One method of producing power - and byproducts - available starting in MV is Benzene. This dense gas fuel is essentially the next logical step up from steam boilers cooking charcoal, as Benzene is also sourced from a steady supply of logs. That said the power profit, and side benefits, are much better
The general idea is to produce Wood Tar (either directly, fluid extract it from charcoal, or both) and distil that into Benzene. Charcoal can be extrated into Wood Tar in an LV machine, but the distilling step requires an MV machine. And Wood Tar alone has no uses before MV. There’s a myriad of ways to generate and utilize Benzene, as well as the byproducts it produces, from getting 1 steady amp of HV in MV all the way to skipping the initial…let’s call it a “prototype” stage of mark I fusion power in mid-late LuV. You could probably push (at that point) Nitrobenzene even further, but realistically I wouldn’t recommend it
So why choose this method of producing power? There are, broadly speaking, four arguments in favor of Benzene based power: Scalability, cost, and byproducts. Much much later on renewability also becomes an argument, but not until mid-IV at the very earliest
Scalability speaks for itself - benzene can carry you from MV to LuV and possibly a bit further still, albeit not without major expansions and modifications. Don’t expect a setup build in a given tier to last you beyond the next tier at best Cost exclusively refers to the price of gas-based generators. Diesel and semi-combustion generators are more expensive than gas generators, both as single blocks and as multiblocks. The cost of producing the fuel is the inverse story, with diesel being much cheaper to produce but more expensive to burn Byproducts are, IMO, the main argument in favor of benzene-based power. At all points you can generate critically useful byproducts from the process of producing benzene, some of which would be hard to source otherwise. None are exclusive as far as I’m aware, alternatives exist, but it is a very nice bonus Renewability only applies starting mid-IV at the earliest, and even then only when you’re building crazy designs that produce way more power than you strictly need at that stage. Oil cannot catch up because it’s fluid fields will actually be drained at those speeds, but again, this is only if you’re going way overboard
This is purely a fun fact for anyone not playing Garden of Grind (or similar skyblock/voidworld challenge run of GTNH), and potentially useful information(?) for anyone who is, but: One method of producing charcoal to turn into benzene is by using XP buckets to craft charcoal. It’s a surprisingly cheap conversion, at only 1 XP bucket per charcoal (this is roughly nothing with a GoG style mob farm going), but how to set it up? And how much power does it produce?
I’m no expert on GTNH skyblock specifics, but as far as I understand the earliest method possible for autocrafting is Extra Utilities’ Transfer Nodes with World Interaction Upgrades. Placed against a crafting table a transfer node with said upgrade will check a 3x3 area behind the crafting table for valid inventories, and use items in those inventories to try and craft stuff as if the items were placed in a crafting table. The exact orientation the transfer nodes uses is a mystery, and this process cannot use any block with an inventory, but it does work with vanilla chests, Mini-Chests, and of course most importantly, Hoppers
The simplest/cheapest charcoal autocrafting setup I’ve figured out is placing a Transfer Node on top of a Crafting Table, and giving it a World Interaction Upgrade. Use some trial and error to figure out which corner is considered the top-left slot of the crafting table, and place a hopper facing downwards in that spot. Below the hopper place a JABBA Better Barrel that is locked to empty buckets, so full xp buckets can’t be removed from the hopper (there are, in theory, ways to hopper filter items, but that process is more complicated to figure out than the entirety of Platline, so I’ll leave that to someone more adventurous to figure out). Below the barrel place another hopper facing into a GT tank that is fed XP, and below the tank place another hopper that feeds into a GT Item Pipe that has a throughput of at least 4 stacks/s (Huge Brass or Large Electrum are both good enough), and feeds XP buckets back into the first hopper. Finally prime the system by placing five empty buckets in the barrel or the XP tank. One tip if you wish to build this setup as compact as possible: Use a Retrieval Node to extract Ashes on the same pipeline that charcoal will be inserted. This leaves one side available for fluid I/O, and another available for power input
I’ve tested this setup to produce up to 2 charcoal per second, assuming a steady enough supply of xp (I’ve no clue how much a GoG style mob farm can produce, but the setup consumes 2 buckets of liquid xp per second, or 100mb/t). This perfectly feeds 3 LV fluid extractors turning charcoal into wood tar, which in turn feeds 80% of an MV distiller turning wood tar into benzene (or one of the other byproducts, bar Cyclopentadiene). Conservatively, assuming benzene was used to produce more benzene, two charcoal should cost ~2152 EU (including generator inefficiency/energy tax) to be processed and yield a profit of around 26648 EU. Given two charcoal is produced every second this should amount to a rough raw power profit of around 1332 EU/t. This setup can be upgraded of course - Speed Upgrades to increase autocrafting speed, Item Conduits to speed up/improve bucket cycling, etc. - but I’m not sure what the limits are
That all said, one obvious downside of the setup is the fact that it does consume XP, even if it doesn’t necessarily(?) consume very much of it - itself a critically important resource to GTNH skyblock progression. For that reason you might wish to use some method of generating power that utilizes the plentiful mob drops instead of the XP. Bonemeal from plentiful bones will let you do some very silly things with Sprinklers or an autoclicker, for instance, and Rotten Flesh can be centrifuged into Methane. It is, admittedly, a glacially slow process that struggles to produce 8 EU/t profit, but passive income is passive income
Two final tips, though I don’t expect them to be news to skyblock players: You can place Sprinklers on top of GT pipes if you place a plate/foil on top of the pipe, and you can I/O stuff through that plate if you use a screwdriver on the pipe to set fluid (in this case) to be allowed to I/O through the plate/foil, then use a Wrench to connect the pipe through the plate. Sprinklers, for the record, work in a 9x9 square centred on them. As for XP yield, Diamond Spikes can be enchanted in an Anvil, and Thaumcraft add-ons add new enchants worth looking into. In particular Wrath acts as Sharpness that stacks with actual Sharpness, and Educational (which is incompatible with Looting, unfortunately) increased XP yield. I’m not sure if there’s other useful enchants that can be placed on diamond spikes, but those two at least are worth looking into. Just be careful not to kill yourself on Sharpness/Wrath V or even VI spikes. They are very sharp
The First (temporary) Main Benzene Power Production (Advanced Coke Oven)
If you want to get a very early start with producing benzene as a main power source you’re going to need something much better than your old coke ovens. They got the job done before in large enough quantities, but for Benzene they will not suffice at all - 8 EU/t worth of benzene per coke oven, and that’s not even including the cost of actually processing the charcoal produced into Benzene. The best option would be a Pyrolyse Oven, but those are greatly handicapped by Cupronickel Coils, and (IMO) don’t become useful until Kanthal. If you need Benzene earlier than that, the answer is (theoretically) Advanced Coke Ovens
