Chlorine: (Rock) Salt Electrolyses (LV) - 2160 EU/bucket, 3.6 seconds/bucket (Rock Salt) / 9600 EU/bucket, 16 seconds/bucket (Salt) (Rock) Salt can be found in the overworld as part of Salt veins, which is a deceptively important vein to find at least one of relatively early due to Lepidolite being the only source of Lithium for good batteries in LV. While you’re there stock up on some salt. Chlorine is always good to have on hand
Salt Water Electrolyses (LV through Ghast Tiers, more realistically EV+) - 21600 EU/bucket, 36 seconds/bucket (+12000 EU using the Ghast Tier route) Salt water is a respectable source of Chlorine and hydrogen, but suffers from the issue of all the rivers and lakes in the world being fresh water. If you have a source of Ghast Tears you can create salt water by chemically it with water, which will yield one bucket of Chlorine per Gast Tear. Farming tears isn’t necessarily a difficult task, there’s an IC2 crop that produces them (albeit slowly) and Carminite Ghastlings from the Twilight Forest can make for functional mob farms even early on. That said your first source of bulk salt water is likely going to be one of four fluid fields. The first being found on the Moon
Ore Processing (MV) - 23760 EU/bucket, 13.2 seconds/bucket (Lazurite Dust) Few items directly yield Chlorine through what could be considered ore processing steps, but there are two options: Apatite Dust and Lazurite Dust. The latter is straightforward, and likely something you will or have been doing to get pure alu dust in early MV, but the former is more complicated. The direct electrolyses recipe is fine for chlorine, but apatite dust has a different processing method involving an LCR, Sulfuric Acid and Water. This recipe doesn’t change the chlorine yield for better or worse, but does greatly increase the Phosphorus yield. For this reason you might want to wait for the LCR recipe, as Phosphorus can be difficult to source in bulk otherwise (slow and steady byproducts from a Benzene power system notwithstanding) and will become important in it’s own right down the line
Scamming the Questbook Shop (MV) - 12160 EU/bucket, ~10.2 seconds/bucket You can buy 16 buckets of Chlorine from the questbook shop every 10 minutes for the low price of 25 Chemistry Coins (which, for the record, I would recommend spending early because they’re going to be all but straight useless very soon). Wouldn’t it be great if you could get more faster, and at a slightly cheaper price? Buy 16 buckets of Iron(III) Chloride, only 70 coins per batch! “That’ll reduce my need for hydrochloric acid, but what if I don’t need more Iron(III)?” you ask? Simple: Electrolyse it. You can, in fact, buy and immediately electrolyse those 16 buckets of Iron(III) Chloride into 48 buckets of actual Chlorine. Admittedly the Iron(III) Chloride trade is on a 40 minute cooldown instead, but that still allows you to almost double the rate at which you can conjure chlorine from thin air through a book you can conjure at a moment’s notice. And those Chemistry coins aren’t useful for much else anyhow
Chlorobenzene electrolyses (EV) - 34560 EU/bucket, 19.2 seconds/bucket Once you’ve gotten a T2 rocket you might be tempted to go to Mars and find a richer Salt Water vein to turn into Chlorine. Instead consider tapping into a Chlorobenzene field - in terms of chlorine per bucket you’re getting the same yield and in terms of chlorine per tick you’re actually getting less (a GT++ electrolyser running batch mode at LuV will yield 225b hydrogen, 45b chlorine and 270 carbon dust every 127t at 15552 EU/t with Chlorobenzene, compare 48b hydrogen, 48b chlorine and 144 sodium hydroxide every 128t at 20736 EU/t with Salt Water), but it’s cheaper to process, yield significantly more hydrogen and yields a much more useful Carbon Dust byproduct than Sodium Hydroxide. Note that for the purposes of chlorine it’s not worth turning the chlorobenzene into Phenol and diluted Hydrochloric Acid first, unless you’re specifically after stupid quantities of diluted acid for some reason I guess
Fluorine: Ore Processing (MV/HV) - variable cost Though few dusts yield Fluorine directly there are few that do - (Blue) Topaz, Lepidolite, Mica and Biotite dusts all yield Fluorine when electrolysed in an MV machine. Mica is probably better put to use making isulation for EBF coils, but the other dusts don’t have alternative uses worth mentioning, so those you will likely want to electrolyse. In theory you could set aside some Blue Topaz for later, but I’m going to take a guess and assume that something called “Infinite Spacetime Energy Boundary Casing” is perhaps not of immediate concern when you’re trying to mass produce PTFE circa early HV In HV you’re able to electrolyse Cryolite Dust into Fluorine as well. Cryolite is a dense source of Fluorine, so it might be worth avoiding spending it on cooking alumina early on in MV (compress pure alu dust into Raw Alu, and EBF that into alu ingots instead. Rush an MV electrolyser if you go that route)
