In this guide we will discuss how to produce the red energy matrices from coal and crude oil without any excess hydrogen to store which could clog up the production line! We will first discuss the idea at a high level, look at the overall recipe and then discuss the required production lines in detail.

Starting with an overview, the aim will be to use the crude oil gathering, plasma refining and x-ray cracking supplemented by smelting coal to energetic graphene to produce the red energy matrices. The crude oil refining process to hydrogen and energetic graphene produces an excess of hydrogen that you usually would have to store and be at risk of filling up and jamming your production lines. We will instead use the coal smelting to energetic graphene to soak up the excess hydrogen into additional red energy matrices.

We will aim to get to 12 energy matrices per second. If this is too ambitious for you, just scale down the production lines proportionally. The mathematics of producing enough hydrogen for 12 red energy matrices is as follows:

+16 crude oil (from oil seed) -16 crude oil +16 refined oil +8 hydrogen (from plasma refining) -16 refined oil -24 hydrogen +48 hydrogen +16 energetic graphene (from x-ray cracking) = +24 hydrogen and +16 energetic graphene

As you can see, there is 8 extra hydrogen per second that gets produced per second that we would normally have to store. However, by producing 8 energetic graphene per second from coal, we can soak up the excess hydrogen and use it to produce even more red energy matrices!

Now that you understand the high level, let’s look at the production lines. We will be using Mk.I proliferate to speed up the plasma refining and x-ray smelting processes because they are very small. If you don’t have proliferate, just put down proportionally more refineries. We will make use of the production speed up rather than the additional items.

The first step is to gather 16 crude oil per second. This is a little more than 2 full Mk.I conveyor belts (which carry 6 items per second). We will then need enough refineries to produce 16 refined oil and 8 hydrogen per second, which requires 32 refineries. This can be divided into 3 lines of refineries, 2 of which are fed with the 6 crude oil per second into 10 refineries (12 without the proliferate) and the third line had 7 refineries (8 without proliferate).

This produces 16 reminder oil per second, or just under 3 full Mk.I conveyor belts, and 8 hydrogen, 2 belts with 3 per second and 1 with 2 per second. The next stage is the x-ray cracking. The tricky part with this production line is that some of the output hydrogen needs to be fed back into the input to be able to consume all of the refined oil. We will make use of 3 lines again, 2 with 20 refineries each (24 without proliferate) and one with 13 refineries (16 without proliferate).

The next challenge is to determine how much of the hydrogen needs to be fed back into the input. The answer is basically that 32 hydrogen is needed on the input in total, which is 12 per second for the longer lines and 8 per second on the shorter line. This means that 2 full hydrogen belts are needed on the input. I used the first 4 refineries to supplement the 3 hydrogen per second coming from the plasma refining stage. This is slightly more than is needed, so there is some excess that can be used to start the second full Mk.I conveyor belt.

The next 6 are used for the other full input belt in addition to the excess of the first 4 refineries. This is then enough hydrogen to get the full line working.

The shorter line works in a similar way except instead of 6 refineries on the second line, only 2 are needed.

The next step is to put together 16 smelters consuming 16 coal per second to produce 8 energetic graphene per second to supplement the energetic graphene from the refining. Now we have everything we need for the red energy matrix. To kick off the production process, be sure to use the energetic graphene from coal to supplement to energetic graphene from the refining in addition to feeding their own red energy matrix production. This means that more hydrogen is consumed which will enable the production line to ramp up. Eventually, the energetic graphene supplementation won’t be needed anymore and it will just be used to produce additional red energy matrices from the excess hydrogen.

That’s it! Now you know how to put together red energy matrices without needing to store the excess hydrogen and jamming up the production lines!