All Mekanism Chemicals and Fluids

Mekanism’s chemicals are what used to be called gases, and they’re the things its machines pass between each other, like Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulfuric Acid. On current versions the infusing materials, pigments and ore slurries are chemicals as well, so they all travel in Pressurized Tubes and they’re all stored in Chemical Tanks.

Most of them have a fluid form too, with Liquid in front of the name, which moves in Mechanical Pipes and sits in a Fluid Tank instead. This page lists every chemical and fluid with what makes it and what uses it, and then goes through the chains that need more than one machine.

Every Chemical and Fluid

The table below has every chemical and fluid that’s added by Mekanism and Mekanism Generators. You’re able to search it for a name, or filter it down to just the fuels or the radioactive ones, and the fuel value is what 1 mB of it will give you in a Gas-Burning Generator.

Only Hydrogen and Ethene (called Ethylene in older versions) burn, and Ethene is worth 141 times as much, at 11,280 FE (28,200 J) for each mB. Sodium is the only coolant besides Water, and the four radioactive ones all come from the Fission Reactor, so they’re covered on the Nuclear Waste page.

Chemicals, Fluids and Buckets

A chemical and its fluid form are two different things as far as the machines are concerned, and a recipe will only ever take the one that it asks for. The Rotary Condensentrator is used to swap between them at 1 mB for 1 mB, and you’ll need it for jobs like Liquid Ethene for HDPE and Water Vapor for Sulfuric Acid.

Buckets

The fluid forms can be picked up in buckets, like the Liquid Sulfuric Acid Bucket, the Liquid Oxygen Bucket or the Liquid Chlorine Bucket. There isn’t a recipe for any of them, as they’re filled from a tank that’s holding at least a bucket of the fluid, and they’re really only there for carrying a little of it by hand.

The same goes for the Liquid Sulfur Dioxide Bucket, the Liquid Sulfur Trioxide Bucket, the Liquid Hydrogen Chloride Bucket, the Liquid Sodium Bucket and the Liquid Superheated Sodium Bucket. You probably won’t see most of these unless you go looking for them, as the lines that use them all run on the chemical form instead.

Storing and dumping

Any chemical that isn’t radioactive will go into a Chemical Tank of any tier, or into a Dynamic Tank if you need a lot of it. A tank only ever holds one chemical at a time, so each one you’re keeping needs its own.

Everything else is safe to store, and nothing will happen if you break a tank that’s holding it. If a tank is filling up with something that you don’t need, then a Chemical Tank and the Electrolytic Separator both have a dump button, which can be set to destroy what’s coming in rather than letting it back up.

Hydrogen and Oxygen

Both of these come from Water in an Electrolytic Separator, which will give you twice as much Hydrogen as Oxygen. It costs 80 FE to make each mB of Hydrogen, which is exactly what it gives back when it’s burned, so it’s only worth making for what it can be turned into, like Ethene.

Oxygen is what the Purification Chamber uses to triple ores, at about 200 mB for each item. If you only need a little, a Flint placed in the machine’s chemical slot is worth 10 mB of Oxygen, though that’s far too slow for a real ore line.

Sulfuric Acid

Sulfuric Acid is the one that takes the most machines, and it’s needed for the last tier of Ore Processing and for reactor fuel. It all starts with Sulfur Dust, and each dust ends up as 100 mB of acid.

Getting Sulfur Dust

There are two machines that make the dust, and neither of them is a crafting recipe. Both need a chemical as well as an item, so they’re each a small line of their own.

Sulfur Dust

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The viewer only shows the item going in, so here’s the rest of it. In a Pressurized Reaction Chamber, 1 Coal or Charcoal with 100 mB of Water and 100 mB of Oxygen gives 1 Sulfur Dust and 100 mB of Hydrogen. The other way is Gunpowder with Hydrogen Chloride in a Chemical Injection Chamber, which is the slower route.

From dust to acid

After that it’s four steps, and the amounts in the table are for a single Sulfur Dust. The Oxygen in step 2 is the same Oxygen the separator makes alongside its Hydrogen, so nothing extra is needed for it.

So the whole line is a Chemical Oxidizer, two Chemical Infusers and a Rotary Condensentrator that’s been set to its second mode. A Chemical Dissolution Chamber will use about 100 mB of acid for each ore, which means that one Coal covers one ore when there are no upgrades in it.

You’re also able to drop Sulfur Dust straight into the chemical slot of the Chemical Dissolution Chamber, but that will only give you 2 mB for each dust. It’s 50 times worse than the line above, so it’s really only there to test a setup with, before you’ve got the acid running properly.

Hydrogen Chloride

Hydrogen Chloride is used by the Chemical Injection Chamber for the 4x ore tier, and it’s a shorter chain than the acid. Chlorine comes from Brine in an Electrolytic Separator, and a Chemical Infuser then combines 1 mB of Hydrogen with 1 mB of Chlorine into 1 mB of Hydrogen Chloride.

The slow part is the Brine, as the Thermal Evaporation Plant needs 10 mB of Water for 1 mB of it, and the separator needs 10 mB of Brine for 1 mB of Chlorine. So every mB of Hydrogen Chloride is 100 mB of Water through the plant, and an ore uses about 200 mB of it.

Salt can be used here as well, as one Salt in the chamber’s chemical slot is worth 2 mB of Hydrogen Chloride. You’d need about 90 Salt for a single ore if you did it that way though, which is why the plant tends to get built before anyone moves on to the 4x tier.

Chemicals Made From Items

Several chemicals never see a pipe, as they’re made by placing an item in a machine’s chemical slot. These are mostly the old infuse types for the Metallurgic Infuser, and the amounts below are what one item is worth.

The Enriched items are worth 8 times the dust they’re made from, which is why an Enrichment Chamber pays for itself quickly. A Chemical Oxidizer makes the same amounts as a chemical you’re able to pipe, which is how a row of machines gets fed from one tank instead of by hand.

From here, the best page to read next is Ore Processing, as the ore tiers are what most of these chemicals get built for. It has how much of each one a full line will use, which is what decides the size of the plant.

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