Black Stone Lily crop (MV) - 52400 EU/bucket, 220 seconds/bucket A not great, but fully passive source of Fluorine. Black Stone Lily produces Black Granite Dust, which centrifuges 5:1 into Biotite Dust. Is it a great, fast and/or efficient conversion ratio? Not really, but passive income is passive income, and unless you’ve got bees or meteors you’ve got few other options
Cryolite Bees (LV+ minimum, likely MV/HV or later) - variable cost In terms of pure fluorine production Cryolite bees are actually better than Fluorine bees, provided you’re willing to do some processing. Confused about the numbers? I totally, 100%, absolutely and most assuredly do not emphasize. Totally got this immediately first try, definitely. Anyhow, a Blinding speed Fluorine/Cryolite bee in a max production boosted Alveary will, on average, produce 235.255 combs and 143.445 combs per hour respectively (note that’s a fraction, not hundreds of thousands). Each Fluorine comb is worth 250mb straight up, whereas each Cryolite comb can be processed into one Cryolite Dust, which (functionally) electrolyses into 600mb fluorine. To save you the effort of typing into a hopefully functional calculator app (or search engine, or your massive brain or whatever): Average of 58813.75mb/hour for Fluorine bees, average of 86067mb/hour for Cryolite bees
Hydrogen: Limonite Centrifuging (LV) - 3520 EU/bucket, 17.6 seconds/bucket (7050mb steam/bucket, 3.525 seconds/bucket using a bronze Steam Separator multi with full parallles) Limonite is a type of iron ore found in a common overworld vein. Centrifuging either type of Limonite dust yields iron, oxygen and hydrogen at a 4:1:2:1 ratio. Concerned about getting more fluid than you can store doing this? Keep limonite around as dust, and centrifuge when needed. Not ideal, but a Steam Separator is pretty fast when it’s running full parallels, and if you’ve replaced most of your other steam infrastructure you should be able to manage the 100mb/t steam cost
Sodium Hydroxide Burning (LV/MV) - 400 EU/bucket, 5 seconds/bucket Sodium is a common byproduct of various electrolyses recipes, albeit most are MV (Salt in LV, mainly Sodalite, Lazurite and Clay Dust in MV). One Sodium dust reacts with water to produce three Sodium Hydroxide and one bucket of hydrogen in a Chemical Bath, which is a cheap source of hydrogen, but leaves the hydroxide to deal with. While it can be electrolysed to recover the sodium this makes the process no less inefficient as straight water electrolyses, so one solution is to simply trash excess hydroxide. Hence why the process is called “buring” sodium to produce hydrogen. It’s not the best method, but rest assured you will get more sodium than you have a use for otherwise circa MV so it is a valid option…if you’re willing to leave it there, of course
Sodium Persulfate (LV) - 10800 EU/bucket, 15 seconds/bucket (does not include the cost/time of producing Sulfuric Acid) One way to process excess Sodium Hydroxide is to react it with sulfuric acid to produce Sodium Bisulfate, which in turn electrolyses into hydrogen. Where to source the sulfuric acid from? It is possible (albeit neither quickly, cheaply or easily) to chemically react sulfur dust with oxygen twice, than react it with water to produce sulfuric acid without ever using pure hydrogen in the production chain. Note that from an optimization standpoint this process is questionable at first, seeing the oxygen, energy and time cost involved with producing sulfuric acid and the fact you can buy Sodium Persulfate from the questbook shop, but you will want a steady supply of Sodium Persulfate for ore processing if not coating circuit boards (Iron(III) Chloride is better for the latter task, and similarly purchaseable from the questbook). As such I would recommend doing this anyway, for the Persulfate if not the hydrogen
Water Electrolyses (LV) - 30000 EU/bucket, 50 seconds/bucket Exactly what it says on the tin. Slower than molasses and ruinously expensive, but braindead simple, an all around attractive trap option for the chronically lazy. Only do this if you’ve got old passive power producers sitting around from say the steam age, otherwise this process is not worth doing
Petrochem Electrolyses (MV) - Highly variable speed and cost, but the simplest method would be obtaining Methane and directly electrolysing that into hydrogen. Direct Methane electrolyses is 1200 EU/bucket, 1 second/bucket Petrochemistry can (and with a Distillation Tower, does) yield a large amount of various chemicals collectively called hydrocarbons for a reason - the lot of them can be electrolysing into varying amounts of hydrogen and carbon dust. Not sure what to choose? The easiest target for hydrogen is Methane Methane can be electrolysed 1:4 into hydrogen, and in MV can be sourced through many different things - Organic items, chiefly logs, can be centrifuged into methane directly (slow and expensive, but easily passived); fermented Biomass can be distilled into Methane (not a good primary source, but a good use of a byproduct); various oil (by)products can be distilled into methane (the main one being Refinery Gas, which is very easy to get in large quantities from good natural gas/light oil fluid fields). Note that with LCRs you’ll get a better recipe that uses methane as a catalyst (effectively) to functionally electrolyse distilled water, which is even more hydrogen yield than electrolysing methane directly. In general, though, if you’re doing petrochemistry and you’re not burning literally everything possible you’re probably stockpiling something you can electrolyse into hydrogen somewhere