Let me be clear: Advanced Coke Ovens are worthless. They are cheaper than Kanthal Coils insofar that their bricks don’t require an HV tier EBF, and cooling their ingots in a Chemical Bath only requires an LV bath instead of an MV one, but the effort you would spend setting up an ACO could let you make great progress towards being able to produce Kanthal ingots, and the coils required to make Pyrolyse Ovens worth using. And given a choice between investing in a short term solution, or that same level of investment into a long term solution, well, that’s not a real choice. I’ll detail the ACO in case some bizarre gimmick run or a change in recipes (imagine a “press X to doubt” meme image here) creates a niche use for them, but in any realistic scenario, skip ACOs altogether in favor of working towards Kanthal Coils. They’re not that hard, everything along their path is super worthwhile, it’s just a better idea all around
ACOs are very simple multiblocks that cook logs into charcoal quickly, one per second. No byproduct creosote oil is produced, but you’ve probably been voiding that stuff (or not producing it at all) for a while now anyway. Input through the top, insert fuel through one of the sides, and output through the bottom One limitation of ACOs is that they can only accept a limited set of solid fuels. Realistically you’ll be using charcoal to smelt charcoal, giving you a net process of 16 logs -> 15 charcoal every 16 seconds. There are other options, but none as readily available, renewable and/or not HV Assembling Machine gated
| Advanced Coke Ovens | Ticks/recipe | Logs needed/t | Ashes/h (avrg) | LV fluid extractors | MV distillers | Benzene produced (mb/t) | Benzene to fuel setup (mb/t) | EU/t profit (base fuel value) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 320 | 0.1 | 675 | 2.8125 | 0.75 | 3.75 | 0.287037037 | 1246.666667 |
Given how straightforward this process is things should be fairly self-evident, but to clarify: Fluid Extractors extract the charcoal into Wood Tar, getting a chance at Ashes in the process, and the distillers distil the Wood Tar into Benzene. Dealing with the Ashes byproduct I’ll cover later on Benzene produced is the raw amount of benzene you should expect a setup running at full tilt to produce. Benzene to fuel setup is roughly how much of that will be spend on producing the benzene, minus any wood farms or byproduct handling, assuming you’re using MV gas turbines to power everything EU/t profit is the raw EU/t value of the amount of Benzene left over after powering the setup, not including any fuel efficiency penalties (or, later on, bonuses) for whatever generators you use to exract the power
The First Actual Benzene Power Production (Pyrolyse Oven)
Once you have Kanthal Coils you’re ready to start putting Pyrolyse Ovens to a serious amount of work. They’re honestly cheap to produce, their only caveat is that without Kanthal Coils they will run 50% slower than normal, while stilll consuming the same amount of power. Which, for producing power, is awful Starting at Kanthal Coils Pyrolyse Ovens lose the speed penalty, and starting at Nichrome Coils start gaining a speed bonus the higher tier the coil is. That said you realistically won’t be using TPV+ coils on Pyrolyse Ovens, at least for very long, since at that point you can craft the GT++ Industrial Coke Ovens
| Coil Material | Cupronickel | Kanthal | Nichrome | TPV | EU/t cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MV | 1280 ticks | 640 ticks | 426 ticks | 320 ticks | 64 EU/t |
| MV (nitrogen) | 640 ticks | 320 ticks | 213 ticks | 160 ticks | 96 EU/t |
| HV | 640 ticks | 320 ticks | 213 ticks | 160 ticks | 256 EU/t |
| HV (nitrogen) | 320 ticks | 160 ticks | 106 ticks | 80 ticks | 384 EU/t |
| EV | 320 ticks | 160 ticks | 106 ticks | 80 ticks | 1024 EU/t |
| EV (nitrogen) | 160 ticks | 80 ticks | 53 ticks | 40 ticks | 1536 EU/t |
| Pyros (nitrogen recipe) | Ticks/recipe | Pyro EU/t | Logs needed/t | Ashes/h (avrg) | LV fluid extractors | MV distillers | LV compressors/centrifuges | Benzene produced (mb/t) | Benzene to fuel setup (mb/t) | EU/t profit (base fuel value) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 53 | 1536 | 0.9056603774 | 8150.943396 | 33.96226415 | 15.8490566 | 23.22206096 | 79.24528302 | 19.74677919 | 21419.46138 |
Fluid Extractors and distillers work the same as before, extracting Charcoal into Wood Tar/Ashes and turning Wood Tar into Benzene respectively. LV Compressors/Centrifuges are used to produce the required Nitrogen. They work very well in a 1:1 ratio, so they’re lumped together for the sake of saving space For the record, the Benzene produced/to fuel the setup cells work exactly the same as before: Only the machines used in this block are considered, and everything being powered off of MV tier gas turbines is assumed. Using LV turbines with better fuel efficiency will decrease the setup’s fuel consumption
Note that in 2.7 centrifuging air was made slightly more expensive, now costing 8 EU/t instead of 7 EU/t. Why? No clue, but it was a change that was made all the same. It shouldn’t have a major impact on overall power consumption/profit, but make sure setups that don’t use lossless LV cables avoid that trouble
Once you have a power production system set up the next logical step is automating log input, in order to produce power passively. Unfortunately this step is a lot more involved, and a potential lag monster, compared to what diesel has to do to secure a supply of raw resources for a very, very long time
For logs you’ve got a few options. One is to manually cut down trees - the Twilight Forest has plenty of large trees it can spare before it becomes known as merely “The Twilight” - until a viable automated setup is available. This might seem a terrible solution, and it is a solution that doesn’t scale too well admittedly, but recall that “infinitely renewable” isn’t relevant until long after options before available. What you need is enough power to get to said options, and manually chopping trees is one way to do so. Each individual log you collect will yield ~27180 EU in benzene fuel profit, and the right tree can yield stacks of logs per
The first automated solution for log production comes in the form of IC2 Bonsai crops, though take this option with a grain of salt. IC2 crops are only as good as the amount of effort you put into them, both to stat level them and to ensure they are fed water/fertilizer, are planted in optimal conditions, etc. As a rough ballpark estimate, expect ~0.5 logs per second out of an LV Crop Manager tending to a single, full field of unstatted Spruce Bonsais in a Fungi Forest at sealevel, and providing water to the crops for extra hydration. This is an easy setup to build, but without stat levelling the crops has very limited output. For a stat levelled crop ballpark estimate: Expect ~0.6 logs per tick out of an MV crop manager tending to a total of 220 21/31/0 Spruce Bonsais in a Fungi Forest above Y128, and providing water to the crops for extra hydration. Feeding IC2 fertilizer as well should increase the yield to about ~0.8 logs per tick Another key point: Oak bonsais produce less logs than Spruce bonsais, so use the latter if at all possible. I’m not sure whether it’s just Oak bonsais that are weaker due to them also producing apples or whether spruce (and others) are better because they can form 2x2 trees, but either way, use spruce over oak Given that Crop Managers consume power per operation it can be difficult to judge how much power per tick on average they consume. Testing suggests that MV tier Crop Managers should be fine being fed 24 EU/t, or 0.75A LV, assuming they are harvesting/watering/fertilizing up to 220 Stickreed (or slower) crops
