Other fuel options

[Bootstrap]

I'd like to see a boiler that uses petroleum gas to make steam. It would have the same hookup points as the heat exchanger, but would accept a pipe for gas instead of a heat pipe.
I'd also love a recipe for turning cold steam into hot steam with heat exchangers, and an optional water-cold steam from heat exchangers. In both cases, you'd have the same power draw, but a higher flow-rate. I'd imagine 4 water-135 exchangers feeding 1 135-500 exchanger being roughly equivalent to 6 or 7 water-500 exchangers.
In place of the water-135 exchanger recipe, you could make 5 135 steam from 3 500 steam and 2 water in a modified heat exchanger, and feed that into the 135-500 exchangers powered by the reactor.
Finally, a furnace that could burn petroleum gas directly with the same crude efficiency as cracking heavy into light, making light into solid fuel, and burning it in a steel furnace. It would be 3x3, look more similar to a steel furnace than an electric one, have a native crafting speed of 2.5, and contain no module slots, but would be affected by beacons.

[bobingabout]

I have been working on making fluid powered entities possible for 0.17.

however, although oil product (gas, light, heavy) powered boilers would be cool, it's probably something that would be restricted to the realm of modding, as with most of your other suggestions.

Due to limitations on allowed inputs (single filter only) you couldn't make a boiler that accepts both water and steam as an input, but you could make a heat exchanger that accepts steam and puts out steam, increasing the temperature.
However, this sort of thing is unlikely to make it into the base game, and be restricted to the realm of modding.

[Bootstrap]

But, if you (or I) were able to make a fluid-powered boiler that could run on any liquid oil product using a separate hookup, could you then assign a fuel value to 500 degree steam to consume it and make 135 degree steam? Or, would it be better (as a first mod/rough draft) to make recipes for a modified chemical plant for steam output from 2 fluid inputs?

[bobingabout]

I made a steam powered boiler.

If you look at how the generator (steam engine) works in code, steam doesn't need a fuel value. it is calculated from it's heat capacity. The fluid energy source input that I've been working on does allow steam as a power source.
so, in theory, you could make a steam powered boiler, that increases the temperature of steam... Steam powered, steam in, hotter steam out.

Here's a screenshot of what I've been working on. Note: For this experiment, I gave water a fuel value, due to it being the easiest to obtain liquids, so with the exception of the normal water input of a boiler, look at it as if it were oil.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/btwniwjxz4hkc ... 2.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nekef72hjtsfy ... 2.png?dl=0

So, that's just a few things you'll be able to do with modding from what I've been working on.

However... I do agree that an oil(of some type) powered boiler would be good for the base game, so I don't want to sabotage that request with "You should be able to do it with modding now" things too hard.

[Factoruser]

First factorio should implement heating and pollution values for liquids resp. allow to burn them.

It would be nice if you have to fuel vehicles with light oil instead of anything that burns resp. need distinct fuel (steam locomotive, diesel locomotive, electric locomotive) or having electric locomotives that need charging stations. Applying a barrel on your vehicle would fill its tank.

Solid fuel on the other hand should be removed later. It's just too easy. You might have an official mod keeping older savegames compatible, resp. just can hide the recipe. Rocket fuel shouldn't be longer burnable and might be created directly from light oil. Nuclear fuel (cells) would be okay on the other hand, but should leave a depleted fuel cell, therefore it would end up in a kind of lowtech reactor using boilers instead of heat exchangers...

[bobingabout]

First factorio should implement heating and pollution values for liquids resp. allow to burn them.

They already have that.
in 0.16, the only entity that can burn fluids is the generator (steam engine), but by default it uses heat capacity and temperature. With modding you can make a power plant that "Burns fluid" to produce electricity.
I've been working on the source code for 0.17 to make any dynamic energy_source entity accept "fluid" as an energy_source type.
fuel_value sets the fuel value on the fluid and emissions_multiplier sets the emissions multiplier, remember it's the entity that specifies how much pollution it creates when running.

for that matter, recipes also accept a, emissions_multiplier tag, and I think items use fuel_emissions_multiplier instead. it is documented somewhere.

It would be nice if you have to fuel vehicles with light oil instead of anything that burns resp. need distinct fuel (steam locomotive, diesel locomotive, electric locomotive) or having electric locomotives that need charging stations. Applying a barrel on your vehicle would fill its tank.