Pyrolyse Oven Electrolyses (MV) - Variable speed and cost based on the Pyrolyse Oven. 1,2-Dimethylbenzene electrolyses is 2592 EU/bucket, 2.16 seconds/bucket If you’ve got a Pyrolyse Oven (or just a huge excess of charcoal and a fluid extractor) you can produce Wood Tar, and distil that into a variety of chemicals that (mostly) can be electrolysed into Hydrogen. Before you’ve got a Distillation Tower the most efficient target for hydrogen yield is actually Benzene, but once you’ve got a DT you should focus on producing and electrolysing excess 1,2-Dimethylbenzene. 1,3 and 1,4 Dimenthylbenzenes also exist, but are used for nothing and nothing worth mention respectively, so focus exclusively on 1,2-D. For hydrogen they’re all equal, electrolysing at a 1:10 ratio
Mars Phenol Electrolyses (EV) - 5880 EU/bucket, 15.6 seconds/bucket As mentioned above Chlorobenzene on Mars is a fantastic source of chlorine before LuV, but when after hydrogen specifically it’s worth processing the Chlorobenzne into Phenol before electrolysing it. Effectively this step trades the bucket of chlorine for a bucket of hydrogen and oxygen, which is good if you’re after hydrogen specifically. The diluted hydrochloric acid you can also distil and electrolyse into another bucket of hydrogen and chlorine per recipe, though the distilling step is likely to be slow if you don’t have a Dangote Distillus or Mega Distillation Tower (the latter of which would be overkill). For the record, a GT++ electrolyser at LuV tier using Batch Mode will produce 336b hydrogen, 56b oxygen and 336 carbon dust every 126t for 15552 EU/t electrolysing Phenol. Alternatively, if you really want to have both at the cost of greater complexity, you can chemically react Chlorobenzene with Sodium Hydroxide to create Phenol and Salt, electrolyse the salt into Sodium and Chlorine, and chemically bathe the sodium with water to get back the Sodium Hydroxide. It’s slower, more complicated and more expensive, but yields double the chlorine and 7/6th the hydrogen compared to the more direct method
Gas Siphon (LuV) - Variable yield depending on whether you’re pumping from Jupiter or Saturn With access to a T4 rocket you are able to find Mithril Ore on Io, Mercury or Venus. This is what you need to craft a Planetary Gas Siphon, which - despite the name - is build in a space station above a gas giant to harvest one of four gasses/fluids depending on the giant and the depth being pumped. LuV gives you access to Jupiter, which will yield tons of hydrogen in the highest mining depths (meaning the power cost is going to be manageable, and the yield not depressing). Note that unlike fluid fields (pre-void drill) Gas Siphons are infinite, they will never run out of resources no matter how long they run
Nitrogen: Compressed Air centrifuging (LV) - ~4051 EU/bucket, ~20.5 seconds/bucket Compressing empty cells to produce air cells, and centrifuging these for nitrogen and oxygen. Note that Nitrogen isn’t useful within LV itself, only coming into play once you start using an EBF (Nitrogen makes two recipes cheaper/faster). So you can delay nitrogen until late LV/early MV
Ender Pearl Dust Electrolyses (MV) - ~2773 EU/bucket, 2.2 seconds/bucket You likely have an Enderman with Regeneration in your old TiC smeltery producing Liquid Ender for you. You can cast this out as Blocks of Solid Ender, macerate that into Ender Pearl Dust (you can also macerate individual pearls, but this is slower), and electrolyse the dust into Beryllium, Potassium and (of course) Nitrogen. This is frankly an underutilized method of obtaining nitrogen post-LV given people generally have drawers upon drawers full of ender pearls laying around by that point anyway, so if you do too consider setting up an electrolyser and turning those excess pearls into something useful
Liquid Air Centrifuging/Distilation (HV technically, mid-IV realistically) - Requires access to Callisto (T3 rocket) Liquid Air fluid fields to make viable. If so much cheaper/faster than the previous two methods A more advanced version of centrifuging compressed air, liquid air has it’s own large block of text right below this one, so check that for details. If you want the TL;DR: Worth doing if you’re able to pump liquid air from Callisto fluid fields, otherwise don’t bother. Vacuum freezing air is expensive, power wise
