Chemical Processing Layout

[keleios]

This is a layout that I made to try and make an easily constructed blueprint for all non-solid fuel chemical production. I run on Solar.

Goals

• Must fit between Roboports.
• Must have Circuit Network flow control.
• Should have room for belts if needed.

Circuit Control
The control allows me to constrain processes so I can always build what I need.

• I don't crack Heavy to Light unless I have more Heavy than Light. Same for Gas and Light.
• Sulfuric is activated when it is lower than Gas, same for Lubricant and Heavy.
• In the future this can be upgraded to use combinators for dual state control.

Things to Improve:

• The tanks are a bit more storage than I need likely. I could dial those back.
• Doesn't support beacons in most locations. I don't use them much.
• I'd like it to be 2 squares shorter North South.

Ignore the belts, they are for measuring.

Definitely Inspired by this layout, but it was much too large: https://i.imgur.com/1U4HKay.png

[MadZuri]

The design you are basing this off of is my least favorite oil design ever. It contains WAY too many storage tanks, and is completely unbalanced. Smart oil designs only really need a single storage tank for each fluid for the sake of measuring amounts. Also, you should never, ever place crude oil in storage tanks. You get nearly 100x as much storage density from using barrels over storage tanks. Concerning ratios (what most oil builds absolutely suck at), 5 refineries with 1 heavy cracking and 7 light cracking can convert all the fluids to gas if you need it. I see that design all freaking over the place, in youtube vids, on open multiplayer servers, on random twitch streams... and it makes me sad. It really is a terrible build (the one you're basing your build off of). Your build is a lot better, but it can still be improved. For instance, leaving a single refinery as basic processing that only turns on when lube/heavy oil gets too low, more solid fuel production capacity, things like that.

[keleios]

I agree almost everything you said, some are even in the "Things to Improve" section. The main thing I took from the other layout is the rather orderly layout. Most Chemical Plant layouts people have bothered to share are extremely erratic, are missing things, etc. If you have a layout you like I'd like very much to see it.

I did the math a bit on how many refineries to cracking plants. I have 6 plants, so thats why I have 1 extra light cracking and 1 extra heavy. Switching a basic processing refinery on would be a great idea for low heavy. Currently I'm most bottlenecked on plastics and actual crude supply, my level is pretty light on crude. I haven't had too many issues regarding Heavy production specifically.

It is logic controlled and maintains a good balance between the tanks. I haven't seen that a lot, though I'm sure others have great builds they haven't shared. Someone posted a compact processing layout that I liked a lot but I haven't been able to find it again.

I'd likely go 4 tanks per block in the future. My production tends to be bursty as I spend a lot of time just screwing around with layouts rather than trying to win quickly.

I've been experimenting with Roboport builds to build a catalog of sorts for when the game gets the built in blueprint library tech.

[BlakeMW]

Also, you should never, ever place crude oil in storage tanks. You get nearly 100x as much storage density from using barrels over storage tanks.

Hold on! That's making the assumption that space is a scarce and limited resource. It costs 5 iron to store 25 oil in a barrel (5 oil/iron) whereas it costs only 55 iron to store 2500 oil in a Tank (25.45 oil/iron), as such the incorrigible cheapskate will assert you should never, ever store crude oil in barrels because it requires 5x as much iron to barrel oil as tank it.

[Neok]

Hold on! That's making the assumption that space is a scarce and limited resource. It costs 5 iron to store 25 oil in a barrel (5 oil/iron) whereas it costs only 55 iron to store 2500 oil in a Tank (25.45 oil/iron), as such the incorrigible cheapskate will assert you should never, ever store crude oil in barrels because it requires 5x as much iron to barrel oil as tank it.

Depends on how you receive the oil. If you need 9 storage tanks for oil, its rather safe to assume that there is a lot of oil coming in. If you receive the oil in barrels there is no point to first empty them in 9 storage tanks.. In that case you would already have the barrels, so its better to keep it in the barrel... Well unless ofcourse you build a pipe to each outpost, or use the fluid train wagon mod

[sckuzzle]

I don't like the control strategy of keeping everything at the same ratio. Heavy oil is only ever used to create lubricant or crack to light oil. Since very little heavy oil is produced, you don't want to needlessly convert it to light oil when you find that perhaps you suddenly need large amounts of lubricant.

