The New Blum Lumb SPOM Resource Loop

[StarvingAngler]

Tired of your boring old SPOM designs using up a ton of water for little output besides barely sustaining themselves? Well, this beta added the final piece in the puzzle to an alternative self powering resource loop that only requires inputs of water and salt, and produces many more resources as an output.

Originally, you could use a Pacu farm to feed Jawbos for rust production, which could then be turned into oxygen and iron which could be fed to Plug Slugs to produce power and hydrogen just like a SPOM, but with additional outputs of food (from all the Jawbos and Plug Slugs), chlorine, and any excess metal that may result from the loop, albeit, this loop required different inputs from a SPOM in the form of salt for the deoxidizers and however you intended on feeding Pacu, none of the methods being particularly good for the large scale of Pacus required.

However, that all changes with the introduction of the Blum Lumb, only requiring water for its plants and finally providing a source for large scale production of algae. Instead of inefficiently throwing algae into oxygen diffusers, you can get substantially more oxygen and far more output by plugging this algae into the Pacu-Jawbo loop for Pacu food, finally completing the loop and giving it a water input just like a SPOM, only much more efficiently (at the cost of more space and potentially more Dupe Labor).

 

As such, I felt like doing math to compare the water to oxygen and other outputs efficiency of these two different SPOM types in an ideal scenario where math is easy:

Electrolyzer Setup - First, 1000 g/s of water is converted to 880 g/s of oxygen, so the water-oxygen efficiency is 88%. Next, the power consumed is 120 J per kg of water, along with (assuming you can somehow filter everything for free) two gas pumps for all of its output, bringing an additional 480 J per kg of water for a total of 600 J per kg of water. This system outputs 112 g/s of hydrogen, which can be used in a hydrogen generator for 800% mass to power conversion, so you only need 75 g/s of hydrogen to break even in power. This leaves you with 37 g of hydrogen per kg of water, which can be used for other needs or turned into 296 J of power.

Summary: in an ideal scenario, the Electrolyzer SPOM has a water-oxygen efficiency of 88% and converts a kilogram of water to either 37 grams of hydrogen or 296 Joules of power.

Blum Lumb Setup - There is little reason to put algae into oxygen diffusers as the result for plugging it into the Pacu loop is far greater in every metric besides space and setup time, so I won't show any number calculations for that here. However, while you are working to setup the loop, it would be wise to start with the Lumbs so that you can really on this less efficient oxygen output until you can build the rest of the loop, though you could also just use an Electrolyzer SPOM while setting this up. Since we are measuring in terms of water efficiency, the most efficient plant is Ovagro, which feeds two lumbs at the cost of 90 kg of water, so 264 kg of algae per 90 kg of water for 2.933333 conversion ratio. Each pacu reproduces every 1.5 cycles, and consumes 7.5 kg of algae, so you get 7.5*1.5 for 11.25 kg of algae per Pacu. 2.933333/11.25 for 0.2607407407 Pacu per 1 kg of water. Each Jawbo converts 1 Pacu to 60 kg of rust, so 60*0.2607407407 for 15.644444 kg of rust per kg of water. The deoxidizer converts rust to oxygen at 76% efficiency for a total result of 11.88977777 kg of oxygen per kg of water for the water-oxygen efficiency of approximately 1189%, which is substantially above 100% and thus drastically more efficient than electrolyzers, but note that this is not overpowered due to all the steps you have to go through and space these ranches will take up, but this setup can be mass produced in the long run. However, unlike Electrolyzers, deoxidizers require an additional input of 1 salt per 3 rust, so you need to provide an additional input of 5.214814813 kg of salt per kg of water, which you are definitely not getting by just desalinating water.

