Bio Fuel is not actually cost effective?

1st Official Post

    I'm doing some back-of-envelope calculations and I'm coming up with IC2 bio fuel potentially costing more EU power to manufacture than it produces in generators. What am I missing?


    A bio fuel can produces 26k EU. Making one involves starting with 24 saplings [or 48 cane/wheat], from which you make 6 plantballs [shaped crafting, no power]. The plantballs then need to be run through a Compressor [EU cost] to make compressed plant balls. Those get put into cells [crafting] to make bio cells, when in turn get run through an Extractor [a second EU cost] to make biofuel cells. The biofuel cells then need to be run through a Canning Machine [a third EU cost] to produce the filled bio fuel can.


    I haven't put it on the bench to measure the EU cost of each of the power-consuming steps, but the gross yield at the end is ~ 1083 EU/sapling, or 542 EU/cane. With that kind of return there's basically no point in attempting biofuel; the power yield for farming wood, turning it into charcoal, and burning that is what, an order of magnitude higher?


    This just feels off. What am I missing?

    Using Biofuel cans straight out is not cost effective...


    However, there is a way to increase their EU output...

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    Quote

    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Pfft those low quality homemade DIY biofuel cells. 4340 EU per 4 saplings. My special biofuel cell formula produces about 23 340 EU per 4 saplings.

    The tin cost of biofuel used to be the main deterrent to me, though nowadays that's less of an issue (since there's such a huge demand for copper, I'm left with a disproportionately large supply of tin). If you're fine with that cost, then ...
    Compressor is 800 EU per item (I tested it). Wiki says the Extractor is also 800 EU per item, and no listing for the canning machine. So for a pure-biofuel cell, there'd be a 9600EU + (canning EU) cost to deduct from the 26040EU value of the fuel. So that's 16440EU, less whatever the Canning machine needs, translating to 2740EU/plantball. With a piece of (char)coal worth 4000EU ... aye, it's a lot of effort for very little payout. Straight burning the saplings in a generator would yield 1000EU per plantball (960EU for cactus/reed), so it is still a gain - probably around 2x-2.5x.


    With the best (coal-based) fuel, at a little over 100k EU (gross) in a fuelcan, often ignored as not worthwhile, Biofuel doesn't have much chance in that arena.


    The formulas for bio & coal fuel cells are nicely explained at http://forum.industrial-craft.…ad&postID=44599#post44599 . Old post, but still seems accurate.


    The fuelcans, like the single-use batteries, seem mostly a relic of another era to me. They're occasionally useful when just starting out (if you've got an unusual set of available resources, or are just trying something 'different'), but from a raw-efficiency perspective (or min-max, powergaming, etc) they're pretty much ignorable. It's unfortunate, since they've got some nice flavor and the multi-step manufacturing would make for some nice automation setups.

    Quote from Vyrebird

    The fuelcans, like the single-use batteries, seem mostly a relic of another era to me. They're occasionally useful when just starting out (if you've got an unusual set of available resources, or are just trying something 'different'), but from a raw-efficiency perspective (or min-max, powergaming, etc) they're pretty much ignorable. It's unfortunate, since they've got some nice flavor and the multi-step manufacturing would make for some nice automation setups.

    Agreed. Even with GT it's not efficient enough to be useful ... and Forestry one is much more efficient, so guess what mods most of players are using :/


    Soon with Molten Salt Reactors, right ? :D
    NERF THA FUSION REACTOR!

    Quote from MatLaPatate

    Agreed. Even with GT it's not efficient enough to be useful ... and Forestry one is much more efficient, so guess what mods most of players are using :/

    As far as I can tell, the Forestry Bio Generator is broken. If you're driving a Forestry biofuel plant with EU run through optimized Forestry Electrical Engines at the nominally-ideal 2.5 EU:MJ conversion ratio, a Bio Generator running off the output doesn't produce enough EU to actually run the machines. If there's supposed to be a 2.5 EU:MJ conversion ratio, then the Bio Generator's output is more than an order of magnitude too low to be comparable to the MJ side of things.

    Quote from Vyrebird

    The fuelcans, like the single-use batteries, seem mostly a relic of another era to me. They're occasionally useful when just starting out (if you've got an unusual set of available resources, or are just trying something 'different'), but from a raw-efficiency perspective (or min-max, powergaming, etc) they're pretty much ignorable. It's unfortunate, since they've got some nice flavor and the multi-step manufacturing would make for some nice automation setups.

