Semi sustainable ethanol power production

Basic Principles

If you are willing to make a totally sustainable ethanol generator, you can use Arbor Trees which domesticated, require 4,5 cycles to grow and/or produce branches and require 10kg Dirt per cycle, 70kg Polluted Water (irrigation) per cycle, that means: 315kg of Polluted water and 45kg of dirt are required to either grow branches, or produce branches

When you have 5 branches, you can start making a lot of Lumber. Basic inputs every 4.5 cycles are:

• 315kg of Polluted water
• 45kg of Dirt

Outputs:

• 1.5 Tons of Lumber

After this you would want to refine lumber onto Ethanol. 1.5T of lumber in an Ethanol Distiller produces

• 750kg of Ethanol
• 500kg of Polluted dirt, which then you can Compost to get dirt and use on your Arbor Trees
• 250kg of Carbon Dioxide, which if you want, you can either scrub it or use an Oxyfern to produce oxygen
• -360 kJ of electrical power to run the distiller

Now you can use the ethanol in a Petroleum Generator, with 750kg of ethanol it produces:

• 750 kJ of power
• 187.5 kg of Carbon Dioxide
• 200 kg of Polluted Water

The polluted water can be converted to fresh water in a sieve (200 kg fresh water at the cost of filtration medium) or by boiling (198 kg fresh water and 2 kg dirt). Lavatories can then consume roughly 135 kg to produce the requisite 315 kg to start the cycle again; fully supplying the tree over 4.5 cycles requires six duplicants.

This gives a net gain of:

• 390 kJ of power (average 144.4 W)
• 445 kg of Dirt (98.9 kg/cycle)
• 65 kg of Water (14.4 kg/cycle)
• 187.5 kg of CO2 (41.7 kg/cycle)

Wild Tree Planting

Arbor Trees can also be planted wild by Pips. A wild tree takes 18 cycles to produce 1500 kg Lumber, but consumes no resources. The output is the same, but there is no water or dirt consumed in the process, giving a net gain per tree of

• 390 kJ of power (average 36 W)
• 500 kg of Dirt (27.7 kg/cycle)
• 200 kg of Water (11.1 kg/cycle)
• 187.5 kg of CO2 (10.4 kg/cycle)

Note that while the per cycle production is lower, the per tree production increases - especially for water. Four wild trees, which produce the same amount of lumber as a single wild tree per cycle, will produce 44.4 kg/cycle of water and 111.1 kg/cycle of dirt, with the same amount of power and CO2 as a domestic tree. In essence, wild trees are trading space for more resource output.