Factorio Forums

Can anyone explain pump uses. without a pump liquid moves and fills up storage tanks. I dont notice any flow increases when i us pumps. Do they increase production at all? Do I really need them before a pipe flows into a factory and/or out of the chem plants? I dont see a need for them? Any help is great. Thank you.

Pumps are used mainly for moving oil and its products (lubricant, etc...).
Pumps move 30 units of liquid/sec in a single direction if powered, while there's no movement if they are unpowered. liquid cannot pass through a pump "backward"
they are especially useful when you have to move liquids for long distances or if you want to empty part of pipes (example: you want all your oil in a storage tank so you put a pump just before storage tank and all liquid will be "sucked" inside the storage tank)

see also here and here

Pumpes are usefull for long pipeline after a specific lenght of the pipe the Oil or other fluid dont go furher so you need a pump too get the Fluid to the destination. And with pumps the fluid is faster.

I've mostly only used them when there's a need to empty a pipeline or tank, like if I accidentally got the wrong liquid in.

Eurofighter1200 wrote:Pumpes are usefull for long pipeline after a specific lenght of the pipe the Oil or other fluid dont go furher so you need a pump too get the Fluid to the destination. And with pumps the fluid is faster.

^ This. I only use pumps if I have a huge pipeline, to push the oil (or other fluid) to it's destination. Sense a pump will force a liquid in a certain direction, it is very useful for these huge pipelines where the liquid may otherwise just sit in the pipe because it's so long.

how long are you guy's pipelines?

if they're long enough for the fluid not to "flow", wouldn't it be easier to run trains with barrels?

One of my pipeline is maybee 100-200 meters long but for a train its to short i think and its in my base so no space for train for other far away locations i use the train have a huge train wit more than 200 oil barrels in it

You could always chop the pipe up into segments and transport those by belt

i've had a belt loop in the past, assembler each end filling or emptying the barrel with about 20 barrels on it.

more because "i wanna see how the fill and empty barrel works" than the "pfft, hate laying all this underground pipe"