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Oil processing

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Oil processing is a large part of Factorio. It was introduced in v0.9. Oil processing may refer to the researched technology, the recipe used in the oil refinery, or the overall workings of oil.

The values shown here are accurate for version 0.15. In 0.14, anything that produces, consumes, or stores any fluid does so at 1/10th of the quantities listed here. Solid items and ratios are unaffected; this is essentially just a cosmetic change of the displayed units.

Beginner

Tutorial

Technologies

Technology Description
Oil processing Allows the player to set up a basic facility to mine, process, and use oil.
Sulfur.png
Sulfur processing
A prerequisite for the research of the Battery, which is used in a handful items later on, including the Science pack 3.
Plastics The Plastic bar is an ingredient in the Advanced circuit, which is used often later on.
Fluid handling Allows better control over your liquids, with the Storage Tank and Small Pump.
Advanced oil processing Gives you a new recipe for use in the Oil refinery, allowing you to get more useful products from your Crude Oil.
Coal liquefaction (research).png
Coal liquefaction
Gives you a refinery recipe to turn excess coal into oil products. Introduced in version 0.15.0.
Flammables
Flame thrower
Gives you access to the Flamethrower and Flamethrower ammo

Recipes

There are various recipes that can be done regarding Oil processing. They are listed below.

After researching Oil processing:
Process Input Machine Output
Basic oil processing
Time icon.png
5
Solid fuel
Time icon.png
3
Solid fuel
Time icon.png
3
Solid fuel
Time icon.png
3
Lubricant.png
Lubricant
Time icon.png
1
Lubricant.png
10
After researching Advanced oil processing:
Process Input Machine Output
Advanced oil processing
Water.png
50
Time icon.png
5
Heavy oil cracking
Water.png
30
Time icon.png
3
Light oil cracking
Water.png
30
Time icon.png
3
After researching Fluid handling:
Process Input Machine Output
Fill crude oil barrel
Time icon.png
1
or
Crude-oil-barrel.png
1
Empty crude oil barrel
Crude-oil-barrel.png
1
Time icon.png
1
or
After researching
Sulfur.png
Sulfur processing:
Process Input Machine Output
Sulfur.png
Sulfur
Water.png
30
Time icon.png
1
Sulfur.png
2
Sulfuric Acid
Sulfur.png
5
Water.png
100
Time icon.png
1
After researching Advanced electronics:
Process Input Machine Output
Processing unit
Time icon.png
15
or
After researching Battery:
Process Input Machine Output
Battery.png
Battery
Time icon.png
5
Battery.png
1
After researching Plastics:
Process Input Machine Output
Plastics
Coal.png
1
Time icon.png
1
After researching Flammables and Flame thrower:
Process Input Machine Output
Flamethrower ammo
Time icon.png
3
After researching
Coal liquefaction.png
Coal liquefaction, added in 0.15.0:
Process Input Machine Output
Coal liquefaction.png
Coal liquefaction
Coal.png
10
Steam.png
50
Time icon.png
5

Mechanics & Usage

To extract, process and use oil and its connected products, research, as shown above, is needed.

Overview

File:Example-Oil-Refining.png
Crude oil being drilled and refined.
File:Example-Oil-Cracking.png
Oil being cracked into lower forms.
File:Example-Oil-Usage.png
Oil being used to create plastic and batteries.

Pumpjacks need to be placed on top of the middle of the oil well. Given electricity (90kW, upgradeable), Pumpjacks will produce a certain amount of Crude oil per second, shown on the right, at the bottom of the information panel. Over time this value will decrease down to a minimum of 0.1 oil/s, providing infinite oil at a very low rate.

All liquids can be transported by Pipes, only Crude oil can be filled into Barrels and moved with the Railway network or other vehicles.

The Crude Oil then needs to be refined in an Oil refinery. The Oil refinery also needs Power provided by an Electric network. It has a much higher demand, at 420kW, but it is also upgradeable. The oil refinery needs to have a recipe set (see above for available recipes). Once it is set, the inputs and outputs show what needs to be, and what will be supplied. You cannot move the locations of these, only rotate the entire machine. Make sure that the products have somewhere to go (preferably Storage Tanks), as the refinery will stop production of all products if one product output is full.

Now you have the three basic products. Heavy Oil, Light Oil and Petroleum Gas. Both Heavy Oil and Light Oil can be cracked to the next lower type in a Chemical plant (recipe above). This is useful if you've got lots of Light Oil, but are lacking in Petroleum Gas (A common problem).

