Blast Furnace

The Blast Furnace is a heat based machine using solely for the creation of Steel. To create Steel with the Blast Furnace, input a source of Iron, such as Iron Ingots, Iron Ore, or Iron Dust, and also 6 Compressed Air Cells. To start the process, the Blast Furnace needs an input of Heat through the orange square on the side of the block. The Blast Furnace can take a maximum of 20 hU/t, so a Solid Heat Generator can be sufficient early-game (except the Compressed Air Cells require a Compressor, so you might as well use an Electric Heat Generator). It should be noted once it is running it uses 1 hU/t, and will not be any faster if more is given to it. Once the Steel has processed, it will also provide Slag as a by-product of processing. The Blast Furnace takes roughly 300 seconds per Steel Ingot.

## Usage Example

This is an example of a compact and efficient Blast Furnace setup. It takes any Iron source from the hopper, turns it into Steel, places it into the Chest on the left, processes the Slag by-product, and places the output of that into the chest too.

Required Components:

* Blast Furnace
* Compressor
* Thermal Centrifuge
* Electric Sorting Machine
* Chest
* EU(at least Medium Voltage)
* 6 Compressed Air Cells
* Heat Source(In the image, a Radioisotope Heat Generator is used.
* 3 Ejector Upgrades

Step-by-step guide:

1: Place the machines in the arrangement shown. It can be changes as you like, as long as the two machines, the Blast Furnace, the chest and the hopper are all connected to the Electric Sorting Machine.

2: Configure the Electric Sorting Machine as shown. If your orientation is different than in the first picture, just make sure it is configured so that:

* Iron and Compressed Air Cells go into the Blast Furnace
* Empty Cells go into the Compressor
* Slag goes into the Thermal Centrifuge
* The Chest is set as the default route.

3: Place Ejector Upgrades inside the Thermal Centrifuge, Compressor and Blast Furnace, all sending items into the Electric Sorting Machine. Also place Transformer Upgrades inside the Sorting Machine and Compressor before supplying them with Medium Voltage(which is needed for the Thermal Centrifuge). It is also recommended to place Redstone Upgrades inside the Blast Furnace and Thermal Centrifuge, but not necessary.

4: Make sure that the machines receive a steady supply of MV EU and the Blast Furnace has a steady source of Heat. In the example, an RHG is used because it is reliable, however the high cost may be unfavourable.

### What's Happening?

The Electric Sorting Machine sends all the Blast Furnace input from the hopper into the Blast Furnace. Once a Compressed Air Cell gets used, it returns an Empty Cell, which is then sent to the compressor to be turned back into a Compressed Air Cell. This means that you can make as much Steel as you like without ever crafting more than those 6 initial cells. It also automatically compresses them whilst the Blast Furnace is still processing, which saves time. Once the Blast Furnace is finished, the Sorting Machine send the Steel into the Chest and the Slag into the Thermal Centrifuge, where it is processed then output right back into the Sorting Machine, which then sends the produce into the Chest. This is most likely the most compact way of producing Steel.