Suggestion: Chemical Engineering

  • I've got a very rudimentary Chemistry background, so I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but:


    If I could nab some of that Hydrogen output and get pure Nitrogen, it's possible to make Ammonia. So Hydrogen + (some nitrogen source - atmosphere, etc.) = Ammonia. Now that ammonia is highly alkaline it could be one of those strong Alkali reagents, or be utilised in something like Fertiliser.


    Burning stuff in a generator or furnace produces CO2, right? Well, pump that into a reactor unit to lower the pH.


    A few more ideas: Producing rubber, fuel, dyes etc. is all common usage in the industry.

  • Nice ideas. Never even though about how modern chemical plants condense gases out of the atmosphere using pressure and temperature.


    Once enough brainstorming has taken place, I'll try and make a consolidated list of all proposed reactions/reactors/reagents/etc.

    People just can't stay away from me... but that is because I'm so fat I have my own gravitational field.


    It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.

  • For calcium IMO better would be bones and bone meal (it would be also good source of phosphoric acid). For strong acid i would say that blaze powder is some form of sulfur, voilà! sulphuric acid.
    Ammonia is not so strongly alkaline, better would be potassium hydroxide, made from potash (special burning wood for it -- very strong alkaline).
    Resin: source of isoprene, for organic synthesis and to make plastic.
    Plantball: fermentation, and we have methane. Water vapor and coaldust with hot -- synthetic gas (CO and H2). Milk + acid = casein (plastic). Shrooms? Toxins!
    And sugar can be fermented -> ethanol -> acetic acid (in water solution -- vinegar), medium acid.
    Any more ideas needed?


  • I thought of perhaps using the Minechem as a base for this, but the mechanic of not having to mine for raw materials irks me a bit.
    This is still meant as a suggestion for IC² though, so I'm not sure what the policy of introducing other mod dependencies are.


    ejkozan:
    Good suggestions. Thanks.


    @Everyone:
    I realised yesterday that the proposed idea (chemical engineering) lacks vision and goals at the moment.
    As in. why should it be implemented at all? Why would a user spend effort in pursuing it?
    Other than stating "Add some chemical reactions to IC²", it has no real goals, either general or specific.
    (Kind of like we said that we want to go on a roadtrip, but haven't figured out where we want to go yet.)


    To that end, I'm going to try and slap together a mission statement (I.e. what we want out of this mechanic/addon).


    Chemical Engineering Addon Mission Statement
    General Goals:

    • Add simplified chemical reactions as a new mechanic to Minecraft (New Mechanic is essentially a balancing act of several values)
    • Provide players with a means to supplement mining, throughout game.
    • Provide players new content to game, throughout game.
    • Provide players means of increasing output from mined/farmed blocks/items.
    • Allow integration with redstone and other control mechanics (Reactors have redstone signals for high/low pH, Water, Heat, etc.)
    • Allow integration with EU system (Heaters, coolers, agitators, etc.)
    • Allow affecting of environment (Exploding tanks, poisoning entities, dissolving blocks, etc.)
    • Supplement existing mechanics in IC² (In reactions make use of centrifuges, furnaces, etc.)
    • {Uncertain} Redo existing ways of obtaining certain items to include some chemical engineering
    • {Uncertain} Expand mining methods to include chemicals (like using super-acids to break blocks, etc.)
    • -- Insert your idea for a goal here --


    Specific Goals:

    • Create mechanics to control heat (Heaters for EU to Heat+, Coolers for EU to Heat-,Heat Exchangers for Heat.average, etc.)
    • Create items for manipulating pH (Bonemeal, Milk, items produced via reactions, etc.)
    • Create food and beverage processes. (Automated baking, automated food-in-a-can, etc.)
    • Create metal ores from large quantities of 'junk' blocks. (Copper/Tin/Iron/etc. from Dirt/Sand/Gravel/Cobble/etc.)
    • Create fuel from plant matter (Bio-fuel from sugarcane, etc.)
    • -- Insert your idea for a goal here --

    People just can't stay away from me... but that is because I'm so fat I have my own gravitational field.


    It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.

  • Should nearby reactors exchange heat?
    Should they exchange heat with Nuclear Reactor, Metal blocks?
    Should they gain/lose heat contacting with Lava/Water? With working processor, furnace, other mods furnaces?

