Factorio Forums

Hello,

I'm being stuck with an issue that looks like a bug. I'm trying to find out what's wrong for hours.
My refinery does not work with the Advanced Oil Processing recipe.
I have a tank directly connected to the refinery refilling with basic oil processing, once I change to Advanced I have no output anymore. All 3 output have the same issue.
I really don't understand what I did wrong

Could you please help me?

Oil refinery has 3 fluid products. You have only 2 of them connected somewhere to flow, light oil is not connected (center fluid output on the oil refinery)

You need to crack the heavy oil into light oil and the light oil into petroleum. Cracking can be controlled with the circuit network and switching pumps. So you only crack heavy oil if you have enough lubricant for example.

It's a bit complicated balancing your oil product ratios to match your usage.

This is my current layout, which is tuned to both research and launching rockets. If you're not launching rockets, you will need just enough rocket fuel for your trains, the rest should be cracked into gas. Heavy oil should always be cracked to light oil and/or made into lubricant.

boskid wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 11:56 am Oil refinery has 3 fluid products. You have only 2 of them connected somewhere to flow, light oil is not connected (center fluid output on the oil refinery)

Brilliant ! It works now, thank you so much!
Thank you also for the other replies, very useful info

The whole oil system is mostly about petroleum. Flamethrower turrets aside maybe, there are only two uses for the other products:

1.) You need heavy oil for lubricant
2.) You need light oil for solid fuel/rocket fuel

There are several ways to set up the circuit conditions, but they all involve measuring a tank (a single one is enough. Even if you have several) and switching a pump depending on its level. So stick a pump into the pipe that leads to your HO and LO cracking plants. Now you can turn that on and off depending on your stored fluids.
That can be as simple as "Lubricant > 24900" for the HO pump. And "Light Oil > 10000" for the LO pump. You generally don't need a huge store of light oil. That ensures you aren't cracking away your heavy oil when you need lubricant. It's not as complicated as it sounds when you have done it once.

There is one other place where you can run into issues like this and that is rocket fuel production. You can back up on petroleum, which also causes a light oil shortage. One way around that is to start producing solid fuel from petroleum when you are full. Even though that's inefficient. You can use that for rocket fuel or burn it off if you're still using steam power all the time.
Or you could have a separate refinery just for the rocket fuel and build just the right ratio of solid fuel from petroleum to consume everything (while cracking the heavy oil as making solid fuel from light oil gets you the most).


In the picture above, look at how the refinieries are linked with underground pipe. Stick to that pattern. It's the most versatile and extensible. If you use regular pipes there you just run into issues.

Thank you Serenity !!

Serenity wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 3:35 pm The whole oil system is mostly about petroleum.

It's all about petroleum. It's mostly about petroleum gas, as opposed to the various kinds of refined petroleum oil.