If you wish to continue using Bonsais as your source of logs - and there are several good reasons to do so, the primary of which is the incredible amount of lag produced by the direct competition - I would recommend investing into an Open Computers crop bot to stat level your crops for you. This crop bot can be build as early as mid-late HV, requiring some stuff you’ll probably not have made yet, but no Titanium or other Moon-gated materials. See https://wiki.gtnewhorizons.com/wiki/Open_Computers_Crop_Breeding for details, though be warned Crop Bots require a lot of crafting to set up. You may want to wait for AE2
An alternative option for tree farming that is available starting in HV is the EnderIO Farming Station. Set up properly this monster is able to spit out ridiculous amounts of logs for minimal effort, but set up improperly it will generate an equal if not greater amount of lag. Still, if you’re desperate, it is a viable option The optimal setup for Farming Stations - at least that I’ve found - is farming Spruce trees planted on Fertilized Dirt. Adding fertilizer to the Farming Station makes comparatively little difference, but fertilizer is at least cheap and easy to make if you wish to push your farm a bit further
Farming Stations require ~1A LV power using a Double-Layered Capacitor, ~1A MV using an Octadic Capacitor, and ~2A MV using a Crystalline Capacitor. Their range is a 3 block radius from the station, or 7x7 total, +2 per capacitor tier. So 11x11 for Double-Layered, 15x15 for Octadic, and 19x19 for Crystalline Expect ~1.8 (Double-Layer Capacitor), ~2.3 (Octadic Capacitor) or ~3.2 (Crystalline Capacitor) logs per tick. As well as ~0.13 (octadic) or ~0.18 (crystalline) saplings per tick. That said Farming Station tree farms will spill items on the ground! Use Advanced Item Collectors to grab the stuff that gets dropped
That all said farming stations have two major downsides. The first is that constantly growing and cutting down massive trees generates incredible amounts of lag from constant lighting updates, the second is that saplings will not grow on their own outside player render distance. You can feed your farming station fertilizer to force trees to grow anyway, but the lack of natural growth will significantly slow down log production even if it doesn’t stop it outright. And keeping a farming station inside render distance means the lag is unavoidable, so overall not the optimal solution. Simple, yes, but not optimal
Finally, circa mid-late IV, you have the option of crafting a Tree Growth Simulator. This ruinously expensive multiblock is able to produce absolutely ridiculous amounts of logs, to the tune of triple digits per tick when optimized at IV. It’ll take a while to get there, but this will be your final tree farm for sure
One of the byproducts you will be getting from producing Benzene - fluid extracting Charcoal into Wood Tar, specifically - is Ashes. At first glance they likely seem useless, but processing them can yield a wide variety of worthwhile byproducts. And processing them isn’t hard to do either, so it’s worth investing in Simply centrifuge the Ashes you are getting to produce a half dozen dusts that need further processing. Electrolysing works in all cases, though you might wish to directly smelt Banded Iron instead if you prefer getting more Iron than extra Oxygen. Quicklime and Phosphorous Pentoxide also have unique uses
| Ashes per hour (average) | LV Centrifuges | MV Electrolyzers | Soda Ash/h | Quicklime/h | Potash/h | Magnesia/h | Phosphorous Pentoxide/h | Banded Iron Dust/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8151 | 18.86805556 | 1.010007014 | 226.4166667 | 2608.32 | 1222.65 | 101.8875 | 452.8333333 | 579.6266667 |
| Benzene to process (mb/t) | mb/t Oxygen | Sodium/h | Carbon/h | Calcium/h | Potassium/h | Magnesium/h | Phosphorous/h | Iron/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.934080517 | 35.37625645 | 75.47222222 | 37.73611111 | 1304.16 | 815.1 | 50.94375 | 129.3809524 | 231.8506667 |
As a quick reference guide of what all dusts are produced, what they’re useful for and where else you’d source them from: Sodium comes from many different dusts, mainly clay or Lapis veins. Sodium has plenty of uses in turning quartz dusts into gems, chemistry, coolant cells for vacuum reactors/dynamo hatches, producing hydrogen/sodium persulfate, and more. You will never, ever, be short on sodium no matter what, though Carbon is easy to get from electrolyzing (char)coal or Dark Ashes (crafted from Pile of Ashes) from the Nether. Has a large number of uses in chemistry, crafting (SMD) Resistors, Carbon Fibre, producing alloys, and more. Carbon has so many uses you’ll be sourcing more from other sources as well Calcium mainly comes from Bonemeal. It has a number of uses as a catalyst in chemistry processes, but can also be used to produce IC2 fertilizer, Calcite for Concrete, Sano/Tutamen Essentia for TC, and some lategame uses a Benzene setup is never going to see Potassium mainly comes from Rock Salt and Saltpeter. It’s a component of Phthalic Acid, which is used in processing some high end bee combs and PBI, as well as the alternative Mica recipe. Other chemistry uses exist, but tend to be as a closed loop catalyst Magnesium mainly comes from Magnesite ore, from Olivine veins in the Overworld. Aside from being a chemical catalyst and lategame uses Magnsium is used in Magnalium and MV Superconductors, Sano Essentia, and de-oxydizing several dusts (mainly silicons) Phosphorous mainly comes from Overworld Apatite veins. It’s used in Phosphorous Silicon Boules, Indium Gallium Phosphide, GT++ Ore Washer and Fisher multi, and several chemical processes (usually as a catalyst). Pentoxide can be used for Phosphoric Acid, for some bee combs and easier Tanned Leather Iron I trust you’re well familiar with by now, both in terms of it’s sources and it’s uses. The only thing worth mentioning is that Banded Iron can be smelted directly into Iron, yielding a 1:1 ratio of Banded to Iron rather than the 5:3:2 ratio of Banded:Oxygen:Iron you get from electrolysing the stuff
As before, again, Benzene to process measures the mb/t Benzene required to run the machines listed in this cell, assuming everything is powered off of MV tier gas turbines
Early on - as in before you’re using a TGS to source your logs, so mid-late IV at the latest - whatever method you are using for producing logs will also produce a steady supply of saplings. You can simply shove them in a drawer with a void upgrade and forget about them, but saplings have their own uses
The obvious use is to turn Saplings into Biomass through a Forestry Fermenter (lower yield, faster) or GT Brewery (higher yield, slower than molasses). Biomass, in turn, can be directly distilled into a good ratio of Ethanol, or fermented into Fermented Biomass and distilled into a wide variety of byproducts (Note that 2.7 adds the Big Barrel Brewery, a new HV tier multiblock (needs EV tier circuits, but otherwise nothing noteworthy) that should be able to help with turning excess saplings into biomass. At HV tier this multi processes 12 saplings/266 ticks for 144 EU/t, ~36 LV Breweries worth of processing speed) Saplings can also be compressed into Plantballs, though this is only really useful in two situations: Producing Hempcrete Powder or following the Plantball -> Plant Mass -> Bio Chaff -> Mulch path to try and produce more biomass. This needs a PA/Maceration Stack to be fully effective, however, so EV tier tech
