Thread: help to create formula for finished product ingredients

I hope this is the correct forum, if not I will move it to the correct on if someone will point it out

I have a finished liquid chemical product in a 55gal drum weighing 450lbs made up of 3 ingredients. These ingredients are stored in 5 gal buckets weighing 40 lbs each.

In order to make 1 drum:
Ingredient A = we use 1/3 (13.33lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
Ingredient B = we use 1/4 (10lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
Ingredient C = we use 1/8 (5 lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
remainder of the drum contains water.

We can carry 64 buckets in a trailer. I need a formula to determine how many of those buckets would ingredient A, ingredient B and ingredient C. And how many drums that would create.

Also in the near future we believe the Ingredient A will change from 13.33 lbs to 10 lbs or 1/4 (10lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket. So I need to plug that into one for the furture

I have tried to figure out how to create this math formula and simply can't do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Originally Posted by lisach

I have a finished liquid chemical product in a 55gal drum weighing 450lbs made up of 3 ingredients. These ingredients are stored in 5 gal buckets weighing 40 lbs each.
In order to make 1 drum:
Ingredient A = we use 1/3 (13.33lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
Ingredient B = we use 1/4 (10lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
Ingredient C = we use 1/8 (5 lbs) of the 5gal/40lb bucket
remainder of the drum contains water.

I think you're simply complicating the problem with all that data...

I'll change ingredient A to 1/2 instead of your 1/3; easier to analyse; all you need is:

We complete a "drum" this way:
Ingredient A = we use 1/2 of a bucket
Ingredient B = we use 1/4 of a bucket
Ingredient C = we use 1/8 of a bucket

Make the buckets 8 units each.
To make a "drum", you need:
4 units (1/2) from A, 2 units (1/4) from B and 1 unit (1/8) from C;
so drum is size 7 units; that's it...no need to worry about size and water!

One C bucket accomodates 8 drums; to complete, 2 B buckets and 4 A buckets are required.
So 7 buckets are required for 8 drums.
If you can carry say 70 buckets, then you need 10 C's, 20 B's and 40 A's;
and 80 drums will be accomodated.

Use same method to analyse your 1/3 A and 64 buckets.