Unfortunately, any facility that is desigo process bulk lightstone would also produce a rge amount of very nasty liquid pollution. Pollution that would very likely damage the ecosystem around our isnd if released into the o. There is at least one way to mitigate it somewhat, though it's not that much better. If we evaporated off all the liquid, we could then remove the remaining solid waste, and bury it in underground areas that have been mostly sealed off from water. It's close to 80% of the inal reddish-rock that gets eaten away by the acid baths, so there is a lot of solid waste left over after it precipitates out.

  sidering I still have a few months until the first stru team shows up to help with the new mana crystal growth area, I may as well take the time to design out such a facility. After all, if I'm needing to give Zeb more of a heads up, actually having a rough idea of what I need done would let me ask him far in advance of when I actually would want the facility worked on.

  So, between doing work on the pylon areas and going up the mountain to use on that we stored up over winter, I also worked on a design for a facility for mass produg lightstone from good precursor rocks until summer finally came. I see how doing this in advaually is quite helpful to Zeb and his teams, since I made multiple revisions and ges to the various designs, adding on new buildings as I went. If I'd dohis spur-of-the-moment, I'd have probably o get the stru teams back over at least two additional times. Holy, good pnning saves a lot of work over time, even for myself.

  In the past, however, most of the projects were straight forward enough, with only a few stages, or a single piece of plicated equipment. Even our cryogenics facility is teically a bunch of batch processes, rather than a tinuous one, so adding things in piecemeal wasn't as big of a deal. However, with this facility, I initially thought I'd just pull water out of the stream to use. Between the acid water, copper fluorite, water demand, and physical pollutants though, I thought it'd probably be best to locate this facility further away from our food and popution areas.

  Unfortunately, that meant relog it to somewhere without as much of a stant fresh water supply. Salt water could work, but it also has quite a bit of dissolved salts already whiteract with the free protons and ro their own way acceleratiain dissolution while simultaneously making it harder to dissolve more material into the water. Ultimately, that meant I needed a way to make fresh water, which was somethiually already built, at least to some degree.

  We have the greenhouses that collect the freshwater from salt formation, though I don't want to haul that freshwater all the way to my pnned site. What I'm thinking of doing instead is building a facility along the craggy coastline in one of the thin valleys. We'll build a seawall to protect it, just like the other valleys have, but it'll be serviced by one of the new roads that we're building along the coasts around our isnd.

  There, we'll pump ier inte smoothed rock boiler chambers that have heat fluorite ptes installed just uhe surface periodically. There, the water will be brought to a boil to evaporate away, and densed into freshwater for the facility. I want the boiler chambers supported by stone pilrs, with a meical system that lower the heat ptes down away from the boiler and into a well-veunnel. That way, the ptes are exposed te quantity of moving air even while they're w, providira mana. Thehe heat ptes are lowered and the boiler is cooled to a satisfactory amount, the rge amount of salt buildup be harvested.

  That lets us produce the freshwater we'd need for our acid baths, while also colleg valuable salt for potential trade iure, or, failing that, repg our need for salt from our old evaporation ponds opening that nd up for farming. This would also give us a good use for our plentiful heat fluorite ptes that we've been making. I decided to do some measurements of the volume of salt that is leftover from evaporating our o water, and what I came out to is about a 1% by volume yield of solid salt. So, for every 100 gallons of seawater, I'd get about a gallon of solid salt.

  The collected freshwater then be used for the acid baths made with the copper fluorite to process lightstone. Thankfully, this unique hydronium acid that we get from the fluorite dissolve about 10 times the amount of rock material as pared to the amount of salt that was initially in the seawater. Though it also loses some of the water alongside the bubbling hydrogen gas ing out of the solution. That means that we ultimately get about 2 times as much high-quality lightstone as we make salt from the process, before sidering water recyg.