Ethanol has a few uses. For power it can be burned directly in combustion gens (192 EU/mb), be combined with Fish/Seed oil to make Bio Diesel (320 EU/mb), be combined with Raw Gasoline to produce Ethanol Gasoline (1100 EU/mb) or be reacted with Sulfuric Acid as a catalyst to produce Ether (537 EU/mb) Of those the two interesting uses are Ethanol Gasoline and Ether. The former because it lets you turn Raw Gasoline into a denser fuel than regular Gasoline before you’re able to upgrade the latter to HOG. The latter because it is both a gas fuel and a combustion fuel, letting it be used in either generator type Beyond that Ethanol can also be combined with Sulfuric Acid (or Dehydrated without sulfuric acid) to produce Ethylene, reacted with Butane to produce Anti-Knock Agent used in producing HOG, or electrolysed into hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. You could also mix it with water to create Vodka, if you want to
So, what about Fermented Biomass? As said it turns into a huge collection of extra byproducts, so let’s just go down the list one by one (ignoring water, because I trust that water is something you have solved by this point):
IC2 Fertilizer (1000mb:1 dust) can be used to boost IC2 crops, mixed with apatite to create a large batch of Forestry Fertilizer, or electrolysed into Calcite and Carbon dust. You’ll likely use it as fertilizer if you’re using bonsais or Forestry Multifarms to supply wood, otherwise calcite has some (unrelated) uses Acitic Acid (40:1 ratio) is used to make Advanced Glue, Ethenone for CBD, Acetone, or electrolysed. Advanced Glue certainly has at least one very critical use circa IV and Acetone is used for Epoxid, but the ratio is simply awful. It’s a supplement, but don’t expect miracles from fermented biomass alone Ethanol (100:15 ratio) I mentioned above. If you want extra power out of your saplings go the non-fermented route and produce ethanol gasoline or ether, since the ratio of biomass to ethanol is much worse with fermented. If you want to make bio diesel (despite it being laughably bad) the fermented route is better Methanol (100:15 ratio) is a combustion fuel (84 EU/mb) and used for a large number of chemical processed, from silicon rubber to bio diesel to gasoline. It’s not hard to produce directly and the ratio from fermented biomass isn’t great, but it’s likely to be used somewhere, so getting some for free is never wasted Ammonia (10:1 ratio) probably needs no introduction, it’s the expensive and slow as molasses chemical that is used for so many things you’d be hard pressed to make progress without having to use it in a half dozen places. That 10:1 ratio will feed roughly nothing, but free ammonia is free ammonia all the same Carbon Dioxide (5:2 ratio) isn’t directly used for much, and as much mostly gets electrolysed into oxygen and carbon dust, which both have a great many uses. Alternatively if you have exess carbon dust you can technically turn it into power by turning it into carbon monoxide, which is a 24 EU/mb gas fuel Methane (5:3 ratio) is a gas fuel worth 104 EU/mb that has several other uses in chemistry, the most notable being used as a catalyst to electrolyse distilled water very cheaply (relatively). If you’re supplying methane directly you can skip the necessarily steps to recycle it, making the process much better/easier Biogas (5:9 ratio) is another option exclusive to the single block distiller, turning fermented into a gas fuel with 40 EU/mb and zero other uses. If you really want this stuff for some inexplicable reason you can DT your fermented and turn the methane into as much biogas as the fermented directly would have made
Realistically you don’t have to bother with processing saplings, but part of the reason to choose Benzene over an oil based power in the first place is for the byproducts, so it would be rather against the spirit to just void the saplings. Besides, when you’re producing saplings anyway the running cost is negligable So, which route to take? If you want extra power out of your saplings go the regular biomass route to produce Ethanol, which can than be processed into either Ethanol Gasoline (higher yield, but less flexible and much more complicated) or Ether (lower yield, but flexible and much earier to set up/run). If you want more byproducts go the fermented biomass route, or if you’re the kind of insanely crazy to go bio diesel for whatever reason, definitely go the fermented biomass route. With the C11 LCR recipe turning Methane + distilled into CO2 and hydrogen, CO2 + carbon dust into CO, and CO + hydrogen into Methanol you can get a 10:23 ratio of fermented biomass to (m)ethanol to turn into bio diesel at a 1:6 ratio, or a cool 5:69 ratio of fermented biomass to bio diesel ultimately. Where to get the extra carbon dust and hydrogen from, you ask? Well, remember the part where you’re producing benzene? It also has DT byproducts…
(Don’t look at me to calculate the ungodly mess of machines and ratios required to make (fermented) biomass -> bio diesel work efficiently a second time. There’s a reason the first benzene tab was completely nuked after the replacement was finished)
Producing Extra Byproducts (Creosote Oil, Phenol, Toluene, Dimethylbenzen)
Benzene is not the only fluid that can be created with Wood Tar. By changing the circuit on your distillery you’re able to create Creosote Oil, Phenol, Benzene, Toluene, or three different versions of Dimethylbenzene - 1,2-D, 1,3-D and 1,4-D. Cyclopentadiene we don’t talk about, it’s not part of Benzene canon
Producing other things will take away from producing more Benzene, at least for now, but there’s nothing stopping you from briefly swapping a circuit around and producing something else you might need. To, again, cover what these various other fluids are used for: Creosote Oil I suspect you’re already familiar with. But, for the record: Torches, Railbed Ties, decorative Creosote Wood Blocks and Lubricant are made using Creosote Oil. It can also be burned for minor amounts of power, in regular or (ideally) in semi-combustion engines, or RC steam boilers Phenol is used in the creation of Epoxid, which (conveniently) is one of the advanced materials required to make a crop bot in HV, and is used as a catalyst in the production of Polybenzimidazole or PBI circa IV. Phenol is also a gas turbine fuel, with a fuel value of 288 EU/mb Toluene is used to make Gelled Toluene, a core component of (I)TNT, as well as Gasoline and HOG separately. It can also be distilled 1:1 into Light Fuel (because reasons?), Dehydrated alongside Hydrogen to produce Methane and Benzene, or burned as a gas fuel with a fuel value of 328 EU/mb Dimethylbenzene is an odd duck. 1,2 is used to make Phthalic Acid, 1,3 is used for literally nothing, 1,4 is used in the Kevlar line. Realistically you will be producing 1,2 exclusively, and electrolysing it into Hydrogen and Carbon until you need Phthalic Acid. All Dimethylbenzens turn 1:8:10 to carbon/Hydrogen
Note that in terms of hydrogen production it’s actually more efficient to produce and electrolyse Benzene directly, rather than produce 1,2-Dimethylbenzene and electrolyse that. That said very soon you’ll be upgrading to Distillation Towers, at which point you will swap to 1,2-D, so might as well prepare for the future
As for Toluene -> Benzene, it’s possible to dehydrate 1 bucket of Toluene with 2 buckets of Hydrogen to create 1 bucket of Benzene and 1 bucket of Methane. The Methane can than be processed into hydrogen (either directly electrolysed or used as a catalyst to electrolyse distilled water in an LCR), or converted 6:1:18 into even more Benzene and more Hydrogen than is needed for the dehydration step in a low tier Chemical Plant. It’s more power, and if (when) you have Explosive bees supplying ITNT the value of toluene itself will be reduced to either HOG or it’s direct fuel value. Or hydrogen, if you don’t want that for power
Producing Everything At Once (Distillation Towers, or The First Major Upgrade)
