Combining two gas pumps into one pipe...

[XEVEN]

So I haven't played since the aqua tuner was first released. I had a pretty powerful oil cooling system that allowed me to refine plastic, metal, and run natural gas generators right inside my base, all the while keeping everything a cool 64 degrees fahrenheit. Basically just an aqua tuner submerged in oil with a hydrogen wart room on one side, and a reservoir of cold oil to control the temperature. I had two of these setups, each one cooled 1/2 of my base.

Anyway, this system also cooled my electrolyzer setup and I wanted to recreate this in the new patch with the new radiant pipes. One problem I remember I kept having was gas pipe blocked keeping my electrolyzers from running as much as possible. I know that it takes two gas pumps to move the output of one electrolyzer, and I know that one trunk line of pipe in theory should handle the output of two gas pumps given that they are pumping the same element.

EDIT

Now that I know the correct question to ask, is there any way to merge two pumps into one powered filter without blockage?

 

[Soulwind]

For merging together, just running the pipes into a single trunk line works just fine.  Make sure that there's at least one tile between the input points and everything should be fine.  For correctly branching or splitting output you want to use bridges, but it's really not needed for merging together.  The pipe blockage and backup is typically caused by the output vent being overpressurized, not the inbound gas packets.

One caveat to that, if you're trying to merge  into a pipe that could already be full, then using a bridge setup can help to coordinate which input gets blocked.  This is easier to see with liquid pumps since 1 pump can already push pipe maximum packets.

 

[XEVEN]

Writing that post, I rememberd that I probably only used one gas filter per two gas pumps. Was it the hydrogen being unable to merge with the oxygen causing the blockage or do I actually need a gas bridge?

[Soulwind]

My answer assumed you're merging the same type of material ( 2 500g hydrogen or 2 oxygen, etc).  Mixed materials never merge which will cause the packets to alternate when being pumped into the same trunk line.

[XEVEN]

Okay good to know because I vaguely remember merging two pumps without a gas bridge working just fine. So it seems it was the occasional packets of hydrogen being unable to merge with the oxygen causing the blockage? Any elegant ways of using only one filter for two gas pumps without getting pipe blocked shenanigans?

EDIT

Ive seen many filterless setups. They are cool and impressive but I'm just looking for something simple that uses a filter. I find that late game I usually have more power than I can use even while running multiple aqua tuners etc.

[Soulwind]

For my electrolyzers, I use a mechanical filter and don't use power filters normally.  However, just make sure to put the filter as close to the pumps as possible and it's usually good enough at separating the gasses into two separate output lines to keep backups from happening.

To use a mechanical filter, you can look around for some of the threads that can show you a complex series of valves and bridges or (for the low-tech method) just make sure that the pump for the H2 is separated from the O2 pump(s) and design the room with a tunnel/pit setup.  So setup a 1 tile high path above the electrolyzer with a 3 or 4 deep well with the H2 pump in it and gas tiles below the electrolyzer.  H2 goes up and over into the pit, O2 goes down below the lyzer and stays separated naturally (so long as you keep the pressure in both zones up above 100g or so).

 

 

 

[XEVEN]

Ah I have seen some cool mechanical filters that use pipe bridges, and I quite like the idea of having a dedicated hydrogen pump. I may just end up doing that.

Is there any way to hook up two pumps to one powered filter without blockage?

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

3 minutes ago, XEVEN said:

Is there any way to hook up two pumps to one powered filter without blockage?

No way.

[XEVEN]

10 minutes ago, R9MX4 said:

No way.

Thank you. It seems like a tile separator set up with atmo switches it's the best way to go then.

[beowulf2010]

14 minutes ago, XEVEN said:

Thank you. It seems like a tile separator set up with atmo switches it's the best way to go then.

Yep. Though if you have a pair of long leads before the merge near the filter, you can minimize (not eliminate) the backup problem by using the compression of 2 half sized packets into a full packet to buffer potential backups.

But without either using self separation via tiles, having 1 dedicated filter for each pump, or using 3 pumps, you will have occasional backups from the small hydrogen packets. 

Look into the new in pipe gas sensors. Those have a way lower power cost at the expense of using refined metals and more research and aren't near as "expensive" to throw on individual pre-merged lines. 

[XEVEN]

51 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Yep. Though if you have a pair of long leads before the merge near the filter, you can minimize (not eliminate) the backup problem by using the compression of 2 half sized packets into a full packet to buffer potential backups.

EDIT

Thinking about it more, it would require a pipe blocked to happen in order to merge two hydrogen packets that happen to be adjacent inside the pipe correct? In other words, occasionally it can reduce two separate pipe blocked down to one. But wait, wouldn't this also merge the oxygen from a single pump causing another pipe block? Meh you had me excited for a second there!

51 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Look into the new in pipe gas sensors. Those have a way lower power cost at the expense of using refined metals and more research and aren't near as "expensive" to throw on individual pre-merged lines. 

Ah! So like a control valve hooked up to a gas sensor? I've heard bad things about those... Letting the wrong packets through and bugging out on world load... Have they been fixed? Is there a way to set them up 100% reliable?

[beowulf2010]

37 minutes ago, XEVEN said:

 

Ah! So like a control valve hooked up to a gas sensor? I've heard bad things about those... Letting the wrong packets through and bugging out on world load... Have they been fixed? Is there a way to set them up 100% reliable?

The only time I've noticed packets slipping recently is due to power drops due to me being a dumbass and overextending my power plants. So, 98% in my mind. 

[XEVEN]

11 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

The only time I've noticed packets slipping recently is due to power drops due to me being a dumbass and overextending my power plants. So, 98% in my mind. 

