Electrolytic Separator

The Electrolytic Separator is a Mekanism machine that splits a fluid into two chemicals, and the one you’ll use it for first is turning Water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. It’s also able to split Brine into Sodium and Chlorine, and Heavy Water into Deuterium and Oxygen, so it sits at the start of most of the mod’s chemical lines.

To get Hydrogen you’ll want to place the machine, give it power and pipe Water into it, which makes 2 mB of Hydrogen and 1 mB of Oxygen every tick. Each of those ticks costs 160 FE (400 J), and that works out at 80 FE for every mB of Hydrogen, which is exactly what the Hydrogen gives back when it’s burned.

How to Make It

You’ll need an Electrolytic Core for the middle of the recipe, with an Infused Alloy on either side of it. The top and bottom rows are both an Iron Ingot, a Redstone Dust and another Iron Ingot, so the whole machine is cheap once the core is made.

Electrolytic Separator

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Electrolytic Core

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The Electrolytic Core is the part that takes some work, as it’s crafted from 5 Infused Alloy, 2 Osmium Dust, an Iron Dust and a Gold Dust. Those dusts come from the Enrichment Chamber or the Crusher, and the alloy comes from the Metallurgic Infuser, so you’ll be able to build one fairly early on.

How It Works

The Electrolytic Separator has one fluid tank that holds 24 buckets, and two output tanks that hold 2,400 mB each. Water can be piped in from an Electric Pump, or you’re able to drop a Water Bucket into the slot beside the tank, which will empty it for you.

It’ll hold 64,000 FE and it does one operation every tick while it has a fluid and room in both output tanks. The left tank takes the first chemical of the recipe and the right tank takes the second, so for Water that’s Hydrogen on the left and Oxygen on the right.

Dump settings

There’s a small button under each output tank, which cycles that tank through three modes. Idle keeps everything, Dumping Excess will throw away whatever is above 85% of the tank, and Dumping destroys what’s in the tank a little each tick, which gets faster with Speed Upgrades.

For a chemical you don’t want at all, Dumping is the one to pick, as the tank will never fill. Dumping Excess is used for a chemical you do want to keep a buffer of, but it’s worth knowing that the machine will stop if both tanks are set to it and both have reached 85%. On 1.20.1 that mode kept 90% of the tank instead.

Getting the chemicals out

Both chemicals are pushed out by the machine itself, with the left tank leaving through the left side and the right tank through the right, as you face the front. So a Pressurized Tube on each of those sides is all it takes, and the Configurator page shows how to move them to a different face.

Recipes

There are only three recipes, and the amounts below are for one operation, which is one tick with no upgrades. The left and right columns are the two output tanks as you’ll see them in the machine’s screen.

Heavy Water costs double the energy of the other two, so it’s 320 FE for each operation rather than 160 FE. None of the three need anything else in the machine, as there’s no item or second fluid involved.

Water to Hydrogen and Oxygen

This is the recipe that feeds everything else. Hydrogen goes into the Pressurized Reaction Chamber to make Ethene (called Ethylene in older versions), and into a Chemical Infuser with Chlorine to make Hydrogen Chloride. Oxygen is used by the Purification Chamber for tripling ores, and for Sulfur Trioxide.

It’s tempting to burn the Hydrogen in a Gas-Burning Generator, but you’ll only get back the 80 FE per mB that was spent to make it. So a separator running into a generator makes no power at all, whereas the same Hydrogen turned into Ethene is worth 11,280 FE per mB.

Brine to Sodium and Chlorine

Brine comes from a Thermal Evaporation Plant, which makes 1 mB of it from 10 mB of Water. The separator then needs 10 mB of Brine for 1 mB each of Sodium and Chlorine, so it’s 100 mB of Water for every mB of Chlorine. Sodium is the second coolant for the Fission Reactor, and it’ll want dumping until you’ve built one.

Heavy Water to Deuterium

Heavy Water is pumped by an Electric Pump with a Filter Upgrade, and it’s only used here. The Deuterium it makes is one half of the D-T Fuel for the Fusion Reactor, and this recipe only exists when Mekanism Generators is installed, which it will be in almost every pack.

Filling a Jetpack or Scuba Tank

Under each output tank there’s an item slot, and anything placed in it will be filled from that tank. So you’ll put a Jetpack or a Flamethrower in the left slot to fill it with Hydrogen, and a Scuba Tank in the right slot for Oxygen.

Right-clicking the machine or a tank with the item in your hand does nothing, as it has to go in the slot. A Chemical Tank has the same kind of slot, which is handy if you’d like to keep a tank of Hydrogen by your door instead of walking back to the separator.

Upgrades and Automation

The Electrolytic Separator takes Speed, Energy and Muffling Upgrades, and Speed Upgrades work differently here than on an item machine. Each one doubles the operations per tick, so 8 of them give 256 operations, which is 512 mB of Hydrogen a tick for 40,960 FE/t.

Energy Upgrades won’t lower what an operation costs on this machine, as the 160 FE is fixed, and they’ll only make its energy buffer bigger. So there’s no cheaper way to make Hydrogen than the base rate, and the Machine Upgrades page has what each upgrade does on the other machines.

One Electric Pump with no upgrades gives about 52 mB of Water a tick, which is plenty for a separator with 4 Speed Upgrades. From here the Hydrogen and Chlorine usually go straight into a Chemical Infuser, which is the next machine you’ll want for Hydrogen Chloride.

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