Oxygen: Compressed Air centrifuging (LV) - 15800 EU/bucket, 80 seconds/bucket Processing air of any stripe - compressed air, liquid air, centrifuging or distilling - isn’t worth it as a primary oxygen source, but you’re likely to use some method as your primary Nitrogen source, so you’ll be getting some as a byproduct. In which case, hey, might as well make use of it
Limonite Centrifuging (LV) - 1760 EU/bucket, 8.8 seconds/bucket (3525mb steam/bucket, 1.7625 seconds/bucket using a bronze Steam Separator multi with full parallles) Same situation as before, only for oxygen it’s twice as efficient and twice as fast given the better ratio of limonite to oxygen compared to limonite to hydrogen
Magnesium Loop (LV) - Variable cost depending on whether you’ve got a Sag Mill or a GT Sifting Machine. The former is technically MV tech (although if find Electrical Steel as loot you can craft it in LV), the latter is significantly more power intensive It is possible to set up fully passive cobble-based oxygen production in LV by using Magnesium as a catalyst to de-oxydize Silicone Dioxide. The full loop, ideally, is Item Transfer Node /w World Interaction Upgrade (cobble production) -> Forge Hammer (cobble into gravel) -> Sag Mill (gravel into flint and sand. Note that to craft a Sag Mill in LV you will need to use a Silver Capacitor, find Electrical Steel in loot, and get some Polyethylene) -> Macerator (flint into flint dust) -> Centrifuge (flint dust into silicone dioxide) -> Chemical Reactor (silicone dioxide and magnesium into magnesia and a raw silicon byproduct) -> electrolyser (magnesia into oxygen and magnesium). More than likely you will use a Sifting Machine instead of a Sag Mill, and that will get the job done, but it will get it done slowly and at a much, much high power cost. All the same this is a source of passive oxygen in LV
Magnesium Loop+ (LV technically, realistically MV) - Variable cost depending on machine setup and other factors. Speed wise at least a bucket every 2 seconds, assuming a good setup Another “if you like a self-imposed challenge” entry, it’s possible to expand on the magnesium loop by adding Quartz Sand made from macerating sand, mixing that with flint dust into Glass Dust, and centrifuging the glass dust into SiO2 dust instead of centrifuging flint dust directly. Note that this setup is such extreme overkill (not to mention expensive) for LV it’s something you’d build in MV if you build it at all. The trick to making this work is using a Steam Grinder to macerate sand, since otherwise it’ll be a major bottleneck. A full expanded magnesium loop setup requires two Forge Hammers (one cobble -> gravel, one gravel -> sand), one Sag Mill (gravel -> flint+sand byproduct), two macerators (flint -> flint dust), one steam grinder (sand -> quartz sand), two mixers (flint dust + quartz sand -> glass dust), four centrifuges (glass dust -> SiO2 dust), two chemical reactors (magnesium dust + SiO2 dust -> raw silicon dust + magnesia dust) and two electrolysers (magnesia dust -> oxygen + magnesium dust). Packed up tight or fed through lossless Redstone Alloy Cables the full setup consumes ~120 EU/t + 80mb steam/t (assuming a Bronze tier Steam Grinder), and produces ~533mb oxygen per second, or ~26-27mb/t. Enjoy the challenge of designing this setup, since you’ll have to get creative to make sure sand is always available, yet cannot clog
Ore processing (LV+) - Variable cost, although the earliest recipe you might use is likely Magnetite Dust at 1575 EU/bucket and 2.625 seconds/bucket Although electrolyses takes centre stage in MV, it’s nevertheless possible to electrolyse (or centrifuge) some dusts into oxygen as early as LV. Cassiterite is an example, yielding two oxygen and one tin dust per three cassiterite dust in an electrolyser. Of course doing this does cut into the amount of tin you get if you were to directly smelt the dusts instead, but there are other options as well. Phosphate, gotten from Tricalcium Phosphate from Apatite veins, must be centrifuged before it’s useful (for anything other than IC2 Fertilizer, for which you’ve got Apatite at that point), which yields oxygen. In addition, as a variant/hybrid approach to the Magnesium Loop, you can mine the three different types of Quartz - certus, nether and quartzite - and de-oxidize those using magnesium in the same way as silicon dioxide. Think of it as a way to (effectively) mine oxygen at a much smaller machine footprint
Water Electrolyses (LV) - 60000 EU/bucket, 100 seconds/bucket It wasn’t worth doing for hydrogen, and spoiler alert, making the recipe effectively twice as slow/expensive did not change this meaningfully. Or at all, for that matter. Never, ever electrolyse water for oxygen unless it’s part of a passive free power setup or power sink
Obsidian Electrolyses (MV) - 2700 EU/bucket, 1.5 seconds/bucket An inefficient, but simple method of turning Redstone Dust into oxygen. Use a Rock Breaker to turn Redstone Dust into obsidian, Maceate the block into nine obsidian dust, and electrolyse twelve dust into magnesium, iron, raw silicon and a lot of oxygen. Where to get a passive source of Redstone Dust from, you ask? Redlon plants from Thaumic Bases grow like melons/pumpkins, except they grow blocks of redstone instead (albeit slowly). Very easy to automate using block breakers, though, considering that the block of redstone will send a redstone signal that activates the block breaker below it…
