Pre-1.0 I had aluminum factories that took the waste water from aluminum scrap and fed it back to the alumina solution refineries. However, in my new 1.0 world I can’t seem to get it to flow correctly.
I’ve tried several solutions, including:
- putting the waste water lower in the junction than the fresh water
- adding a valve to the waste water to prevent backflow
- adding a valve to the waste water to only supply the amount not provided by the fresh water
The only think I have not done yet is decrease the water extractor rates, mostly because I don’t recall having to do that before when I used a valve.
Any tips? Anyone else had success in 1.0
Update: I believe I may have found a solution - I’ve added a fluid buffer just after the waste and fresh water merge.
waste fresh
\ /
buffer
|
refinery
This seems to give the pipeline a little wiggle room to settle, whereas without the buffer the fresh water would slowly fill in whenever the waste water wasn’t at full production. The waste water would then back up, which meant production of aluminum scrap would back up, which meant that alumina solution would back up, and then meant the water would back up leading to a sort of deadlock With the buffer there’s a little more wiggle room in the pipeline for excess water
I got it working by using a difference in head lift. Build a series of liquid storages, one on top of the other; hook them up in series. Connect fresh water to the bottom of the tower. Make sure that the fresh water line doesn’t have enough head lift to fill the highest container (you can move your pumps back or make the tower taller to do this). Connect waste water to the tower, with plenty of head lift. When the water level is below the limit of the fresh pump, both fresh water and waste water can enter the tower, and it gradually increases. When the water level is above the limit, fresh water stalls but waste water can still enter, and the water level decreases. As a result, the water level hovers around the limit, and your machines can keep running.
A simpler method with just limiting fresh input with a valve will stop working if the machines aren’t producing constantly, since the pumps will keep bringing in fresh water and fill the pipe when the machines are idle.