Empty Cell is a tin-based IC2 fluid container that holds one portion of water, lava, coolant, or other IC2 liquids.
Guide
Mine Tin Ore with a stone pickaxe or higher and smelt the raw tin into Tin Ingots in a Furnace. Tin is the only material needed for an Empty Cell recipe.
Open a 3x3 crafting grid and place one Tin Ingot in each corner of the bottom row and one in the middle slot of the left and right columns, leaving the center and the entire top row empty.
Confirm the craft to receive several Empty Cells from a single recipe. The exact yield depends on IC2 version, but Tin is always efficient for bulk production.
Right-click an Empty Cell on a water source to get a Water Cell, or insert it into a Canning Machine or Bottling Plant together with lava, coolant, biomass, or UU-Matter.
Feed filled cells into Geothermal Generators, Nuclear Reactors, Compressors, and other IC2 blocks. Empty Cells return after the liquid is consumed in some setups.
In modern IC2 Experimental the Universal Fluid Cell is reusable, but Empty Cell stays cheaper and is required by many legacy recipes.
Place four Tin Ingots in a 3x3 grid in a U-shape: bottom-left, bottom-middle, bottom-right, plus the middle-left and middle-right slots. The center and top row stay empty, and one craft yields several Empty Cells.
Empty Cell can be filled with Water, Lava, Coolant, Biomass, Construction Foam, and UU-Matter. Each filled variant has its own item id and is used by specific IC2 machines.
Right-click an Empty Cell on a water source to make a Water Cell, or place it in a Canning Machine or Bottling Plant together with the desired liquid for lava, coolant, biomass, and other fluids.
No. The Universal Fluid Cell from modern IC2 Experimental is reusable and crafted from four Tin around one Glass, while Empty Cell is single-use and crafted only from Tin.
No, Empty Cell exists only when the Industrial Craft 2 mod is installed. Vanilla Minecraft has no direct equivalent and uses Buckets instead for water and lava.