Tutorial:Controlling oil reserves with pumps

[Talguy]

Here's how I control my reserves and prevent all of them from running out. I know I can use combinators, but I don't care about energy loss and this way is much easier to set up. I've added wooden chests with barrels next to the lights so you can easily see what liquid is used for a condition(pump).

Oil explained

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• All pumps must be running for cracking to work.
• Red light means negated condition (less than).
• When a light burns, a pump may work.
• Heavy oil light oil should always be indirectly connected with a pump, otherwise the system doesn't work.

As you can see here, I have a shortage on heavy oil and petrolium.

The entire oil setup:

oil.png (1.76 MiB) Viewed 35156 times

If anyone has a different method, please post! Would love to compare. Also, I'm using the color coded trains / lights mod

[ccik]

I use a similar system of controlling oil reserves and cracking, but less complicated. I have storage tanks hooked up to pumps as well, but only use one input condition.

If Lubricant is over 1k, i turn on the pump to my heavy to light oil cracking plant.
If Petroleum gas is under 1k, i turn on my light to petroleum cracking.

If my light oil is above 2k, i pump the oil to a different set of tanks, dedicated for solid fuel production.
If my petroleum gas is abouve 2.4k, i pump the overflow to another set of tanks, again used for solid fuel production. I know that this is a waste of oil, but i need to keept the solid fuel production running for rocket fuel.

With this setup, there is always lubricant and petroleum gas available for producing stuff, but on the other hand, my refineries are working all the time, and every bit of overflow is turned into rocket fuel.

[Lupoviridae]

Here's what I use:

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Keeps my fluids looking like this:

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[Talguy]

Here's what I use:

Capture.PNG

Keeps my fluids looking like this:

Capture2.PNG

Nice! What happens if tanks are full? The reason that I have my cracking pumps at <2k light oil/petroleum is so my yet to be built solid fuel pumps (> 2.4k) can go to solid fuel production. That way, creating batteries / plastic always gets preference.

[Lupoviridae]

I have three basic logic checks. 2.4k is "almost" full (2.5k is totally full.) I also use light oil as my exclusive source of fuel blocks, so I need to make sure that never runs dry.
1) If heavy oil and lube are both full, extra heavy oil gets cracked.
2) If light oil is full, extra gets cracked to petrol.
3) If light oil is low, heavy oil cracked.

It makes the priority light>petrol>heavy

Heavy oil will always be the first product to run out, unless you are using a ridiculous amount of light oil fuel, in which case heavy and light would probably run out together. But the pipes never get blocked due to one product being full. In all the time since I set this up I've actually never seen any of them drop below full, though my base is relatively small in this save.

[Tev]

I have much simpler conditions:
(heavy oil cracking) lube > 2400
(light oil cracking) light oil > petroleum
I have more and more reduced my processed oil tanks and now I only have one tank for each product, and only handle buffering with oil barrels. Much easier, universal and quickly rebuildable Not to mention you have less liquids to store (productivity everywhere).

[RoddyVR]

It seems to me that most of the setups here posted(including the seemingly elaborate setup of the OP), never consider the possibility of overflowing petrolium gas that stops production of heavy and light oil which stops production of lubricant (and solid fuel in some cases).

I think any "automatic control of liquid levels" needs to answer these questions, before it can be relied upon.
What will happen in this system when:
1. i stop all production in my factory except liquids, will all 3 (or 5 if you're tracking acid and lub also) tanks fill up, or will some remain sub 2500 because others have already filled up and the refineries stopped.
2. only petrol is being consumed (most setups answer this with cracking)
3. only light oil is being consumed (most will stop refining when petrol tanks fill up)
4. only heavy oil is being consumed (same as 3).
5. if the crude oil runs out (you could add subquestions here of "and condition of questions 2-4")
I suspect in most cases the "last drops" of crude will not be devided by your system the way you would want it to if you were carefully watching and managing the system yourself (some will have reserves of heavy and light, but run out of petrol, others will convert everything into petrol and have no fuel from light to make electricity to power the machines using the petrol).

Every one has different priorities for their systems, but it seems to me that many of us design our systems to meet our priorities in only the one circumstance of "factory running". and we make assumptions that something wont happen ever (most assume there's never TOO MUCH petrol being made by the refineries)

I'm trying to come up with a set of rules for the pumps going to cracking that will make the system behave same way as if a person was conrolling it.
Considering that all of our production is a one way street, (you cant uncrack or unproduce anything in the vanila game), i think it really becomes a question of prioratizing the end products.
*for my conditions below i would convert "=empty" into something like "<100" in the game and "=full" into ">2400" for liquids, just so that fringe cases of "cant use up last drop cause there's less left in system then recipie requires" and the like dont screw up your logic.


