Solid lubricant and portable water production
Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2014 2:33 pm
Note: In this post I will use the notion of "Solidly-Transportable", or ST for short. By this I mean any item that can be transported via train/transport belts/inserters etc. All solid items are ST, as well as crude oil (as it can be put in a barrel and thus transported as a solid), but all other liquids are not.
TL;DR - by making lubricant a solid and allowing water to be created (in small amounts) wherever necessary, the oil industry could be simplified.
1. The problem
The main point of this double-suggestion/idea is to make the oil industry a bit more organizable and streamlined (as I see it). The main problem is that the oil industry uses Crude Oil and has a few liquid intermediate products (sulfuric acid and lubricant), and transporting liquid is much more messy than transporting solids.
Looking at the 4 direct product of the oil industry (After the initial Light/Dark/Petrol stage) we have -
1. Plastic - solid.
2. Sulfur - solid.
3. Solid fuel - solid (may be skipped).
4. Lubricant - liquid.
That is - with the exception of Lubricant, all primary oil products are solid, and thus can be easily transported to wherever they are needed. In my factories I always make the sulfuric acid wherever it is needed, and never in my refinery area. The same for plastic - it is made in the refinery, but used elsewhere.
Thus we are left with the "problem" of lubricant - as lubricant is a liquid it leaves my method with two options -
1. Make long pipes or lubricant from my refinery to wherever lubricant is needed.
2. Make mini-refineries that only make lubricant (Light oil and Petrol are turned into solid fuel) wherever lubricant is needed.
I currently use method 2, but it is far from perfect, as you may have guessed.
The problem of liquids have been discussed in this forum before (see https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=5315 etc.), but allowing all liquids to be put into barrels has it's own disadvantages.
2. The solution
The solution I came up with is rather simple - make Lubricant solidly-transportable. By making lubricant ST we have all of the primary oil-industry products ST, and thus the only place messy pipes should be used is in refineries and oil fields.
Now, this is of course not the whole story - there is still the question of how lubricant should be made ST. There are three ways I thought of -
1. Allow lubricant to be put into barrels - I don't like this idea. It's almost the same as allowing all liquids in a barrel, and this is messy.
2. Make lubricant a solid to start with - This is straight-forward, and not unrealistic, as lubricants are commonly viscous gels or pastes (See http://petrodunes.com/templates/product ... 810815.jpg or any other engine grease product). It does however takes away some of the complication of various recipes, which may be undesired.
3. Make a new product "Lubricant gel" or "Solid lubricant", with recipes to turn one to the other - This is a sort of mix between the two ideas. Lubricant will still be made as a liquid and used as a liquid, but it has a recipe to turn it into a solid, thus being ST, and turned back into useful liquid where it is needed.
3. The catch
One thing that this idea still doesn't solve is this - to make sulfuric acid you need not only sulfur but also water. Water means pipes, and you may not want to make your battery/processing unit factory near a lake. The solution to this is - make a way to create water without a lake. This could either be a condensation-plant, which condenses atmospheric humidity into water, or a ground-water pump which suck water from aquifers. Either may be modified by environmental/weather conditions, if those are ever introduced (i.e. - condensation plants are less effective in deserts, more effective in humid weather etc.).
Those machines should not make large amounts of water - it should not be feasible to run a power plant with them, but as a sulfuric acid plant uses much less water than a power plant they should still be usable to create small amounts of water wherever necessary.
I hope I did not bore you with my long post. Looking forward to hear your thoughts.
TL;DR - by making lubricant a solid and allowing water to be created (in small amounts) wherever necessary, the oil industry could be simplified.
1. The problem
The main point of this double-suggestion/idea is to make the oil industry a bit more organizable and streamlined (as I see it). The main problem is that the oil industry uses Crude Oil and has a few liquid intermediate products (sulfuric acid and lubricant), and transporting liquid is much more messy than transporting solids.
Looking at the 4 direct product of the oil industry (After the initial Light/Dark/Petrol stage) we have -
1. Plastic - solid.
2. Sulfur - solid.
3. Solid fuel - solid (may be skipped).
4. Lubricant - liquid.
That is - with the exception of Lubricant, all primary oil products are solid, and thus can be easily transported to wherever they are needed. In my factories I always make the sulfuric acid wherever it is needed, and never in my refinery area. The same for plastic - it is made in the refinery, but used elsewhere.
Thus we are left with the "problem" of lubricant - as lubricant is a liquid it leaves my method with two options -
1. Make long pipes or lubricant from my refinery to wherever lubricant is needed.
2. Make mini-refineries that only make lubricant (Light oil and Petrol are turned into solid fuel) wherever lubricant is needed.
I currently use method 2, but it is far from perfect, as you may have guessed.
The problem of liquids have been discussed in this forum before (see https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=5315 etc.), but allowing all liquids to be put into barrels has it's own disadvantages.
2. The solution
The solution I came up with is rather simple - make Lubricant solidly-transportable. By making lubricant ST we have all of the primary oil-industry products ST, and thus the only place messy pipes should be used is in refineries and oil fields.
Now, this is of course not the whole story - there is still the question of how lubricant should be made ST. There are three ways I thought of -
1. Allow lubricant to be put into barrels - I don't like this idea. It's almost the same as allowing all liquids in a barrel, and this is messy.
2. Make lubricant a solid to start with - This is straight-forward, and not unrealistic, as lubricants are commonly viscous gels or pastes (See http://petrodunes.com/templates/product ... 810815.jpg or any other engine grease product). It does however takes away some of the complication of various recipes, which may be undesired.
3. Make a new product "Lubricant gel" or "Solid lubricant", with recipes to turn one to the other - This is a sort of mix between the two ideas. Lubricant will still be made as a liquid and used as a liquid, but it has a recipe to turn it into a solid, thus being ST, and turned back into useful liquid where it is needed.
3. The catch
One thing that this idea still doesn't solve is this - to make sulfuric acid you need not only sulfur but also water. Water means pipes, and you may not want to make your battery/processing unit factory near a lake. The solution to this is - make a way to create water without a lake. This could either be a condensation-plant, which condenses atmospheric humidity into water, or a ground-water pump which suck water from aquifers. Either may be modified by environmental/weather conditions, if those are ever introduced (i.e. - condensation plants are less effective in deserts, more effective in humid weather etc.).
Those machines should not make large amounts of water - it should not be feasible to run a power plant with them, but as a sulfuric acid plant uses much less water than a power plant they should still be usable to create small amounts of water wherever necessary.
I hope I did not bore you with my long post. Looking forward to hear your thoughts.