  • Quote from Sebra

    Should nearby reactors exchange heat?


    Yes, definitely. Ever since you suggested it on page 1 I thougt that would be a neat mechanism.
    I would make it so that you need heat-exchangers though (special blocks) that simply try to balance the heat of all adjacent blocks.
    (Specific goals #1: Heat-Exchanger given quick mention.)


    Quote from Sebra

    Should they exchange heat with Nuclear Reactor, Metal blocks?
    Should they gain/lose heat contacting with Lava/Water? With working processor, furnace, other mods furnaces?


    Heat could be made a standard like EU, but you would still have to code it in.
    I suspect given that one would have to code all such interactions it would take time to get total integration.


    I'll assign in detail what mechanics/items/blocks/ideas have to do with what goal, once all goals are defined.
    A shortened explanation of how a project works:

    • Decide what you want (Goals)
    • Decide how you are going to get what you want (How to)
    • Decide who does what, when and exactly how (Detail plan)
    • Do it (Work, work, work...)
    • Celebrate (This step typically performed by management that had nothing to do with the project, but take all the praise. :P )


    We are now in step 1.
    (I'll avoid the whole 'Must', 'Should' and 'May' approach for goals, unless nobody can agree on order of implementation and importance.
    What the bleep is Must, Should, May goals? )
    So once we get to step 2, I'll consolidate all the ideas under each goal. That way we can easily see what goals we have no ideas for yet.


    Note: Flying to Madagascar tomorrow, so may not be able to drive this until I get back. Hopefully I'll still get time.
    If anyone else wants to give this a go (like trying to code it) in the meantime, feel free.

    People just can't stay away from me... but that is because I'm so fat I have my own gravitational field.


    It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.

  • How about lava metal extraction? You melt ore or dust, and electrolyze it? Get special alloys or more efficiency.

    1. OMG CREEPER RUN AWAY!
    2. Go away, you creeper wierdo!
    3. What ever, I'll just go around.
    4. Hup, over their heads I go!
    5. Okay Mister living grenade, I'm going to knock you into those skeletons, and I'll follow through with a nano saber. Understood? FOR THE ALMIGHTLY DRAGON LORD!

  • Quote

    (And yes, I understand that It is likely that in real life neither of those are 'weak', but in response I argue )


    It's not that far off... 'Strong' doesn't kick in until pH<5 or pH<10... Natural water sources actually are closer to the 6 range on the scale depending the environment that they are located..


    And I do hope somebody can take the time to put this together. This would really add more depth to those blocks rather than 'mine this, process that, herp derp repeat'. Would create newfound tiers of technology to explore by finding resource alternatives with chemical application (like synthetic redstone, leather, and such)

    Would anyone like to try a Slowpoke Tail?! Only 1 Million Yen!


    Quote

    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

  • Love the whole idea but I think this will be to hard to code. (But what do I know I've never even seen MC coding)

  • Love this idea, it has so many possibilities.


    One thing that I think needs considering is the pressure of the reaction. For example, take the hydrogen + nitrogen = ammonia reaction; you need very high pressures for that to work. Some way to compress or expand or pump or release pressure of gas or liquid would be useful.


    I'd like to see processing of wood and plantmatter (read: plantballs) into some sort of efficient fuel. Given water, yeast/enzymes/some sort of digester, low pressure/heat, average pH and quite a bit of time one can get ethanol or methanol from either of those; a more high-powered industrial process uses water, high heat, and high pressure which is released after the process finishes, boiling off the water and giving a high yield of basic hydrocarbons. The first process would probably be a lower tier, less efficient process, and the second would be a higher tier, more difficult process that gives a higher amount of fuel.

  • CrazyCrafter:
    Well, that entirely depends on how you program them.
    For example, why don't the dirt/sand/cobblestone/stone/etc. blocks create lag? There are thousands upon thousands of them! Why doesn't a large cobblestone house cause lag?
    Simple answer? No iterative code running on each block.