The first major upgrade to a Pyrolyse Oven setup comes in HV after crafting a Cleanroom and producing EV tier circuits - a Distillation Tower. DTs (for short) are multiblock distilleries that don’t choose between what single product you want, it just produces all of them. Needless to say this is a major upgrade (Incidentally, those same EV tier circuits can be used to craft a Vacuum Freezer, which is the multi that is most likely gating you from being able to craft and upgrade your Pyrolyse Ovens with Nichrome Coils, so get ready to upgrade your Pyrolyse Ovens more than once within HV)
To get the most out of your Benzene production, post-DTs, change the setup so that it is able to run off of excess Creosote Oil, Toluene, Phenol and Hydrogen (from electrolysed 1,2-Dimethylbenzene) produced. It’s an ordeal to balance it, yes, but it’ll turn raw Benzene production into raw Benzene profit Another thing you can do to increase power yield is combine Toluene and Hydrogen to produce Methane and Benzene. Assuming no overclocks this is a power positive process, but does require the benzene produced to be burned, at least in part, to make up for the total EU value worth of gases that went into it
| Wood Tar (mb/t produced) | EU/t Cost (Nitrogen production) | HV Distillation Towers | MV Electrolyzers | mb/t Creosote Oil | mb/t Phenol | mb/t Benzene | mb/t Toluene | mb/t 1,2-dimethylbenzene |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 656.25 | 769.2307692 | 26.25 | 42.525 | 164.0625 | 65.625 | 262.5 | 65.625 | 98.4375 |
| EU/t profit (base fuel value) | EU/t cost (Fluid Extractors) | LV fluid extractors | LV compressors/centrifuges | EU/t (Semifluid Gens) | EU/t (Phenol, Gas Turbine) | EU/t (Benzene, Gas Turbine) | EU/t (Toluene, Gas Turbine) | EU/t (Hydrogen, Gas Turbine) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 144001.9344 | 1800 | 112.5 | 76.92307692 | 7875 | 18900 | 94500 | 21525 | 19687.5 |
| Fuel Efficiency | EU/t cost (DTs) | Ashes per hour (average) | Logs per tick consumed | Large Semifluid Burners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.85 | 6720 | 27000 | 3 | 1 |
EU/t cost (Electrolysers) 2551.5 EU/t cost (Pyros/ICOs)
If the above is a bit of a confusing mess, well, concequence of a buffoon trying to jury-rig together a universal solution. Directly tying the numbers to Pyrolyse Ovens/single block machines would leave Industrial Coke Ovens without precious ratio calculations, and cause more issues later RE: GT++ multiblocks. But leaving out the single block machine calculations would also cause issues RE: Multis later on. It’ll become clear in the next block. Hopefully
In any case, if you want to know how many machines you need (or how many machines worth of processing capacity multis need to be able to replace), and how much power you should expect to produce given a certain fuel efficiency you are burning said fuel at to power the setup in the first place, simply create a copy of this tab/spreadsheet (don’t ask me how that’s done, I don’t know) and fill in the green fields with the required numbers. Don’t know how much Wood Tar you’re producing off-hand? Just throw a calculation at it. =3500*3/53 will give you the numbers for 3x EV/Nichrome Pyro ovens, for instance (3500 is the amount of milibuckets of Wood Tar one Pyrolyse oven recipe produces, assuming all the charcoal is fluid extracted into more Wood Tar, if that wasn’t immediately obvious. Multiplied by the number of said ovens, divided by the number of ticks per recipe will yield mb/t Wood Tar produced)
Industrializing Benzene Production (Industrial Coke Ovens)
Industrial Coke Ovens, or “Pyroke Ovens” as I tend to call them given that they are not limited to being used as only coke ovens, are a GT++ multiblock available starting in EV. Yttrium you can get from Rare Earth, which is a byproducts of ore processing several different ores, chiefly Redstone Ore, for the record
At first glance they might seem like a straight downgrade - a quarter the recipe size compared to Pyrolyse Ovens, and no speed bonus at all? Valid points, but their benefits end up more than making up for it. For one the recipe size is smaller, but also faster. ICOs take 256 ticks to process four C10 recipes at MV, which is between a Kanthal and Nichrome Coil Pyrolyse Oven at MV. It also does this consuming only 89 EU/t rather than 96 EU/t, since ICOs have an innate tier-based energy discount. Where they really shine, however, is parallels and Batch Mode. Which requires EV tier to reach full potential:
| ICO Tier: | Parallels | Ticks | EU/t cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| HV | 9 | 128 | 507 EU/t |
| HV (nitrogen) | 6 | 64 | 507 EU/t |
| HV (N, Batch) | 12 | 128 | 507 EU/t |
| ICO Tier: | Parallels | Ticks | EU/t cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| EV | 24 | 128 | 1291 EU/t |
| EV (nitrogen) | 24 | 64 | 1936 EU/t |
| EV (N, Batch) | 48 | 128 | 1936 EU/t |
| ICO Tier: | Parallels | Ticks | EU/t cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| IV | 24 | 64 | 4916 EU/t |
| IV (nitrogen) | 24 | 32 | 7373 EU/t |
| IV (N, Batch) | 96 | 128 | 7373 EU/t |
At EV tier, with C10/Batch Mode, an ICO is able to process the equivalent of 12 Pyrolse Oven recipes in 128 ticks, or ~1 recipe every 10-11 ticks. This is ~4 times faster than an EV tier Pyro oven with TPV coils, or ~2 times as fast as an EV Pyro with Naquadah Alloy coils. So, yes, a very major upgrade Of course it requires ~26% more EU/t to run, but even this is deceptive: Innate parallels (Batch Mode is purely a game performance improver, which is still good in it’s own right) are very good for energy efficiency. EV ICOs spend ~20650 EU per Pyro recipe. An EV/TPV Pyro will run you 61440, or ~3x as much EU
Of course all of this power does come at one cost (technically two, but given the fact the second would be access to Steel I’m going to assume it doesn’t count): Maintenance Issues. One issue, and your EV ICO is drawing ~2151 EU/t - too much. To solve this give them either 3x HV energy hatches supplied with 2A HV each, or give them a single EV energy hatch fed 2A EV. This allows them to draw the extra power required to keep running with up to five maintenance issues, only breaking down completely when they get a sixth and final maintenance issue. Of course you should fix issues before they get two, preferably
If you want to calculate machine ratios/energy costs/profit, refer to the mess above. ICOs will produce 875mb Wood Tar per recipe, times their number of parallels, times the number of ICOs, divided by the amount of ticks each recipe (or batch thereof) takes. Pyro ovens produce 3500mb/recipe, for the record
Increasing Fuel Efficiency (Large Gas Turbine, Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell, XL Gas Turbines)
No doubt you’re starting to get tired only getting 95%, 90% or 85% of the energy your fuel actually contains, and starting to get concerned staring at the 60% and 50% efficiencies that single block EV/IV gas gens have. Despite the latter two being entirely viable, even outright overpowered IMO, you might be looking for a way to get more energy out of your fuel nevertheless. The solution, available starting in EV, is Large Gas Turbines. Solid-Oxide Fuel Cells are technically also an option starting as early as HV, but I’ll discuss why they are not worth bothering with later
Large Gas Turbines are multiblock gas turbines that require turbines - or rotors, as I like to call them - in order to turn gas fuel into power. The output depends largely on the rotor used, but the gas fuel used can also end up choking power output a little (or a lot) depending on how the numbers work out