In terms of additional production factor now, assuming all gas is perfectly filtered and neglecting the variable cost of all potential autosweepers, a deoxidizer uses up 60 J per 0.75 kg of rust so 1251.555555 J per kg of water. Each deoxidizer also produces 600 g of gas per 750 g of rust so you need 1.6 gas pumps per kg of rust, or 25.03111111 pumps per kg of water. This will use up 6007.46666 J per kg of water, for a total of 7259.02222 J per kg of water. Now how much power you can produce brings in our additional critter: plug slugs. The deoxidizer converts 750 rust to 400 iron, so 8.343703703 iron per water. Assuming you are ranching your slugs properly, each plug slug can convert 12 kg/cycle of iron into 120000J/cycle of power for 10000 J per kg iron, or 83437.03701 J per kg water. Hence, the total power output is 76178.01479 J per kg of water. Do note that this number is raw power, so must be stored in batteries or power banks rather than in gas tanks. Since I don't want to write this crazy big number, lets round down pretending that I am accounting for inefficiencies to say 76 kJ of power per 1 kg of water. Because this number is so big, you could easily drop your power output if you want more metal ore out of the system, losing 10 kJ per kg of iron you decide to take out of this system. Example: you could produce 56 kJ of power and 2 kg of iron per 1 kg of water. In terms of hydrogen produced, 0.05 kg of hydrogen per 1 kg of iron, so 0.4171851850 kg of hydrogen per 1 kg of water, or rounding down for 417 g of hydrogen per kg of water, which is also much larger than the electrolyzer SPOM, and there you had to trade hydrogen for power, whereas here we produce power and hydrogen together. You could still burn this hydrogen for and additional 3.336 kJ power power per kg of water.

That tracks the iron, hydrogen, and power from the deoxidizer, so now onto the rest of the system. Besides the food and egg shells produced by the Lumbs, Jawbos, and Plug Slugs (Pacu are eaten by Jawbos so no food output from them but still an egg shell output), the only other outputs are polluted dirt and chlorine. The polluted dirt output is quite interesting as this is the only way I know of to truly mass produce polluted dirt to a practical degree. This value is simply half of the algae from the start of the system, so simply 1.466666 polluted dirt per water. Narrowing down all possible uses for this polluted dirt, I have found 3 of value.

1. Using it for more oxygen in the sublimation station. Not sure why you would need this considering how effecient this system already is, but this is a possibility.

2. Feeding pokeshells. With this system, the production from sanishells and pokeshells won't be too useful besides maybe the sand (due to the salt requirement), so the best option is using oakshells for the wood. You could use this for building, ethanol production, or ethanol power to try and get some additional resources, including some additional polluted water for the system, increasing water efficiency of everything.

3. Using it in the sublimation station again, but this time for pufts. Here, you could use the slime produced to either get phyto oil, or convert it to algae, which would cover the water input as well. The slime production is about 0.9196 kg of slime per kg of water.

Options 2 and 3 would likely have significant impacts on the water efficiency of the system, but I really don't want to calculate that.

The last output is chlorine. However, I have actually been lying to you, as chlorine is an input to the system, not an output. The only way to produce the amount of salt required for such large scale deoxidizing is with Dasha Saltvines, which use up large amounts of chlorine and sand. Sand is not going to be considered due to how easily it can be produced (even the iron ore output can be rock smashed into sand, and pokeshells can use the polluted dirt). However, the chlorine can not be mass produced as easily and is not produced in large enough quantities in the system, so it will be considered as an input here. Honestly, since the water input is more variable due to the possibilities of what to do with polluted dirt, it likely would have been better to measure this system as relative to chlorine input compared to water input, but I have already gotten this far, and the goal is to compare it with water to resources of the electrolyzer. I have already established the requirement of 5.214814813 kg of salt per kg of water. Each saltvine produces 3.009259258 kg of salt per kg of chlorine, so you need 15.69272975 kg of chlorine per kg of water. The deoxidizer is producing 0.04 chlorine per rust, so it produces 0.6257777 kg of chlorine per kg of water, so you need a total of 15.06695197 kg of chlorine per kg of water.

Summary: in an ideal scenario and rounding a few numbers down, the blum lumb SPOM has a water-oxygen efficiency of 1188.977%, and additional outputs of 76 kJ of power and 1 kg of iron per 10 kJ spent, 417 g of hydrogen, and 1.4666 kg of polluted dirt, all per 1 kg of water.

 

Conclusion: Doing math is a lot of work, I am never doing all these ratios to see the optimal outputs of setups again this took 3 hours.

 

More Informative Conclusion: The typical electrolyzer SPOM only requires water but has a low water-oxygen efficiency and doesn't really produce much of an output. Meanwhile, utilizing Blum Lumbs to complete the Pacu -> Jawbo -> deoxidizer -> Plug Slugs has a drastically higher water-oxygen efficiency more than 10 times that of the electrolyzer and produces substantial amounts of usable power, food, metals, and polluted dirt, but takes up more space, can use up more Dupe labor depending on how it is done and requires an additional input of chlorine.

End Summary: if you want a simple design to solve your oxygen needs and don't care about water consumption, make a SPOM. If you want a very efficient system that can properly power your base and provide lots of food and iron, but are willing to spend the time and space to build such a complicated setup and have a sufficient source of chlorine, build a Blum Lumb SPOM.

