Merging fluids

[Kiako]

Hello,

 

I try to merge fluid in conduct but can't find an efficient way to do so. For instance, merging polluted water from toilette and sink to have only 10 Kg in a one tile  pipe.

I vaguely remember doing this quite a long time ago so the solution may be well known but I can't find it.

Could you give me any clue ?

 

Thanks

[Coolthulhu]

You could split the flow, offset one branch by an odd number of tiles, then merge them. This can at most double the flow rate.

Other than that, there is no good way. Just use bridges to avoid splits, because splits can halve the throughput.

[Kiako]

Thanks, I was looking for something that I couldn't find and your answer made me think outside of my box. I found kind of a solution : it's not elegant, precise, and certtainly NOT compact. But it partially solve the problem..

 

The idea is setting a "mecanical filter" (1), larger than usual, with one "gap" in a loop filled with  a different liquid , (here with Water to merge and Petroleum as a different liquid)

The gap will be made by destroying the one or  two last parts before the valve. (2).

This gap will be filled with the fluid to merge and this will be the only part to let (Water) go trough. So the fluid will be accumulate before the filter, "waiting" for the gap to go trough the filter (3).

Unless you perfectly know the amount of fluid coming in, it's better to have a bypass (4) to prevent blocked pipe.

 

Well, obviously, it won't perfectly merge random of, for instance, polluted water from a sink. But it reduce lots of small parts to one or two.

[Kiako]

Still working on a better solution. This one will merge fluid perfectly to the cost of space. It can be a little bit smaller but too small will make it unstable.

Fluid to merge will accumulate in a main buffer. (1).

(An other buffer (2) is optionnal, but I found it useful as the fluid détector I use can be unstable To be more precise, there's always some fluid left into the shutoff before the fluid détector, wich may activate the fluid détector as soon as it set on again.This buffer will guarantee a short bypass on the system will only mergerd fluid go trough.)

When buffer is full, a fluid detector (3) will  be activated. Here, it's a hydrasensor set to 2 kg.

This will

• set off the fluid detector (3) (prevent fluid to get in the detector + activate the pump long enough for the sensor not to be activated anymore)
• prevent fluid to go into the main buffer.
• open the main buffer. to release merged liquid

An Automaton  buffer will let the main buffer to empty completely

A pipe buffer will prevent the pump to be blocker (3), and  will evacuate incoming fluid during the process without blocking the pipe thanks to a pipe buffer (4). They should come back to be process in this order:   Pump > Buffer (4)  > incoming fluid

release of the merged fluid.

[Kasuha]

22 minutes ago, Kiako said:

Still working on a better solution.

Here's a solution for you. It only works for one liquid and needs another liquid as stopper.

The valve on te left plays role of the producer, it may be a toilet, a sink, a pump, whatever. Here's the thing without icons:

The bridge plays role of priority fork, so incoming liquid comes first to the meandering part, buffer. It's stopped by the other liquid (polluted water in this case) at the output end - there's always a packet of polluted water at the output of the bridge at the end of the buffer so no clean water can pass it. So it stays in the buffer.

When the buffer fills up, the liquid continues through the other, bridge, the overflow:

Similarly how polluted water prevented the buffer to put water in the pipe, now the water from overflow block the valve with polluted water to keep adding packets of polluted water that was blocking the buffer. And as these packet of clean water keep going under the bridge output, packets are replenished from the buffer. That also frees room at the other end of the buffer, so water stops entering the overflow:

When there are no more packet coming from the overflow, the polluted water valve re-establishes the flow and blocks the buffer again.

[Kiako]

This is way more clever than what I did. Many thanks.