    Similarly, even if you made multiple chemical reactors, each a multi-block 'object', if you write it in such a manner than only one block does the processing, then no real issue.
    Similarly, if you want to check for the reactor being 'broken' by a player mining a block from it, you can simply have a new block type, that has no "Execute on tick" code, but triggers some response upon the event of being 'broken'. This new block would make up the majority of the shell of the reactors.
    On a multi-block reactor, typically only a few blocks would be executing code per tick. Likely these would be: Reagents input, Product output, Water input, Heat Regulation, Animation block (if any). So say between 4 and 8 blocks, depending on how many heat regulation (heat-sink) blocks you want a reactor to have. (Maybe even 3 only? If you define a reactor that you cannot control the heat of, except through reagents added.)



    3Davideo:
    A Massive bio-fuel refinery would be awesome.



    BillJoehobo:
    I doubt that the code will classify as 'difficult' (if you are talking in terms of technical complexity). It isn't much different than a recipe, or a furnace 'what-is-smeltable-into-what' table.
    But if you are referring to the amount of effort and work, then yes, I have no misconceptions that it will be a lot of work to implement.



    NuclearStudent:
    Sure. Why don't you draw up some mock reactions? We can work from there.



    MagusUnion:
    I also hope someone will give this a bash. I certainly will once I have time again.
    In the mean time I'll try and drive the design through the phases, so at least what it is we are aiming for is well defined.

    People just can't stay away from me... but that is because I'm so fat I have my own gravitational field.


    It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.

  • I don't know why you want pH as a basic reaction property, water based reactions are only a small part of chemical technology. I was thinking about something in these lines, based on metal pipes (in different cost/ heat and pressure, maybe corrosion resistance), reactor parts like stirrer, valve, heater or plating (think forestry aviary, but with any rectangular shape), catalysts. Also separators are needed, maybe simple for start (e.g. SO2 goes to the left, SO3 to the right), but laterwith some rectification columns or distribution systems based on Nernst Law. The best way would be to model reactions as realistically as possible (with correct enthalpy, entropy and rate, but scaled to minecraft/fun timing), with special reactor blocks with catalyst, where reaction occurs, with diffusion and flow simulation. It could make all basic reactors design possible, even with more complex cascade systems.


    Buildcraft Oil raffination could be a good place to start, processing oil would be a source of a lot of products, including sulfur, sulfuric acid (to make for example rubber from sticky resin), all kind of plastics with different properties, fuel and practically any simple organic compound. It would need a shitload of research and work to get it right/fun, but with addition of more realistic ore processing it could make a great timewaster and educational tool.

  • 3Davideo:
    Why not? As long as it is balanced properly I see no reason why not.


    Zjarek:
    Well, no particular reason for pH. As stated with the bakery example, it probably does not make the world of sense.
    The basic idea here is simply a gameplay element with three to four variables that you have to keep within their respective ranges to get it to succeed.
    The closer you maintain the values to optimal, the more you get out. Arguably you could use the same basic idea to do potion mixing, or cauldron brewed spells, or anything really.


    As for water, I purely suggested it given my experience in mining.
    Water is often used as a transport medium (slurry = solid particles suspended in a liquid, typically water). And even when not directly used in the reaction, often used in other ways.
    For instance, cooling for furnaces (transporting heat away), heating for distillation columns (bringing heat by means of steam), even dust supression.
    Industry uses 22% of water consumption


    Overall, I figured that a simplified version of chemistry would make it more accessable to the average player, given the sheer complexity that chemistry can entail.


    So in short, I'd love to hear your suggestion for a replacement system, just don't make it unfathomable for the rest of us. :P

    People just can't stay away from me... but that is because I'm so fat I have my own gravitational field.


    It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.

  • It is just my thing, that I would like to see realistic chemical reactor simulation from the first time I started playing modded minecraft. It just feels like the best medium for this. I have some experience in writing chemical simulations, but more in depth and in smaller scale (about 1 nm wide cube with periodic boundaries, one polymer, a few nanoseconds, days of computation time). About water, it is just your idea of reactor "black box" that I don't like. In my opinion reactor should be multi block structure, because they are awesome and using efficient reactors should require making complicated multi elements structures, they are a lot of fun to build. I would love to see technological extension to TerraFirmaCraft, but unfortunately tech mods are incompatible with it (I mean balance, not just getting it to work together).