Plumbing - Back Flow Prevention valves

[T.S.O.Gs]

I came up with this idea while setting up a hydroponic greenhouse. It came about while i was trying to decide rather or not to use the main water lines or the waste water lines for irrigation. I decided that given the context of what was being decided here that it would be preferable to use both if possible but there was a problem. See if you mingle the lines together, contaminants from the waste line will contaminate the main lines and work its way back up through the pipes when the main line is not being siphoned from by the farm tiles. Eventually it might happen that germs would work there way all the way back to the main water reservoir that I use to supply my colony with water, and eventually contaminate it. Or worse yet, contaminated water could overshoot the green house and end up flowing upstream in the main water line if pressure from the waste line were to surpass the other. Eventually this could lead to systems upstream in that system getting contaminated water instead of clean.

So, i got to thinking, what would prevent this, while still allowing comingling of the systems at the green house. The answer is a back flow prevention valve. Placed at either end of the green house plumbing system, facing into it at both ends, this would prevent water from one line over shooting the green house and getting into the other line. The thing that would make this happen in the first place without BFPV's would be if  sinks, lavatories and showers or other users of clean water were to use a bunch of those systems at once, like at the start of a shift for instance. Also, throw in that the greenhouse has just freshly watered itself. If the waste and clean water lines are comingled at the greenhouse (a system that would be in place to allow the greenhouse to use whatever supply was more abundant) the use of all those other systems at once is going to create a vacuum of sorts in the line that water is drawn from. This is going to cause the pumps at each end to simultaneously start pumping water in that direction. The clean system will of course start pumping fresh water to replace what was lost, but since there will be a loss of pressure at the other end too, the waste water pump will also kick on, causing contaminated water to overshoot the greenhouse and after enough repeating cycles of this, eventually those Duplicants will be taking showers that are a 50/50 mix of clean and contaminated water.

Now, this is just one use of a BFPV. I'm sure that some people would find other uses. After all, as one of the guys at Blizzard said in the late 90's about StarCraft 1, give the game to 500 different people and you will see 500 different ways of playing any given scenario.

Also, as a side note, you could combine a BFPV with a pipe pressurizer that can use compressed air to force a line that has no viable source to draw from, like say of a  reservoir was drained and the pump could not use new water to push old water down the line, a pressurizer placed after a BFPV could force water down the line until the line was eventually drained.

Also, i have used filters for this purpose, but that is rather bulky where as a BFPV is just a section of pipe that lets liquids through in one direction only.

[molsen234]

Is BFPV your abbreviation for the pipe bridge? It does everything you describe I think.

[T.S.O.Gs]

Now that i think about it, you're right, i've just never used it as anything other than a solution to get pipe A around pipe B. I forget that thing has one way inputs.

 

But for tight spaces i was thinking about something that was 1 tile, maybe 2 that does the 1-way flow thing but does not get one pipe around another.

 

[molsen234]

Is BFPV your abbreviation for the pipe bridge? It does everything you describe I think.

[JaxckLl]

Pipes already cannot backflow, since they cannot flow in the direction of an input.

[TheMule]

There's no gravity in ONI's pipes... or pressure...

[Slavon Blue]

On 12/30/2020 at 4:24 AM, T.S.O.Gs said:

Now that i think about it, you're right, i've just never used it as anything other than a solution to get pipe A around pipe B. I forget that thing has one way inputs.

 

But for tight spaces i was thinking about something that was 1 tile, maybe 2 that does the 1-way flow thing but does not get one pipe around another.

 

In that case perhaps you should try a liquid valve?