Seems acceptable, especially if you're running a filtered exhaust system for your base, which I usually do.

[PhailRaptor]

There was a thread detailing their use, I'll poke around to see if I can locate it.

49 minutes ago, XEVEN said:

Ah! So like a control valve hooked up to a gas sensor? I've heard bad things about those... Letting the wrong packets through and bugging out on world load... Have they been fixed? Is there a way to set them up 100% reliable?

There are 2 situations where they might fail.  The first is lack of power, causing the Shutoff to not function.  The other is if the "exit" lines are backed up and there's no room for the packet(s) getting sorted to go where they are supposed to.

[Edit]  Found the thread:

 

[XEVEN]

15 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

There was a thread detailing their use, I'll poke around to see if I can locate it.

There are 2 situations where they might fail.  The first is lack of power, causing the Shutoff to not function.  The other is if the "exit" lines are backed up and there's no room for the packet(s) getting sorted to go where they are supposed to.

Cool. I'll definitely try that. I'm more excited for the temperature sensor. Some people are using it to lock liquid down in a room while it gains or loses heat but I want to try using it to automate an aquatuner control valve. It seems you can eliminate the pump/reservoir setup for temperature control now.

[beowulf2010]

5 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

here are 2 situations where they might fail.  The first is lack of power, causing the Shutoff to not function.  The other is if the "exit" lines are backed up and there's no room for the packet(s) getting sorted to go where they are supposed to.

D'oh. Knew I was forgetting something. The way I currently do all my main plumbing and gas lines involves large recirculating loops so it's impossible for me to have backups where a slipped packet won't just cycle back around eventually. That's why I forgot about case 2.

[Lilalaunekuh]

If i could be a bit more complex:

 

The first sensor on each loop is a element sensor to detect hydrogen, the seccond sensor is a temperature sensor just to detect any gas.

If a pipe is full and the valve can´t filter the output, the temperature sensor gets triggered. If some gas packets enter one of my loops they will stop the gas pump till my pipes are empty again.

 

 

 

=> 100% failsafe filtered electrolyzer at ~525Kg O2.

 

(Just to safe power: the valves just open for the rare hydrogen packets and use no power on oxygen packets.)

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

The SAVEFILE in this topic contains three kinds of low-power filter. The gravity filter can only apply on liquid. The others two can be used on both liquid and gas.

 

[XEVEN]

5 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

If i could be a bit more complex:

 

The first sensor on each loop is a element sensor to detect hydrogen, the seccond sensor is a temperature sensor just to detect any gas.

If a pipe is full and the valve can´t filter the output, the temperature sensor gets triggered. If some gas packets enter one of my loops they will stop the gas pump till my pipes are empty again.

 

 

 

=> 100% failsafe filtered electrolyzer at ~525Kg O2.

 

(Just to safe power: the valves just open for the rare hydrogen packets and use no power on oxygen packets.)

Why do you bridge the output of the shutoff valves over themselves like that? Cant you just come out the other side? I mean I get what you're doing. O2/H prioritizes the bridge. If it cant get through the bridge it hits the temp sensor and shuts off the pumps but I see a few of what seem to be unnecessary bridges, making it look way more complicated than it really is. What are they for? Also, why do you need a buffer gate? Curious.

[Lilalaunekuh]

2 hours ago, XEVEN said:

Why do you bridge the output of the shutoff valves over themselves like that?

I need one bridge after my shoutoff valves to seperate the valves from my loop for congested outputs. Else in a rare cases, where the bottom pump finds some hydrogen there would be a chance the hydrogen packet would take an additional turn before beeing sorted.

 

Ok for each pump output i need  3 bridges:

- one to loop the input if the output is congested

- one to leave the loop if the output is empty

- one after the loop to merge the half full packets without congestion

 

Just the briges on the right and left  side are useless

 

[XEVEN]

26 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

I need one bridge after my shoutoff valves to seperate the valves from my loop for congested outputs. Else in a rare cases, where the bottom pump finds some hydrogen there would be a chance the hydrogen packet would take an additional turn before beeing sorted.

 

Ok for each pump output i need  3 bridges:

- one to loop the input if the output is congested

- one to leave the loop if the output is empty

- one after the loop to merge the half full packets without congestion

 

Just the briges on the right and left  side are useless

 

Really cool. Can't wait to try out this update.

[Lilalaunekuh]

3 hours ago, XEVEN said:

What are they for? Also, why do you need a buffer gate? Curious.

In a rare cases where just one packet triggers the temp sensor, to stop the pump till my 5 pipe segment loop is free again (so standart buffer gate with 5s timing)

[XEVEN]

I don't understand the third bridge you describe. If its after the loop, its already sorted, and two pumps should be able to merge the same element without congestion shouldn't they?

[Lilalaunekuh]

 

If I remove the 2 brigdes you can see a 1Kg O2 packet on the bottom line.

=> It stacks inside the bottom pipe cause it can´t enter the middle pipe segment

(Just a bit lower throughput but why not build something with max throughput ?^^)

 

Same as splitting a pipe with and without a bridge (just a small delay so no real need)

[Kabrute]

 

Does your system fail if the pipes back up? Do you find your throughput suffering?  Are you tired of seeing packets bouncing around until they finally hit 1kg? Then have I got a treat for you. Our Mechanical Filter option has a 99%flow rate with 100% safety and security coupled with a 0 power cost it provides the ultimate in affordability matched with flexibility and operational transparency, its everything you want in a President, I mean Filter.  By syphoning the hydrogen out of the upper pumps lines before mixing then the O2 gets to flow at a maximum.