Charcoal

game version: 0.2.4972

Producing charcoal

Charcoal is an ore, but it can't be mined. Instead, it must be produced from organic matter.

Plants, cooked food, decayed food, or seeds placed in a Recycler will generate 1 Reagent Mix each. This Reagent Mix can be put it into a Centrifuge to convert it to Biomass (this step is optional, unless the Reagent Mix was mixed/stacked with other Reagent Mix containing different ingredients). Either the Biomass or the original Reagent Mix can be placed in an Arc Furnace, or a Furnace/Advanced Furnace at over 580K and at least 100 kPa of pressure, to convert it into Charcoal.

Each conversion step is 1:1, so the overall ratio is 1 Charcoal for every 1 plant/cooked food/decayed food/seed.

Steel from iron and charcoal

Charcoal can replace Coal when making Steel. The ratio is the same, 1 Charcoal for every 3 Iron ore.

Gases

When Charcoal is burned in a Solid Generator it will release 3 mol CO2 and 3 mol of X. These gases can also be released in a Furnace or Arc-Furnace without destroying the Charcoal.

When Biomass is converted to Charcoal, each one will release 8 mol of Volatiles and 4 mol of X.

With Carbon Dioxide from Charcoal, Volatiles from Biomass, and Oxygen from living plants, it becomes possible to create a renewable cycle that creates and consumes these three gases. It's preferable to keep the level of Carbon Dioxide in the plants atmosphere as low as possible without allowing it to reach zero. This is because plants in the game will consume less Carbon Dioxide when there is less of it available, while still being able to grow at a normal rate and produce Oxygen at full capacity.

Water Purification

The Water Purifier runs exclusively on Charcoal (it cannot use normal Coal as fuel), converting Polluted Water back into clean Water. This allows the Polluted Water output from a Shower to be cleaned and re-added to the main water stockpile, or simply re-used in the shower again.

Fuel

Charcoal can be burned in the Solid Fuel Generator to produce power. But it does not behave like regular Coal does .

When 1 Coal is burned, it will burn for 6 game-ticks (3 seconds) and release 20 kW of power each tick, for a total of 60 kJ.

When a stack of Charcoal is burned, they will not burn to completion, they will only burn for ~2 game-ticks which gives ~20 kJ energy each. Only ~33% of the available energy is obtained.

With a little bit of automation it's possible to release 100% of the energy from a stack of Charcoal. A Stacker controlled by an IC can be used to release the Charcoal one by one every 8 game-ticks, this is enough time for each Charcoal to always burn to completion.

Example IC code - releasing Charcoal from a Stacker to a Solid Generator to get 100% power efficiency:

alias Stacker d0

s Stacker Mode 1
s Stacker Setting 1

MaxCharcoalPower:
yield
ls r0 Stacker 2 Occupied
beqz r0 MaxCharcoalPower
s Stacker Output 0
sleep 3.5
j MaxCharcoalPower