Soil Centrifuge

Tier
 Crafted at

The **Soil Centrifuge** is a Crafting Module that extracts resources from  Soil collected via the Terrain Tool.

## Uses

The following table lists the resources that can be extracted from a full **Soil Centrifuge** tank (two Canisters of soil):

  Ammonium | 1

* Power Consumption Rate: 6 U/s

Each full operation consumes 182.25 Units of power, regardless of how many items the machine produces.

## Notes

* For bulk production, use a Medium Fluid & Soil Canister in combination with a Small Canister to continuously feed soil to the Centrifuge.
* The **Soil Centrifuge** takes 30.375 seconds to complete the process, not including start up.
	+ The overall process, including the time to load two Canisters worth of Soil from a Medium Soil Canister, as well as the time for the machine head to fill each of the necessary tubes in the Centrifuge, varies depending on the resource selected and thus the number of tubes that need to be filled. Resources that produce at a lower number per Centrifuge cycle require more soil per tube, but the time increase to fill the tubes does not completely offset the time saved from filling fewer tubes before each Centrifuge cycle. Thus resources that produce more per Centrifuge cycle also take slightly longer to run each cycle.
	+ In total, the Centrifuge requires approximately ~45-46s to complete a full cycle for a resource that is produced at a rate of 8 per fully-filled cycle, ~44s for 6 per cycle, ~42s for 4 per cycle, ~41s for 2 per cycle, and ~40-41s for 1 per cycle.
* The **Soil Centrifuge** is a good source for Scrap. Using the centrifuge to obtain 6  Clay, smelting them into  Ceramic with the  Smelting Furnace and creating 6 Drill Mod 1. Each Drill Mod 1 is worth 0.5 Scrap, with the net result of 3 Scrap per full **Soil Centrifuge** tank.
	+ Unfortunately, however, this method cannot be automated, as the Small Printer cannot print Drill Mod 1's. The most efficient automated conversion is using a Centrifuge to produce Resin, then using a Small Printer to produce Small Canisters, which scrap into 0.25 Scrap each. As a full Centrifuge tank produces 8 Resin, this produces a total of 2 scrap, or 2/3rds the output of the above Ceramic option.
* A Trade Platform it is more efficient to use the **Soil Centrifuge** to create Scrap using the method listed above if players want to obtain Quartz, Graphite, or Ammonium, as the amount gained from 3 Scrap is 6, 6, and 3, respectively, resulting in more of the desired resource per unit of soil.
	+ If using the automated method above, which operates at a ratio of 1 Scrap per unit of soil rather than 1.5 (as with the Drill Mod 1 method), Quartz breaks even, and thus is more efficient to produce directly in the Centrifuge (due to the additional power requirements and complexity of the Small Printer + Medium Shredder + Trade Platform. Graphite and Ammonium are still more efficiently produced using the Scrap route, resulting in twice as many of each per unit of soil (versus 3 times as many per with the Drill Mod 1 method).
	+ A **Soil Centrifuge** takes approximately 45s to complete a full cycle producing 8 Resin, including soil loading time from a Medium Soil Canister, as well as the time for the machine head to fill each of the 8 tubes in the centrifuge.
	+ A Small Printer requires only 1 second to print a Small Canister, and thus is never the bottleneck in this system. A single Small Printer can keep up with the output of ~5.75 Soil Centrifuges.
	+ A Medium Shredder takes ~6.5s to consume a Small Canister. That's 26s per scrap, and 52s per 8 Resin, which is longer than the Centrifuge takes to produce the same.
	+ As such, to fully consume the output rate of a Soil Centrifuge, one needs at least two Medium Scrappers. For purposes of scaling production, the ratio is approximately 9 Medium Scrappers per 8 Soil Centrifuges. For any production setup that involves 8 or fewer Centrifuges, the rule of thumb is the player needs a number of Medium Scrappers equal to the number of Soil Centrifuges plus 1.
	+ A Trade Platform takes ~45s to return from a trip. Unloading and reloading of the rocket is nearly instantaneous, as long as there are free storage slots on the same platform (**NOT** including Large or Medium Resource Canisters, which take approximately 1 second per item stored) and sufficient Scrap available on the storage on the same platform (again, not including Resource Canisters). Medium Storage Silos are optimal for this. Each trip of the Trade Platform rocket uses between 4 and 8 Scrap, depending on which resource is being traded for.
	+ Since a single Soil Centrifuge can produce at most 2 scrap per ~45 seconds using the automated production method, it requires between 2 and 4 Soil Centrifuges, with the associated number of Medium Scrappers, to keep a Trade Platform completely busy.
	+ The input rate of Soil for this setup is ~2.67 Small Canisters worth of soil per minute per Centrifuge, or a Medium Soil Canister every ~4.5 minutes for 2 Soil Centrifuges (4 Scrap per Trade Platform rocket), or every 2.25 minutes for 4 Soil Centrifuges (8 Scrap per rocket). This requires a single Large Storage with 4 Medium Soil Canisters every 9-18 minutes, or alternatively a single Large Storage Silo B with 12 Medium Soil Canisters every 27-54 minutes.
	+ Highly recommended to have a Large Rover with a drill and 1-2 Large Storage Silo B's + 12 Medium Soil Canisters each to keep up with this soil demand rate, if going for optimal production rate.
	+ In theory, this can be used to produce everything required for a Nanocarbon Alloy production line entirely on Atrox, with the exception of the Hydrogen and Argon gasses, which cannot be sourced locally or purchased with Scrap.
	+ If everything except the gasses are produced using the Soil Centrifuge, with the Iron, Titanium, Graphite, and Ammonium traded for using Scrap and the Organics needed for the Carbon produced directly by the Centrifuge, it requires 6.25 units of soil per Nanocarbon Alloy.
* If there is not any storage for the resources and the emptied Soil Canisters, the Soil Centrifuge will stop operating until storage room has been created.
* If the soil centrifuge is unplugged and plugged back in while filling its tanks, it will become stuck in the crafting phase rendering it unusable. Saving and reloading the game does not fix this, however using the packager will reset it.

## Trivia

* Before the Crafting Update, the **Soil Centrifuge** could create any resource, but a piece of it had to be provided first (presumably to give incentive to players to travel to other planets, rather than just synthesizing resources on the starting planet). The soil storage tank could also hold more than two canisters of soil but it could not be used until the first two full canisters were synthesized.
* It was previously called the Mineral Extractor.

## Media

* Soil Centrifuge Icon
* Experimental version of the Mineral Extractor, previously referred as sediment processor
* The pre-base building update version of the Soil Centrifuge
* Soil Centrifuge (pre-crafting update)
* Test designs for the Soil Centrifuge found in SES Vlog 018.