Factorio Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel

When Is Turning Coal Into Solid Fuel Useful?

Suppose you're in the mid-game.

You haven't discovered nuclear, the patches are far away, or located next to biter nests. Your solar fields haven't scaled up yet.

You still rely on steam to provide most of your power, and Steel Furnaces to smelt items (Steel Furnaces consume 90kW vs Electric Furnaces at 180kW).

That's when it would make sense to build a coal to solid fuel setup.

Here's an example of a mid game map.

Generated with completely default settings. No Mods.

Note the two power plant arrays to the North and West.

The Bare Bones Setup

Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel image 10

The following design is the absolute bare minimum you need to start turning coal into solid fuel.

Setup

To use this blueprint, you need to:

Hook up coal to the belt to the top left.

Hook up water to the top.

Dump a barrel of heavy fuel into the assembler to the top. (You may remove the assembler after that).

Throw some fuel into the boiler to the top.

Set the constant combinator (next to the assembler) to the number of refineries you have. This will ensure that the storage tanks keeps enough heavy oil to keep the refineries self sustained.

The numbers

This setup consumes 2 coal per second and 2.2 M electricity per second, and produces 2.35 solid fuel per second. This works out to

Input: 2 * 4 M + 2.2 M = 10.2 M in

Output: 12 * 2.35 M = 28.2 M out

This gives us a ratio of 2.76 of output vs input!

Essentially, your coal patches will last 2.76 times the usual time!

The 5 Refinery Setup

Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel image 27

Basics

This is the setup you will use the most until you scale out of using solid fuel.

The Numbers

This setup takes in 10 coal per second and 7.8 M electricity per second, and it produces 8.35 solid fuel per second. This works out to

Input: 10 * 4 M + 7.8 M = 47.8 M in

Output: 12 * 8.35 M = 100.2 M out

This gives us a ratio of 2.09 of output vs input!

Essentially, your coal patches will last 2.1 times. While the 1 refinery setup is more efficient, this setup produces more per second.

Real Example

Here's something I have deployed in the example above.

It produces enough fuel for all my smelters, trains and one steam engine column.

The Coal Patch The Solid Fuel Conversion

The Scaling Calculator

Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel image 42

Included in the blueprints is a ratio calculator, where you can see how many of a certain thing you need.

You can enter the number of Oil Refineries you want to run in the constant combinator at the bottom.

On the top, you can mouse over each arithmetic combinator to see how many of a certain thing you need:

Boilers

Heavy Oil to Light Oil Chemical Plants

Gas to Solid Fuel Chemical Plants

Light Oil to Solid Fuel Chemical Plants

The 5 Refinery Beacon'd Setup

Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel image 51

The Basics

This is just theory crafting, to be honest. You should've moved to 100% solar and nuclear by now, but I wanted to push the limits on how much coal to solid fuel I could convert. Feast your eyes on this:

This setup consumes 1 full blue belt of coal (Actually, a little bit more: 46.5/s to be exact; blue belts provide 45/s). In return, it provides nearly 1.7 blue belts of solid fuel (!).

The Numbers

This setup takes in 45 coal per second and 119 M electricity per second, and it produces 74.8 solid fuel per second. This works out to

Input: 45 * 4 M + 119 M = 299 M in

Output: 12 * 74.8 M = 897.6 M out

This gives us a ratio of 3 of output vs input!

Your coal patches will last three times as long as just burning it as coal! Wow!

That said, you should've moved to nuclear (for trains, backup power etc), electric furnaces (because they can have modules) and solar farms (main power source) by now, so this is just theory crafting.

Should you find yourself burning coal late game, maybe consider plonking this down next to your coal patch?

Blueprint Book

Copy the text in the pastebin link to your clipboard, then "Import String" in Factorio to get access to the 4 blueprints mentioned above. Enjoy! :)

https://pastebin.com/BDLPnacx

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2761277771

Coal Liquefaction to Solid Fuel