mixing fuel types in a gas boiler

[Sister of Silence]

Is it possible to send heavy/light oil/fuel gas/etc all to one gasboiler and let the boiler sort it out just like coal boilers do with animal feed/biomass/coal? Or will there be a blockage if there's a small amount in the pipes leading to the boiler that is too little to burn in one session?

[manfred.stabentheiner]

it work if you use the cheat table from fearless side ..input and output *100

[Sister of Silence]

Ah, so it's not possible in vanilla. Thanks.
I'm trying to avoid mods/cheats at this point since they tend to get abandoned and outdated as the game still gets patched a lot in early access.

[Peter34]

Won't the Gas Boiler just continue to receive whatever is in its one intake Pipe, until it has enough of one fluid to do a burn cycle?

[SamuraiProgrammer]

Not exactly, but I have seen something something that may fulfill your needs. (See the end for my ideas that (I think) may take care of the issue.)

What you can do is prioritize a fuel and have a second fuel in case the first one runs out.

This is from a youtube video by JDPlays. I am just passing the information along. I don't take credit for it. Here is the link to the pertinent section of the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IVwchCi-j4&list=PLnIE0W-m629exSS9LlJc5S-aRo2poUj0t&index=5&t=1071s

The idea is that you have a pipe balancer with inputs of two different fuels (in this case it was light oil and heavy oil. You prioritize one of them in the balancer. Then there is one short(ish) pipe to the boiler.

Here is what will happen (as far as I understand it).

The prioritized fuel will be used until there is not enough to perform another cycle in the boiler. The priority fuel will empty from the pipe as it tries to fill the boiler. The boiler will now hold a partial load of the primary fuel. Once the pipe is empty (assuming the priority fuel in the tank is still empty), the secondary fuel will fill the pipe and feed into the boiler. The fuels will be kept separate in the boiler.

When the primary source has fuel again, the secondary fuel will stop feeding into the exit pipe. Any residual secondary fuel in the pipe will fill the boiler. Once it is empty, the primary fuel will then begin to fuel the boiler.

I have used this and it worked for me.

The rest of this is my idea.

I think (but have not tried it) you could have several boilers with different inputs connected to the same steam pipe II. They would all run until the pipe II has filled. It is possible (I think) that prioritizing the boilers will give you some control over which fuel is burned first.

I hope this is helpful and I apologize if you already knew all of this.

[Ruges]

Short answer: Yes it works in vanilla.

Medium answer: Think of a pipe as a conveyor belt. (I am pretty sure pipes use the same mechanics as belts. with the added stipulation that only one type of product can be in a pipe at one time). So when you swap from fluid A to fluid B, the pipe must be empty for fluid A before fluid B can enter the pipe and when it does enter the pipe it must travel along the pipe before it enters the next segment. (IE shorter pipe lengths are better in that the flow swap is faster) Finally setting up junctions with priorities help keep the swapping to a minimum.

IE Lets say you have 3 fluids going to boilers. Junction A outputs to all the boilers. Junction A inputs fluid type1 with priority. Junction B outputs to junction A. Junction B inputs fluid type2 with priority on type2. and inputs fluid type 3 with no priority.

This creates a scenario where fluid1 gets used first. then fluid2 gets used second. then fluid 3 gets used third. One of the things I do with this setup is manually swap the priorities on fluid2 and fluid3. Wish there was some sort of logic system that could swap it automatically.

[Southside]

Originally posted by Sister of Silence:

Is it possible to send heavy/light oil/fuel gas/etc all to one gasboiler and let the boiler sort it out just like coal boilers do with animal feed/biomass/coal? Or will there be a blockage if there's a small amount in the pipes leading to the boiler that is too little to burn in one session?

Not in one session. The boiler collects all incoming resources, but only identical ones are used per cycle/session. But as described by Ruges, it works really well otherwise.

[Kaery]

Originally posted by SamuraiProgrammer:

I think (but have not tried it) you could have several boilers with different inputs connected to the same steam pipe II. They would all run until the pipe II has filled. It is possible (I think) that prioritizing the boilers will give you some control over which fuel is burned first

This works. If you don't care about the workforce used, you can set up one boiler per different fuel and use splitters to prioritize which boiler gets to deliver steam first, second, and so on. This means that as long as, say... The light oil burning boiler is running, your coal boiler will stop with a full output as it cannot get rid of the steam. 'If' you have a splitter prioritizing the input from the light oil boiler in your steam pipe after the boilers. Once the light oil runs out, the coal fired one will take over again.

[Tankfriend]

Just make sure you run the exhaust output (i.e. exhaust/CO2/steam) of such a multi-fuel boiler setup straight through a smoke stack.
Since there are no pipeline filters, you can't "sort" the output and process or clean it up further without getting the pipe blocked whenever the wrong outputs show up.

[AnonymouS]

It is possible if the distributor is put near the boiler. I tried. the pipe to the boiler need to be short enough, let say 1 unit length so it won't store too much liquid.
Example: 2 Pipe one for light oil,one for heavy input to distributor, 1 shot pipe output to the boiler.

[Sister of Silence]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I have tried the balancer system and dedicated fuel boiler methods described above but was curious to see if there was another more direct way.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

One last thought. I am unsure of this but I think I heard (on a youtube video) that if you arrange for the pipe segment adjacent to the input to be a connector, it will do the same thing.

[SirDrinksalot]

I run my boilers off heavy and light oil with the method above of pipe splitter (that 2 x 4 thing).
Prioritise light oil as you produce more (depending on what you are doing with it) and most of the time it takes little management.

As mentioned above, I have a coal one next to it early game as you dont produce enough and prioritising the steam from the gas one means the coal will kick in if the oils run out.

[SirDrinksalot]

Originally posted by ♥AnonymouS♥:

It is possible if the distributor is put near the boiler. I tried. the pipe to the boiler need to be short enough, let say 1 unit length so it won't store too much liquid.
Example: 2 Pipe one for light oil,one for heavy input to distributor, 1 shot pipe output to the boiler.

The boilers tend to hold both fuels from what i have seen, so if there is not enough light oil to create a steam it will hold it whilst the heavy oil comes in and vice versa, if for some reason you dont prioritise I dont think it makes much difference, but suspect it may be possible that it could prevent a continuous boil if you were randomly doing 1 light oil, 1 heavy oil until full, i think in theory thats like twice as long to fill it, so depends on how fast your steam is consumed.