Carbon

Carbon is a refined resource in Astroneer.

Source

Output	Input	Module
Carbon	Organic	Smelting Furnace

Carbon is used to craft the following items: Template:Uses

Carbon can be used with a Medium Generator to produce Power.

Carbon gives 270 bytes when placed in a Research Chamber.

Carbon provides more power overall than a nugget of Organic.

Organic fuels a Small Generator for 100 seconds at 1U/s, which produces 100 Units.
Carbon, placed in a Medium Generator, runs for 100 seconds at 3U/s and produces 300 Units.
Smelting Organic into Carbon only takes 60 Units in a Smelting Furnace, and consequently raises its effective power output by 140 Units.

When planning for long trips, Carbon has the highest consumable power yield per single T1 slot of any item in the entire game, with a few exceptions;

The T2 slot that a Medium Generator necessarily takes up is effectively 8 T1 slots that could be used by a medium storage to hold Organic and Small Generators.
Consequently, it's possible to carry more energy per storage space used by placing Organic instead of Carbon if space is limited.
The ratio flips above 12 spaces used; 12 T1 spaces worth of Organic or Carbon produce almost exactly the same amount of power, including the overhead of the space the generator takes up. An easy way to remember is that if you must carry more than 12 Organic for portable power, you will be able to store more total energy by using a Medium Generator instead. ;)

Carbon can be researched in the Research Chamber to get 270 Bytes.

In Update 0.10.1 Coal was removed from the game and replaced with Carbon
Coal's purpose in the game was as a solid fuel which powered the Medium Generator, even though it was generally thought to be superfluous in the main game flow; As a trade resource it was as valuable as titanium, making it nonetheless exciting to discover.