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Road Flare

Properties
Stacks	20x
Recipe
Created With	Fabricator, Tool Manufacturer
Cost	1g Iron Ingot

Description

Road Flares are part of the Starting Gear and are found scattered around the spawn area. They burn for a short period of time and give out a distinct red glow in a small area. In a zero atmosphere environment, a road flare burns for approximately 5 minutes and 5 seconds. Further testing required for different environments/configuration.

Use

Press O to toggle the flare light on or off. (O might not be true) Hold right click to light it. They are throwable holding Q. It can generate heat and could be use as a cheap heat source to heat up a room. Beware it could ignite H2 if both H2 and O2 exists in the room!

The total heat energy of one road flare is 600kJ. Volume is constant in sealed rooms (8m^3 per one cube), as well as amount of matter, therefore only temperature and pressure are changed with heat energy, which is isochoric process. The equation for isochoric process is Q = Cv·n·ΔT, where Q stands for heat energy, Cv is molar heat capacity, n is amount of matter (in moles) and T is temperature. As a reference, one cubic volume of air (oxygen & nitrogen) at 100kPa and 20C has around 357 moles. For example, with oxygen that means that one flare per one cubic volume can raise from -66C and 70kPa to 20C and 100kPa. From 20C and 100kPa one flare per cubic volume would raise temperature to 106C and pressure to 129kPa.

Interestingly, this makes iron a theoretically better energy source than coal in Solid Fuel Generator as 1 unit of coal generate 200kJ of energy and 1 road flare costs 1 iron. This depends on iron ore to iron conversion efficiency, and road flare to energy conversion method, and solid fuel generator heat energy output. Further testing required.