Fractionator

Fractionation Facility

Taking advantage of the high vapor pressure ratio of hydrogen and liquid deuterium at a certain temperature, deuterium is fractionated from liquid hydrogen with a certain separation efficiency. Use a conveyor belt to introduce hydrogen from one side, after fractional distillation, export from the other side, and export the deuterium from the front port.

Work Consumption		720 kW
Idle Consumption		18.0 kW
Made In		Assembler
Hand-Make		Replicator
Stack Size		30

1

3 s

8

4

1

Summary

The Fractionator is a unique facility with 3 conveyor belt ports. The input requires Hydrogen, belted in from one side, leaving through its opposing belt port. 1% of the Hydrogen that passes through will be transformed into Deuterium and needs to be belted out from the middle port.

Fractionators will conserve Hydrogen stacks that are passing through, with the exception of converted Hydrogen, which is removed from the pile. Hydrogen is converted individually rather than per stack, so any singular Hydrogen has the same chance to be converted. Since the total production of the fractionator directly scales with the amount of hydrogen passing through, much higher production rates will be achieved when the belt itself is faster and/or stacked. If the Hydrogen feed is proliferated the base conversion chance is increased by its speed proliferation value (up to 100% with MK3 Proliferator for a 2% chance).

Production Chain

Recipe	Building	Replicator?	Technology
1 3 s 8 4 4 1		✔

Production Progression Chart

Stage 1	Stage 2	Stage 3	Stage 4	Stage 5
24	24	8		1
4	4
8	4
8	4	2	1
2	2	2
2	2	2
1	1	2

Player Tips & Tricks

The Fractionator is unique in that the amount of Deuterium produced is a percentage of the Hydrogen input. This means that the rate of Deuterium conversion is directly proportional to the conveyor belt's speed (1% of belt speed), how saturated the Hydrogen input and outputs are, and how high the Hydrogen input is stacked.
- Belt Speed * 0,01 * Saturation Percentage * Stack Size = Deuterium Production Speed
- Production rates for a single Fractionator with fully saturated input belt:

Stack Size 1		Stack Size 2		Stack Size 3		Stack Size 4
3.6/m	0.06/s	7.2/m	0.12/s	10.8/m	0.18/s	14.4/m	0.24/s
7.2/m	0.12/s	14.4/m	0.24/s	21.6/m	0.36/s	28.8/m	0.48/s
18/m	0.3/s	36/m	0.6/s	54/m	0.9/s	72/m	1.2/s

Early / Midgame Fractionator loop with T-Junction and Piler, to re-stack the circulating hydrogen and fill any gaps created in the process. Please pay attention to belt direction and relative positioning of junction and Piler.

It is useful to build Fractionators in a conveyor loop, with one entry point for Hydrogen. This allows cycling of Hydrogen already on the belt for further conversion to Deuterium, requiring only the replacement of Hydrogen that was converted. However, limiting the loop size or replenishing hydrogen in between is crucial since every converted hydrogen will lower the efficiency of each following Fractionator in line.

The total expected output of such a Fractionator setup can be calculated using the following amended equation: [Belt Speed] * [Stack Size] * ([Initial Saturation Percentage] - (0.99 ^ [Number of Fractionators])) = [Total Deuterium Production Speed]

This equation gives the expected total production of a 100 Fractionator setup on a Stack-1 Conveyor Belt Mk.III loop, starting at 100% saturation as 30 * 1 * (100% - (0.99 ^ 100) = 19.019 Deuterium/second, or a system conversion rate of 63.4%. In comparison, a loop of 6 Fractionators will operate at 94,14% conversion efficiency.

As a result, having multiple entry points in the conveyor loop for Hydrogen to replenish saturation, or multiple conveyor loops is recommended. With the introduction of Piler Sorters 100% efficiency can be ensured by re-stacking the Hydrogen loop in between each Fractionator, rendering the traditional single-loop setups obsolete. Thus, Piler Sorters also remove the need for limited loop size.

In order to prevent clogging of the loop setup (circulation ceases) the inflowing Hydrogen conveyor must be joined to the conveyor loop in either T-shape or via Splitter with the returning Hydrogen input set as prioritized. Alternatively, the Hydrogen can be injected via sorters.

Proliferating Hydrogen increases the Fractionator's conversion rate by the Proliferator's Production Speedup bonus, also applying the Energy Consumption penalty. Passing through the Fractionator does not remove the Proliferator marks from the Hydrogen unless it gets converted.

The energy consumption of a Fractionator depends on the Deuterium output (or equivalently the Hydrogen Input) for Deuterium output rates below or equal to 18/m (full Mk. III Belt with Stack Size 1) the base energy consumption of 720 kW is independent of the output rate as long as it is non-zero. For Deuterium output rates above 18/min the energy consumption is given by 0.06*([Deuterium/m]-6) MW. For example a Fractionator running on a fully stacked Mk. III Belt with 72 Deuterium/m consumes 3.96 MW. When using Proliferators for Production Speedup bonus the energy consumption rate is increased as usual (20%, 70% and 150% increase when using Mk. I, II., or III. Proliferator respectively). Thus the maximal energy consumption of a single Fractionator is 9.9 MW while producing 144 Deuterium/m on a fully stacked Mk. III belt of Mk. III proliferated Hydrogen.

Max throughput for a line of N fractionators processing 7200 stacked, proliferated hydrogen/minute is 7200 * (1 - 0.98 ^ N). 14 fractionators in a line will yield an average 1773 deuterium / minute, not quite saturating an output belt. Alternately 2 lines of 6 fractionators on either side of a single output belt will yield 1643/m.