If you consider just Heavy light and Petrol, i think this simple system will work for prety much everyone.
Crack heavy when Light < Heavy
Crack light when Petrol < Light
produce solid fuel from petrol (or into a steamengine) when petrol = full and (light = empty or heavy = empty) - this is in case there's no petrol use, to fill up the other 2 tanks

In most cases i think Petrol and Lubricant > Light > Heavy which just changes the rules for heavy cracking:
Crack heavy when Light < Heavy AND Lubricant > Light (set 2 pumps one after the other with these conditions to get the "and" effect)

If your priority is Petrol > Lubricant
then add a second route between the Heavy tank and cracking set with pump:
Crack heavy when Petrol < Light (same condition as for light cracking)
and put a pump between heavy tank and lubricant plant set with:
Produce lubricant when Petrol > Lubricant

If you want to include solid fuel production in the pumps system logic, then:
If you want to produce solid fuel (mostly) from Light oil:
Crack light into petrol only when (solid fuel storage or light oil tank) is full - (either condition works, which one is better depends on if your solid fuel production can keep up with light oil producion)
Produce Solid fuel from petrol when (solid fuel storage or light oil tank) is nearly empty

If petrol usage is more important then solid fuel production (you have backup fuel generation in coal, but cant run out of petrol), then add a pump between petrol and solid fuel with:
Petrol = full.

I'm going to build this all into my current factory, and will post picks when its up. hope i helped more then just myself in figuring this all out here, instead of while building it in game.

[voyta]

A) Cracking is one-way process (you can't turn lighter fraction into heavier).
B) Oil processing always produces some petroleum gas.
A and B => If your petroleum consumption is 0, and your storage is not infinite, then you can't create design that will guarantee infinite production of any other fraction.

Every design that controls the cracking (and possibly chooses which oil processing to use) has to assume at least some minimal consumption of petroleum gas.
Every design that can guarantee infinite production of specific fraction regardless of other fraction(s) consumption has to guarantee way of consuming at least excess petroleum gas.

This can be done by using petroleum gas as operating medium for steam engine(s) that exclusively powers something that always consumes power (e.g. radar(s)).

[ratchetfreak]

A) Cracking is one-way process (you can't turn lighter fraction into heavier).
B) Oil processing always produces some petroleum gas.
A and B => If your petroleum consumption is 0, and your storage is not infinite, then you can't create design that will guarantee infinite production of any other fraction.

Every design that controls the cracking (and possibly chooses which oil processing to use) has to assume at least some minimal consumption of petroleum gas.
Every design that can guarantee infinite production of specific fraction regardless of other fraction(s) consumption has to guarantee way of consuming at least excess petroleum gas.

This can be done by using petroleum gas as operating medium for steam engine(s) that exclusively powers something that always consumes power (e.g. radar(s)).

C) you can convert petroleum gas into solid fuel

it's not hard to always have a demand for some solid fuel via boilers or trains (or rockets)

[voyta]

Well, if you convert it into solid fuel you run into problem with non-infinite storage/consumption for the said fuel - and this is not just theoretical, but also practical issue, for very large scale production or for very long timescale because past certain point, you are not able to guarantee enough solid fuel consumption.
When you heat the petroleum and "evaporate" it in steam engines, the consumption is always guaranteed (and also higher than when you just try to burn the fuel).
Of course practically you don't void all the petroleum, just the excess, but the outflow has to be there for the guarantee in the non-maintenance scenarios (which are necessity in all the really big builds .

[Kalanndok]

Well what I am doing is this:

Refine crude oil if EITHER...
- crude oil is over 80%
- or heavy oil is below 40%
- or light oil is below 40%
- or petroleum is below 40%

Crack heavy oil to light oil if...
- heavy oil is over 50%

Crack light oil to petroleum if BOTH...
- light oil is over 50%
- and petroleum is below 50%

Convert light oil to solid fuel if...
- light oil is over 80% (Independent of petroleum. If I'm still backing up light oil while cracking I'll need to refactor the cracker but first of all I need to make sure it doesn't back up anymore)

Convert petroleum to solid fuel if...
- light oil is over 80%

Right now I'm just storing the fuel without actually using it but I'm planning to use it in an automatic emergency power plant.
I envision having a giant water reservoir getting heated up by several arrays of boilers using all solid fuel exceeding 1000 units (and of course all other excess burnables in the base).
The water in the tanks will get heated but not yet dispatched to steam engines.