Sugar Electrolyses (MV) - 1075.2 EU/bucket, 0.896 seconds/bucket A powerful, efficient, fast, and pure(-ish, close enough) source of oxygen available starting in MV. To get enough sugar to make this process work you’ve got two options: IC2 Sugar Beet crops, or Thaumic Bases Sweeds. The former you’re likely to get as part of crop breeding, so there’s little opportunity cost to set up a small farm and let it run, whereas Sweeds require a tiny bit of investment into Thaumcraft, but pays back that investment with interest. Sweed crops rapidly spread themselves, and drop sugar or sugar cane when harvested. They can be farmed using an EnderIO Farming Station and don’t require Tile Entity mode to be world accelerated. I’m not sure which is better, but both are viable
Callisto fluid pump (IV) - variable yield On Callisto, which requires a T3 rocket to reach, you can find fluid fields of Oxygen. They’re unfortunately not rich, so don’t expect miracles, but they are fairly common and chances are you’ll find one looking for a liquid air field if you want to give your nitrogen production a serious boost, so might as well
Liquid Air Centrifuging/Distilation One alternative to air centrifuging is liquid air centrifuging, or even liquid air distillation. Both methods produce more than just the nitrogen and the byproduct oxygen that air centrifuging does, but it’s a fair question to ask if the process is worth it. Be it for nitrogen, or for whatever else it produces
As a baseline: Centrifuging air requires a Compressor to turn empty cells into compressed air cells, and a Centrifuge to, well, centrifuge said compressed air. The recipes are basically at a 1:1 machine ratio, so you can assume each compressor/centrifuge combo will yield 3900mb Nitrogen and 1000mb Oxygen every 80 seconds, consuming a total of 15800 EU, at LV. Each overclock halves the crafting time while doubling the total EU cost, and later on (circa EV/IV) GT++ centrifuge multis make the recipe faster/cheaper, and Air Intake Hatches cut out the need for a compressor entirely
Liquid Air centrifuging simply adds an additional step: Vacuum Freeze the compressed air cell before sending it to the centrifuge. Very straightforward, however while the Vacuum Freezer:Centrifuge remain at a perfect 1:1 machine ratio (assuming HV and LV power respectively) the Compressor:Vacuum Freezer ratio changes to ~11:1. Of course that’s easily managed - a small tower of single block machines or even a couple of Steam Squashers, doesn’t really matter. Once it’s build, it’s build. The real question is how much of what does it produce, and at what cost. In total, assuming you’re using 11 LV compressors to feed the system, every 74.2 seconds you’ll be producing 40b Nitrogen, 11b Oxygen, 1b Argon (worthless, basically) and 1b Noble Gases (which can be centrifuged at a 34:21:9:3:1 ratio to produce CO2, Helium, Methane and Deuterium respectively - frankly, trash it) for 751540 EU
Regular air centrifuging produces 2.4375mb/t nitrogen for ~4.05 EU/mb. Liquid air centrifuging clocks in at ~26.95mb/t nitrogen produced for 18.7885 EU/mb. Accounting for the fact that you’re using 11 compressors to accomplish this you’re looking at, effectively, slightly higher throughput at little under 5x the EU per mb cost for using a vacuum freezer and one centrifuge instead of 11 centrifuges. Not exactly the most worthwhile of trades, and the extra byproducts aren’t even worthwhile. All told ignore liquid air for the moment, but don’t worry. It will be back with a vengeance (maybe)
(For the record, an HV tier GT++ centrifuge consumes just over 1 air intake hatches worth of air - each produces 250mb/t - and produces ~98.73mb/t nitrogen at a staggeringly low ~1.31 EU/mb. The exact numbers are 70200mb nitrogen every 711 ticks at 130 EU/t)
Liquid air can also be taken a step further - liquid air distillation using a Distillation Tower. It requires a special Liquid Air Fluid Hatch to input the 100M mb liquid air the recipe calls for, and either Giant Output Hatches or ME output hatches to capture the gargantuan amounts of gases the recipe produces
The first problem that presents itself is simply one of ratios. The DT recipe runs for 375 seconds at EV, but would require ~374 HV vacuum freezers to keep it running at that speed. Of course running the DT recipe full time would produce 10411.2mb/t nitrogen, which is far too much to reasonably compare with liquid air centrifuging. Ran at 0.25% throughput, or 400 times slower than it could, the recipe would produce ~26mb/t nitrogen. That seems reasonably close to the amount that liquid air centrifuging produces, the question is how many vacuum freezer does that take, and how much EU per milibucket?
