Pumps in Oil Processing

[jonbrave]

I have been playing Fac for quite some time. I don't think I really understand a thing about using pumps in oil processing... :(

In my current, I have two fair sized oil fields producing, one brought in under land and the other by train. I seem to have been building more & more refineries (more than any other game, maybe 20 now). They all seem to be full of water & crude, so I don't see a slow down that side, yet I could not seem to produce (much) more output. For example, my Plastic factories just didn't seem to be getting enough petroleum for my needs.

I have a mix of cracking going on and converting to solid fuel. I have a little circuit system switching between things if over-production on petro/light/heavy. Nothing is blocked. I just don't seem to be producing as much output as I'd kind of expect with all those refineries. While the input water/oil seems always full with no wait, the outputs are weak.

The only places I have pumps & storage tanks are:

* The crude train stations have tank->pump->train or train->pump->tank. No pumps after the arrival tanks, no more pumps anywhere.

* One storage tank for each product somewhere after refineries have produced, so I can monitor and attach to circuit. No other tanks.

On a whim, for the first time, I went to by plastic area (several chemical plants). They are serviced via one incoming pipe. I broke the pipe near to them and inserted first a tank then a pump, and reconnected, Lo & behold, they finally have enough petro coming in!

Do I have a flow pressure problem? Have I really achieved anything? If that's going to take petro away from elsewhere presumably some other shortage will show up in due course. Or do I just need pumps to move things around?

I've uploaded a screenshot of the processing area, I don't know if it will be of any interest. That many refineries, really? Or, if they all have full inputs, but not enough in the pipes out, does that mean it's not a pump/tank issue, I really need to build loads more?

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198104246727/screenshot/780729699968756900

EDIT I am SICK TO DEATH, and I mean it, of the RIDICULOUSLY complicated way I recall Steam makes it to display this screenshot in my post with a "preview". I have this EVERY F***KING TIME I upload. The link above is from my uploads area, and I recall I have to access it some other way in order to get a different URL suitable for a preview and I CAN NEVER RECALL HOW. Steam have had 20 years to make this easy for me & loads of others who ask about it, and as usual they just can't be bothered. Grrrr :(

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1810994466

Took me 10 minutes to produce URL for above, I have NO IDEA how to remember what I did to get that, so I won't be any better off next time....

[Fel]

For the screenshot thing just hit the "share" button and copy that link, it needs to have a specific URL for it to display it so the share button is the best way to get the right URL:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1810994466

The main use for pumps is for trains or for circuit network on/off logic.
For example, you are direclty making heavy oil into solid fuel, but the "best practices" more or less go along these lines:
Store petroleum gas, heavy and light oil (send a line of heavy oil and petroleum gas where it is needed of course), and put pumps on a different output of your storage tanks for heavy and light oil with network logic only turning them on when the storage is over a certain percentage.
From the output of those pumps you can send heavy oil purely to cracking (before that it would be solid fuel, but heavy oil to solid fuel after cracking is unlocked isn't that good) and light oil to cracking and/or solid fuel.

That way you are making sure you are never stopping your refineries but also making the best use of your heavy and light oil as much as possible.
Of course you would adapt ratios to your needs.


For the usage of pumps for normal pipes the problem is that you need them at frequent intervals if you want the flow to remain consistent from one end to the other, without pumps or after a certain amount of pipes the flow has a (somewhat low) cap on the amount it can transfer per second, so bigger factories will need multiple pipes bringing water and multiple pipes for petroleum gas (although reaching that amount of petroleum gas does require a fairly big factory).

[jonbrave]

@Fel
Thanks for your response. I had read earlier today somewhere that converting oil to fuel is more efficient with one route of petro/heavy/light. I will bear that in mind in future. Your comments confirm my approximate understanding.

So... it doesn't look like pumps is my issue here. Though putting a storage+pump on my plastic making area has assured my plastic output at least --- but I guess I'm just redirecting it from elsewhere.

So even though I have like 20 Refineries, given that their inputs show full but the output network is low, it looks like I should just try building more refineries, does that sound right?

[Fel]

That's the answer for most problems in factorio, make more, build bigger, leave the concerns about efficiency to those that care about it.

Especially after you unlocked cracking, oil also follows that rule.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't spend some time to understand each recipe and their benefits at some point but at least until you reach a point where you have too little input or too much output you don't need to worry too much about that.

Also another use for pumps that I forgot above is that it only allows liquid in one direction, meaning that it's a good way to make sure the oil goes towards your refineries (or your petroleum gas towards your plastic like you did).

[Purpleganja]

I never really understood how good pumps were and how disruptive tanks can be for the pressure and flow before having some fun doing water racing.

[Subak]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

it looks like I should just try building more refineries, does that sound right?

I see some refineries that are not operating (no flame). At least in the latest version, hovering a refinery will tell you why (right hand panel). It will probably be low fluid ingredient or fluid production overload.

At a certain point, pumps won't help and you need more dedicated pipelines from pumpjacks and water pumps or tank reserves.

What is probably going on is they are water-starved. I see a bunch of boilers and refineries all fed from the same water pipeline which I suspect has a single lonely water pump on the other end of it. That just won't do for the number of water consumers you have.

I'm a fan of pump directly connected going into tank (or a bank of them) and pump directly coming out of tank. Generally, 'fill' the tanks/banks with more pumps/pipes than you have outgoing. No fuss, stuff just works, if a fluid is low you immediately see which it is and so what you need more of.

[jonbrave]

@Jo Daddy
Thanks for replying. I can't recall the exact situation I was in when I took that screenshot.

I have been checking the input levels to the refineries and they do seem to maintain 100 water + 200 oil without much/any lag for producing the next set of output. There are more than one water pump dotted around, somewhere.