The steam engines will kick in if either...
- an accumulator sensor detects that the accumulators won't hold through the night
- or the water level in the water reservoir exceeds 95% storage capacity

In both cases I'll pump the water to a smaller buffer reservoir which feeds the steam engines. In the former case as long as the power shortage exists, in the latter case until the water level is below 80%.

I apply these conditions through combinators and pumps on the outlets of the storage tanks. You have to watch out not to exceed the 60 fluid per second in the pipes when pumping light oil into the cracking plant. Therefore I have a 9x9 storage for each resource to have enough tank outlets to put 2 pumps per full pipe (in and out). Need to increase storage if I need more outlets/inputs).

With these conditions each resource ensures that it's not blocking production of another resource. If any resource actually gets to 100% I need to adjust the ratios of the refineiries/cracking plants. The condition to burn crude oil if exceeding storage is just to actually use oil that is available since I'm very short on coal on my map. That condition is not necessary for the auto-balancing.

[Urbs]

Well what I am doing is this:

Refine crude oil if EITHER...
- crude oil is over 80%
- or heavy oil is below 40%
- or light oil is below 40%
- or petroleum is below 40%

Crack heavy oil to light oil if...
- heavy oil is over 50%

Crack light oil to petroleum if BOTH...
- light oil is over 50%
- and petroleum is below 50%

Convert light oil to solid fuel if...
- light oil is over 80% (Independent of petroleum. If I'm still backing up light oil while cracking I'll need to refactor the cracker but first of all I need to make sure it doesn't back up anymore)

Convert petroleum to solid fuel if...
- light oil is over 80%

Right now I'm just storing the fuel without actually using it but I'm planning to use it in an automatic emergency power plant.
I envision having a giant water reservoir getting heated up by several arrays of boilers using all solid fuel exceeding 1000 units (and of course all other excess burnables in the base).
The water in the tanks will get heated but not yet dispatched to steam engines.

The steam engines will kick in if either...
- an accumulator sensor detects that the accumulators won't hold through the night
- or the water level in the water reservoir exceeds 95% storage capacity

In both cases I'll pump the water to a smaller buffer reservoir which feeds the steam engines. In the former case as long as the power shortage exists, in the latter case until the water level is below 80%.

I apply these conditions through combinators and pumps on the outlets of the storage tanks. You have to watch out not to exceed the 60 fluid per second in the pipes when pumping light oil into the cracking plant. Therefore I have a 9x9 storage for each resource to have enough tank outlets to put 2 pumps per full pipe (in and out). Need to increase storage if I need more outlets/inputs).

With these conditions each resource ensures that it's not blocking production of another resource. If any resource actually gets to 100% I need to adjust the ratios of the refineiries/cracking plants. The condition to burn crude oil if exceeding storage is just to actually use oil that is available since I'm very short on coal on my map. That condition is not necessary for the auto-balancing.

So do you have 4 pumps in a row right before refineries in that order of checks?

[Kalanndok]

No. 4 pumps in a row as you're suggesting would only put oil to the refineries if ALL of the conditions are met (AND-gate).
I want it to work however if ONE of the conditions is met.

Therefore I'm using a build of 4 decision combinators that take the input of all my fluid storage tanks (all connected to a red wire circuit).
Each decision combinator then evaluates each condition and if true outputs a signal of A=1.

The outputs of the combinatirs are connected through ONE green wire to the pumps (different wire so that I can keep the signal isolated from the storage level signals) which are set to work if A > 0. Basicly that's a logical OR-gate designed with combinators.

[ratchetfreak]

No. 4 pumps in a row as you're suggesting would only put oil to the refineries if ALL of the conditions are met (AND-gate).
I want it to work however if ONE of the conditions is met.

Therefore I'm using a build of 4 decision combinators that take the input of all my fluid storage tanks (all connected to a red wire circuit).
Each decision combinator then evaluates each condition and if true outputs a signal of A=1.

The outputs of the combinatirs are connected through ONE green wire to the pumps (different wire so that I can keep the signal isolated from the storage level signals) which are set to work if A > 0. Basicly that's a logical OR-gate designed with combinators.

instead of pumps in a row you can put them in parallel so only 1 pump needs to be on.

[Kalanndok]

instead of pumps in a row you can put them in parallel so only 1 pump needs to be on.

Sure...but for 60 Fluid per second I'd need 8 pumps and each further conditions needs two new pumps.
Then I rather go with combinators (easier to expand/modify)