Lubricant overflow, what to do with it?

[Rabob]

Hello people, so I have a small problem. My factory is quite compact and I don't need a lot of resources. I use oil to make materials and the Solid fuel from it, is used to power my base (apart from solar power).

The problem however is that I produce far more lubricant than I need and the factory eventually bottlenecks itself
Lubricant storage is full -> oil processing stops -> solid fuel shortage -> whole base underpowered

Is there a way to automatically get rid of excess lubricant (and other liquids)?
At the moment I delete storage and rebuild it, but that's quite inconvenient.

[KatherineOfSky]

Crack the Heavy Oil into Light Oil.

[ArtyD42]

I'd personally just have a second output point cracking the heavy oil into light oil, and then into solid fuel. You can also crack light oil into petrolium if you really want. It's not efficient but it does work.

[Rabob]

Light/Heavy oil is not the problem. Excess Lubricant is (The green looking oil)

[The_Mell]

Stop producing it maybe..?

You seem to produce lubricant to get rid of heavy oil.
Your problem is not lubricant - it's your 'idea' about petroleum, light and heavy oil.
Those 3 you must care about, those must be handled to keep things working.
Any product made of those 3 doesn't change anything (except your setup is by a strange chance a perfect one).

You must use the possibilities of advanced oil processing to keep your petrochemie running.
Crack heavy into light and light into petroleum to balance things out.

[bobSheep]

Set some pumps with wires to pump excess oil types to move it to solid fuel factories, what way only excess is processed. You will need a ton of solid fuel if your goal is to launch x rockets a minute.

or just make a ton of tanks for the time being.

[ArtyD42]

Originally posted by Rabob:

Light/Heavy oil is not the problem. Excess Lubricant is (The green looking oil)

Alright then... lets break this down to the simplest point...

Oil field collects crude oil. This is fed to a refinery that produces heavy oil. That feeds into a chemical plant that produces lubricant. What is preventing you from putting a second chemical plant that converts heavy oil into light oil and feeds to the light oil system?

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by Rabob:

Light/Heavy oil is not the problem. Excess Lubricant is (The green looking oil)

You are PRODUCING the lubricant. It's OK if it fills the tanks.

Obviously, the heavy oil must go somewhere, (instead of lubricant production) -- that's why we have suggested cracking, etc.

[Rabob]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Originally posted by Rabob:

Light/Heavy oil is not the problem. Excess Lubricant is (The green looking oil)

You are PRODUCING the lubricant. It's OK if it fills the tanks.

Obviously, the heavy oil must go somewhere, (instead of lubricant production) -- that's why we have suggested cracking, etc.

Oh like that, but then I will have even more solid fuel and I already have too much of that when it's producing normally :/
At the moment I just replant the silos to delete the excess lubricant. I was just hoping for a way to automatically dump the excess.

[AlexMBrennan]

Oh like that, but then I will have even more solid fuel and I already have too much of that when it's producing normally :/

Again, that's why you should use advanced oil processing to crack heavy oil to light and light oil to petroleum as needed: you need lots of petroleum (for plastic and batteries), you don't need the heavy (for lubricant)/light (for solid fuel) so turning the heavy/light oil you have but do not need into petroleum would be the obvious solution.

[Mazian]

Depending on demand, you're always going to have an excess of something and a shortage of something else.

Since everything is in your control, you get to choose what you have an excess supply of. When you have a shortage, it's in your power to resolve it.


If you have too much lubricant, stop producing it. Crack Heavy Oil to Light Oil, then convert the Light Oil to Solid Fuel, or convert Crack the Light Oil again down to Petroleum Gas-- where it benefits you in (ultimately) producing more Batteries, Plastics, Blue Chips (Advanced Processors) and Explosives.

With the use of Small Pumps and Circuit Network logic, you can make your fluid/gas routing more complex and comprehensive.

You could also progress to using Advanced Oil Processing to reduce Heavy Oil production (increasing Light Oil and Petroleum Gas production) which further relieves pressure from either Heavy Oil or Lubricant production.


Or, if you have way too much in the way of Batteries and Plastics, you could go in the other direction and use the Lubricant to produce more Express Transport Belts, Express Splitters, Express Underground Belts and Electric Engines (the engines would, in turn, allow you to increase mass production of Robots.)


Or, if you don't like any of those suggestions, you could convert Heavy Oil and Light Oil into Flamer Ammo.


And if you still don't like that idea at all, you could go search http://mods.factorio.com/ for the mod that lets you dump things into a void. There is even a mod for this that is compatible with 0.13.x. WARNING: This will disable Steam achievements in your game.


And if you still don't like that idea, then you can stick with your current method.



Your options are plentiful. There are lots of uses for Oil products, and multiple ways to consume Heavy Oil without converting it to Lubricant. But what you want isn't supported in vanilla Factorio and will likely never be supported.

[Timi]

Originally posted by Rabob:

At the moment I just replant the silos to delete the excess lubricant. I was just hoping for a way to automatically dump the excess.

If you really want to automatically dump it, add an electric engine to the storage tank which activates when the lube tank is getting full and pumps into boilers and from there to steam engines. Maybe in it's own electrical grid with a pair of radars if you are running solar otherwise or you want to ensure it is burned off quickly.

Same applies for all liquids (including sulfuric acid! Too bad it doesn't pollute as much as you'd think it would), steam engines run off them all as long as they are heated up first.

[Mazian]

Originally posted by Timi:

Same applies for all liquids (including sulfuric acid! Too bad it doesn't pollute as much as you'd think it would), steam engines run off them all as long as they are heated up first.

That is a great on-point suggestion.
I keep forgetting this fact.

Edit:fixed typo

[daniel0674]

Originally posted by Timi:

Originally posted by Rabob:

At the moment I just replant the silos to delete the excess lubricant. I was just hoping for a way to automatically dump the excess.

If you really want to automatically dump it, add an electric engine to the storage tank which activates when the lube tank is getting full and pumps into boilers and from there to steam engines. Maybe in it's own electrical grid with a pair of radars if you are running solar otherwise or you want to ensure it is burned off quickly.

Same applies for all liquids (including sulfuric acid! Too bad it doesn't pollute as much as you'd think it would), steam engines run off them all as long as they are heated up first.

You don't even need to heat it up, you can pipe it in directly when it's cold and the steam engines will just vanish the liquid. That way it won't produce electricity but also cause no pollution.
In fact the steam engine doesn't even need to be connected to a grid, and if you connect it to the main grid because the flashing power symbol bothers you it will still vanish the liquid even if you're running on solar.

[Timi]

Originally posted by daniel0674:

You don't even need to heat it up, you can pipe it in directly when it's cold and the steam engines will just vanish the liquid. That way it won't produce electricity but also cause no pollution.
In fact the steam engine doesn't even need to be connected to a grid, and if you connect it to the main grid because the flashing power symbol bothers you it will still vanish the liquid even if you're running on solar.

Oh, that simplifies things. Didn't think to try that, even.