At 0.25% processing capacity a liquid air DT will need 250 cells worth of liquid air every 375 seconds, or 1.5s per cell. One HV vacuum freezer produces a cell every 1.4 seconds, so a single freezer will actually keep the DT running at ~0.26785% uptime. This means that with a single HV vacuum freezer the DT method will produce ~27.887mb/t nitrogen, at ~18.165 EU/mb. Slightly faster and cheaper than air centrifuging, though each run of the recipe will take a staggering 140000 seconds, or more than a day and a half of straight freezing. For that reason alone I would recommend sticking with (liquid) air centrifuging for a while. Even the unimaginable power of offline AFK servers have their limits. As for byproducts, liquid air distillation has better ones than the centrifuging methods, although the ratios very quickly make them completely irrelevant - Oxygen and Argon are the only ones that can reasonably be measured in mb/t, ~7.48mb/t and ~0.33mb/t specifically. The next highest is a useless CO2 yield at ~0.29mb/s, after which the yields take another (albeit less noticeable) nosedive - 0.779mb/m Neon, ~0.224mb/m Helium, 0.077mb/m Methane, ~0.048mb/m Krypton, ~0.023mb/m Hydrogen, and finally, an absolutely pathetic ~0.003mb/m Xenon. It would take ~180 days worth of running this recipe to get a single cell of Xenon to (presumably) start replicating it through UUM. Of course that’s assuming a single HV tier vacuum freezer. You could do much, much better than that
Technically as early as HV, though you’d certainly want to be in EV and likely even IV before you start seriously using one, you’re able to craft a Mega Vacuum Freezer. A monster of a multiblock that is able to run up to 256 recipes in parallel, meaning that with a “measly” 16A EV energy hatch you could run an EV DT recipe at ~68.5% uptime. The question of how to supply that much compressed air remains, but Mega Vacuum Freezer do have room for ~200 and change air intake hatches, so…you can probably make some magic happen there. It that worth it for nitrogen production, or the byproducts? I’m honestly not sure. Throwing around 16A EV, or about 1A LuV, at producing nitrogen alone is likely to be extremely excessive for a very long time, not to mention a dedicated Mega Vacuum Freezer. Producing a cell of Xenon every ~17 hours is honestly not that bad of a rate, but…what are you going to with it? Spending ~4 hours and 14 minutes distilling liquid air to shave 281.25 seconds off of crafting a Naq doped boule seems like an unwise investment of time, and you’re definitely not producing anywhere near enough to boost void miners down the line
Now…what if you could cut out that whole “freezing liquid air” step entirely? Once you’ve gotten a T3 rocket you can access Callisto, where you can find (admittedly meagre, but they’ll get the job done) fluid fields of liquid air. Slam a fluid pump on that, and you can start collecting (relatively) large quantities of liquid air without any freezers involved. The freezing step is, by far, the most expensive part of liquid air centrifuging. Replacing that with a T4 pump will yield a variable amount of liquid air every 8 ticks for 57344 EU per batch - collect more than 4267mb per batch and that’s more efficient than a freezer
For calculating purpose, let’s assume a close to dead pump that’s bringing in 4500mb liquid air every 8 ticks. This is enough to feed 15.75 LV single block centrifuges - although you’ve definitely got the technology to craft GT++ centrifuges by now - producing ~424.5mb/t nitrogen at ~0.28 EU/mb. Including the power cost of the pump, and assuming single block LV centrifuges you’d definitely not be using anymore at that point. An HV GT++ centrifuge runs 18 parallels every 329 ticks at 324 EU/t, consuming ~2900mb/t liquid air to produce ~2188mb/t nitrogen at less than ~0.22 EU/mb (including T4 drill cost) (curious how you’re supposed to input the 954000mb liquid air per batch conveniently, or how to increase throughput without running into crazy input hatch requirements? The Liquid Air Fluid Hatch works for GT++ centrifuges just as well as DTs, and you are filling it with actual liquid air, so it won’t complain)
My advice? If you’re not going to be pursuing other methods of acquiring noble gases - bees, IC2 reactor fuel rod burning/processing, LFTR, Naquadah Gas processing - liquid air distillation is worth setting up, and maybe even worth setting up early. Dealing with 20 Super Tank Is worth of nitrogen every day and a half is going to be a serious challenge, but you will need at least one cell worth of each of the noble gases to start replicating them through UUM if absolutely nothing else, so you have a source for the few recipes that do need them. Liquid air distillation is one way to get samples…albeit a slow one. If you do plan on getting noble gases through other means stick with air centrifuging initially, and later switch to liquid air centrifuging. The extra byproducts are nothing to write home about, but it’s a good way to massively boost nitrogen production and make it more efficient over regular air centrifuging
One of the materials you will start needing in MV is Silicon, and later on (…ostensibly) it’s Solar Grade variant. And although I like to refer to it as an “early automation setup tutorial” it can still be difficult to untangle the complete mess of related NEI recipes. So here’s a cheatsheet in case reverse-engineering the path through the NEI pages jungle proves easier
First, there’s three major ways to source Raw Silicon Dust, one of which requires MV. In LV you can centrifuge plentiful Redstone Dust (very slow, but yields good byproducts) or use Magnesium as a catalyst to de-oxidize various types of Quartz dust or Silicone Dioxide dust into Raw Silicon Dust. Silicon Dioxide, in turn, can be sourced through centrifuging Flint/Glass dust, or electrolysing Brick Dust/Sand. The latter method is significantly more complicated to automate, but can be fully automated as early as LV (see Magnesium Loop above)
