Solving the Hydrogen + Graphite Problem

[Prota]

Ok so I already have the X-ray cracking upgrade but I've been struggling for hours on how to "separate" the refined oil from the hydrogene on the belt.

The refinery generates 2 refined oil but only 1 hydrogene. The x-ray needs the opposite and I need to solve this to automate the red energy matrix.

Is anybody stuck at this too?

[Kai]

Filter. It's one of the first things you learn.

[thethomasgeorge]

when you place your sorters, use the arrow button left and right to select what you want on what belt.

[flux.faraday]

Second question: I'm not there yet, but I'd suggest feeding back all the hydrogen to the xray cracker until you have enough. Only then let it flow to the matrix generator. Burn excess oil or graphite if you need to.

In my world, I'm just storing the refined oil in a tank. Don't have xray cracking yet :)

[Prota]

Thank you very much for the help, it solved for me

[TickTockBent]

Splitters and Sorters can filter items. You could send everything down one belt for convenience then sort them with a splitter by filtering the outputs

[blastingweevil]

for the hydrogen and refined oil you only need to filter 1 output it will then automaticly send the unfiltered items down another output

[Foefaller]

Originally posted by blastingweevil:

for the hydrogen and refined oil you only need to filter 1 output it will then automaticly send the unfiltered items down another output

Only as long as there's no backup. If the filtered line is full and the refinery has to ship out that resource in order to keep producing, it will start shipping resources down the unfiltered line. Not sure if it's the same for the 4 way, but it wouldn't suprise me.

So while starting off you only need to filter one sorter, it's better to set both if you're using significantly more of one of the outputs than the other.

[ReaperWolfsbane]

Originally posted by Foefaller:

Originally posted by blastingweevil:

for the hydrogen and refined oil you only need to filter 1 output it will then automaticly send the unfiltered items down another output

Only as long as there's no backup. If the filtered line is full and the refinery has to ship out that resource in order to keep producing, it will start shipping resources down the unfiltered line. Not sure if it's the same for the 4 way, but it wouldn't suprise me.

So while starting off you only need to filter one sorter, it's better to set both if you're using significantly more of one of the outputs than the other.

I use 2 lane wide belts on the input/output. This way it allows me to build up a very long chain of refineries running along in a line. Rotated so the side input/outputs are available and the two sides of the building where only one side has any I/Os are always facing each other.

Two lanes for the output of hydrogen/graphite, graphite gets fed into a storage that then feeds to the labs, hydrogen is designed to wrap back around to the storages that hold the hydrogen coming off the refined oil process.

Another two lanes for the input of hydrogen and refined oil that feeds into the graphite process. Of course the whole system I have setup produces -faaaar- more hydrogen than I could use. In fact I have it setup so that the 'final' storage that gets fed from both hydrogen sources (refining oil to feed the graphite producers and the excess hydrogen created from graphite) is stacked 3x storages tall and has a runoff at the top that ends up feeding to 6 fractionators along with feeding a bit more runoff to some thermal generators for more power.

This is because I found out that while sorters placed on a lower/bottom tier of storage will pull from even the top levels, sorters attached to the top level won't pull from lower, or at least not that I've noticed.

Kind of hard to see the graphite conveyor but it runs along the hydrogen output line that feeds back into the storage. https://i.imgur.com/x4HAllk.jpg

Filtering sorters is very important though, can't build any of it without filtering outputs from any of the machines. I would recommend anyone looking to do something similar might want something that looks better, because this was mostly cobbled together in a hurry because I needed large amounts of that red matrix and this was the best idea I had.

[Hydroculator]

Originally posted by ReaperWolfsbane:

https://i.imgur.com/x4HAllk.jpg

And here I was proud of the fact that I got a miner and a storage unit connected.

[ReaperWolfsbane]

Originally posted by Hydroculator:

Originally posted by ReaperWolfsbane:

https://i.imgur.com/x4HAllk.jpg

And here I was proud of the fact that I got a miner and a storage unit connected.

My original setup for getting started out was having 4 miners feed to a 2x2 grid of storages so I would have stone/iron/copper/coal whenever I needed it. Which then expanded to a section that auto crafts blue matrix. That screenshot was when I added a section to make red matrix at a reliable-ish rate. Then I had to add the deuterium manufacturing area to deal with the huge surplus of hydrogen to prevent hitting a production stall of graphite. I added a further section recently to slowly produce yellow matrix recently, and now I'm working on getting space deliveries figured out so I no longer have to manually fly out to my titanium and silicon sources. Getting to a point where I can no longer craft stuff in my inventory so that's going to be weird setting up facilities to produce solely resources I can't replicate.

[Britty mitty]

Originally posted by ReaperWolfsbane:

Originally posted by Hydroculator:

And here I was proud of the fact that I got a miner and a storage unit connected.

My original setup for getting started out was having 4 miners feed to a 2x2 grid of storages so I would have stone/iron/copper/coal whenever I needed it. Which then expanded to a section that auto crafts blue matrix. That screenshot was when I added a section to make red matrix at a reliable-ish rate. Then I had to add the deuterium manufacturing area to deal with the huge surplus of hydrogen to prevent hitting a production stall of graphite. I added a further section recently to slowly produce yellow matrix recently, and now I'm working on getting space deliveries figured out so I no longer have to manually fly out to my titanium and silicon sources. Getting to a point where I can no longer craft stuff in my inventory so that's going to be weird setting up facilities to produce solely resources I can't replicate.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1366540/discussions/0/3111392579689320697/
I have a thread, third post down you'll see an explanation on setting up planet to planet transport with screen shots as an example.

[cameronipizza]

Set it up like this:

Oil of around 2.0 per second, put oil pump here.

Make four refineries.

Make belt come from oil pump to the first two refineries and set them to the first recipe you originally got.

Connect the first two refineries towards the remaining two - which you'll set to x-ray.

The x-ray refineries will make 3 hydrogen per cycle, so filter these off to your science lab to make red matrices.

You'll be left with graphite. Filter these off to a thermal plant. What usually happens: You send graphite to labs, unfortunately it doesn't produce enough so you make graphite from coal but now there is too much and the graphite backs up and your refinery shuts down. Trust me, just burn it, and make graphite from scratch from coal, straight to the lab.

So you're getting lots of hydrogen, yay! But unfortunately the first two refineries produce too much oil. To start with, burn it all off in thermal power plants in the beginning so the hydrogen production. isn't inhibited. Eventually, make plastic with it to go toward making yellow matrices.

Essentially: In the beginning when you have no use for graphite or refined oil... burn it all! The hydrogen must flow!

[Rhaane]

@ReaperWolfsbane
The screen shot you posted has hydrogen and refined oil in crates. Have you tried the Tanks? those are both liquids and you can belt them directly into storage tanks for 10,000 of them into 1 tank instead of 20x30 stacks in a crate (600). Tanks can be stacked the same for LOTS of liquid buffer storage and it looks awesome.

[!?!]

It's a 1 refinery to 2 crackers ratio and cracking consumes 3 hydrogen and outputs 1 so you'll get 1 graphite and 1 hydrogen per crack if you feed it in itself. Perfect ratio for science but unfortunately, the excess hydrogen from the refineries messes it up.
So burn that or whatever.

Oh yeah also don't ever mix belts.
All that does is create headache.

[Mansen]

Originally posted by Foefaller:

Only as long as there's no backup. If the filtered line is full and the refinery has to ship out that resource in order to keep producing, it will start shipping resources down the unfiltered line.

Why would you leave unfiltered output in the first place? You place two outputs, both filtered to Oil or Hydrogen. Now the plant only outputs what it should and never mixes things.