Mechanical pipe filter

[PVD]

So, I have been suffering a lot of pain trying to setup self-sufficient oxygen generator, still not setted it up, but already found interesting feature, which can help you to economize energy. The purpose is to remove filter, so you will have not to pay for filtering of each packet of gas/liquid. General idea is to create some buffer, which will keep substance which you need to filter and then make the main pipe to flow through it, so required gas will go there:

How it is working:

Valve in the buffer creates a dead loop of extremely small packets. When packet in the Main pipe reaches Gas Pipe Bridge input it will try to go through it (bridge has higher priority than default pipes), but it will have some problems, because Gas Pipe Bridge output is already occupied by gas of valve's loop. So valve's packets will be unioned with main gas pipe packet (if same type), or will go further throw main pipe (if different). When new big packets will reach valve's input they will try to go over valve, but they are too big, so 99% of them will go to the filter output.

And here is little smaller schema, maybe you can make it even smaller, I haven't been wasting much time on that:

So, in order to make it working, it need to be manually setup. You will need to set valve to something small, but not zero, I have used about 100-500 mg/s for gasses, as more it closer to zero as better. Then you need to deliver some gas/liquid to valve's input, so it will absorb it and will use for loop, when system will be ready for use, it will send packets to the filter output (make sure to have there some input, generator, another valve, bridge, vent, etc.)

Here is a video of how I have used it in game:

filtrator_example.avi

And test:

filter_test_1.avi

So, about it's pros and cons:

• + Does not need energy to run, you can set up it anywhere and as much as you want.
• - Gas need to be delivered to the filter (sometimes can be a problem, especially if you still does not have a gas which you want to filter)
• - Can not filter full packets, you need to be sure then packets have size less than (max_packet_size - valve_setting), e.g. 500 mg/s valve, 999.5 g/s packets.
• - You need to make sure that you can deal with all filtered material, if filter output will be filled with gas/liquid, it will stop "filtering" and all substance will go throw main pipe while ignoring filter, be aware of that.

[MoMuffins]

This system of yours will break when you stop pumping and will have to be reprimed every time.  I've tested the same setup awhile ago but gave up on it due to quirks in the pipes.  Physical separation is much more reliable, but even then not totally guaranteed to work without quirks.

[PVD]

21 minutes ago, Fatmice said:

This system of yours will break when you stop pumping and will have to be reprimed every time.  I've tested the same setup awhile ago but gave up on it due to quirks in the pipes.  Physical separation is much more reliable, but even then not totally guaranteed to work without quirks.

What do you mean by stop pumping? When main pipe will not contain any packets? This one have been working for about 50 cycles and no problems with that, here I have added valve and stopped flow, then released it back:

 

filter_test.avi

[MoMuffins]

What will happen when your inputs stop?  The packets in the valve loops will continue to go to their destination no?  Once everything moved out of the valve loop, there is no residual gas to affect the output of the valve loop.  It is quasi-stable.

[PVD]

2 minutes ago, Fatmice said:

What will happen when your inputs stop?  The packets in the valve loops will continue to go to their destination no?  Once everything moved out of the valve loop, there is no residual gas to affect the output of the valve loop.  It is quasi-stable.

No, they will not, valve will not allow them to leave, that's why it's called "dead loop", they will be always there, sure there maybe be some floating accuracy problems, but i'm not sure how much millions of cycles it will need to break that system. However all of this is also need to be more tested, but in my case it's working fine.

[MoMuffins]

Just now, PVD said:

No, they will not, valve will not allow them to leave, that's why it's called "dead loop", they will be always there, sure there maybe be some floating accuracy problems, but i'm not sure how much millions of cycles it will need to break that system. However all of this is also need to be more tested, but in my case it's working fine.

Last I tried, it wasn't very stable due to pipe quirks...Maybe because pipe bridge was destroying its contents.  I'll check it out later today.

[Keylan]

I realy like this.

How about adding a valve at the main pipe set to 9.9 KG so you will always have thr free space you need.

If there is an issue with priming, you could still use this as an aditional filter when you got your mixed main pipe and an already clean hydro pipe you can add the hydro from the mixed to your clean pipe with this.

 

[MoMuffins]

17 minutes ago, Keylan said:

How about adding a valve at the main pipe set to 9.9 KG so you will always have thr free space you need.

Gas valves only go up to 1kg.  Liquid valves can go up to 10kg

[MoMuffins]

Okay, I've tested this many many times.  Very unstable.  It does work but not a guaranteed filtering.  As you can see in the picture, two hydrogen gas packets got to the right, which is good.  Then a little later, some oxygen got to the right.  Valve set to 4000 mg/s, smallest setting I could achieved.

[PVD]

8 hours ago, Fatmice said:

Okay, I've tested this many many times.  Very unstable.  It does work but not a guaranteed filtering.  As you can see in the picture, two hydrogen gas packets got to the right, which is good.  Then a little later, some oxygen got to the right.  Valve set to 4000 mg/s, smallest setting I could achieved.

Here I've performed a test:

filter_test_1.avi

In your case, problem maybe in fact that packets are bigger than valve can handle, try to put valve before filter, like I did in the test.

[Saturnus]

If you make sure the incoming packet size is smaller than the valve maximum the filter will work indefinitely. As valve split to an average output that may be a bit higher or lower in each individual packet you may want leave about 10% remaining capacity for that so if the feedback filter valves are set to 100g/s then set the input valves to about 800g/s as an example.

I wouldn't exactly call it an exploit to be honest. It's a clever use of feedback loops and the game gas handling mechanics.

What I find really interesting is that you could in principle do exactly the same thing with liquids.

[ShamPeiN]

 

im thinking about a shutoff valve after a filter and a parallel shutoff valve(or deconstruct pipe piece), once you select first gas, filter takes it in, then second, third, ...

once all good, turn filter off and reroute gas to other line

if any problem valve to 0, setup again

nice catch

[MoMuffins]

3 hours ago, Saturnus said:

If you make sure the incoming packet size is smaller than the valve maximum the filter will work indefinitely. As valve split to an average output that may be a bit higher or lower in each individual packet you may want leave about 10% remaining capacity for that so if the feedback filter valves are set to 100g/s then set the input valves to about 800g/s as an example.

I wouldn't exactly call it an exploit to be honest. It's a clever use of feedback loops and the game gas handling mechanics.

What I find really interesting is that you could in principle do exactly the same thing with liquids.

Okay, the pipe bridge did go over 5kg with oxygen in my test.  So a valve before the bridge should improve stability.  I've been trying to find a more stable packet compressor but all feedback loops will eventually lapse for some reason.

I agree it is not an exploit but a quirk of pipe mechanics.

[Kasuha]

On 1. 4. 2017 at 9:41 PM, PVD said:

- Can not filter full packets, you need to be sure then packets have size less than (max_packet_size - valve_setting), e.g. 500 mg/s valve, 999.5 g/s packets.

By simple adding of one bridge you can extend the filter to be able to filter full packets up to when there is too many of them consecutive. With 500 mg/s, that 'too many' would be 2000 consecutive full packets. With what I can set up (around 4000 mg/s), it's still impressive 250 consecutive full packets.

Edit: here's the schematic (made in MS paint from the original image). Also, the direction of flow in the main pipe must be opposite to the direction of flow of packets in the filter, i.e. in this case upwards.