Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

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zOldBulldog
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Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by zOldBulldog »

The idea has been circling the back of my head. Uranium mines last a long time, require only a little sulfuric acid, and the distance to oils isn't usually bad if you use a pump or two and underground pipe.

So, why not make the acid on site in a very compact setup? Even the inefficiency of ignoring the perfect ratios would not matter due to the low consumption. So, one refinery one heavy oil cracking, one light oil cracking, one sulfur and one sulfur plants would convert all the oil to sulfuric. Pop it in a tank... and you even have a reserve.

Has anybody done this before? Did it work well or did you end up regretting it?

EDIT: ANSWER

There is strong consensus. Sulfuric Acid consumption is so low that there is no need to produce on site or even near the uranium mine. A storage tank and occasional deliveries are more than enough.

---

As a related (more long term and rational, but larger) alternative I also considered dedicating the nearest oil field to pure sulfuric production outpost, following the ratios to convert all the oil to petroleum gas, then making sulfuric from it. Pipe a little to the uranium field and plop the rest in trains for anywhere that sulfuric might be needed.

But for some reason I keep circling back to the 1st idea, so I am left wondering if there might be value in it.
Last edited by zOldBulldog on Tue Oct 09, 2018 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by eradicator »

From personal experience oil is usually the first thing that i run low on, so i definetly wouldn't want to waste any of it (certainly not a whole field) on uranium. You need a proper sulfuric acid plant anyway for production, and uranium itself is used in such small quantities that i never considered doing acid on-site. I just build a pipeline to the nearest uranium field, because even a medium uranium field is going to last a looong looong time. A 1LC would probably do the job just fine too if you don't like pipelines. If you're not using too much for ammunition you should be able to easily calculate the sulfiric acid per gigawatt ratio.
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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by Nefrums »

You also need iron to make acid.

But I have used the setup you describe kick start u235 production to get enough for korvarex.
One chest of iron is enough to get like 150 u235.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by vjbone »

Once I made this:
Train with iron and coal goes to mine
Coal I turn into oil and into gas
(Water was near enough :D )

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by dood »

Doesn't seem worth it.
One train lasts for like 2 hours and once it is set up, you can send it to future uranium mines too whereas all the on-site mumbo jumbo to get acid going is just dead weight to be deconstructed once the uranium is mined out.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by Hannu »

zOldBulldog wrote:
Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:56 am
Has anybody done this before? Did it work well or did you end up regretting it?
Not with uranium but technically it is basically the same if you power an outpost or separated factory with an oil from local well. You can do it and it works perfectly. I used it in one play when I did not build global power network.The real question is does it fit your personal rules.

I do not usually prefer it because I think that it is more realistic to have single chemical factory. There is no technical reasons for the decision because all processes are simple and cheap to build in Factorio in every scales. It gives also little bit more logistic challenge to bring different materials between production plants. If I remember correctly I allocated one slot for acid barrels and one slot for empty barrels in every uranium ore wagon (or maybe it was one column for both).

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by herkalurk »

I have a large fluids processing plant in the middle of my map, if I need fluid somewhere I have a train come in and fill the tank car to dump into tanks at the remote site. I have a site just producing science and I have batteries and blue chips made there, so I have 200K storage for acid on site. Same thing at my uranium mining sites, I have a single train that supplies them all with acid since it doesn't go down very far. In a previous thought I had trains bringing sulfur to 1 of my chip production sites that was next to water and iron, so I made the acid on site, but only from those 3 materials, not from the base raw material of crude oil.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by evopwr »

The megabase I'm doing is built using districts/areas, and trains to move everything around, so I need acid trains anyway - may as well just get them to also visit the uranium mine when required.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by ledow »

Do you really lose any significant amount of sulfuric from mining sites?

I just build them with a storage tank, put a second train stop (usually on the same track but no reason you can't have it the other siee) and I have a set of trains that do nothing but deliver sulfuric to the relevant sites.

Because when the uranium runs out, you can recover almost all that sulfuric back, using those same stations (just change the name of the station to say "Sulfuric" to "Sulfuric Depleted" and then have a "cleanup" train run around to all "Sulfuric Depleted" sites, fill up and drop the excess back off to the main storage).

Because mining uses so little, a huge tank full of it will last a long time, so it doesn't add much to train traffic. And one little "click" when you run out of uranium to mine when all the miners go idle and you can recoup every bit of sulfuric that wasn't used and put it back somwehere.

I'm sure people with mods can automate it 100%, but even in the base game I can pretty much make that mostly happen automatically with a bit of blueprinting and circuits and things. And one train picking up the "no longer required" sulfuric from your entire setup and dumping it back in main storage (to be picked up and used again) pays for itself in the first trip, really.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by herkalurk »

ledow wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:09 pm
Because when the uranium runs out, you can recover almost all that sulfuric back, using those same stations (just change the name of the station to say "Sulfuric" to "Sulfuric Depleted" and then have a "cleanup" train run around to all "Sulfuric Depleted" sites, fill up and drop the excess back off to the main storage).
You're clearly not using an unlimited resources mod. I was getting frustrated moving around my mining sites that I got an endless resources mod, so I've been mining the same 3 uranium sites for hundreds of hours. I have 1 train that delivers sulfuric acid to each of the sites and returns back to a fill station.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by JimBarracus »

Could be done but the effort is way to much.
In Order to fill up a cargo wagon with uranium ore you only need to use 6 slots for barrels (three for full ones and three for empty ones)
which gives you enough to mine 1500 units, 34 slots, laving space for 1700 uranium.
With mining productivity 7 you produce enough extra uranium to fill up the cargo wagon completely.

when you have a train for sulfuric acid you can just setup a station which is deactivated with sufficent acid.
Only worth it when there is a really big field.

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Re: Minimal on siite sulfuric for uranium mine?

Post by Nefrums »

I usually make a train with one cargo wagon and one fluid wagon that stops for like 30s at the uranium mine and the main base.

And as you say one tank is enough at the mine.

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