhere near 2.0, for example, and the TE steam engine is only a little bit better.

 

[Damoklesz]

Yeah, there's a reason why I nerf Forestry significantly in the config (especially the broken fermenter), and don't even include Steve's Carts in the first place for my games. Makes things way too easy and boring Still, having some form of automated wood production is nice, and the new multifarms deliver that in a halfway reasonable form factor, if configured correctly. Too bad the energy use modifier setting still doesn't work.

On the topic of why anyone would use boilers in a finite fuel setting: because if you pick the right boiler, you might still get more energy out of your fuel than conventional engines and generators would be able to give you. Whether or not that's possible applies to the specific situation though, and you can't make blanket statements. For example, in my Mindcrack v6 world, I ran a 27 LP boiler + steam turbine quite successfully off of a tank of methane created from bauxite electrolysis. A very finite resource, but using the boiler still allowed me to produce quite a bit more EU than I would have gotten if I had thrown the methane directly into a gas turbine. I was even able to extend the boiler's lifetime by a couple more hours with leftover creosote oil (equally non-infinite).

EDIT: Didn't see your post before, Damoklesz, but as you can see, there are indeed situations where a boiler in a non-infinite fuel setting makes sense. You also forget that while combustion engines are extremely efficient, they are so only for Buildcraft fuel and biofuel (and lava, to a lesser extent). There are many fuel types, especially solid ones, where the available engines are far less efficient. Last I tested, a stirling engine didn't even reach anywhere near 2.0, for example, and the TE steam engine is only a little bit better.

Did you actually mined the bauxite yourself? I didn't do the math, but if you did it must have taken you plenty of time. I personally prefer having a tunnel bore... so then bauxite (and methane) is an infinite (although not very reliable) resource. Also if we're considering finite situations, we should also speak about the cost of the boiler and the engines, which is quite heavy compared to a single gas turbine. I'm guessing that it comes down to how much you value your energy in raw materials. If we take the UU value (even in easymode), the gas turbine will probably win.

About the fuel types... as far as I know you can pretty much burn everything solid in an IC2 generator, and power an electrical engine. I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything liquid or solid that can only be used for power in a boiler and nowhere else.

 

[hotblack desiato]

may I ask about different fuels? I'm thinking of setting up a boiler, and setting it's fuel supply up by using a treefarm is just a bit weird/OP

currently I think of lithium as the basic fuel, since it is virtually infinite (every red rock biome contains tons of it). the other idea is hydrogen, made by a nuclear reactor. and there is the question: would it be just more efficient, if I use forestrys electrical engines.
a third idea is: standard bc-fuel, but made with my GT-distillation tower, powered by nuclear energy (I have tons of uranium, and even more thorium and some plutonium. breeder + ind. centrifuge, great thing)

and one suggestion for the efficiency: thank you for comparing the boilers with the combustion engine, and that this engine fueled with fuel has an efficieny that matches large boilers. I might add: the huge advantage of steam is the lossless transportation through tesseracts, whereas an engine room in a base hooked up with an energy tesseract has this 25% loss, which lowers the efficiency...

 

[noskk]

There's no advantage of lossless transportation man, you can always transport the fuel/biofuel with liquid tesseract to destination and then make a remote power system (with combustion engines) at the destination.

 

[Omicron]

Did you actually mined the bauxite yourself?

A large part of it, yes - my base was in a forest biome, so I constantly ran into the stuff from the get-go. I was also running a small quarry in the later stages, but since this was Mindcrack, with GregTech on full hard mode, I had to start processing bauxite before even thinking about building it.

And yes, in that situation I just wanted maximum energy output. I had resources overflowing in their chests, but needed massive EU to drive the GregTech matter fabricator in order to produce iridium. Building the boiler was essentially pocket change, and just one of several measures I took to boost energy generation.