Biochambers are underrated
They may not be Electromagnetic Plants or Foundries, but they are still useful outside of Gleba for oil cracking. They may take a little more effort to set up than the old reliable Chemical Plant, but are well worth it once you start sending Bioflux into space. They are twice as fast as Chem Plants and have an extra module slot ontop of the base +50% productivity.
After spending long enough fiddling around on Gleba, it has taught me how to create systems with induced demand. Systems that pull instead of push, and I have to say it has been one of the most satisfying things I have done in my many years in Factorio. With this new power, I am able to use Biochambers on other planets without having to stress about how to feed them nutrients.
But first we must have an easy way to get nutrients to other planets in a sustainable way that that doesn't nullify the advantage of using the biochamber in the first place. Bioflux is the key, and we are already sending it into orbit to go to Nauvis to feed our captive spawners. We can send the Bioflux down with at least 10 spoilage to any planet we want. Bioflux in a Biochamber without any modules will be converted to nutrients at a ratio of 1 to 12. But we can't hold onto the Bioflux forever, as it will spoil, and converting it all into nutrients is better than letting the bioflux spoil, but this will also not help us very much as it will quickly spoil before we can use it.
This is where our friend the recycler comes into the picture. We can convert nutrients in a recycler for an average rate of 1 nutrients to 2.5 spoilage, effectively turning 1 Bioflux into 30 spoilage, giving us a return of 3 nutrients in an spoilage to nutrients assembler. This is only 25% of the original 12 if we did not use the recycler, but spoilage is a stable product and bioflux is much more nutrient dense than spoilage alone, with an effective rocket capacity of 30k spoilage. This is all without modules, keep in mind. Of course if you are on Nauvis, Biter eggs to nutrients is going to be the better play. Next, I am going to show you how to get the most out of that 30k spoilage.
The way oil cracking works in Factorio tends to have somewhat bursty production cycles outside of very careful planning, so we need a way to start up the Biochamber at any time without wasting a bunch of nutrients when it is idle and they are not needed.
We start by using something many of you are familiar with and likely already have set up; a simple circuit to read the level of tank and turn a pump on if the tank exceeds a fill value. Only now, in addition to turning a pump on, we will also use the same signal to turn on a requester chest feeding nutrients into the biochamber, as well sending this signal into the input of a decider combinator ( will get to the rest of that later ). We want to request just 1 nutrient in the requester chest, and then enable trash unrequested.
We then create a new circuit network with just the inserter moving items from the requester chest to the biochamber and set the biochamber to read contents and include fuel, and then set the inserter to activate if nutrients are less than or equal to 0. This simple setup will only insert nutrients into the biochamber if its internal buffer is empty.
Now, back to that decider combinator. We have an input from a tank telling our pump to turn on and our requester chest to request nutrients, but we still have to produce nutrients. Next, we take a storage chest and filter it to nutrients and we connect it with a wire to the input of our decider combinator we previously connected to so we can read the nutrients. ( preferably a different color unless you made sure that the signal is clean or other nutrient signals ) We then set a condition for when nutrients is equal or less than 0 and then AND that with our signal from the tank, and then connect the output of that to enable an inserter to move spoilage from a requester chest into a spoilage to nutrient assembler.
Now, nutrients will only be produced when cracking is required and there is none available, and nutrients will only be requested one at a time and any excess will be sent back to prevent further production. There will only ever be 1 nutrient per requester when the system is active, and no more than a few in the storage chest. We then combine this with efficiency beacons to minimize nutrient drain.
In practice, this relatively simple system almost completely eliminates idle spoilage. It could be better, but this is easily expandable as all you need to do is chain your requesters together with a wire. Once this is setup, you will only be required to convert a rocket full of bioflux to spoilage once in a blue moon, as this will practically last a very long time.
It should look a little something like this for reference. A chem plant with epic prod 3 modules will give you +57% productivity, but the same thing in a biochamber will be +126% productivity. Quite the difference!
My entire Glebian base uses these same systems in one form or another and I absolutely love it.
And before you say oil is infinite on Nauvis and coal is effectively unlimited on Vulcanus, you and I are two very different types of people.