I mentioned this in another thread, but I thought it deserved its own conversation. What do you guys think of adding wood gasifier tech? you wouldn’t be able to power a deathmobile on it, but an RV just travelling around might be able to get 30mph or so? I imagine it being a viable power source for people who like to play with a ‘1’ for city size. cars and gas stations are NOT ‘EVERYWHERE’ when you play like that.
The engine would be fueled by the gaseous fumes released from the super heated(yet not on fire) wood in the wood gasifier. this would be an almost infinite fuel supply balanced of course by a somewhat lower load capacity and top speed.
I see this being used more for bases that don’t want a big and fragile solar farm to power their crap and could instead plunk down 1 or 2 gasifiers surrounded by heavy fencing. and jumper cabled to your battery bank inside your base…
the details would vary from base to base, but I really think that this idea has merit.
And what about liquefiers? You can turn char/coal into a fuel that has the same grade as gasoline. Ofc that process only turns multiple kg (if not tons) of coal into x litres, but that only with some chems and time.
A gasifier would give you instant (low grade) fuel, but the liquefier could supply higher grade fuel (after some time and some materials used)…
Hmm, what about a charcoal steam engine? Takes water and charcoal, can explode if overheated? Definitely would be low power output, so i like the idea. Maybe have/make different models with differwnt torque vs hp.
Damn. I love the charcoal steam engine idea. Have it generate craptons of heat, and need fuel supplied directly into itself, with limited capacity(so necessitating refueling during transit).
Wood burning engine is a recurring request. That’s the third request for it I’m seeing, but I’m pretty sure there were more before that.
I’ll just quote myself, because the situation didn’t change much since the last time:
I like the general idea, because this sounds like one of those things you'd reproduce quickly after the world died, but I know nothing about automobile steam engines (only few bits about the huge, ultra-bulky power plant ones).
If someone did the necessary research and listed it in a readable format, I could help or even write it myself.
I’m looking for things like:
[ul][li]How to feed the boiler: automatic system or having a tar-covered man shovel in broken planks? How often?[/li]
[li]Water (or any other working fluid) use and reuse: open or closed system? Clean water or any water? How much water used?[/li]
[li]How to regulate output: some sort of super/turbocharger increasing/limiting oxygen input?[/li]
[li]How to clean it after usage? Can it work as a continuous process?[/li]
[li]Heating up: do the mechanics (other than power output) change before it gets ready to use?[/li][/ul]
Also, DYI solutions much preferred and nothing that requires an actual factory. When in doubt, assume that most of the technology in the game is like it is now in real life, rather than human-shaped robots running on energy provided by internal thorium reactors.
Some of the ideas can (and possibly should) be simplified, but realism is a bonus.
As for wood gasification, it looks like it would play less nicely with the current system than steam engines. The whole heating up with different fuel and re-using existing engines but limiting their output. I may be misreading things, but I think steam engines would be better here.
But again, I know next to nothing about wood gasification.
I’d say one or the other, because their in-game effect is pretty much identical (push wood, acquire torque).
Charcoal would probably be a better solution than woodue to density and familliarity.