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Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 8:44 am
by halida
Looks like oil is infinite, Is there any machine can use oil to produce energy?

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:36 am
by haunted_1
Oil is not infinite!

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:54 am
by Rens2Sea
Actually, if you look at the lua (prototypes/entity/resources.lua) you see this:

Code: Select all

data:extend(
{
  {
    type = "resource",
    name = "crude-oil",
    ....
    infinite = true,
    ...
infinite = true :D

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:59 am
by haunted_1
Thats something new. Afaik and i can remember the devs said, that oil isnt infinite. :oops:

Edit: Well, my pumpjack loses oil pumping speed. it went from 1.0s to 0.7s in an actually very short time. So i thought that oil will run out.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:03 am
by kovarex
The minimal speed is 0.1 and it will stop at that, we wanted to have the system different for this resource, mind that it is an experiment.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:08 am
by ray4ever
I just learned that you can turn any oil into solid fuel which than can be used in a burner -> steam engine setup to produce energy.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:24 am
by Zourin
If the oil spills 'dry up' fairly quickly, I'm guessing there's a way to transport oil so that I don't have to deconstruct entire oil processing plants and rebuild them near the local supply every time? 0.8.8 pipes can barely go ten tiles without complaining about how stressful their lives are and asking for a raise.

The grief I get trying to move water is enough to ask for a gas-electric power turbine and disconnect the water supply and stone-age burners entirely.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:50 am
by Rens2Sea
Yeah, you can build empty barrels and fill them with oil at a chemical plant. You can also empty them to get the oil back so you can transport it.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 12:05 pm
by TGS
kovarex wrote:The minimal speed is 0.1 and it will stop at that, we wanted to have the system different for this resource, mind that it is an experiment.
I think it's quite cool the way it works. Infinite, but impractically slow. Though I've been finding quite a few patches of oil clumped together so even though it's slow, it could add up.
Looks like oil is infinite, Is there any machine can use oil to produce energy?
In a manner of speaking yes. If it is infinite you can pipe it into a storage tank and turn it into solid fuel. Which is quite cool.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:24 pm
by ficolas
Im using oil to power everything, I dont know what I will do when my deposits arent good enough D:

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:56 pm
by Garm
look for more and establish offshore bases until you have enough to power your main base even with used up wells.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 5:07 pm
by rk84
ficolas wrote:Im using oil to power everything, I dont know what I will do when my deposits arent good enough D:
Go find more deposits until you have 20 for every refinery? I can't wait to make barrel trainstations, but somehow I ended up to update/test/fix testmode.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:38 pm
by kovarex
ficolas wrote:Im using oil to power everything, I dont know what I will do when my deposits arent good enough D:
You need to expand and expand .... :)

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:23 pm
by BurnHard
Does someone else find it weird, that you need 2 units of heavy oil, but only one unit of light oil for producing one solid fuel block? Logically i thought heavy oil has more energy stored, therefore 1 unit heavy oil and 2 units light oil for one solid energy unit would be more reasionable.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:31 pm
by Darthlawsuit
BurnHard wrote:Does someone else find it weird, that you need 2 units of heavy oil, but only one unit of light oil for producing one solid fuel block? Logically i thought heavy oil has more energy stored, therefore 1 unit heavy oil and 2 units light oil for one solid energy unit would be more reasionable.
Image

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:08 am
by Fossil
Is there any way of getting rid of all the solid fuel I am accumulating? I am running a few refineries to produce petroleum gas for plastics, but the heavy oil is only useful for lubricant, and light oil doesn't seem to be used for anything other than fuel. An option to just burn/dump it would be nice.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 1:23 am
by Zourin
Well, it's solid fuel. Throw it in the tank of a car, a train, or your steam power plants.

i have to curse work right now, as I can't play to fully explore the mechanics, but the 'pump' from Liquid Logistics *should* enable you to push water to more remote areas and set up isolated power networks that don't run off your primary/starting coal source. Set up a solid fuel power station to act as a 'backup-backup' to your primary steam power plant and solar panels. I personally hate being tethered to shorelines for steam power.

Long stretches of pipe like that can be easily powered by small solar/accumulator setup and be wholly independant of your main grid, but at least you can 'burn off' that solid fuel by providing local power to your refining operation.

On an unrelated note: that gives me an idea..
Using accumulators and substations to 'interface' a backup switchover station between two power circuits. Very simply, the two sets of power lines never directly connect, but share an accumulator bank. Energy is never 'borrowed' unless the system fails over to accumulator power... I have to see if it's even possible to set up two substations that close together without connecting them. I vaguely remember some kind of hotkey..

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 2:45 am
by TGS
ficolas wrote:Im using oil to power everything, I dont know what I will do when my deposits arent good enough D:
You will start buying the biters land with fake incentives and drilling their oil! Then you will look for ocean deposits with complete disregard to the fishies. Then when you are mega oil billionaire you will crumble under the weight of your own phallus! Or something like that.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 3:07 am
by Zourin
TGS wrote:
ficolas wrote:Im using oil to power everything, I dont know what I will do when my deposits arent good enough D:
You will start buying the biters land with fake incentives and drilling their oil! Then you will look for ocean deposits with complete disregard to the fishies. Then when you are mega oil billionaire you will crumble under the weight of your own phallus! Or something like that.

That's pretty much what it comes down to. Take ground from the biters for more derricks.

The only problem I may have is whether oil holds a candle to coal power, as coal deposits are particularly rich in terms of being able to produce electricity. I wonder how it compares to the amount of fuel you could get from a handful of oil derricks by comparison.

An Electric Miner on good ground without overlap can easily produce upwards of 9k in coal over time. Considering oil needs to be pumped then processed into anything usable, I would speculate that oil power is lacking if the derricks are running dry as fast as mentioned earlier? (I really wish I wasn't away from home right now >.<)

I'm still waiting for a gas-turbine power plant, so i can finally disconnect from the ponds.

Re: Can I use oil to produce energy?

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 3:09 am
by syneris
Fossil wrote:Is there any way of getting rid of all the solid fuel I am accumulating? I am running a few refineries to produce petroleum gas for plastics, but the heavy oil is only useful for lubricant, and light oil doesn't seem to be used for anything other than fuel. An option to just burn/dump it would be nice.
Split your pipes and run half to a steam engine. You will still get some oil going to making solid fuel. You can also mix heavy and light oil to make flamer fuel, good for burning down trees. I'm rarely using electric furnaces now, because solid fuel is just so abundant once you need to make advanced products.

It would be really cool if the liquid network could somehow connect with the circuit network. Smart valves could be used to open and close fluid access based on configurable criteria similar to smart inserters for chests.