Rotors have three stats relevant to LGTs: Durability, Base Efficiency, and the Gas entry (as well as the Loose entry directly below Gas). Overflow Efficiency Tier theoretically matters, but not really. Durability is exactly what it says on the tin, how long a rotor lasts before it breaks. There is a random element to that, but broadly speaking the more EU/t a rotor produces, the more damage it will take every damage tick. Base Efficiency is your fuel efficiency. The Gas/Loose entry lists optimal flow rate and how much EU/t is produced at said rate. Overflow Efficiency Tier factors into how hard fuel efficiency dies from overfeeding
To get LGTs to run optimally you need to use a Fluid Regulator to carefully supply the right amount of fuel per tick, depending on how much the rotor needs of the specific fuel you’re using. There are calculators for rotors and turbines out there, but for the record: Take the amount of EU/t listed as Optimal Flow, and divide this by the EU value of 1mb of the gas fuel you are using. Floor the result to get how many milibuckets of fuel you need to feed the LGT per tick. Multiply that by the EU value of 1mb and the fuel efficiency as a fraction (I.E. 0.8 for 80% efficiency, 1.2 for 120% efficiency, etc.) to get your final EU/t output, if you are not able to optimally supply the exact amount of EU/t worth of fuel input the rotor wants. You can use a Portable Scanner to see/confirm the optimal flow rate once a LGT is fuelled and running, for the record
An example: Medium Manyullyn Rotors have 130% Base Efficiency, 2500 EU/t optimal flow, and I’m feeding it Benzene. Floor(2500/360)=6. 63601.3=2808 EU/t. So the optimal flow is 6mb/t Benzene for a Medium Manyullyn rotor, and it’ll produce only 2808 EU/t instead of 3250 EU/t because of the awful matchup
| Optimal Flow on tooltip (EU/t) | Fuel Efficiency | EU value of 1mb fuel | Optimal Flow in LGT (mb/t) | Output (EU/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2500 | 1.3 | 360 | 6 | 2808 |
If you feed turbines less than their optimal flow, power output and fuel efficiency will suffer. If you overfeed/overclock turbines their power output will increase, but fuel efficiency will drop. It’ll likely still be better than EV/IV single blocks, but you should ideally feed LGTs their requested optimal flow exactly (for reference, though I dont understand the underlying math at all: A Medium Manyullyn Rotor fed 7mb/t benzene produces 3166 EU/t, ~125% fuel efficiency. 8mb/t produces 3494 EU/t, ~121% efficiency. 9mb/t, 3790 EU/t, ~117%. 10mb/t, 4055 EU/t, ~112%. 11mb/t, 4290 EU/t, ~108%. 12mb/t, 4492 EU/t, ~104%. The takeaway here is not to be afraid of overfeeding/overclocking your LGTs early on, if you have enough fuel to eat the efficiency cost. Running Medium Manyullyn at double optimal flow increases EU/t output by 60% at the cost of reducing fuel efficiency by only ~25%. It’s not ideal, but it’s worth considering)
In addition to the difficulty of checking over 130-odd materials for the, if you’re lucky, two or three materials you can make meaningful rotors out of, and doing math to determine your optimal flow and power output if you’re not using an external calculator for that, and needing their fuel input regulated, LGTs have yet another downside: Unlike single block generators, which only burn fuel when they need to, LGTs will continue to burn fuel even when their dynamo hatch is full. They can be toggled on and off externally using Machine Controller Covers and redstone, and one should do that, but it’s another complication for the pile
One final note is that LGTs are capped at outputting no more power than their dynamo hatch can handle, though unlike the olden days they won’t explode if this limit is exceeded. LGTs can accept Buffered Dynamo Hatches to get 4A output, but cannot use Multi-Amp or Laser hatches to further increase output
“What rotors should I use” you ask? If you don’t have access to EV buffered dynamo hatches yet (these cost Tungstensteel to make, albeit a small amount of it) you’ll want to look at Medium TPV if you want the best fuel efficiency. Medium Ardite, Enderium Base or Vibrant Alloy should yield maximum power at less, but still respectable fuel efficiency rates. If these materials are too expensive/unavailable you’re better off using EV single block gas generators, as you’d be looking at maybe ~20% more fuel efficiency from an LGT at best (unless you compromise power output by a lot). Alternatively use 4x HV SBs instead. Once you have EV buffered hatches (and Large rotors given the implied access to Tungstensteel) you’ll want to look at Large Shadow Metal, Terrasteel or HSS-E rotors. Neglected magic and don’t have HSS-G coils? Large Manyullyn is a respectable temporary fill in, or if you’re really desperate, try Large TPV/Desh
Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell are a fun, but ultimately failed attempt at creating an alternative for Large Gas Turbines in terms of energy output. The power output is respectable once you include the steam (that you can run through a large steam turbine for extra power efficiency), but everything else is or has a downside
The multi, while technically available in HV, requires several obnoxious materials to craft which you otherwise have zero use for in that tier. The need to supply oxygen is largely irrelevant for a Benzene setup, given that centrifuging air for nitrogen produces oxygen as a byproduct, but does introduce a point of failure should nitrogen back up (though how that could happen in practice is beyond me). The need to throw steam through a steam turbine adds another multi, and rotor, needed to get full power output. Steam is only produced when the SOFC is at 100%, and it warms up at a rate measured in geological time periods, which is very bad if you don’t have giant batteries to minimize the amount of times the multi has to toggle on or off. Finally there is no scalability bar crafting more of the same (obnoxiously expensive) multis. LGTs can be upgraded with better rotors and/or overfed fuel, SOFCs are what they are and stay that way
There is also a Mark II SOFC, which has all the same issues: Annoying recipes, glacial warmup period, superheated steam (and in turn regular steam) to deal with, not great fuel efficiency, needs oxygen supply, zero scalability. It used to output more power than LGTs could in IV…but those times have changed (Curious about exactly what bonus with >1M EU/bucket fuels the Mk II’s tooltip talks about? Prior to 2.7 this was absolutley nothing as the bonus was bugged, getting erroneously overwritten. After being patched the bonus provides Nitrobenzene (and technically Naquadah Gas, I suppose) a 1.6x bonus to effective fuel density, greatly increasing fuel efficiency. With Large HSS-E rotors processing the (superheated) steam you can get 37176 EU/t out of 192mb/s, or 9.6mb/t Nitrobenzene. ~242% effective fuel efficiency is legit, beating out even Large Ichorium rotors…but it doesn’t make the SOFC’s quirks worth bothering with)
Loose Mode is a mechanic that has been a part of large steam turbines for a while, but as of 2.7 have also been brought over to Large Gas Turbines (most noticeably the XL version of LGTs, which gained Loose Mode as a replacement for its now removed Fast Mode). Loose mode can be toggled by right clicking a LGT controller with a screwdriver. When in Loose Mode an LGT will consume much more fuel, but at the cost of reduced fuel efficiency. Exactly how much depends on the rotor, and can be seen plainly on a given rotor’s tooltip: When a LGT is in Loose Mode it uses the Loose entry stats below a rotor’s Gas tooltip The rest of the LGT’s mechanics remain exactly the same when it’s running in Loose Mode - calculating optimal fuel efficiency and whether power output is throttled based on a fuel density/flow mismatch, overfeeding fuel to gain more energy output at the cost of (further) reduced fuel efficiency, etc.
