Chemical plant

The Chemical Plant is a mid-game processing building used to craft most of Factorio’s intermediate fluids and chemical products. It is one of the main ways to turn oil products and other resources into useful industrial materials, and it becomes available for a wide range of recipes once the appropriate technologies are researched. In the base game, the Chemical plant can be assigned twelve recipes, and one recipe must be selected before it begins processing.

Its base-game recipe list includes sulfuric acid, heavy oil cracking, light oil cracking, solid fuel from light oil, solid fuel from petroleum gas, solid fuel from heavy oil, lubricant, plastic bar, sulfur, battery, explosives, and flamethrower ammo. These recipes cover the core oil-processing chain as well as several important consumables and military items.

With the Space Age expansion, the Chemical Plant gains additional recipes, including ice melting, thruster fuel, thruster oxidizer, advanced thruster fuel, advanced thruster oxidizer, carbon, acid neutralisation, steam condensation, holmium solution, coal synthesis, fish breeding, ammoniacal solution separation, solid fuel from ammonia, ammonia rocket fuel, and lithium. Some of these recipes can also be made in other buildings, most often the cryogenic plant. A few recipes are effectively planet-locked because they use liquids that are only available on Aquilo and cannot be shipped off-world, even though the recipe can still be selected elsewhere. Acid neutralisation is crafted on Vulcanus, while ammoniacal solution separation, solid fuel from ammonia, ammonia rocket fuel, and lithium are crafted on Aquilo.

The Chemical Plant has two fixed fluid input slots. Unlike solid ingredients, fluids cannot be inserted anywhere on the building. When a recipe uses two different fluids, each one must go into its designated input, and the plant shows icons on the inputs to indicate which fluid belongs where. These fluid inputs can be flipped when needed, allowing the player to swap their sides to match the layout of pipes or neighboring machines.

• Because many of its recipes are central to oil refining, plastics, explosives, batteries, and fuel production, the Chemical Plant is a key part of most factory designs.
• It is especially important for recipes that require precise handling of multiple fluids, since the input sides matter.
• In Space Age, it remains relevant even when other specialized buildings are introduced, since several advanced recipes still support or require it.