In MV you can start to electrolyse a ton of different things to yield raw silicon dust. In particular Lazurite and Sodalite is likely to give you a bunch as part of securing an early source of pure alu dust, and later on either Obsidian Dust or Biotite can supply a fully automated source of raw silicon dust (the redstone dust/black granite dust required supplied through some kind of crop, in all likelihood). There’s also a Silicon bee, for the (at this stage overly) dedicated apiarists out there
So you have your raw silicon dust, now that? Broadly speaking there are three paths to turning raw silicon into silicon solar grade - Silicon Tetrachloride, Silane and Trichlorosilane
To make a long story short, Silicon Tetrachloride involves reacting raw silicon dust with chlorine, and reacting the resulting liquid with sodium to produce solar grade and salt. The salt can than be electrolysed to return the full amount of chlorine and sodium used, but this electrolysing step - which has to be done four times per solar grade cycle - is both slow and power intensive. Each Silicon Solar Grade dust produced through this method costs 53400 EU, and a full cycle takes 64 seconds (20 seconds if using four electrolysers) Trichlorosilane reacts raw silicon dust with hydrochloric acid to produce trichlorosilane and hydrogen, which can than be reacted together to produce Silicon Solar Grade and the hydrochloric acid used in the initial step. It’s a very easy loop to set up, only consuming 18000 EU per Silicon Solar Grade dust and both machines taking 15 seconds per cycle Silane is a product of separating four Trichlorosilane into one part Silane and three parts Silicon Tetrachloride, turning four HSiCl3 into one SiH4 and three SiCl4. “So what benefit does this extra step provide over using either method directly”, you ask? Well, eh…it doesn’t have a benefit. At all. Even using the hilariously terrible HV LCR method of producing Silicon Solar Grade you can completely skip dealing with Silane if you have access to hydrogen…which the recipe itself produces, meaning you cannot possibly not have enough unless you intentionally create some kind of crazy Rube Goldberg machine designed specifically to force you into using Silane. Good luck with that, I guess
With a dozen or so NEI pages condensed into…more than a dozen NEI pages worth of text…well, with the numbers ran and calculated I’m sure the optimal path for producing Silicon Solar Grade is obvious. So how to automate it, or at least set it up so that you can stuff raw silicon dust into one drawer, and get the actually useful variant spat out into another one? Well, Trichlorosilane gives you a single option: Empty cells and liquid Hydrochloric in a Chemical Reactor, producing hydrogen cells and liquid Trichlorosilane. From there the next step should be obvious, but even if it wasn’t it turns out the “wrong” choice uses the same circuit number, so even if you somehow got it wrong you’d accidentally get it correct anyway
See why I refer to this setup as a tutorial? Once you’ve untangled the mess of NEI pages - a skill you’ll need often in GTNH - the rest is very difficult to mess up. One challenge you can run into trying to make this setup compact is the problem of how to prevent Silicon Solar Grade Dust from finding it’s way into the first chemical reactor. It’s easy to place two Chemical Reactors next to each other and bounce both items and fluids back and forth using the machine’s own auto-output feature, using a screwdriver to set them both to allow input through the output side, but this can cause the Silicon Solar Grade dust to clog the first chemical reactor. Simple solution? Input Filter. Sneak-right click a single block GT machine’s output or front face with a screwdriver to enable Input Filter. With this setting enabled a machine will not accept input - solid or fluid - that it does not have a valid recipe for. Chemical Reactors have no valid recipe for Silicon Solar Grade dust, so it will not auto-output into the first chemical reactor. Instead Conveyor into a locked barrel/drawer, and done
Tips and tricks: There is an EBF recipe that cooks Silicon Dioxide and Carbon Dust directly into a cooled Raw Silicon Ingot, only requiring Cupronickel and MV power. However Raw Silicon Ingots are basically worthless until much much later, and as a method of turning Silicon Dioxide into Raw Silicon Dust it’s both more expensive and requires a much more valuable machine. Still, this recipe is much faster than directly blasting raw silicon dust into ingots, and completely skips the need to cool a hot ingot afterwards, so keep it in mind for later, potentially
Although not required by the questbook in MV, it is possible - and worthwhile - to set up Silicon Solar Grade in LV. Not only as a passive process slowly building up a stockpile as you throw raw silicon dust at it to be converted, but to produce Monocrystalline Silicon Boules to produce Wafers, which makes Diodes easier to craft…if you craft any at all, that is
Silicon Solar Grade plates, to craft Transistors for the first grade of HV circuit, is what is intended to gate access to HV without access to Kanthal Coils needed to cook the Silicon Solar Grade dust in an EBF. However there is nothing stopping you from crafting SMD Transistors instead, skipping that step, and cooking Stainless doesn’t require Kanthal either
| #mb/t Ethylene [2] | #mb oil/Ethylene (Ref. Gas) [4] | #mb oil/Ethylene (Light Fuel) [4] | #mb oil/Ethylene (Naphtha) [4] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | 4.17335 | 6 | 7.5 |
