Introduction: Minecraft: Tekkit Instructables; Oil Refineries.

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Hello and welcome to, a lengthy instructable on how to build an Oil refinery in Tekkit. For those who don't know, I do not recommend you continue unless you like to learn a great deal of information in very short periods of time on a subject of which you may know absolutely nothing of.. Tekkit is a modpack for minecraft, I will be looking at particular features from the mod Industrial Craft, that is in Tekkit. Seeing how there are rarely any instructables on minecraft, and even less instructables on how to create things in minecraft, never mind how to create things, machines and contraptions in Tekkit, I can imagine this instructable will be very slow moving, and any and all support will be greatly appreciated as I try to inform the community on how to create the most efficient versions of their machines, and maybe introduce some people to new machines and techniques that are entirely new to them.

In this Tekkit Instructable I will teach you how make an oil refinery and turn oil from an oil-well into fuel for use with combustion engines.  

Things you will need:
- A working knowledge of the basics of minecraft, and also the basics of Tekkit. Do not be frightened and let any advanced concepts scare you off, these concepts will soon become easy as cake to you with repeated mention and experimentation.
- A source of oil (Easily found in Ocean biomes, where they are most common, but to the best of my knowledge they spawn everywhere,  just look for the black spout of oil, during the creation of this instructable I encountered a large oil spout in my first five minutes of searching)
- Some piping. (Ideally cobblestone waterproof pipes, and stone waterproof pipes, aswell as some wooden waterproof pipe. (Optional – Wooden and gold/stone conductive pipe, this is to run the oil refineries from a remote power source, which is advantageous because it is far more reliable, and less catastrophic in case something happens or fails)
- Oil refineries and tanks. (Tanks for storing the refined fuel, and tanks for storing the raw oil.)
- Pumps and engines. (For getting the oil out of the oilwell you will need pumps, which are crafted using a miningwell and a tank. And the engines will be used to power the pump, transport the resources around in pipes, and to power the oil refinery.)
- Basic materials for building, such as wood or stone. (Youll use these materials for building platforms to stand on, unless you choose to make this refinery underground, which has its obvious advantages and disadvantages.)
- Teleport pipes. *Extremely optional.* (This is just a personal preference, teleport pipes arent terribly expenisve to make, only costing 8 diamond, 16 gold, 64 iron, 128 cobble, and a load of sticks, these simply make the system a lot cleaner, easier, less messy, and teleport pipes become almost a neccessity when moving liquids over long distances, or building extremely complex systems. This is definitely not reccomended for players who are just starting and want fuel to power quarries and ore refining stations, but for more advanced and experienced players, teleport pipes make life easier for transporting liquids, power and items.)
- A lot of patience. A system that is effective and clean is both difficult and timely to make. Don’t expect perfection with your first on-site oil refinery, it takes a lot of time to develop flawless and effective systems.

Step 1: Locating a Source of Black Gold.

First of all, you will want to find your source of oil. The best way to do this is to look for the black spout of oil that will indicate a plentiful oil well. Even a small deposit will contain enough oil that, when transformed into fuel, will power your quarries for years. Don’t be afraid to be a bit picky when searching for a source of oil, there is lots out there. You want a source that is close to home, is not too far down into the ground, and isn’t a little pool of oil. You want to find a source of oil that has an actual line of oil going down into the ground, and connects to a large well of oil.

Step 2: Begin Storing the Oil.

Once you have found yourself the perfect oil deposit, set up camp. You’ll want a house near the oil spout with a bed, a crafting table, and an alchemical chest to store your stuff in, although I highly recommend you use alchemical bags. They are much more efficient. At the center of the height of the oil spout, set up your pump. Surround the pump with four redstone engines, one of all four horizontal sides of the pump. Then, out of the top of the pump, connect it to a cobblestone waterproof pipe. Connect that pipe to some tanks that you will be storing the raw oil in. These tanks shouldn’t be too far away from the well, as to minimalize the distance the oil has to be transported. It would be ideal to have 16 tank blocks storing the raw oil, each tank requiring eight glass to craft. At this point you should set up your refined fuel tanks, well away from the oil tanks and the oil well; I would recommend putting it next to your house that you set up. Thirty-two to sixty four tanks would be an adequate amount of tanks to store your oil, unless you plan on piping your fuel straight back to your base (not a bad idea by the way), if you do pump it straight back, make well sure that you have tanks set up at your base in a safe place to store it, and have one tank at your oil refinery storing the oil, to act as an overflow indicator.