[Hanmac]

have you looked at using Blum Lumb in "Swampy Biome" with Bog Bucket?

Small summary:

• 5 Bog Bucket make enough Bog Jelly to feed 1 Blum Lumb
• 1 Blum Lumb makes enough Algae to feed 11 Algae Terrariums
• 11 Algae Terrariums make enough Oxygen for 4 Dupes

Resources:

• Requires 1.980 t of clean Water
• Produces 1.725 t of polluted Water
• Produces 264 kg of Oxygen (for 4 dupes)

using the rest of the Polluted Water for more Bog Jelly makes:

• 43 Bog Bucket use 1.720 t of polluted Water for 11997 kcal Bog Jelly
• 9 Blum Lumb eat that Bog Jelly for 1.782 t extra Algae

and you still get extra Algae for the Pacu Loop.

(there is also a Loop with Seakomb Leaf to Phyto Oil to Algae to Pacu)

[StarvingAngler]

I feel that this loop has a more useful output of power and metal at the cost of negligible amounts of water and a fair bit of chlorine, which can be made in the Dartle loop.

Also, for the loop you suggested, it would likely be more effecient to just clean the water for use in ovagro due to ovagro's higher water efficiency for feeding Lumb.

[gigamoi]

Yeah, Bog buckets are good if you have excess polluted water you are unable or unwilling to purify (as I happen to do in some places), but if you are to clean your water, ovagro will net you the same amount of algae for about 36% of the price (and a 50% increase in both though meat and critter tending).

[StarvingAngler]

The beta is over, but I just realized one final addition that this resource loop produces. Typically, it is assumed Dupe labor is being minimized by having the Lumbs harvest the Ovagro. However, despite the extra Dupe labor cost, it may be more beneficial to instead have a Dupe with improved farming 2 harvest these plants instead. This is because Ovagro is the only plant that can compare with gas grass for plant husk production, producing nearly half as much plant husk per cycle, whereas the closest contender for plant husk production is not even at a tenth of what gas grass can produce. As such, by having skilled Duplicants harvest the Ovagro, you are now getting an additional output of plant husk at no additional cost (besides extra dupe labor [This may be worth it anyways since this allows you to make specialized farming rooms with mimika, grubgrub, and fertilizer]).

With this additional Plant Husk, you could feed husky moos for even more power output from this system as well as additional water, decreasing the water intake of the system further.

[StarvingAngler]

One last addition I completely forgot to mention. Earlier I mentioned how the system seems to only be possible with a chlorine source due to lack of any other way of mass producing salt. However, I completely forgot that Rhex exist, not only producing water and cooling, but also salt.

[alexkuzmov]

On 11/22/2025 at 4:46 AM, StarvingAngler said:

One last addition I completely forgot to mention. Earlier I mentioned how the system seems to only be possible with a chlorine source due to lack of any other way of mass producing salt. However, I completely forgot that Rhex exist, not only producing water and cooling, but also salt.

I gave the loop you proposed a look and it might workout like this:

4 ranches of 2 lumb + 1 rhex per ranch -> nearly 1 ton of algae per cycle + enough water from the Brine ice to feed all ovagro vines, the salt would from 4 Rhex brine would be enough for 1 rust deoxidizer. Salt is indeed the limiting factor.

The rest just explodes in productivity, the algae is enough for over 100 pacus, which can feed like a crazy amount of Jawbos, which will **** out a tons of rust per cycle.
You can only run 1 deoxidizer though.
With so much rust, might be a good idea to run a rust melter on the side for free refined iron.

[alexkuzmov]

I think its a dope loop, and I`ll try to make it in my current base.
You get so much out of it and the only things I see as costs is dupe labor + 0.6 kg of water per cycle.
Out of it you get sand, tons of rust, oxygen for 5 dupes, iron ore, chlorine, meat, molts, feathers...

[gigamoi]

20 hours ago, alexkuzmov said:

You get so much out of it and the only things I see as costs is dupe labor + 0.6 kg of water per cycle.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure you can get your missing water and salt from a few extra rhexes fed with though meat sourced from the first four rhexes and themselves (if you don't mind using the though meat that way, which you most likely do since your setup should also produce ludicrous amounts of jwambo filet). You may even not need to groom those extra rhexes and just have them on a critter condo.

