Frosti85 wrote: Thu May 14, 2020 1:21 pm
you can create a plant that convert coal into lube, without byproducts
you use coal liquifaction
heavy oil -> lube
light oil -> solid fuel
petro -> solid fuel
solid fuel -> steam -> energy & coal liquifaction
the solid fuel from this process burn all the petro and light oil, and the energy is enough to power the entire plant
basically, then you have a coal to lube zero energy module
I found this intriguing, so I tried it in sandbox/cheat mode:
I had to bootstrap the setup with a bit of heavy oil for the refinery, of course, and a bit of coal to start the steam.
But now it's self-sustaining and then some. One single refinery running coal liquifaction and turning the light oil and petroleum into solid fuel produces more than enough power to run itself and enough coal miners to easily saturate it. There's a surplus of solid fuel, which can be used to power the rest of the factory.
Which, I guess, may not seem that different from the case
without coal liquifaction (a surplus of light oil and petroleum), except that coal liquifaction produces a lot of heavy oil. Especially in the current (experimental) version, coal liquifaction takes in 25 heavy oil and spits out 90, producing 3.6 times as much heavy oil as was put in.
So, JackTheSpades, if you set up a bunch of coal liquifaction, turn the light oil and petroleum into solid fuel, and run your factory off that solid fuel, will you end up with enough lubricant?
I realize you may look at the solid fuel in this case as "waste", but I feel like if you're using it to run your factory, it's not really waste.