Step 3: Set Up Your Refinery.

In this step the magic starts to happen. You will want to pump the oil out of your oil storage tanks (using a redstone engine per/tank), and carry the oil towards where you are going to refine the oil into fuel. Pick a spot that is a reasonable distance away from your stored oil, and away from your base of operations, if anything goes wrong and an engine explodes, you could lose it all, unless you keep your engines away from everything that could be damaged. You can do this by using the conductive pipes, or by using redstone engines. Redstone engines are ideal for things like transport, but should not be used for oil refineries. They are simply inefficient and slow. With the conductive pipes, it is essential to use gold conductive pipes as the stone conductive pipes have a 1% energy loss per block traveled, which is absolutely no good. Gold conductive pipes have a loss rate of 0.01% energy loss per block traveled; Say yes to not losing half your energy after traveling 4 chunks!
Place your refineries down, and connect your pipes to the side of the refinery that has 2 tanks on it. You can connect your conductive pipe to the underside of the refinery and trail off your conductive pipes to where you will be setting up your engines. Connect a wooden waterproof pipe, and a redstone engine to the end of the refinery that only has one tank, this is where the refined fuel will come out of. Connect that end of the refinery and the wooden waterproof pipe with the tanks that you made to store the refined fuel.

Step 4: The Power Source for Your Refinement

Know that gold conductive pipe we laid down earlier? Now we are going to add some power to those lines to start refining some fuel. Lead those lines away from your work-pace, and set up some combustion engines. Three combustion engines are an adequate enough source of power for two refineries to run at a comfortable pace, but you can add or subtract combustion engines at will. To connect these combustion engines to your gold conductive pipes, place wooden conductive pipes attached to the end of the combustion engine that looks like a wooden tip thing... I really cant describe it better, see the pictures to get the right idea. After that is done, you'll need some water to cool your combustion engines, and you will need a lot of it. You can get water from making a water pool that measure 3 blocks by 3 blocks, and is one block high. Put your pump anywhere above this pool and you will be supplied with infinite water , as the water taken from the pool will instantly replenish. Have this water pumped into tanks, about 10 tank blocks are adequate enough for cooling three combustion engines. Power this pump the same way you do as for the oilwell pump, with four redstone engines, and have waterproof pipes carry the water back to the tanks mentioned earlier. Two of these water pools is necessary for three combustion engines, unless you want your refinery to blow up because of insufficient cooling for your combustion engines. Also have a line come from your refineries and towards your engines that will carry refined fuel to power your engines. For the time being you can power your combustion engines off of raw  oil, which is not a great long term plan. Combustion engines running on raw fuel burn hotter, therefore overheating much quicker, and use much more fuel. As soon as possible, start running your combustion engines off of the fuel being produced by the refinery it is powering. 

Step 5: But Wait, This Isn't Right...

The system I created for the example is very unrealistic. Although more or less ideal, you really wouldnt take the time to make something like this in a real world where supplies are limited. Fortunately, I can show you a system I created not so long ago where I poured all my knowledge and experience into, to make an oil refinery that would be much more like one you would build in an actual world. 

Step 6: How to Build Your Real-world Refinery

Not much differs from the system I just taught you how to make, and this one, but this one is more compact, uses less materials, and takes up much less space. Follow the instructions attached to the pictures to get a better idea of what I mean.

Step 7: Finishing Touches and the Nitty-gritty

Bare with me as I go through some fine details and show you how much your refinery can be simplified with teleport pipes.


Teleport pipes! These things make life so much simpler and cleaner. Figuring them out is simple and need little explanation, and wooden pipes are not needed on either side of a teleport pipe. if you do not know how they work, I will not attempt to explain them fully, but they work bu transmitting your item in a certain frequency which is customizable to 9999 different frequencies, and using all three types of teleport pipes you can have three times that amount of frequencies all carrying and receiving materials and power. the possibilities are virtually unlimited.