How fast do heating towers consume rocket fuel?

[GAMING_Alligator]

I'm struggling to find the answer to this on Google, and unlike any other building, the game itself doesn't tell me the consumption speed for heating towers.

Does anybody know?

[Synical]

Heating towers consume energy at a rate of 16 MW.
Rocket fuel contains 100 MJ of energy.
100 MJ / 16 MW = 6.25 seconds

[MechBFP]

A normal quality heat tower continuously consumes 16MW of fuel energy. That means it continuously consumes 16MJ per second. Rocket fuel contains 100MJ. So 100MJ/16MW = 6.25 seconds.

The reason you get the units of second is because a watt is a joule per second. So when you divide the joules cancel out and you are left with seconds.

[Paveway]

FYI the game does call it out if you hover over a heating tower - look at the pop up window on the right of the screen

[Nero]

The factoriopedia in the upper right corner has all the info about every building.
Hover over the blue shapes in the item description to see the individual consumption rates.

Btw, if you use them to power your base then its probably better to burn the solid fuel instead, as you will lose quite some joules in the crafting process.

[Hurkyl]

Unless you're on Gleba, where rocket fuel is an agricultural product and solid fuel would be rather awkward to produce. Or have a couple levels into the productivity research.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Nero:

Btw, if you use them to power your base then its probably better to burn the solid fuel instead, as you will lose quite some joules in the crafting process.

The solid fuel consumed to make 1 rocket fuel is itself worth 120 MJ of energy, whereas the resulting rocket fuel is only worth 100 MJ. So a 16.6% loss. Not even counting energy spent on producing the rocket fuel, or the additional light oil.

However, this is only true initially - because of productivity research on rocket fuel.
You can trivially grab 5 levels of it and get 50% bonus.

Also; rocket fuel is actually infinite on Gleba. Normal oil is not; and requires shipping in. So for Gleba specifically, rocket fuel actually is the best answer, always.

[oyssoyss]

I even ship some nuclear fuel to Gleba in case I have nothing to burn. though plenty of rocket fuel.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by RiO:

Also; rocket fuel is actually infinite on Gleba. Normal oil is not; and requires shipping in. So for Gleba specifically, rocket fuel actually is the best answer, always.

Don't forget about coal liquefaction options. But I would be super surprised if making solid fuel that way is anywhere near competitive with agricultural rocket fuel.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by RiO:

Also; rocket fuel is actually infinite on Gleba. Normal oil is not; and requires shipping in. So for Gleba specifically, rocket fuel actually is the best answer, always.

Don't forget about coal liquefaction options. But I would be super surprised if making solid fuel that way is anywhere near competitive with agricultural rocket fuel.

The thing is; coal liquefaction needs coal.
Which, on Gleba, is gotten from carbon and sulfur.
Which requires all the other agricultural products as well.
And is literally far, far more expensive to build and operate, than bio rocketfuel.

[Vyndicu]

I wonder where OP is trying to burn rocket fuel.

Maybe Aquilo for the heat?

[Nero]

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by Nero:

Btw, if you use them to power your base then its probably better to burn the solid fuel instead, as you will lose quite some joules in the crafting process.

The solid fuel consumed to make 1 rocket fuel is itself worth 120 MJ of energy, whereas the resulting rocket fuel is only worth 100 MJ. So a 16.6% loss. Not even counting energy spent on producing the rocket fuel, or the additional light oil.

However, this is only true initially - because of productivity research on rocket fuel.
You can trivially grab 5 levels of it and get 50% bonus.

Also; rocket fuel is actually infinite on Gleba. Normal oil is not; and requires shipping in. So for Gleba specifically, rocket fuel actually is the best answer, always.

Thats why i said it’s probably better.
You also forgot the 10light oil (+12MJ) involved in the recipe(~23% loss total)

I prepared the numbers before but steam swallowed my previous comment so i‘ll just say that lvl 5 endless for rocket fuel isn’t trivial for people who are new to the game(~20k science)

Our gleba base runs almost entirely on heat from waste disposal
On Aquilo we didn’t bother and just use rocket fuel bc stacks have more energy density

[RiO]

Originally posted by Nero:

Originally posted by RiO:

The solid fuel consumed to make 1 rocket fuel is itself worth 120 MJ of energy, whereas the resulting rocket fuel is only worth 100 MJ. So a 16.6% loss. Not even counting energy spent on producing the rocket fuel, or the additional light oil.

However, this is only true initially - because of productivity research on rocket fuel.
You can trivially grab 5 levels of it and get 50% bonus.

Also; rocket fuel is actually infinite on Gleba. Normal oil is not; and requires shipping in. So for Gleba specifically, rocket fuel actually is the best answer, always.

Thats why i said it’s probably better.
You also forgot the 10light oil (+12MJ) involved in the recipe(~23% loss total)

No I didn't forget:

Originally posted by RiO:

The solid fuel consumed to make 1 rocket fuel is itself worth 120 MJ of energy, whereas the resulting rocket fuel is only worth 100 MJ. So a 16.6% loss. Not even counting energy spent on producing the rocket fuel, or the additional light oil.

[Nero]

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by Nero:

Thats why i said it’s probably better.
You also forgot the 10light oil (+12MJ) involved in the recipe(~23% loss total)

No I didn't forget:

Originally posted by RiO:

The solid fuel consumed to make 1 rocket fuel is itself worth 120 MJ of energy, whereas the resulting rocket fuel is only worth 100 MJ. So a 16.6% loss. Not even counting energy spent on producing the rocket fuel, or the additional light oil.

My bad
I assumed you meant the energy required to produce the light oil

Weird to exclude that from the total energy content but that only matters when producing huge quantities so who cares.