Trees + Petroleum Generator

[Segato]

How many trees are needed to keep working always 1 Petroleoum Generator?

[Promethien]

Wild? Quite a few. I forget the exact numbers but its something like 7.5 trees per ethanol distiller and it takes 4 distillers to do full time run on the generator. It takes two domesticated trees and you'll have left over but it costs more water than you get back. Not a lot more water, but its far from free.

The thing is. You don't have to have a 100% generator to make it worth setting up. Wild trees going into the ethanol cycle effectively get you dirt, water and power at the sole cost of dupe labor. Set everything up on smart batteries and only use the other stuff when the ethanol isn't burning. 

[PhailRaptor]

1 PetroGen requires 4 Ethanol Distillers to run full time.

Each of those Ethanol Distillers will require 1 kg/s, or 600 kg/cycle, Lumber.

Each Arbor Tree branch provides 300 kg of Lumber, and takes 4.5 cycles to grow domestically, or 18 to grow wild.  That means we need 2 branches per cycle per Distiller.  Each Tree will grow 5 branches, so 2 Trees need to be fully harvested per cycle for every 5 Distillers.  Accounting for Dupe time for harvesting, and likely siphoning off some to feed Pips, we can assume it's really 2 Trees per cycle for 4 Distillers.

If growing Trees domestically, it only takes 4.5 cycles to grow the Branches, where as Wild will take 18 cycles.  So it comes to approximately 9 domestic or 36 wild Arbor Trees to sustain a 100% uptime PetroGen.

None of this accounts for waste.

The PetroGen will produce 500 g/s CO2 and 750 g/s Polluted Water.  Each of the Distillers (remember, there are 4 of them) produce 333.33 g/s Polluted Dirt and 166.67 g/s CO2.  This totals 1,166.68 g/s CO2, 750 g/s Polluted Water, and 333.33 g/s Polluted Dirt.

Grown domestically, the Trees will consume 70 kg/cycle (or 116.66 g/s) Polluted Water.  If domestic, there are 9 of them, so that becomes 1,050 kg/s.  So we'll need an additional 300 g/s Polluted Water to sustain domestic Trees.  If we mixed domestic and wild, the PetroGen would provide enough for 6 Trees, so we'd need to pick up the slack with 12 wild trees.

Carbon Skimmers can remove 300 g/s CO2.  To offset 1,166.68 g/s we'd need 4 Carbon Skimmers (capable of 1,200 g/s).  The process of running a Carbon Skimmer also turns 1,000 g/s of clean Water into the same volume of Polluted Water, but since it's a 1:1 ratio we can set that up on a loop with a Water Sieve.  The Sieve can process 5 kg/s, so our 4 Carbon Skimmers will only need a single Water Sieve.  This will, however, require 1 kg/s of Sand (or, late game, Regolith).

The Polluted Dirt is most quickly handled by using 4 Compost Heaps (each takes 100 g/s).  Each domestic Arbor Tree will need 10 kg/cycle, which is a very small amount by comparison.  Alternatively, you could use some or all of that Polluted Dirt to feed Pokeshells, which will produce Sand that can then be used by the Water Sieve (not to mention their Molts can be crushed for Lime, and their Eggs).  Unfortunately, I do not have precision data on how much Pokeshells eat, or what ratio they produce at, so I can't give you any math on how many per Compost or per Sieve.

In terms of power, the PetroGen will produce 2,000 W.  Each Distiller requires 240 W to run, each Carbon Skimmer requires 120 W, and the Water Sieve will need 120 W.  Since the PetroGen releases the Polluted Water directly into the environment, instead of into a pipe, we'll also need a Liquid Pump for another 240 W.  The combined cost is 1,800 W, so we gain 200 W overall out of this complex

In summary:

• 1 PetroGen
• 4 Ethanol Distillers
• 6 domestic Arbor Trees
• 12 wild Arbor Trees
• 4 Carbon Skimmers
• 1 Water Sieve
• 4 Composts
• input of 1 kg/s Sand (or Regolith)
• output of 200 W of power
• output of a small amount of excess Lumber (Pip food?)

[Lifegrow]

Careful with the maths at the end there. For example, yes, you may need a liquid pump for the petroleum gens output, but it's only working at 10% efficiency - a quick hydro sensor > filter makes that 240w disappear  

I'm feeding my polluted dirt to crab boys - they give me sand.

I'm sending my CO2 to slicksters - they give me oil.

Factor in a functional setup and the ethanol -> petro build is a very cheap one. Looking at the raw figures can be a bit misleading. As ever, it depends a) what you have lots of and b) what your base values higher.

Need sand, feed the poop to crabs. Need dirt, compost the poop. Need coal, feed the poop to sage boys. Need clean water? Sieve that poopwater.

Fact is - it gives quite a few options.

[Majestix]

Some potential optimisation: vent the CO2 into space to save on those carbon skimmers. Also, 750g/s of polluted water can be handled by a mini pump, saving another 180W.

[Aelfled]

And, of course, if you have a power plant you get another 1000W from tune-up

[Coolthulhu]

2 hours ago, Majestix said:

Also, 750g/s of polluted water can be handled by a mini pump, saving another 180W.

Or a liquid sensor, to only run it when you can run it at full capacity. Mini pump has 1/10 capacity, but 1/4 the power draw, so it's inefficient.

2 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Each Tree will grow 5 branches

Pretty sure it's 7.

[nakomaru]

Trees were changed to 5 branches at a time in the middle of the LU preview. If you have an old save where they used to grow 7, they will still have 7 though.

[PhailRaptor]

10 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

2 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Each Tree will grow 5 branches

Pretty sure it's 7.

There are 7 slots in which an Arbor Tree is able to grow a branch, but it will only ever grow 5 of them.  The extra 2 slots are to allow a sub-optimally placed tree to still reach it's 5 branch allotment.  IE your Pip plants a Mealwood plant directly adjacent to a still-growing Arbor Tree.  If the Arbor Tree could only grow the 5 branch slots, you'd lose 2 of them, resulting in a 3 branch tree.  But the extra slots let it still reach 5 branches.

[Promethien]

Ah thats right, the 7.5 was calculated back before the branch nerf. Still for the most part you have no real reason to do the calc. Do this:

Set up your tree farms (see recent threads about how pips work on this). Make sure there are some pips in the tree farms so you get acorns (no need to groom them). Expand your tree farms as you get more acorns. 

Build a generator with 4 distillers set to feed it.

Take what you can get from the distillers and generator until you expand your tree farms enough to keep them running full time. 

Build another 4 distillers with generator.

Repeat.