Tutorial:Setting up Aluminum Ingot production

This page serves to guide you to set up minimal Aluminum Ingot production, reusing all the waste Water.

Overview
Aluminum Production is unlocked at Tier 7 - Bauxite Refinement. Once unlocked, you can set up Aluminum Ingot production.

Aluminum Ingot production is done in 3 steps. The first step is producing Alumina Solution, which requires Bauxite and Water, and has a byproduct of Silica. The second step is producing Aluminum Scrap, which takes Alumina Solution and has a byproduct of Water. The third step is producing Aluminum Ingot, which requires Aluminum Scrap and Silica.

Reusing waste Water is the main initial challenge when setting up Aluminum Ingot production. Piping it back to the original supply requires difficult piping. An alternative is to use waste water as the only source for a single Alumina Solution producer.

Minimal setup
Here we focus on building a minimal unit that reuses all of the waste water, and doesn't get stuck.

Step 0 - basic resources
Acquire basic resources:


 * Bauxite - 18/s
 * Water - 18/s
 * Silica - 150/s

Over- or under-provisioning any resources will not break the setup. Under-provisioning will slow it down.

Step 1 - Alumina Solution production
Build 2 Refineries to produce Alumina Solution. Connect water only to one of them. The other one will use waste water. Set the other refinery to 50% capacity.

Step 2 - Aluminum Scrap production
Build 1 Refinery to produce Aluminum Scrap. Set it to 75% capacity. Connect all the Alumina Solution production to it.

Step 3 - Aluminum Ingot production
Build 3 Foundries to produce Aluminum Ingot. Connect one of them to the byproduct Silica from Step 2. Connect the rest to the external Silica source.

Summary
This setup produces total of 180 Aluminum Ingot/s.

Expanding production
The setup described above can be used as a minimal unit (later called a Production Node), and repeated side-by-side to increase production. However, some improvements can be made. They save you building space, but not resources nor energy.

Improvement 1 - Reuse waste water Refinery from Step 1
Refinery from Step 1 was set to only 50% capacity. It can be used to recycle water from 2 Production Nodes, saving you one Refinery.

Improvement 2 - Reuse scrap Refinery from Step 2
Refinery from Step 2 was set to only 75% capacity. When building 4 Production Nodes, using 3 Refineries to produce Aluminum Scrap will be enough.