Edited November 27, 2025 by gigamoi
typo

[alexkuzmov]

11 hours ago, gigamoi said:

Hmm, I'm pretty sure you can get your missing water and salt from a few extra rhexes fed with though meat sources from the first four rhexes and themselves (if you don't mind using the though meat that way, which you most likely do since your setup should also produce ludicrous amounts of jwambo filet). You may even not need to groom those extra rhexes and just have them on a critter condo.

Possibly, yes. Its a crazy loop with so many posibilities because of the amount of resources it produces. The more you look at it the more it explodes in productivity.

For example. Instead of feeding the polluted dirt to pokeshells, you can run it through a compost to get regular dirt for mealwood farming. That mealwood can feed dreckos to get phosphorite to fertilize Pikeapple Bush. With that amount of dirt you can have 105 bushes which can feed over a 100 Floxes. The wood from the floxes can be turned into ethanol. And not just a little bit. With over 100 floxes, you can run 10 distillers flat out, which translates to 2 and a half petroleum generators which give you 1.875 P02 per second. More dirt, more water, C02, more meat than you would know what to do with.
Another route, you can expand on the Rhex stables as you suggeted and can get more salt from the brine. That can then feed another 2 rust deoxidizers for a full 90g/s of chlorine to grow a Megafrond plant. Take the water from the petroleum generators or better, from the brine, to grow bristle berries and now you can make endless berry sludge.

P.S. The polluted dirt from the ethanol distilers can now feed 28 pokeshelss for nearly 1 ton of sand per cycle. Run half that through a glass forge, now you got 125 kg/c of glass.

P.S.S. You can actually take some of the overflow of resources to feed hatches and get coal.
So egg sheels make lime, hatches make coal which makes refined carbon, jawbos make rust which makes iron ore which makes refined iron. Combine all these you get steel. LOL, you can make steel with this loop.
Dreckos and mealwood? You get plastic.
The more I think about it the more this loop can make. They`ll probably nerf it.

Edited November 27, 2025 by alexkuzmov

[gigamoi]

Yeah. I believe blum lumps are so "OP" at the moment because they are meant to allow for decently efficient oxygen generation through the oxygen diffuser, as both production and consumption rates so neatly match through easy fractions, while the oxygen diffuser was meant to be easy to set up early-game but hard to sustainably use. As a result of the latter, while initially abundant in some asteroid, algae had to be hard to sustainably efficiently produce and said processes were generally less water efficient than just electrolyzing the water for oxygen. Algae being hard to produce, it was made a potent pacu food at some point. Now blum lumps make it easy to mass produce. Hence, the ludicrous multiplicative power of (blum lumps)*(pacus).

 

That being said, I really appreciate the effort to diversify potential oxygen sources as I've been setting up SPOMs for more than six years now. I'm glad blum lumps make the oxygen diffuser easy to restock as I find diffusers to be more practical to use than oxylite for space travel (mostly because a sitting oxylite bin left alone with no automation in a rocket interior with atmosuit docks will result in constant supply errands as it off gases whereas the diffuser's threshold mechanic prevents that. I use to have to automate something complex in the very limited rocket interior space to mitigate that. I no longer have to).

 

So I believe the fix should consist in making pacus hungrier when it comes to algae.

Edited November 27, 2025 by gigamoi

[missasch]

 

4 hours ago, gigamoi said:

I'm glad blum lumps make the oxygen diffuser easy to restock as I find diffusers to be more practical to use than oxylite for space travel (mostly because a sitting oxylite bin left alone with no automation in a rocket interior with atmosuit docks will result in constant supply errands as it off gases whereas the diffuser's threshold mechanic prevents that. I use to have to automate something complex in the very limited rocket interior space to mitigate that. I no longer have to).

I always found the off gassing annoying but recently Exho Ridge did a video where he used the storage tile and an oxylite sconce for oxygen in his rocket and the tiles don’t allow the oxylite to off gas so it actually works out really well. Although I don’t know that it would be great for heavy Atmosuit usage I currently just plug the gas pipes into the atmosuit on planet for my mining rockets and it works great. 
 

But I am excited to try out the Blum Lumbs since this seems so interesting of a resource loop.

[Carib94]

While the loops in this thread are quite interesting, I simply use blums for the diffusers in rockets and/or cross planets. If my math is correct you need 2.5 blums to have a diffuser running full time(probably wont cause of pressure stuff). So if having 4blums you get oxygen for at least 4-5 dupes + extra algae for pacu maybe so pretty good critter overall. S tier