Is MFR Biofuel broken?

[Curunir]

It's been a long time since i fiddled around with Biofuel. I discovered now, much to my surprise, that it is extremely efficient on source materials if you keep the BioReactor stacked with the maximum amount of biomass. To put this into numbers: I simply put one single piece of biomass of nine different kinds in there, namely five kinds of saplings, a carrot, a potato, one netherwart and one (wheat) seed. This instantly created about 1400 units (of whatever) in the internal buffer when I switched the machine on. When I pumped this out, I learned that I had just created 171 (!) buckets of Biofuel.

 

Does anybody know if that is intentional? True, Biofuel is less efficient than regular Fuel, but with that kind of yield, even a very modest autofarm can create limitless energy if you just build enough Compression Dynamos.

Is this maybe some kind of conversion bug? Or are we really supposed to get two thirds of a drum filled with just so little? It is about ten times the amount I expected.

[Digdug83]

I ran my last world's base on biofuel back before TE had dynamos and before I started messing with Atomic Science. The output really does scale down quite a bit the fewer types of items you have in the reactors though. I'd have to run numbers again but I wonder what it would take to get my current 50K RF/t out of just bioreactors and biogenerators?

[Curunir]

I don't know about BioGenerators, as they output MJ and I don't use that. But Compression Dynamos, like all Dynamos, output 80 RF/t - they just burn through Biofuel more quickly than through regular Fuel. That means 250 Dynamos for a fully charged Laser Drill, or 625 for your 50k output.

 

My point is that you could possibly feed this kind of power plant with two or three BioReactors producing at full efficiency, and not even use that much biomass for it. It does sound like a fun project, building a massive Dynamo center like that. But I feel that the fuel yield is quite a bit too high.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Curunir

[Kezr]

I am unable to replicate this. I am using the recomended version, and from 1 piece each of nine different kinds of biomass I get 1425 mB of biofuel, just like the Efficency gauge in the Bioreactor UI says. If I fill the machine completely, that is two stacks each of nine kinds of biomass, I get 182400 mB of fuel. Quite a bit closer to your number.

 

What I did was to just plonk the bioreactor on top of a drum and let it drain into that.

Did you do something different or are you using another version than the recomended one?

 

You said you pumped the fuel out of the reactor? How did you do this? I have yet to find a way to make it drain faster than a few mB per second.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Kezr

[Digdug83]

BioGenerators are more efficient than Compression Dynamos in this regard. A single bucket of biofuel produces exactly 800K RF at a rate of 160 RF/t. They can output both types of energy by the way (RF in this pack version), not that it makes much difference when you hook a conduit to them anyway. So they're twice as powerful as dynamos and 60% more fuel efficient to boot.

 

Granted I certainly don't feel like setting up 125 of them to power a single drill but you could easily power a good sized base with them and a handful of high-efficiency bioreactors if you have the farms set up properly.

 

As far as I know the fuel output from the reactors hasn't changed much since earlier versions. I guess the logic is if you can keep 9 kinds of items in there at all times you deserve ludicrous amounts of fuel production.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Digdug83

[Curunir]

@Kezr

I am running the Biofuel through Fluiducts into Extra Utilities Drums.

 

Here is the biomass input for comparison:

 

And that is what the setup looks like, with a filled drum:

 

It only has 156.6 buckets this time, because it actually starts to drain its buffer even when no pipe is attached, so I reattached it quickly and lost about 15 buckets by that. This is another pointer that there is something wrong here.

 

I am running the 1.2.10 beta, but I don't think MFR has been updated since 1.2.9e.

[Curunir]

Alright, I replicated the setup where the BioReactor just sits on top of a drum and drains into that. This yielded 1425 mB.

 

So it's a conversion error with Fluiducts. Might have been introduced with the Thermal Expansion update to 3.0.0.7, so it would be helpful if somebody running on 1.2.9e could try and replicate this behaviour.

[Kezr]

The problem is there in 1.2.9e too. If I replicate your setup I get insane ammounts of fuel, but only when the fluiducts are set to passive. If I set the duct connected to the reactor to force extract, I get the correct 1425 mB of fuel.

[efflandt]

I run my base with ME network (incl. Quantum Bridge and MAC) with 6 to 8 biofuel generators (6 is likely enough) and a pocket dimension on the other end of Quantum Bridge where I have a majority of my TE and Galacticraft machines likewise powered by 6 biofuel generators (fed by endertanks). The only biomass I need to keep both supplied is a single biofuel reactor and patch of netherwarts. The harvester typically uses iron upgrade, but sometimes tin upgrade if my biofuel storage (in fluid cell) starts decreasing (planter has higher upgrade to work either way). It is self sustaining with minor adjustments to that one crop and I have 65 drums of biofuel in stock besides the ave. 3 Kbuckets in the fluid cell, so I have not even played with maximizing biofuel output.

 

Laser drill is separately powered by either 20+K RF/t turbine with small reactor, or less efficiently by just a passive reactor I had before that. At one point I tried powering just 1 laser precharger with biofuel generators, but did not have enough of them at the time.

[Kezr]

I've been testing some more, and there seems to be a bug with how MFR machines interact with fluiducts when they are in their passive state. The output is and order of magnitude or two too high.

Tested with both opaque and transparent ducts.

Machines that I've confirmed to be afflicted are the Bio Reactor, Lava Fabricator, Oil Fabricator and Sewer. I haven't tried the harvester's sludge output because I could not be arsed.

 

EDIT: Issue is now posted in the tracker.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Kezr

[EvilOwl]

We need to put it to the TeamCOFH irc channel

Edited July 15, 2014 by bochen415

[jakalth]

TeamCOFH already knows about the fluiduct replication issue.  That is what is going on with this setup.  It's the fuiduct outputting more fluids then it recieved, into the barrel.  And it's not the barrel that's the issue either.  The fuiducts do the same thing when outputting into portable storage tanks as well.

[Curunir]

I thought that other issue was caused by a loop. But if you say so, let's see if the next update fixes that stuff.

The workaround for now is probably always setting force-extract mode on MFR fluid machines, like BioReactors. Or not using Fluiducts for those.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Curunir

[jakalth]

Hmmm, I must of read that wrong then?  They can still do a small duplication of fluids when transfering fluids, but I've never seen it happen by that much, without a storage loop involved.  Then again I've not actually played around with barrels, so it could be a combination of things going on there.

Edited July 15, 2014 by jakalth

[Curunir]

Kezr already checked and it's independent from the storage involved. Could still be a related issue to the one you found, but this one occurs specifically with MFR machines and produces extreme overspill. Somebody should point it out to Team COFH, if only to make sure.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Curunir