Explain how to use ethanol to a complete noob

[wd_]

2 hours ago, blash365 said:

I put those numbers in my sheet and i end up with -160 kg/c pW and -133 kg/c lumber.

So it doesnt add up for me.:/

My calculation ends up with 25 domestic and 30 wild trees for your setup.

 

I am calculating with 333,33 kg/c lumber per domesticated tree (300*5/4,5)

Yeah, my values were not completely correct because I've also calculated water I use to produce O2 and water I get from my geyser. You are right, for a self-sustaining setup just on ethanol I would need 25-30 trees. But my calculations give me -155kg/s, not -160. Are you sure you are calculating the downtime of extra ethanol-producing distillers correctly? One of them will have some downtime because I don't need 600kg of ethanol, just 520.

Also, I've just posted my calculations spreadsheet in another post, so if you want to take a look at my calculations, here it is:

 

However, I've changed it a bit, mainly added a delay for branch harvesting, but also calculated power wasted on sweepers more precisely.

[blash365]

2 minutes ago, wd_ said:

Are you sure you are calculating the downtime of extra ethanol-producing distillers correctly? One of them will have some downtime because I don't need 600kg of ethanol, just 520.

No, my calculation isnt that elaborate.;)

But thanks for pointing it out.

[Promethien]

You don't have to have the full number of distillers running to get the benefit of ethanol power. You don't even need a single distiller running full time. Take the dirt, water and power you can get from however many trees you have. Keep a couple pips in the tree rooms to get more acorns and gradually expand. Ethanol isn't all or nothing. 

[Tonyroid]

On 8/10/2019 at 11:46 AM, Nebbie said:

It's not a trap, it just appears that way without considering the full effects of it. Basically, the name of the game in ONI is to get water to electrolyze in SPOMs, because they turn hot water into cool oxygen (massive heat deletion from the electrolysis plus hydrogen generator) and power (hydrogen generators create more power than everything else needed to run them uses). In forest starts, water is unusually scarce, which throws a wrench into this.

Now consider that the ethanol power system's big byproduct is water... merge it and a SPOM together with an aquatuner that just keeps things at the minimum output temp of the petroleum generator for water and the SPOM's heat deletion actually overpowers the heat creation, while it all increases the amount of power produced.

Oh, and the system also produces polluted dirt, which can be turned into sand by pokeshells to prevent running out of filtration medium it needs, and composted into dirt to feed your mealwoods to feed your colony or dreckos. Did I mention it's overall power-positive and heat-negative while producing oxygen? Basically, ethanol power with wild trees is actually crazy if you can scale it up, Every 4kg/s of lumber (36 wild trees) you can generate represents the oxygen, food, cooling, and power to keep 6 dupes surviving very comfortably.

As for actually using a steam turbine, it's way overkill to cool the ethanol-related equipment. Yes, if you run an aquatuner full-time, then the steam turbine will only refund enough to get you into "this coal generator powers my heat deletion" territory, but the cooling potential is about equivalent to 50 domestic wheezeworts in hydrogen. That's probably enough to both cool your base and an iron volcano too (don't actually do this, you can set up a passive cooling system with iron volcanoes so they generate power pretty easily).

These are fair points. It is indeed quite true that if you have other things to do with the byproducts then ethanol can work just fine.

[Lurve]

Most of the complaints people have here go away if you tune up the generator.  1 kW surplus becomes a 2 kW surplus, which is enough power to run one heavy thing (aquatuner, refinery) without constant brownouts.