My strategy is to only crack heavy oil when lubricant > 2000, because it's not much of an investment and it makes control easy. However, if you want a more advanced control strategy, you should stockpile heavy oil and only create lubricant on demand. The only time you should ever crack heavy oil is when: 1. Heavy oil stores are nearly full 2. Light oil stores are nearly empty. Similarly, you should stockpile light oil in case you need solid fuel. Only crack it to petroleum when stores are nearly full or petroleum is nearly empty. Create sulfuric acid and plastic on demand to minimize waste when you need it for something else. You never want to switch to normal oil processing, as it gives a lower yield.

I operate on the assumption that my factory may need to operate at high capacity indefinitely. Stockpiling an intermediate may work if your factory operates intermittently, but you'll find that if you suddenly want to produce more of something (like, say, 100 productivity 3 modules) your factory will initially run before being massively bottlenecked.

Depends on how you receive the oil. If you need 9 storage tanks for oil, its rather safe to assume that there is a lot of oil coming in. If you receive the oil in barrels there is no point to first empty them in 9 storage tanks.. In that case you would already have the barrels, so its better to keep it in the barrel... Well unless ofcourse you build a pipe to each outpost, or use the fluid train wagon mod

You are forgetting that if the oil came in in a barrel, you probably want that barrel again...to bring in more oil. Each barrel you leave filled with crude is one more empty barrel you must create to continue transporting said crude.

[keleios]

I don't like the control strategy of keeping everything at the same ratio. Heavy oil is only ever used to create lubricant or crack to light oil. Since very little heavy oil is produced, you don't want to needlessly convert it to light oil when you find that perhaps you suddenly need large amounts of lubricant.

I feel like you aren't quite seeing the balance there is by processing to those rules. All of the tanks get full at around exactly the same time. If any tank gets lower than its source inputs the system tries to correct. The second Lubricant falls below your Heavy reserves it starts making more. If you use tons of Lubricant you would likely need an auxiliary plant for bandwidth, but the design works great. Under normal operating conditions, Heavy is almost never cracked to Light, but can if Lubricant is full.

That said, the joy of a fully circuit connected design such as this is every output is controllable. If you use a lot of Lubricant, erratically, you can add some Combinators to generate a signal to only crack Heavy if Lubricant is ~95% full and Heavy is ~95% while creating Lubricant at all times. No change in pipe layout required, every factory input is small pump controlled.

The only thing that may require a change layout, but trivial to add, would be adding a pump to control the crude input to 1 or more of the refineries and setting it to do standard processing, turning it on on the condition that Heavy gets too low. It's a great idea by MadZuri and it fits with the layout.

That all in mind, this is a generic layout for primarily solar powered factories, requirements for Solid Fuel production would require more Chemical Plants. It tiles with Roboports, as long as you can supply enough water and crude. If you have enough space you can build out quite a lot.

I'll probably make another design a bit later to act as a smaller scale processing system. I also might make a lower storage setup with more Solid Fuel.

[keleios]

Playing around with trying to make a small layout that grows outward with belt capabilities for inputs and outputs on the perimeter. Maybe for a sub-base or early game.

Inputs for Water and Crude in North.
Middle belt going North is a mix of iron and copper
Western belt going North is coal.

[AutoMcD]

Personally I shipped the sulfur out of there on a belt. Water is easy to source, can make the acid anywhere. I didn't want the factory and the refinery on top of eachother.. Blue circuit production had to be expanded quite a bit!

[ilostmahbucket]

Playing around with trying to make a small layout that grows outward with belt capabilities for inputs and outputs on the perimeter. Maybe for a sub-base or early game.

Nice creativity here, Keleios.

[keleios]

There's an error in the small layout for Light Oil > Gas cracking water feed. I re-arranged it from a previous layout and missed it. Probably post an actual running version tomorrow when I get the kinks worked out. I didn't want to waste crude by running it on the screenshot.