Shouldn’t use Watterson’s work. He fought long and hard against stuff like this…

I’m not real familiar with it, but you might look for some chain with a width wider than one link. Seems like that would provide you behavior more similar to belts. It seems McMaster sells double link width, but there may be other sources of finer/wider variations.

Finally, someone mentioning the water usage aspect for a plant being built in Arizona. A water intensive/critical process? Sure, set it up in a desert…