Lime and it's uses

[PapaDookie]

Just wondering since we now need lime to make steel would it be an idea to change the output on the rock granulator so that sedimentary rock when ground also drops a small amount of lime but to balance out the increased source with adding lime to the recipe for glass? 

[blash365]

Alot more transport errands for little gain, if you ask me. But in terms of realism it might be a good step.

[Coolthulhu]

Having some very high labor, very low yield source of lime might be a good idea. At the moment lime is available in small amounts on mapgen (fossils), but after that it's just a waiting game while farming a lot of critters for meat.

Glass needing lime certainly wouldn't balance out increased lime drops. The only glass sink is solar panel and they're a pain to use already. It would only result in more steel and less panels.

[Sasza22]

Potential lime sinks would be the carbon skimmer and concrete. It would be nice if bunker tiles required concrete as well as steel. Would make them more "bunkery". As for carbon skimmers it makes chemical sense to use lime to trap CO2 in water as CaCO3.

Maybe instead of the rock crusher we could use a later tech chemical plant that would extract small amounts of lime out of sedimentary rock. It would be also used for other recipies.

[Coolthulhu]

55 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Potential lime sinks would be the carbon skimmer and concrete.

Lime is one of the very few resources that actually have enough sinks - it is the single most "sinkable" material (even more than oxygen, water etc.). Adding lime-based concrete to bunker tiles would not really change anything: the limiting factor is still amount of lime (which limits steel at the moment).

ONI lime doesn't have the same role as RL lime. IRL lime is plentiful (Ca is 5th most common element in crust), emits CO2 when processed, is used in steel production to bind slag (ie. doesn't end up in steel). ONI lime is so rare that it is the primary limiter of steel production, is much rarer and more valuable than gold, becomes fully integrated (100% of mass) in resulting steel.