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Oil refinery has two recipes.

Basic-oil-processing: 3 heavy oil, 3 light oil, 4 petroleum gas ===> in sum 10
Advanced-oil-processing: 1 heavy oil, 4.5 light oil, 5.5 petroleum gas ===> in sum 11

So all in all the the advanced oil processing comes out with one liquid more.

Now, assumed, that we need at the end heavy amounts of petroleum gas and nearly no heavy or light oil it makes much sense to crack the heavy to light oil and the light oil to petroleum gas.

What can be done here is, that we can add productivity modules in this crackers. And that I did: I filled all my cracker-chemical plants with productivity modules. There now comes some more oil out.

And now my question:

Given the exact same amount of oil as input, where comes more petroleum gas out: When I use the basic- or the advanced-oil-processing? Provided, that all chemical plants, which crack the heavy to the lighter oil products have been equipped with productivity modules.

And special question: Does that change, if I also provide the refineries with productivity modules?

Heavy oil to light oil is 75% efficient.
Light oil to petroleum gas is 60% efficient.

Even with 20% productivity bonus you lose some oil. So the solution is to minimize cracking.

The best you can achieve with productivity 3 modules in everything is 10 crude oil to 11.78 petroleum gas.

We did the math... and we got that if you can fit 7 tier 3 productivity modules it's better to do basic oil...

i'm doing the build now, i'll tell you in about an hour or two of the results

Basic cracked 2.5k crude => 1.9k gas

Advanced cracked 2.5k crude => 2.2k gas

Basic cracked full productivity 3 2.5k crude => 2.6k gas

Advanced cracked full productivity 3 2.5k crude => 3k gas

About the only time basic is better than advanced, is if you've got a reason to make large amounts of solid fuel, since Light Oil is the most efficient to convert into SF (even with cracking losses, still better to convert to SF from Light Oil), and there's no way to decrack/combine the oil forms.

n9103 wrote:About the only time basic is better than advanced, is if you've got a reason to make large amounts of solid fuel

Basic is never better. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... php?t=7052

DaveMcW wrote:

n9103 wrote:About the only time basic is better than advanced, is if you've got a reason to make large amounts of solid fuel

Basic is never better. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... php?t=7052

Basic is better if you need insane amounts of Lubricant, which comes from heavy oil and you cannot un-crack light to heavy to make lube.

Of course, I have yet to need this much lube, even with a primarily belt driven center-line factory using all express(or dytech) belts.

DaveMcW wrote:

n9103 wrote:About the only time basic is better than advanced, is if you've got a reason to make large amounts of solid fuel

Basic is never better. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... php?t=7052

Basic without cracking seems to be the most power efficient, according to your chart.
It seems to be making a lot of assumptions, and isn't really based on anything other than most left over power.
Yes, I know it helps to indicate total amount of SF made.
But between the self-admitted inaccurate measuring, and the basic cracking being more power efficient, I'm not too keen on taking that chart at face value.

Thanks for all replies, very helpful.

Sorry to necro the thread. Warning: long post, and potential mistakes here and there. Here are some calculations:

Light cracking (5s)
3l-2g

Heavy cracking (5s)
4h-3l(-2g)

4h is cracked to 2g in essence. So, h:g ratio is 2. We can assume 2h is 1g and 3l is 2g.

Basic refinery output
3h-3l-4g (5s - 1cycle)
12h-12l-16g (20s - 4cycle)
6g-8g-16g (20s - 4cycle, theoretical - 30g total)

Advanced refinery output (5s)
1h-4.5l-5.5g (5s - 1cycle)
4h-18l-22g (20s - 4cycle)
2g-12g-22g (20s - 4cycle, theoretical - 36g total)

These calculations alone proves that the theoretical gas output is 20% better for advanced when compared to basic. Now, lets try to look at the situation from another viewpoint; cracking efficiency.

Assuming heavy supply is infinite, heavy cracking will provide enough light to be used in light cracking. This makes all the light output of the refinery excess. So, a setup where not a drip of heavy or light will be stored, and used with 100% efficiency, there will be a lot of light cracking going on.

Using the 20s output "calculations" above, and assuming there are 4 refineries;
Basic: 48h-48l-64g
After heavy cracking: 36l+48l-64g (3x chem plants)
After light cracking: 56g+64g (+7x chem plants)
For 120g per 20s (6g/s), you'll be running 10x chem plants.

Advanced: 16h-72l-88g
After heavy cracking: 12l+72l-88g (1x chem plant)
After light cracking: 56g+88g (+7x chem plants)
For 144g per 20s(7.2g/s), you'll be running 8x chem plants.

Not only you have better potential g production for advanced refining, you also have to use less chem plants if your plan is to convert every drip of h and l to g as well. The reason I used 4x refineries is, 4x basic refining yields 48h in 20s, which is the amount 3x chem plants would require in the same amount of time - in other words, for the sake of simplicity.

Of course these calculations are purely theoretical, and only for g production. If your aim is to produce fuel, the figures look a bit different. This time, assuming that the numbers are for 60s. There is a catch though; if you use heavy cracking, you'll actually increase the h:f ratio. 4h alone is 2f, but if you crack it, 4h=3l and it is 3f. Denoting this with fuel*

Advanced refining: 12h-54l-66g
After fuel: 6f+54f+33f (93f total) (77.5% crude efficiency)
After fuel*: 9f+54f+33f (96f total) (80% crude efficiency)

Basic refining: 36h-36l-48g
After fuel: 18f+36f+24f (78f total) (65% crude efficiency)
After fuel*: 24f+36f+24f (84f total) (70% crude efficiency)

Numbers are close, but still not there. I can go on and talk about more and more (like required number of chem plants and stuff) but it is redundant. Advanced pretty much sweeps the area. Basic is only good for a couple of things: you need a lot of lubricant / flamethrower fuel. Aside from that, advanced is well, advanced.

To your question: Adv. Processing gives u more Petrol/Oil even with productivity. I calculate that somewhere on exel.

But productivity on converters are a waste in my opinion: Very expensive and not very effective.

Refinarys with productivity and chem. Plants with producivity except the converters is the best solution.
It gets much better with speedmoduls on oilpumps +additional beacons.
Speedmoduls per beacon on a Refinary (with Productivity) reduces the energy cost per unit processed oil. This is fun.