In Minecraft, the item used as "kelp fuel" is Dried Kelp Blocks. You make them by processing kelp in a few simple steps.
Steps to Make Dried Kelp Blocks
Making dried kelp blocks is a two-step process starting with raw kelp found in ocean biomes.
1. Smelt Kelp
First, you need to dry the raw kelp.
- Obtain Kelp: Harvest kelp from underwater in oceans.
- Smelt Raw Kelp: Place raw kelp in the top slot of a furnace, blast furnace, or smoker. Use any fuel source (like coal, wood, lava bucket, etc.) in the bottom fuel slot.
- Collect Dried Kelp: The smelting process yields dried kelp.
You will need 9 pieces of dried kelp for the next step.
2. Craft Dried Kelp Blocks
Once you have dried kelp, you can craft it into the fuel item.
- Open Crafting Interface: Use a crafting table.
- Place Dried Kelp: Place 9 pieces of dried kelp into the 3x3 crafting grid. Fill all nine slots.
- Craft Block: The result is a dried kelp block.
| Material | Quantity | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Dried Kelp | 9 | Dried Kelp Block |
Using Dried Kelp Blocks as Fuel
Dried kelp blocks can be placed in the fuel slot of furnaces, blast furnaces, or smokers to smelt items.
- Each dried kelp block can smelt 20 items.
Efficiency Considerations
As noted in the reference, crafting a dried kelp block requires smelting 9 pieces of kelp first.
- If you use a dried kelp block itself to smelt the 9 pieces of kelp needed to make another block, its net fuel value is reduced. It takes fuel to make the dried kelp in the first place.
- However, if you use a different fuel source (like coal or charcoal) to smelt the 9 pieces of raw kelp into dried kelp, the resulting dried kelp block effectively allows you to smelt 20 items per block using the initial fuel source's energy to create the block itself. This increases the number of operations per other fuel source used in the initial smelting step.
In summary, dried kelp blocks are a renewable and powerful fuel source once crafted, especially when the initial kelp smelting is powered by a different fuel.