(note that 2.7 Beta 3 has two bugs associated with Loose Mode - LGTs do not remember that they are set to it and will revert to Tight Mode upon world load, and (X)LGT will stop accepting fuel after toggling Tight/Loose mode. The latter can be fixed by breaking/replacing the input hatch until the bug itself is fixed)
XL Gas Turbines, or XLGTs for short, have been moved to LuV tier as of 2.7 (now needing an LuV tier ABS for the controller). Beyond that, and the aforementioned removal of Fast Mode and replacement addition of Loose Mode, XLGTs are mechanically identical to LGTs save for having 16x the throughtput. XLGTs can accept multi-amp and laser hatches in order to extract this prodigeous amount of power produced, and only require 12 rotors per multi (instead of the 16 one might expect). Take care when building these multis because the controller expect the rotors to be at their north and south, not east and west. You can use a GT wrench to rotate the controller 90 degrees if you wish/need to
Benzene is the third densest gas fuel of the ones you will ever seriously use as a gas fuel, but it’s still only 22.5% as dense as the best gas fuel, Nitrobenzene. And as the name implies, Nitrobenzene is made from Benzene. Starting in EV you will be able to turn your Benzene into Nitrobenzene To first address, and politely excuse away the elephant in the room: Yes, there are two recipes to produce Nitrobenzene. A LCR recipe, and a Chemical Plant recipe. The former is significantly worse for power production purposes, at least for a very long time, so I’ll only be discussing the Chemical Plant recipe
(note that the below numbers assume 2.6’s fixed chem plant speed - in prior versions, or at least 2.5.1, the impact of coils on processing speed was not calculated correctly and resulted in chem plants being faster than intended)
| C. Plant Tier | Nichrome | TPV | HSS-G | HSS-S | Naquadah | Naq. Alloy | EU/t Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HV (1x Par.) | 401 | 300 | 241 | 201 | 172 | 150 | 480 |
| EV (4x Par.) | 401 | 300 | 241 | 201 | 172 | 150 | 1920 |
| IV (8x Par.) | 401 | 300 | 241 | 201 | 172 | 150 | 3840 |
| LuV (8x Par.) | 200 | 150 | 120 | 100 | 86 | 75 | 15360 |
| ZPM (8x Par.) | 100 | 75 | 60 | 50 | 43 | 37 | 61440 |
| Chem Plants | Parallels | Ticks/recipe | EU/t Cost | mb/t Benzene consumed | mb/t Sulfuric Acid consumed | mb/t Nitric Acid consumed | mb/t Distilled Water consumed | Oxygen consumed (mb/t) | Nitrogen consumed (mb/t) | Hydrogen consumed (mb/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 8 | 300 | 3840 | 266.6666667 | 53.33333333 | 266.6666667 | 533.3333333 | 1158.290598 | 266.6666667 | 800 |
| Rough power profit estimate | EU/t Nitrobenzene produced | Sulfur Dust consumed per tick | HV LCRs for Sulfuric Acid (C7) | HV LCRs for Nitric Acid (C21) | MV DTs for Distilled Water | Oxygen produced (from =>) | LV compressors/centrifuges | MV Electrolyzers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 283860.8957 | 426666.6667 | 0.05333333333 | 1.540740741 | 85.33333333 | 17.06666667 | 68.37606838 | 109.4017094 | 34.56 |
(Oxygen consumption includes Sulfuric Acid and Nitric Acid, and deducts the amount produced as a byproduct by air centrifuging. MV Electrolysers are assumed to be electrolysing 1,2-Dimethylbenzene, seeing as how that is a very solid source of hydrogen you’re all but guaranteed to have access to) (The power profit estimate does not include the cost of producing the missing amount of oxygen and sulfur dust, fuel efficiency, and has at best a loose grasp on the cost of producing benzene. Nevertheless it can be taken as confirmation that upgrading to Nitrobenzene is a drastic increase in power profit overall)
Producing Benzene should be no issue, refer to the DT section once again for those calculations and ratios if you wish to confirm how much Benzene you are producing. Nitrobenzene will require additional materials, however - Sulfuric Acid, Nitric Acid, and Distilled Water
Sulfuric Acid is best produced using the C7 LCR recipe, directly combining Sulfur Dust, Oxygen and Water into Sulfuric Acid. Sulfur Dust can easily be mined from Sulfur veins, but if you want a passive source you ought to look into either Sulfur bees, or Nether Stonelilly IC2 crops. Netherrack dust is rich in sulfur (note that once you have access to a T4 rocket you can find sulfuric acid fluid fields on Io. If you were struggling with sulfur supply before, you won’t afterwards) Nitric Acid is (as of 2.7) a straightforward combination of a 3:1:4:1 ratio of hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen to nitric acid. In earlier versions you had to make Ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, than combine that with oxygen to make nitric acid. The ratios haven’t changed, it’s just been compressed to one step (also, reminder that LCRs have perfect overclocks by default, so 4x speed for 4x EU/t cost as opposed to regular overclocks 2x/4x. When, not if, the number of LCRs gets out of hand remember that each tier higher divides the number of LCRs needed by 4, which keeps them manageable) Distilled Water is an odd duck. You can distil it directly in DTs, which is a reasonable and extremely simple solution. Alternatively you can try to chemically react hydrogen and oxygen to produce pure H2O, or with access to a T3 rocket you can find it on Ross128b in crazy rich fluid fields
As great as an upgrade as Nitrobenzene is, however, trying to scale it up will still rapidly result in crazy machine spam and ruinously high oxygen demand. The oxygen can be solved with Sugar electrolyses, either through Sweeds or Sugar Beet IC2 crops. The Machine Spam is going to require more GT++ multis
Condensing/Consilidating the Setup (more GT++ Multis)
Expanding your (Nitro)benzene production you’ll inevitably run into crazy high machine requirements, which overclocking cannot solve without hurting power efficiency, and thus power profit. The solution, once they become available, is to invest into GT++ multis to replace single block machines, or DT multis Here I’ll list the GT++ multis that will prove useful in a (Nitro)benzene setup, and how many single blocks (or multis, in the case of DTs) they replace in terms of processing capacity. Meaning if a setup calls for 112.5 LV fluid extractors you need that many machines replaced worth of multi processing capacity
| Energy Tier: | Processing Array (most SBs) | Industrial Centrifuge (compressors/centrifuges) | EU/t | Large Processing Factory (fluid extractors) | EU/t | Industrial Electrolyzer (1,2-D Electrolyzers) | EU/t | Dangote Distillus (T2) (Wood Tar DTs) | EU/t | Industrial Electrolyzer (Sugar electrolysers) | EU/t |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HV | 16 LV machines | 40.50632911 | 130 EU/t | 45 | 308 EU/t | 16.72258065 | 324 EU/t | 6.666666667 | 512 EU/t | 16.69565217 | 324 EU/t |
| EV | 64 LV machines | 108.1690141 | 692 EU/t | 120 | 1639 EU/t | 44.928 | 1728 EU/t | 26.77165354 | 2048 EU/t | 44.8 | 1728 EU/t |
| IV | 64 MV machines | 271.1864407 | 3456 EU/t | 150 | 2049 EU/t | 56.19512195 | 2160 EU/t | 40 | 3072 EU/t | 56 | 2160 EU/t |
| LuV | 64 HV machines | 654.5454545 | 16589 EU/t | 360 | 9831 EU/t | 137.1428571 | 10368 EU/t | 80 | 12288 EU/t | 135.1111111 | 10368 EU/t |
Industrial Centrifuges can use Air Intake Hatches to automatically supply themselves with compressed air, removing the need for compressors entirely. Each Air Intake Hatch produces 250mb/t compressed air. You’ll need one hatch per 40 compressors/centrifuges replaced, assuming my math works out
In 2.7 the Large Processing Factory was deprecated in favor of a slew of new multiblocks that are able to better scale to the needs of an endgame base. Not something a benzene power setup would ever have to concern itself with, except that LPFs were used as multiblock fluid extractors. They will be no more, so we’re going to have to put it’s replacement, the Large Fluid Extractor, to work. Befitting the whole “better scale to the needs of an endgame base” idea the LFE is, to quote my own first impression of it, “beastly”, but this power does come at the cost of upgradability. You’ll need more than just a new energy hatch
