How do I get the most solid fuel out of my crude oil?

factorio

I omit water requirement as not important.

Should you crack oil?

You can transform 2 heavy, 2 petroleum or 1 light to 1 solid fuel.
You can crack oil products: 4 heavy → 3 light → 2 petroleum.

Heavy oil gives you 0.5 solid fuel per heavy unit. Heavy cracked to light gives you 0.75×1 = 0.75 solid fuel per heavy unit.

Light oil gives you 1 solid fuel per light unit. light cracked to petroleum gives you 0.66×0.5 = 0.33 solid fuel per light unit.

Result: You should crack heavy into light, but avoid cracking light into petroleum.

Basic or advanced oil processing?

Best values you can get per oil product unit: heavy → 0.75 solid fuel, light → 1 solid fuel, petroleum → 0.5 solid fuel

Basic oil processing gives 3 heavy, 3 light and 4 petroleum per 10 crude.
Advanced oil processing gives 1 heavy, 4.5 light and 5.5 petroleum per 10 crude.

Total solid fuel per 10 crude:

  • Basic oil Processing: 3×0.75 + 3×1 + 4×0.5 = 7.25 solid fuel
  • Advanced oil Processing: 1×0.75 + 4.5×1 + 5.5×0.5 = 8 solid fuel

Result: It is better to use Advanced Oil Processing to maximize solid fuel yields.

Related

Will Pokemon Go work with my rural location?
Does Zarya's primary fire (Particle Beam) have an increase hitbox with high energy?
Critique my proof of: For every integer $x$, the remainder when $x^2$ is divided by $4$ is either $0$ or $1$
Can we use algebra and trig identities to show that there exist $x,y \in \mathbb{R}$ such that $\cos(x)+i\sin(x)$ = $\frac{1+i\tan(y)}{1-i\tan(y)}$?
How to invert Binet's formula for Fibonacci numbers
Show that $\lim _{x\rightarrow 1}\frac{\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }a_nx^{n\ }}{\frac{1}{1-x}\log \left(\frac{1}{1-x}\right)} = 1$
General pathway in obtaining a solution for a sequence that's neither arithmetic nor a geometric progression
Show that this function is one to one
$X(n)=2^{n}(1-Y(n))$ is a martingale?
Distribution of stopping time for biased random walk using martingales.
If a matrix is invertible, how do we prove that its principal submatrices are invertible?
Integral of $L^2(\mathbb R^+)$ function is $o(\sqrt x)$