From here, after some research, you can use the oil products to create various products. They are all listed above.

Tips

  • Lubricant
    • If you run your Heavy Oil pipe from the refineries past a Lubricant-making Chemical Plant before sending it to the cracking Chemical Plants, you can be sure that the Lubricant production will have priority over cracking.
    • Most games will only ever need one lubricant-producing Chemical Plant and one Storage Tank for the lubricant.
    • Since Lubricant is only used for blue belts and electric engines, and the only other use of Heavy Oil is flamethrower ammo (production of which is either best placed in your oil refinery or elided entirely) and cracking into Light Oil (the Heavy Oil to Solid fuel production ratio is terrible compared to cracking it first), you may want to consider placing your production of robots and belt assembly nearby your oil refineries, so lubricant doesn't need to be sent as far.


Items to handle fluids

Pumpjack.png
Pumpjack
Pumpjacks mine the Crude Oil from the oil fields, and let you move it by Pipe.
Oil refinery Refines Crude Oil into basic oil products (Heavy/Light Oil and Petroleum Gas).
Chemical plant Like the Assembling machine, used to automate processing of liquids and crafting.
Storage Tank Stores up to 25000 units of any liquid.
Pump Allows you to pump liquids from one area to another. Used inline (between pipes). Also used to pump fluids into fluid wagons.
Offshore pump Allows you to pump water up from a body of water.
Assembling machine 2
Assembling machine 3
Allows you to craft items using liquids, used mainly for Barrels.
Pipe.png
Pipe
Allows transporting of liquids from one location to another.
Pipe to ground A Pipe, but under the ground, acting similar to Underground belts.
Boiler.png
Boiler
Transforms water into 165°C steam.
Heat exchanger.png
Heat exchanger
Transforms water into 500°C steam.
Steam engine Consumes steam to produce electricity.
Steam turbine.png
Steam turbine
Consumes steam to produce electricity.
Fluid wagon.png
Fluid wagon
Carries up to 75000 units of liquid by rail, in three tanks of 25000 each.

Advanced

Optimal ratio to produce petroleum gas

The optimal ratio is the ratio of buildings in which they can all work without jamming or having inactive superfluous. For example, when you apply 1 Oil Refinery to the optimal Advanced oil processing ratio [25 : 3 : 21], you get [1 : 0.12 : 0.84]. Round that up to get [1 : 1 : 1], which means:

  • 1 Oil Refinery on Advanced oil processing
  • 1 Chemical plant on Heavy oil cracking
  • 1 Chemical plants on Light oil cracking

Different ratios are close enough to the perfection such as [8 : 1 : 7].

The setup above will not jam, but it will have temporarily inactive buildings. If you round down, it will no longer have inactive buildings, but it will jam (over time).

This can be sped up with modules, but to prevent jams or inactive buildings, it is recommended to speed everything up evenly. When slowing down (by using Productivity modules) you are better off experimenting on altering the ratio or the speed on certain buildings, since these ratios are only mathematically correct if all the buildings have the same speed, and have 100% productivity (so no added bonuses).

Calculating the optimal ratios is relatively challenging, since not all of the durations of the processes are the same (the crafting speed of a chemical plant is 1.25, but the refinery's is 1.0). If this were not taken in account, it will lead to (temporarily) inactive buildings, which is not optimal.

Basic oil processing

Ratio Building Process Recipe
25 Oil refinery Basic oil processing
Time icon.png
5
9 Chemical plant Heavy oil cracking
Time icon.png
3
Water.png
30
21 Chemical plant Light oil cracking
Time icon.png
3
Water.png
30
Buildings Input/s Output/s
Water.png
825

Advanced oil processing

Ratio Building Process Recipe
25 Oil refinery Advanced oil processing
Time icon.png
5
Water.png
50
3 Chemical plant Heavy oil cracking
Time icon.png
3
Water.png
30
21 Chemical plant Light oil cracking
Time icon.png
3
Water.png
30
Buildings Input/s Output/s
Water.png
650

Crude oil transport

File:Pumping station.jpg
Autonomus installation for manual pickup of Crude oil barrels.

Since oil fields practically can deplete, new sources will be demanded. There are many different ways to overcome this problem:

  • Pipes/Belts
  • Manual pick-up
  • Trains
  • Robots (Troublesome over long distances)

See also