For the record, the base stats of the LFE is 50% faster speed than a single block machine of the same voltage, and a 20% EU/t discount. In addition you can give the multi better EBF coils for a (multiplicative) +10% speed and -10% EU/t cost bonus, and give it better Solenoids to give the multi +8 parallels per tier I have, frankly, zero clue how in the world I could make a writeable let stand a readable 3D table given the three variables that matter to LHEs - energy tier, coil tier, and solenoid tier - so instead have a simple (I hope) list of EV-IV tier configurations you might use:
| Energy Hatch | Coil Tier | Solenoid Tier | LV Fluid Extractors | EU/t Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1x HV | TPV | EV | 60 | 299 | LFEs cost at least 5 stacks and 12 Tungstensteel worth of Robust Tungstensteel Machine Casings and the controller block, so consider this multi to be available around mid EV at the earliest. |
| 1x EV | TPV | EV | 120 | 1195 | HV Solenoids will be trivial around this time, and EV Solenoids likewise will be easy if you’ve got enough platinum for TPV coils. IV Solenoids require a T3 rocket or meteors. |
| 1x IV | TPV | EV | 240 | 4778 | Requires SP Coolant Cells, which needs Super Coolant, which requires Callisto Ice and Ledox dust. Both are native to T3 planets (or a Heavy Duty Alloy T3 meteor). |
| 1x HV | HSS-S | EV | 64 | 269 | - |
| 1x EV | HSS-G | EV | 137.14 | 1075 | - |
| 1x IV | HSS-G | EV | 320 | 4300 | - |
| 1x HV | HSS-S | IV | 80 | 336 | - |
| 1x EV | HSS-G | IV | 171.43 | 1344 | - |
| 1x IV | HSS-G | IV | 400 | 5375 | - |
The LFE has a unique power utilization quirk:
Letting the power production Loose (LGTs and the tragedy of Nerfchorium)
Perhaps you’ve found yourself in need of this before or perhaps you find yourself in need of it now after completing your multiblock based benzene power plant with a shiny new LFE - it’s time to burn all of that benzene (and friends) to turn into power. Loose Mode and Large HSS-E rotors let you get pretty close to 1A LuV output per LGT, but remember you can overfeed fuel to get more power at the cost of some fuel efficiency. So, how far can you push your LGTs with what fuels? I may not know the math behind it at all, but I do know how to brute force solve problems through experimentation, so here’s some numbers:
| Large HSS-E rotor (Loose Mode) | Small Ichorium rotor (Tight Mode) | Large Trinium rotor (Tight Mode) | Medium Ichorium rotor (Tight Mode) | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel | EU value/mb | mb/t input | EU/t output | Fuel Efficiency | mb/t input | EU/t output | Fuel Efficiency | mb/t input | EU/t output | Fuel Efficiency | mb/t input | EU/t output | Fuel Efficiency | ||||
| Nitrobenzene | 1600 | 16 | 31110 | 121.5234375 | 14 | 32665 | 145.8258929 | 12 | 32768 | 170.6666667 | 11 | 32266 | 183.3295455 | ||||
| Ether | 537 | 50 | 32447 | 120.8454376 | 43 | 32683 | 141.5399939 | 33 | 30909 | 174.4201794 | 32 | 31422 | 182.8561453 | ||||
| Benzene | 360 | 75 | 32594 | 120.7185185 | 63 | 32628 | 143.8624339 | 51 | 32683 | 178.0119826 | 49 | 32616 | 184.8979592 | ||||
| Toluene | 328 | 82 | 32452 | 120.6573468 | 68 | 32469 | 145.5747848 | 55 | 31646 | 175.421286 | 53 | 31770 | 182.7542568 | ||||
| LPG | 320 | 84 | 32446 | 120.7068452 | 70 | 32665 | 145.8258929 | 57 | 32056 | 175.745614 | 55 | 32266 | 183.3295455 | ||||
| Phenol | 288 | 94 | 32682 | 120.7225177 | 78 | 32609 | 145.1611467 | 63 | 32040 | 176.5873016 | 61 | 32474 | 184.8474499 | ||||
| Naphtha | 220 | 123 | 32671 | 120.7354028 | 103 | 32737 | 144.4704325 | 83 | 32227 | 176.4895947 | 80 | 32366 | 183.8977273 | ||||
| Refinery Gas | 160 | 169 | 32643 | 120.7211538 | 140 | 32665 | 145.8258929 | 115 | 32621 | 177.2880435 | 110 | 32266 | 183.3295455 | ||||
| Hydrogen | 20 | 1357 | 32762 | 120.7148121 | 1125 | 32760 | 145.6 | 922 | 32763 | 177.6735358 | 886 | 32708 | 184.5823928 |
Regarding the tragedy of Nerfchorium, which had it’s hidden bonus throughput multiplier reduced substantially in 2.7, as you can see it went from too good to be practical to too expensive to be practical. Ichorium does retain it’s nigh-immortal levels of durability, but being able to last an eon and a half doesn’t much matter when your replacement arrives within the next month or two. It’s still great for tools, top tier for electric prospector’s scanners circa LuV for quite a while in fact, but as far as rotors go Ichorium has become a relic of a more glorious past. To summarize:
Small Ichorium rotors have 2x the throughput of Large HSS-E, and equal fuel efficiency. 2x Large HSS-E is substanstially cheaper than 1x Small Ichorium, however, and small Ichorium is obsolete the moment you get access to Large Trinium in early to mid LuV. A more expensive temporary solution isn’t worth it Medium Ichorium rotors have the same throughput has Large Trinium rotors, and 15% more base fuel efficiency. That doesn’t even remotely justify the far greater cost, so the only time they can shine is if you craft them - expensive as they are - in IV, and drag them to late LuV/early ZPM. You can do this, Ichorium certainly has the durability to last through multiple tiers, and the rotor that makes Ichorium fully obsolete post-fusion does have a very slow production rate in a (at that point) extremely expensive and in demand machine, so there is a case to be made for Medium Ichorium. Just prepare for the Vis and Infusion cost Large Ichorium has a throughput comparable to Adamantium or Adamantium Alloy, but better and much better fuel efficiency than the former and latter respectively. Unfortunately it is ruinously expensive compared to either, and has little practical value in IV, so by the time you’ve a reason to craft it you’ve reason to go with a much cheaper, much saner option. Post-fusion the ability to craft Duranium makes Large Ichorium rotors fully obsolete, as well. That all said if you really want to put Large Ichorium to use, despite it being in no way, shape or form worth doing from any efficiency (or sanity) standpoint, there is one option: XL Steam Turbines. 2.7 moved the XLSHST to IV, as well as rebalanced the Deep Earth Heating Pump - yes, this is not a new multi, the recipe was just seventeen quintillion different kinds of clown tier - to be craftable in IV. If you really want maximum power out of them at all costs…Large Ichorium rotors can work Huge Ichorium rotors require a T2 fusion reactor to craft for the large Americium rod, and as mentioned previously Duranium makes Ichorium as a rotor material completely obsolete. You could end up in a situation where the fuel input numbers line up much better with Huge Ichorium rotors, but…don’t count on it
For the record, a Large Duranium rotor takes ~35 minutes worth of T1 fusion reactor…reacting to produce. The material input isn’t even worth mentioning if you managed to craft a fusion reactor in the first place, but that time requirement is not insignificant - especially in the context of steam-based fusion power, which has been rebalanced in 2.7 to require three steps to get maximum output, instead of the previous single step to get the vast majority (leading many people to consider the second step optional). At ~35 minutes per large rotor needing 36 to get your power production fully set up is a compelling argument for perhaps using weaker, but cheaper rotors initially, and Ichorium for sure has the durability to be used for this purpose basically no matter how much runtime they saw in IV and LuV. Mind you that 36 medium ichorium rotors is very expensive and time consuming in it’s own right, but you can prepare ahead of time