I also looked at the special compacted fuels again the other day and remembered why I never bothered with them in the first place. For a casual solo player like myself, it’s just not worth the time/mental effort of preparing these advanced fuels.
At the time of the addition of these fuels, this was what was announced about them:
For the time they’d take me, I could spend that time mining for gems and more coal anyway, and although I’ll use a few hundreds of compact coals every so often, I would think I probably use little coal compared to what other people might be using.