Unfortunately, vehicles can't be fuelled by a fluid or electricity, I think they're all actually locked to burner=, but if you want them to be able to be powered by barrelled fluids, you can actually mod that in now. Just make a new burner fuel category, and apply it to barrels and the vehicle, with a burnt result slot, which returns an empty barrel.
Trains being able to hold a charge from the electric grid on effectively an accumulator either in the locomotive itself, or a wagon would be neat, but when I was talking about it with the devs (along with a lot of other non-viable options that were shot down right away) the big issue with this one was... How is it "Significantly different" from burner. In theory, you can already make this possible with scripting too. If we can put in a good case for why this option should be available (Again, it would likely be restricted to modding, not a base game thing, but it has been known for mods to be imported to the base game before, one of the ones I know is that I actually wrote a mod to store research progress when switching between technologies before it was added to base game) then it might happen that support for this could be added to the game.
Fluids in vehicles, the only support for this is basically hard coded into the fluid wagon.

Solid fuel on the other hand should be removed later. It's just too easy. You might have an official mod keeping older savegames compatible, resp. just can hide the recipe. Rocket fuel shouldn't be longer burnable and might be created directly from light oil. Nuclear fuel (cells) would be okay on the other hand, but should leave a depleted fuel cell, therefore it would end up in a kind of lowtech reactor using boilers instead of heat exchangers...

I would be against removing the solid fuel (and later) option, mostly because of the massive uses for burner fuel. Perhaps if some of these areas have newer options (Oil burning boilers, cars and tanks, electric locomotives etc.) then maybe my opinion would change.

[darkfrei]

I've been working on the source code for 0.17 to make any dynamic energy_source entity accept "fluid" as an energy_source type.

How can you get 0.17 api? How to test mods without the game?

[bobingabout]

I've been working on the source code for 0.17 to make any dynamic energy_source entity accept "fluid" as an energy_source type.

How can you get 0.17 api? How to test mods without the game?

The API is here: https://lua-api.factorio.com/0.17.0-preview/
But that only includes the game phase, not the data phase.
And I'm special, I have source access, only a select few of non-developers have this kind of access, which means I have to download the source code and compile the game myself.
This fluid energy source is a feature written primarily by myself, touched up and aproved by Rseding.

[Factoruser]

First factorio should implement heating and pollution values for liquids resp. allow to burn them.

They already have that.

Really ? Even resulting temperature and pollution ?

in 0.16, the only entity that can burn fluids is the generator (steam engine)

Of course, consuming fluids isn't a real difference to "burn" items... But an "oven" can only accept one fluid, you can't make a boiler take light oil or petroleum gas resulting in a different temperature, heating and pollution. But it also seems that Wube originally planned to use fluids for power plants but then decided to use solid fuel as a workaround. Maybe they had trouble implementing the tank wagon...

It would be nice if you have to fuel vehicles with light oil instead of anything that burns resp. need distinct fuel (steam locomotive, diesel locomotive, electric locomotive) or having electric locomotives that need charging stations. Applying a barrel on your vehicle would fill its tank.

Unfortunately, vehicles can't be fuelled by a fluid or electricity...

Now having tank wagons it won't be THAT difficult to fuel locomotives with fluids. Tanks and cars would be filled just with light oil barrels, dunno whether you can hook up on the event when you "apply" an item on a vehicle... And electric locomotives: how are robots/roboports working ?

Maybe you have to convert fluids into items and vice versa. E.g. a "electricity" / megajoule "item" that is "burned" by an electric locomotive. The problem is the transfer via a charging station entity resp. pump. It's not THAT beautiful if a building produces megajoules and put it inside a locomotive with an inserter...

Really interesting would become a steam locomotive that would not just burn solid fuel, but also consume water... ('course stupid, that much effort for a technology that everyone will skip).

Solid fuel on the other hand should be removed later. It's just too easy.

I would be against removing the solid fuel (and later) option, mostly because of the massive uses for burner fuel. Perhaps if some of these areas have newer options (Oil burning boilers, cars and tanks, electric locomotives etc.) then maybe my opinion would change.

I wanted to say using the oil fluids for boilers instead of solid fuel. The wood- and coal-accepting boilers might be upgraded to oil-consuming burners. And you are using electric furnaces anyway as soon as possible.

[bobingabout]

First factorio should implement heating and pollution values for liquids resp. allow to burn them.

They already have that.

Really ? Even resulting temperature and pollution ?

You can specify a fluid output temperature from a recipe, yes. and emissions_multiplier would go on the recipe.
I think I covered most of your points, but missed that one.

on my fluid void recipes on my gas vent, I have emissions_multiplier set so that some gasses like Oxygen do little to no pollution, but then others like chlorine do a lot of pollution. Set it on the recipe.