Chemical Processing Mod

[Ronivan]

So for some time now I have been thinking about making new interesting elements to the game, industrial application ones. So after some studying the Blood Element Mod made by Heinermann, which also had the generosity of sharing through his Github, I was able to implement some new elements. I would like to start this discussion to learn about other opinions about this idea, the designs, applications and usefulness of them.

Spoiler

From left to right:

• Rubber
• Argentite (Silver Ore)
• Silver ( has solid, liquid and gaseous states )
• Borax
• Fiberglass
• Tungsten Carbide
• Oil Shale

Rubber: Synthetic material made from petroleum, somewhat like plastic. Rubber has the advantages of having a higher melting point of plastic. Will have the same applications that plastic has. Likely I will have to make its own tile too.

Silver: refined metal with a high thermal conductivity. Not as high as Thermium, but somewhat in middle.

Borax: Sodium Borate, has industrial applications like in the production of thermal resistant glass, fiberglass and as a flux in the production of steel.

Fiberglass: Thermoset polymer matrix with insulating properties. Can be used to make tiles, pipes and so on.

Tungsten Carbide: Has a very high melting point of 5460°C (5733.15 F°), high strength and hardness. This stuff is almost as hard as diamond.

Oil Shale: this was complicated. Its like a dirty heavy crude oil, that with my setup, at 120°C would turn 80% to crude oil and 20% to Sour Gas. Its a solid, so it can be mined and moved around as such.

 

I would like to give my regards and thanks to Heinermann for sharing his code for adding new elements.

 

[Dovahkick]

I have a good majority of your mods installed on my game, so I'm curious to know about what you're going to make next.

Fiberglass could potentially be used as a cable for transporting lights, wether it's from the sun or a lamp or Shine Bugs, but this would be to my guess, rather difficult to code. Otherwise, it could also be used for making electrical cables as well, but tiles and pipes can work too.

What would be the requirements to make Tungsten Carbide? Because as we know it, Thermium has the highest of thermal tolerances with +900°C to machines, then there's Niobium with +500°C. Thermium is also the most conductive of materials with a low thermal capacity. If tungsten carbide was harder to aquire than niobium, it would have slightly higher thermal tolerances than Thermium. Else if it was easier to aquire, it could instead be an in-between of steel and niobium.

[Ronivan]

You should not mistake Fiberglass to Glass Fiber, they are different stuff. Fiberglass is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. In the game recipes, this will be done in Molecular Forge with the following recipe: Sand - 60kg, Borax 10kg, Plastic 30kg. The result is 100kg of Fiberglass. This material will be used the same as raw minerals, making tiles or pipes. Its a relative good insulator, with Thermal Conductivity of 1,25. In comparison, Granite have 3 of thermal Conductivity, so its better and can be produced in large scale as needed. Also Fiberglass has 0 Radiation Absorption, which means tiles made from it will not block radiation from passing through.

Tungsten Carbide will not give any form of overheat temperature bonus of any sort to the buildings it will be made of. The only thing that its good for its the high melting point. Any building that is not overheat-able will take full advantages of this material. Tungsten Carbide will be made in Molecular Forge with the following recipe: Tungsten - 50kg, Fullerene 50kg, Borax 10kg. The result is 100kg of Tungsten Carbide.

Rubber will be made in a similar fashion as plastic, with Rubber Press using Crude Oil instead of Petroleum. Rubber has the Plastic tag to it, so any building and use Plastic will be able to made from Rubber too. The difference between Rubber and Plastic is that former has a very low melting point compared to the later. Cheap to make, but also not reliable at high temperatures. I'm not sure yet about this one, perhaps I should scrap this element.

Borax will be used as ingredient for other materials, as mentioned before. It will come from Salt processed in the Mineral Mill, with the following recipe: Salt - 100kg = Table Salt - 5kg, Borax 5kg, Sand 95kg. Borax can also be used to make Steel, with the Metal Refinery recipe: Iron - 70kg, Refined Carbon 30kg, Borax 30kg. Note that the Borax mass is not part of the Steel mass, because it just serves a flux in it. This recipe may be subject to changes before the mod is done.

Silver is a interesting metal. It has a Thermal Conductivity of 210 (Aluminum has 205 and Thermium has 220). Although its interesting, it became kinda redundant with Aluminum, since both elements have almost the same melting point. From my recipes, I decided to make Silver be made from Silver Ore and Electrum. Since both elements are not present in any biome, they will be extracted from Sedimentary Rock through the Mineral Mill. Cool as it is, I'm still not sure of making Silver. The reason I made this post was to gather ideas on new elements.

Oil Shale is another interesting material. It melts at 120°C releasing 80% crude oil and 20% sour gas. Its a solid element, and I thought using it like some sort of dirty crude oil. I have no idea how to make this material in to the biomes without debug.

 

The problems you see is not making the elements, but making use of them in the game context. I would appreciate any suggestion regarding new substances.

[Ronivan]

Just to complement, Silver would make sense if it had the real element Thermal Conductivity of 480, way above Thermium. The difference is that Silver would reduce the overheat temperature to by 50°C, making is high unstable as a building material for most buildings, except at low temperatures. Another element that I was thinking about is a Refrigerant Gas, that would work the same as the Super Coolant does, but in a gas form. Freon is a interesting gas for this, but there is no Fluorine in the game, which is a good thing if you consider how freaking dangerous pure Fluorine is. I will ferment all these ideas in my mind.

[Dovahkick]

22 hours ago, Ronivan said:

Another element that I was thinking about is a Refrigerant Gas

How about helium? Its thermal conductivity is one of the highest of all the noble gases (but hydrogen still has THE highest), it is the 2nd lightest of all gases, but most of all, it needs one of the lowest of temperatures possible to turn liquid, ranging around -268,9°C, it also needs to be extremely pressurized to turn solid (which means that even at 0K at 1 bar, it will stay liquid). Also, it's much less dangerous than the fluorine you mentioned, but breathing too much of it will lead to suffocation.

[Ronivan]

If you look in to the gas elements, its Mercury Gas that has the highest thermal conductivity. Helium has Heat Capacity of 0.14 and Thermal Conductivity of 0.236; Mercury Gas has Heat Capacity of 0.14 and a Thermal Conductivity of 8.3. Its much higher of that of Helium, at least beyond mercury boiling point. I have already made a refrigerant gas called Halon Gas, with a Heat Capacity of 0.86 and a Thermal Conductivity of 4.56. It has a freezing point of 0, same as Helium, but will degrade to Chlorine at 90°C. Somewhat similar to Super Coolant, this gas will be made using Fullerene, and Chlorine.