I have a few thoughts, I hope this is the best thread to talk about them.
Firstly I'll say I am not a chemistry expert, I only did chemistry up to the final year in high school.
I was looking at the recipe to turn sugar into carbon and water cells in the electrolyzer and this did not make sense to me. A very fun little experiment one of my chem teachers did was to add sulphuric acid to sugar thus oxidising the sugar resulting in carbon.
I would propose that this would be the new recipe perhaps in the chemical reactor instead as (naming wise) it might make more sense, although you don't really need a machine for this reaction.
My second comment regards the red rock that is fantastic for many simple (gregtech simple, lol, not ic2 simple) materials such as aluminium, sodium, lithium and silicon. I am curious as to how these materials were decided upon. From what I know about red rock or soil, is that the reddish brown colour contains iron, or more accurately iron oxide. Fe2O3. (on a side note this turns to Fe2O2 a green blue colour when in an anaerobic state such as flooding)
I am not suggesting that the recipes are changed around this red rock unless Greg you think it suitable. I just always found it curious.