| MV Distillers (wood gas) | MV Pyros (Kanthal/Nitrogen) | LV Centrifuges/Comps (Nitrogen) | Logs per second (tree farm) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.8 | 2.133333333 | 2.735042735 | 2.133333333 | |
| MV Chemical Reactors (Ethanol) | LV Distillers (Diluted Sulfuric) | #mb/t additional Sulphuric Acid | #mb/t Ethanol | |
| 1.44 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 1.2 |
MV Dehydrators (Ethanol) [1] 2.88
| LV Distillers (SSC Refinery Gas) | LV Chems (S. Steam Cracking) | LV Distils (regular oil) | #mb/t regular oil required | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.96 | 1.6 | 3.333333333 | 4.166666667 | |
| LV Distillers (SSC Naphtha) | LV Chems (S. Steam Cracking) | LV Distils (regular oil) [3] | #mb/t regular oil required | |
| 0.576 | 0.96 | 6 | 2.4 | |
| LV Distillers (SSC Light Fuel) | LV Chems (S. Steam Cracking) | LV Distils (regular oil) [3] | #mb/t regular oil required | |
| 1.152 | 1.92 | 4.8 | 4.8 | |
| LV Distillers (SSC Heavy Fuel) | LV Chems (S. Steam Cracking) | LV Distils (regular oil) [3] | #mb/t regular oil required | |
| 1.92 | 3.2 | 26.66666667 | 8 | |
| LV Distillers (SSC Heavy Fuel) | LV Chems (S. Steam Cracking) | MV Distils (heavy oil) [3] | #mb/t heavy oil required | |
| 1.92 | 3.2 | 1.6 | 5 |
Notes: [1] Dehydrators are very energy intensive, but skip the need for sulphuric acid. More than likely not worth using, but it might have a niche use [2] Ethylene can be pumped from Triton, a T6 planet, once you manage to scrounge together a T6 rocket circa ZPM [3] Note that the sulphuric will still have to be desulfirized, but one LV chemical reactor should suffice for any reasonable amount of ethylene/t [4] While Naphtha produces ethylene the fastest it’s not actually cheapest in terms of oil cost. If you’re short oil consider using Ref. Gas instead
Tips and tricks: Naphtha is a gas turbine fuel, however with only regular oil you’ll get much more power out of producing Light Fuel instead
| #mb/t Sulfuric Acid [1] | EU/bucket Hydrogen [2] | EU/bucket Oxygen [3] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3520 | 1820 |
| Sulfur Dust, Hydrogen route: | LV Distillers (diluted sulfuric) | LV Chem Reactor (H. Sulfide) | LV Chem Reactor (Sulfur Dust) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36.52 | 0.6 | 0.12 | 0.12 |
| Sulfur Dust, Oxygen route: | LV Chem Reactor (Trioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (Dioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (Sulfur Dust) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.12 | 0.32 | 0.2 | 0.06 |
| Hydrogen Sulfide, Diluted route: | LV Distillers (diluted sulfuric) | LV Chem Reactor (H. Sulfide) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28.64 | 0.6 | 0.12 |
| Hydrogen Sulfide, Loop route: | LV Chem Reactor (Trioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (Dioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (Sulfur Dust) | MV Electrolyser (H. Sulfide) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22.76 | 0.32 | 0.2 | 0.06 | 0.144 |
| Hydrogen Sulfide, O2 route: | LV Chem Reactor (Trioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (Dioxide) | LV Chem Reactor (H. Sulfide) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26.16 | 0.32 | 0.2 | 0.12 |
Notes: [1] The amount of sulfuric acid to produce /tick. It may seem unintuitive since early on you’re not looking for a set production rate, but it’s how I code this stuff and it gets the job done [1] The number below a route is the EU cost to produce that much mb/t worth of sulfuric acid. Oxygen/hydrogen cost is factored in, increasing the total cost accordingly [2] The EU cost of producing one bucket of hydrogen. Centrifuging Limonite Dust costs 3520 EU per bucket, electrolysing water costs 30000 EU [3] As above, but oxygen. Centrifuging Limonite costs 1760, Compressed Air 15800, Silicone Dioxide (through cobble) <=23570. Electrolysing Cassiterite 1980, water 60000
Tips and tricks: All of the above are single block recipes, since this assumes very early sulfuric acid production. When you get to HV and get LCRs everything will change forever, pretty much The Hydrogen Sulfide routes assume you source the Sulfide from processing sulfuric oil products. As such the non-closed loop routes include the hydrogen cost of oil processing The Silicone Dioxide method can also use the various types of quartz (nether, certus and quatzite), but obviously this isn’t as easily automated early game as flint from cobblestone 19200 of silicone dioxide’s EU cost (roughly, there’s percentage outputs involved) comes from sifting gravel into flint. If you use a Sag Mill instead, for example, it’ll be much cheaper
Phosphoric Acid One little known acid (mainly because it doesn’t see much use until later) is Phosphoric Acid. The most obvious/direct way to get it is through the C24 LCR recipe using Phosphorous, Oxygen and Water, with Phosphorous in turn being sourced through (Tricalcium) Phosphate, or Apatite. There’s a better recipe to turn Apatite into Phosphoric Acid than electrolying Apatite dust into Phosphate dust 9:3, electrolyse Phosphate dust into Phosphorous 5:1, and turning that into acid 1:1, for a total of a 15:1 ratio of apatite dust per bucket of phosphoric acid, however
Using an LCR (or single block electrolyser technically, but that recipe is a bit incomplete/bugged/strange, so I wouldn’t recommend using that version) you can combine 9 Apatite dust with 5 buckets of Sulfuric Acid and some water, to create 40 Gypsum (which can be electrolysed for the sulfur, oxygen and water used to create the sulfuric acid, making that component a closed loop if you wish), 3 buckets of phosphoric acid, and one bucket of hydrochloric acid. Bar recycling the sulfuric acid this makes the process a single LCR step, and improves the ratio from 15:1 to 3:1 Apatite:Phosphoric Acid