Mix Petroleum Coke and Coal?

[The Chaotic Coder]

I'm about to set up some refineries for the first time, and after looking through the recipes I need to get rid of the heavy oil residue by turning it to Petroleum Coke and sending it to my power plants.

Before I set up some big thing and find out it doesn't work, I wanted to ask here.

I already have a bunch of coal power plants. Can I just mix the Petroleum Coke with the Coal on the same belt? Or will this jam the inputs of the power plants?

[Shabazza]

I don't see real issues here.
It will not block the coal power plants themselves, but may/will block the input conveyor intermittendly, as the plant will only accept petroleoum coke, when the last piece of coal from internal buffer was used. (and the other way round)
But that's not different from when you have 1 coal type, as you usually have some overproduction anyway. So your conveyor will even now stop at times, bc internal buffer is full.

Just make sure to not accidentally mix coal sorts in truck stations. That will not work.

[cswiger]

The power plants will only accept one type of fuel, so you're better off not mixing PetCoke and Coal. Build a new set of power plants instead, or use the AWESOME sink to take in the PetCoke.

Note that you probably do want to keep a storage container or two of PetCoke for the future, however-- it's used for Aluminum refining.

[Shabazza]

Gimme a sec. I'll try it...

EDIT: Works exactly as I wrote earlier.
If there are 5 pieces coal and then 5 pieces coke on the belt, the plant will feed the col into buffer and conveyor will then stop until those 5 are used.
Then the 5 coke will feed. And so on.
So no problem mixing them on the same belt in that scenario. :)

[Honorable_D]

It is kinda weird how both Petcoke and Rubber are setup. You get them in tiers 5-6 but for Petcoke you never use it till tier 7-8. I AWESOME sunk so much Petcoke over the course of tiers 5-6.

Rubber isn't used in major crafting recipes until tiers 7-8 so I sunk tons of that too.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

It is kinda weird how both Petcoke and Rubber are setup. You get them in tiers 5-6 but for Petcoke you never use it till tier 7-8. I AWESOME sunk so much Petcoke over the course of tiers 5-6.

Rubber isn't used in major crafting recipes until tiers 7-8 so I sunk tons of that too.

Indeed. I'm quite happy that I came across a silicone circuit board recipe.
I'm dumping loads of the coke/rubber into circuit boards to save on overusing plastic.

[Shabazza]

Rubber? Well, this topic derailed quickly...

[Honorable_D]

Oh, yeah the alternate recipes could help. Sadly I don't have a lot of them...

[tulle040657]

I use my Petroleum Coke to make aluminum scrap

[whyteboi]

Originally posted by tulle040657:

I use my Petroleum Coke to make aluminum scrap

ya, plenty of coal and iron in the map for steel. aluminum more important

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by Shabazza:

Gimme a sec. I'll try it...

EDIT: Works exactly as I wrote earlier.
If there are 5 pieces coal and then 5 pieces coke on the belt, the plant will feed the col into buffer and conveyor will then stop until those 5 are used.
Then the 5 coke will feed. And so on.
So no problem mixing them on the same belt in that scenario. :)

But, I think, in the short moment of switching, this generator is offline, which can switch the fuse, if you are near the max capacity.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

But, I think, in the short moment of switching, this generator is offline, which can switch the fuse, if you are near the max capacity.

I'll be honest, I've not checked, but unlike constructors which only consume the items when the process is completed, generators consume the fuel unit immediately (because the rate of consumption differs depending on the fuel).

So in other words, the moment the generator consumes the last fuel item in its internal inventory, it should free up the slot for another type to be placed within with no downtime.

[The Chaotic Coder]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

So in other words, the moment the generator consumes the last fuel item in its internal inventory, it should free up the slot for another type to be placed within with no downtime.

I've mixed in the Pet Coke with the coal and watched it for a few minutes.

When the last piece of Coal in a generator gets consumed, it burns for 4 seconds (after the inventory becomes empty). So there's plenty of time for a piece of Pet Coke to enter the generator. Same thing when the last piece of Pet Coke is used, except it only burns for 2.4 seconds, but that's still long enough for Coal to start coming it.

The only issue is that if the belts aren't upgraded enough, a mix of the two might not move fast enough. With pure Coal you need 1 item every 4 seconds per gen, but a 50/50 mix needs an average of 1 item every 3.2 seconds each. So if, for example, 8 gens are fed with a MK2 belt (which is the exact perfect ratio for pure coal) then they'll start running out of fuel if you're close to max capacity.

[VladK02]

use smart splitters. One belt can mix coal and petroleum coke, smart spliters can send one or the other type of fuel to the power plants. coal goes to the left, coke goes to the right.

[The Chaotic Coder]

Originally posted by VladK02:

use smart splitters. One belt can mix coal and petroleum coke, smart spliters can send one or the other type of fuel to the power plants. coal goes to the left, coke goes to the right.

I don't have them unlocked yet.

There isn't enough coke to keep even 1 plant fed all the time. The oil well and refinery is a 2-minute Hypertube ride away, and I'm basically transporting plastic + coke in my pocket while I wait to unlock trains. I put the plastic into the factory, and throw the coke into a container where it gets mixed in with the power plant's coal. It only takes about 10-15 minutes to burn through, and then it's back to pure coal.

[sansee]

Originally posted by jchardin64:

There isn't enough coke to keep even 1 plant fed all the time.

That shouldn't be a problem.

With only 2 refineries taking heavy oil residue into PetCoke it's more than enough for a 3:8 generator setup.