karlthepagan
commented
3 years ago Coke is a vital ingredient in modern steel and electronics production. This "metallurgic coal" will be one of the last uses of fossil fuels that humans will eliminate from our economy. Zero-carbon steel and silicon technology is a modern challenge.
Coke Production (Recipes are examples with some reasoning behind them but used resources and outputs are accurate to my knowledge) Coke is produced in a similar way to charcoal. It is burned in a oxygen free environment and the impurities burn out. A primitive way to produce coke is a beehive oven. A beehive oven can also be used to produce charcoal. A beehive oven should be made out of bricks at the kiln. It does not require a power tab because it does not require additional fuel to produce charcoal or coke since the wood or coal is what is actually burning. The charcoal recipe can be the same as the existing recipe in 9.0 just moved to the beehive oven and not requiring fuel to produce. Coke should be made with one coal and produce one coke and about .25 Slag(from 9.0). The oven should produce air pollution. (Vent on top of dome) Beehive Oven:
More advanced ways exist today to produce coke. The upgraded ovens should not be able to produce charcoal they burn too hot. The upgraded tier of coke oven should be called "industrial coke oven" or "cross-regenerative coke oven". It uses electricity and coal to produce coke at a significantly faster rate than the beehive oven. High-temperature carbonization is the process used the industrial coke oven which produces air pollution and creosote oil (simplified version of real byproducts) instead of slag. You could even make the industrial coke oven tier two (midgame) and the cross-regenerative coke oven tier three (late game). The tier two version would be slower (than tier three) and use charcoal (at a slow rate) as fuel (high carbon content fuels tag). While the tier three version uses electricity and is the fastest. All machines should be able to uses respective tier upgrade (basic, advanced, modern) as well as smelting upgrade. The effective skill is smelting or advanced smelting.
cross-regenerative coke oven:
Section A is a cross section. I would recommend letting the artist come up with something creative for the design since the real versions are extremely large (20 feet tall and 50 feet long) and normally build into buildings. That is a diagram of a cross-regenerative coke oven which is a modern way to produce coke. For simplicity in game the electricity would be used to produce the extremally hot temperatures used in high-temperature carbonization. A external heat source is needed because it requires temperatures hotter than what the coal normally burns at. Creosote oil is used to treat wood to keep it from rotting. This is useful for making railroad ties which would be useful for when trains are added to the game. It could also be used to treat lumber and lumber based furniture to make the tier progression more realistic since more modern furniture is treated when made out of wood. Creosote oil was also used to waterproof the sails of ships before synthetic fabrics were made which were already waterproof. (Boat Update) In modern times newer chemicals have replaced the job of creosote but at least you have some midgame chemical treatment when the chemicals industry is introduced.
Coke Uses Coke is obviously burned as a fuel but it is normally used for specific applications. Coke is used to produce steel and metal since coal does not burn hot enough. The bloomery and blast furnace should only accept fuels with the high carbon content fuels tag because other fuels don't burn hot enough. The requirement to add coal to make steal should be removed because that was supposed to represent the high carbon content fuel. So requiring the blast furnace to uses those fuels added additional fuel is unnecessary.