Factorio Forums

Hi!

I have a problem with my oils refineries because It stops once in a while and stops the rest of the production. Doesn't stop completely, but made the production really slow.
I m using petroleum gas, light and heavy oil to creare solid fuel.
In other cases, i produce other things like sulfur, but i have the same problem, i mean, i always use the three products from the oil refinery.

Thank you!

Is any input empty or any output full when it stops?

I believe not, but don't know. I'm gonna check it. This is an image of the oil refinery, in case it helps!



Thank you!

Perhaps the productions slows because of insufficient oil? The setup you showed the refinery should work non stop until the Petroleum gas builds up.

How many jack pumps should i connect to have a normal production?

Thanks for answering

Well, a single refinery uses 20 oil/sec, you have at least one other refinery on the same source, so at least 40 oil/sec. If you put tank holding oil in front of the refineries it would be easy to tell if you had sufficient oil input.

Easiest way to tell is to click on the refinery. You will see icons for crude input, and petrol, light, and heavy output.

When a refinery cycle happens, the icons for petrol, light, and heavy typically will disappear quickly because the fluid is consumed through the pipe by the chemical plant. If not, then the output is backed up.

Before a refinery cycle happens, the crude icon builds up to 100 units. If not, then the input is insufficient.

If you have not researched cracking or circuit networks then you must balance your refinery output to prevent a "deadlock" Like when light oil backs up to the refineries stopping them, and petrol is empty, and nothing is currently consuming light oil.

You can look at the recipes and see what is being used by how much and how often.

Solid fuel costs 20 heavy oil, or 10 light oil, or 20 petrol and takes 3 seconds to make.

The refinery in basic mode (pictured) will produce 30 heavy oil, 30 light oil, and 40 petrol every 5 seconds.

Ignoring time and all other chemicals, to balance dedicated basic refineries for solid fuel you should have at least the following solid fuel chemical plants: 3 from heavy oil, 6 from light oil, and 4 from petrol.

From what I can see in your picture, your setup should eventually deadlock on light oil. But the tank levels are dry so I'm going to assume you aren't hooked up to enough pumpjacks.

Basic principles of oil production:

- Pumpjacks produce at full volume only for a while. After that they produce only a small amount. You can compensate somewhat by maxing modules and beacons around the Pumpjacks. If memory serves, I think you use Speed modules (level 3 is the best, but even level 1 is better than nothing).

- If one of the 3 tanks/pipes coming out of your refinery fill up, it will stall the refinery and not produce the other products either. That is why you use cracking on circuit conditions based on tank volume and/or conversion to solid fuel. The goal is to make sure that if your refinery stalls, it happens only with *everything* full, not one or two products full and the rest empty. It might take you a while to learn how to do it, but it is a fun puzzle to solve.

- It is always a good idea to use productivity modules on your refinery, to use less crude. It is also a good idea to surround it with beacons filled with speed modules.

- Use Advanced oil processing if you need mainly Petroleum Gas. Use basic Oil processing if you need mainly Lubricant.

- The most efficient producer of solid fuel is Light oil.

Thank you all!! Your info is being really helpful.

I have ignored circuits all this time, because seemed tricky, but i knew that it will causes problems sometime. I had also stuck in the game, not knowing what to do next.

I'm going to work on circuits and modules to try to fix it.

I avoided circuits for quite awhile when I started as well, but once you understand them, they are so awesome!!

I think your quick fix is to add another oilfield (more pumpjacks!) rather than focusing on circuit network and modules quite yet!

Oil is the best place to learn beginner circuits, because it is the simplest.

Run a wire from a fluid tank to a pump. Set the condition to enable the pump (for example Heavy Oil > 24,000 for the pump that is between the Heavy Oil tank and the chemical plant that converts Heavy Oil to Solid Fuel) and done.

I recommend you look at a few Oil Plant designs on factoriprints.com, watch a few Factorio Oil Processing videos on youtube, and read for a few forum threads on Oil Processing. You will have fun and get started in understanding circuits.

Neither cracking nor the circuit network are required to balance refineries, and it can be fun and challenging to do so without.

For example, you can have 6 light oil solid fuel plants, 3 on each side of a belt going towards your boilers. Then, further upstream the solid fuel belt, 2 heavy oil solid fuel plants on one side of the belt and 2 petrol on the other.

In this case, solid fuel from heavy and petrol are prioritized because it's at the start of the belt, inserters from the light oil plants will have to wait until the belt clears up to output.

Also, the heavy oil pipeline and petrol pipeline to those solid fuel plants could be 20 times longer than other plants using heavy oil and petrol. This prioritizes petrol and heavy oil for plants closer to your refinery because the solid fuel plants will not get any liquid unless the beginning of the pipeline (and tanks) are relatively full.

Also try putting a pump off of the petrol pipeline headed to solid fuel plants, then use the pumped pipe for your sulfur.

Then just play with the pipeline lengths and number of solid fuel plants to balance things out.

Of course, a combination of both cracking and circuits will give you a much greater degree of control of your fluid levels.