• I know that for steam power the limit is 20 boilers + 40 engines per 1 Offshore water pump. But I don't understand the ratios (e.g. water) needed to maintain Refineries?
  
  
• I was told years ago that "fluid pumps are not necessary unless your pipelines are very long". But I don't have an idea whether my networks now constitute whatever "very long" is?
  
  
• I assume that I cannot get away with connecting 2 Offshore water pumps into the same pipeline to increase the pressure, as the pipes limit that and can't take more than 1 Offshore pump?
  
  
• Now that I am starting to use Pumps (I don't mean Offshore pumps) in my fluid network, I like your suggestion that I hook up Pumps + Storage Tanks into the middle of the network, it won't do any harm and it will let me see if my pressure/input is too low for what I want outgoing, correct?

[Fel]

Ratios work for boilers because you won't be changing their speed but for refineries it is often a place where you put speed modules fairly soon after unlocking them, and that completely changes the "refineries per offshore pump" ratio.

If you want to bother about ratios and math, an offshore pump outputs 1200 units of water per second, you need a pump every 17 pipes (underground pipes each count as 1 pipes worth for that math, so every 8 "couple" undergound pipe) to maintain that 1200/s ratio, but even at 200 pipes it only falls to 1000 units per second.

There is a great wiki page about fluids (it has a table in the "pipeline" section about pipe length and pumps):
https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system

[jonbrave]

@Jo Daddy
I think you were right. I built a new Offshore pump to service the network connected to the Refineries, that brought in more water. Built pump & storage tank too.Pressure is right back up, though I don't think I'm actually producing more gas/oil, the Refineries were already at 100 water. Perhaps elsewhere in the network benefited.

@Fel
Thanks, I had read that stuff. Complicated tables!
> but even at 200 pipes it only falls to 1000 units per second.
That is good to know.

[Subak]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

it won't do any harm and it will let me see if my pressure/input is too low for what I want outgoing, correct?

Somewhere in more official docs like the wiki it will tell you that a pump directly off of a full tank is an ideal way to start a pipeline so that it maintains maximum throughput.

I don't worry much about the transfer rates falling off with pipe lengths, at least not directly. Filling/pumping from tanks I just worry about having full water/oil tanks and add more to the filling side if it isn't full. This is almost a requirement for big nuclear setups with stuff like ~50+ heat exchangers.

Yeah though, being able to easily see what's lacking by looking at what tanks are not full is a great reason to do it.

Another thing you'll find handy if you haven't heard of it is the factorio cheat sheet (just google) it's not so much an actual cheat as a list of buildings and ratios since other people have done the math.

Tanks aren't a total silver bullet (unless you have tank->pump to every input) because one thing you'll hit sooner or later is similar to the same thing as belt capacity.

For the same reason you can't really put 100 smelters in a row fed off the same belt, refineries and chem plants have a cap to being fed off the same pipeline.

I don't go gaga for all the calculations involved in pipe lengths under/over ground. Rather just keep in mind you may need to run another dedicated pipe/pump line to feed a large chain of liquid consumers. 1000 units/second sounds like a bunch, but with modules or even just enough stuff 'drinking' you can consume all a single pipeline can carry fairly easy.

[gGeorg]

Pumps have several roles.
1. speed up flow
2. stop flow (on demand)
3. provide one way flow (pump do not allow flow upstream)

There is whole magic box about fluid system. SOme of important informations,
Use pump connected to a tank or other device. Flow (and preasure) is better. Before or after is ok. Difference is forgetable.
17 ground pipes per pump flow 1200 u/s
200 ground pipes per pump flow 1000 u/s
more pipes than 200 means flow goes down qickly. You dont want do that.
e.g. pair of underground paips count as 2 regardless range.

Use light to solid fuel only. Others two options are far more less eficient. Altho usefull for unlock your system, they are only emergency. Standard process iis use cracking.

Make yourself a scheme for usage.
for example, Heavy oil is needed for lube and firethrower ammo. Thats all scheme :-)
Lets take a pipe from refineries with HO.

Make yourself a tank for HO then pump attach by wire. Tank leads to a branch for lube production.
Then place a pump before the tank, attach wire and say pump up to 20k.
Then make other branch of Oil process. for HO cracking. From refinery, before lube branch pump.
Set a pump there. set wire again, say - pump HO only if the HO tank (yes it is still the same tank) is mmore than 19k.

That way, you made two branches on Heavy oil, One is preffered for Lube rest of it goes to cracking.

This way you need to make care other liquids too.
After few tests, you get self balancing system. Use just wires, tanks and pumps. No combinator required.

Also, you can use productivity modules for any oil bilding to highly increase output.

[Purpleganja]

I read in an FFF of the new fluid system of early .17 that undergound pipes behaved like their full length for throughput. Was it implemented?

[Fel]

The new fluid system itself was not implemented (outside of the reservation that prevents crossing liquids) so probably not.

[Purpleganja]

Originally posted by Fel:

The new fluid system itself was not implemented (outside of the reservation that prevents crossing liquids) so probably not.

It was the FFF #274 that talked about a 2nd fluid update and I remember login in and reading that in the patch note.. oh well, It was a while ago.. I guess I will do some testing then.

[Fel]

in FFF 283 (about the changes that were going to be included in 0.17.0 just before its release they talked about that:

The fluids

We were testing the algorithm, and there was a lot of back and forth, but the time was running by and there were some problems not that easy to fix. To prevent things from getting broken in a ways we couldn't anticipate and not to potentially delay the release any further, we decided to split the change.

So the fluid mixing prevention and fluid update optimisations are in 0.17, but the new algorithm was put aside for further research.

source: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-283

[Purpleganja]

Alright, thanks Fel!