    When you're "just starting out" you don't have a generator and a compressor and an extractor and a canning machine. :)


    I'm playing in a GregTech-enabled modpack, and was hoping that biofuel would be a good second-tier power source approach, because GT makes the leap from generator+scaffolding to anything better [even basic solar] *extremely* expensive in terms of both infrastructure and rare mined materials. If the basic answer is "don't bother with bio fuels, just grow trees and chop them up into scaffolding" then the mod's power progression is broken; that's just not how the world works.


    (A lot of the weird emergent costs would go away if the EU generation output of various wooden items were fixed. It really ought to be a more reasonable continuum; say 1500 EU for burning a log, 400 for planks, 150 for a stick. With those numbers make a scaffold the same output as a log, 1500 EU -- its component parts would add up to that individually, but require slightly more than 1 log to produce.)

    Quote

    If the basic answer is "don't bother with bio fuels, just grow trees and chop them up into scaffolding" then the mod's power progression is broken; that's just not how the world works.


    From what I understand of GT, the "proper" progression is from solid fuel Generator to liquid fuel Generator (be it Oil/Fuel or Lava). While those options are pretty robust, it does make gameplay highly linear, as renewable applications are unwelcome...


    There is a strong difference between 'base IC2 style of play' and 'GT style of play'. The meta-game confusions between these two are part of the reason Gregtech is a very polarizing mod in terms to how players respond to it.

    Would anyone like to try a Slowpoke Tail?! Only 1 Million Yen!


    Quote

    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    Quote from ctate

    As far as I can tell, the Forestry Bio Generator is broken. If you're driving a Forestry biofuel plant with EU run through optimized Forestry Electrical Engines at the nominally-ideal 2.5 EU:MJ conversion ratio, a Bio Generator running off the output doesn't produce enough EU to actually run the machines. If there's supposed to be a 2.5 EU:MJ conversion ratio, then the Bio Generator's output is more than an order of magnitude too low to be comparable to the MJ side of things.


    iirc, that was essentially intentional. SirSengir's commented on the very different scaling of EU and MJ systems, and the Electrical Engine and BioGenerator are balanced with only the one-directional conversion in mind, and NOT meant to equate to each other. That translates into the system being lossy when run in a loop, as you describe.


    Quote from ctate

    When you're "just starting out" you don't have a generator and a compressor and an extractor and a canning machine. :)

    Depends what direction you take ;). The generator and extractor are likely to be some of the first machines anyway, so it's just the compressor and canning machine that would be bumped earlier. In my case, it comes up when avoiding treefarms, solars, wind, and lava/geogens (geogens are typically my main powersource until nuclear). That made coal fuelcells seem the natural path ... but they just weren't worth it imo.

    Quote from MagusUnion

    From what I understand of GT, the "proper" progression is from solid fuel Generator to liquid fuel Generator (be it Oil/Fuel or Lava). While those options are pretty robust, it does make gameplay highly linear, as renewable applications are unwelcome...


    There is a strong difference between 'base IC2 style of play' and 'GT style of play'. The meta-game confusions between these two are part of the reason Gregtech is a very polarizing mod in terms to how players respond to it.

    I can totally respect that. When I was musing about this in another forum, I suggested that the Forestry Bio Generator's EU output level be brought into line with its MJ-side output [i.e. increased by a factor of ~ 12x] *but* that this be balanced by having GregTech rewrite the recipe for it to be more expensive, moving it from early-game-achievable to midgame+.


    Oil/Fuel dependence is tricky because of its worldgen dependence and the lack of real transport infrastructure for liquids. In the game I'm playing the nearest oil deposits I've found are small offshore gushers about 2000 blocks away from my existing workings. I guess the hardcore answer is to pick up and move, but UGH. :)


    Here in the real world, biofuel generation (by which I mean turning mixed organic waste into Texas light crude) is only upper-medium tech -- certainly nowhere as sophisticated as nuclear plant design & construction -- and is *power positive*, i.e. after you've bootstrapped the processing stack it produces net power, partly from utilizing the extra heat and partly by tapping the emitted NG/methane and using that in generators. I'd love to see that kind of tech expressed in Minecraft alongside the hard-mineral tech that's currently so dominant.

    Quote from ctate

    Here in the real world, biofuel generation (by which I mean turning mixed organic waste into Texas light crude) is only upper-medium tech -- certainly nowhere as sophisticated as nuclear plant design & construction -- and is *power positive*, i.e. after you've bootstrapped the processing stack it produces net power, partly from utilizing the extra heat and partly by tapping the emitted NG/methane and using that in generators. I'd love to see that kind of tech expressed in Minecraft alongside the hard-mineral tech that's currently so dominant.

    Greg planned to add a Fermentation device. Maybe it could be used to get more energy from that Biofuel, it'd just need more time ... (and a more expensive machinery)


    Soon with Molten Salt Reactors, right ? :D
    NERF THA FUSION REACTOR!