  The hydronium then be drained into a well grouank to hold for a short while so that more of the hydrogen gas be released and the acidity drop somewhat in the liquid. In that tank, some of the materials will precipitate out as some of the protons form hydrogen gas and release more metal ions than the fluid hold. After that, the liquid is again draihis time to a boiler, where the rest of the liquid will be removed, and as it does so, more hydrogen gas is released.

  The steam and hydrogen gas are then put through a denser like the seawater was, but they're theed to atmosphere with a fresh air fan, making sure that any trace amounts of votile pounds and the rge amount of hydrogen gas don't build up in the system. When all is said and doween multiple acid hases, about half the water then be recovered and recycled, meaniimately should get about 4 times as much high-quality lightstone as we get salt. That also means that we get about 20 times as much waste material as salt, so we'll be moving a lot of solids around. My guess is that we'll just store the waste material where we cut the rock for processing, though if a more ve location arises, that work as well.

  By my calcutions, we'll need about 50 cubic feet of feed water for every cubic foot of lightstone produbsp; So, I pn on making four salt water boilers, and 20 byproduct boilers. The byproduct boilers are going to be quite a bit smaller than the seawater ones, but we need more of them sihe acid washing happens ied smaller phases, rather than all at onbsp; I'd like the feed boilers to be 20 feet by 30 feet, and filled with 6 feet deep of water, meaning every boil cycle in a single boiler would yield about 72 cubic feet of acid washed lightstone, alongside 36 cubic feet of salt. The byproduct boilers will only be 10 feet by 18 feet and have 3 feet of water in them.

  After all the general building designs, meics, and devices were sketched out, I went to Zeb to discuss the idea. I opehe discussion by telling him that I wouldn't even want to start work on this projetil mid- year at the soo, since I have so many other projects that I'm w on. Though I also espoused the usefulness of the acid washed lightstone as more pure hand-refined lightstone, being more acid resistant and a fairly strong struaterial. Ultimately, it's useful in a lot of applications where metal isn't, especially because we have stoneshaping.

  In fact, seeing how resistant it is, has made me rethink some of our previous iions. For example, using thick resins for roofing wood. We could instead simply coat it in a thin yer of stoneshaped lightstoo achieve a simir result. Si seems like humanoids 't actually shape sto will, but rather cut the stoh magic, it makes sehat they wouldn't have developed this style of design. For us specifically though, we could coat the outer yer e boats with an inch of the acid washed lightstone, roofing the whole thing while also preventing internal metals from corroding to a degree. Obviously, cracks could form along the hull, and we'd o be smart about how lied it.

  Zeb, however, rightfully pointed out that to process the amount of lightstone I described, we'd least ten regur stoneshaping goblins w in the facility to keep up with lightstone produ. This es down to the repetitive nature of the acid washing, plus vacation time and work hours. All that is also assuming we average a single seawater boiler a day of produ. If, however, there were a mana sourearby, that could be cut down to only four workers. The big issue es down to the amount of mana spent on stoneshaping and waiting to recover the mana to tinue. With our limited supply of mana crystals and ever growing popution, I think six additional workers is probably cheaper lohan a mana sourbsp; Improved stoneshaping is 4 times as mana effit as regur stoneshaping, but any demon that has access to that is far more valuable as a stru worker than as a lightstone producer, so they're out of the question as well.

  Ultimately, we agreed that we'd start produ of this facility two years from now, though they'll be starting with the sea wall as a project during off seasons, and only prioritizing building the rest of the facility ohe sea wall is done. Ohe facility as a whole is plete the saltwater boilers will run at full capacity, but we'll only have a limited lightstone supply until we have a surplus of stoneshaping goblins to fill all the necessary positions.

  I'm quite tent with this. Normally, I'd design a project like this over the course of a few months like it has been, but then I'd directly oversee all the stru and building of the facility, assisting with my much rger mana capacity and improved stoneshaping. If this goes retively well without me, then I should be more free to design other projects, speeding up our overall produ, rather than keeping me as a bottleneck for hings. In about two weeks time, I'm expeg the stru team to show up to help me get the mana crystal growth area dug out, so I'm more than ready to ge gears and work on that.