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I’m developing a fluid balancer for my train station to empty all fluid wagons at once despite of uneven consumption. So, I have made a quick try in the belt manner. Leftmost tanks work like wagons, tanks on the right are buffers for consumption.
It didn’t work at all. Absolutely ineffective. I knew that Factorio fluid dynamic is a little strange. I didn't realize it’s so... crazy. I’d even say – it’s nonsense, but maybe I just don't understand something. In general, I know how Factorio fluids works, but results are counter-intuitive and unexplainable for me. There are no problems if you have couple of pipes, but when you connect 4+ pipes together, it becomes a mystery.

I tried to put intermediate pumps inside the structure but no success. I know it can be solved using circuit networks but I’m looking for "steampunk" solution.
Any thoughts?

coppercoil wrote: ↑

Sun May 12, 2019 6:45 pm

I know it can be solved using circuit networks

It can ONLY be solved using circuit networks. Unless you want to barrel it and run the barrels through a belt splitter.

only way i know of splitting fluids are

tank with X amount of pumps connected via wire and activate if fluid is more then X. (that way they acti/deactivate at the exact same time)

So it would be max a 1 to 3 splitter!?

Connect the tanks on the left and let them balance themselves. Good enough for most applications. If it does not work in your case: circuits or barrels, there is no way to do it with just pipes and pumps.

For train (un)loading I put in 2 tanks per fluid wagon with the pumps on the outside of the wagon. The 1 tile gap between train cars is bridged by a straight pipe. That means the tanks will already balance them self slowly. Worst case a train can always be unloaded by pushing stuff through those balancing pipes. But that's best avoided.

So next I have a pump on every tank that is circuit controlled. An arithmetic combinator calculates the negative of the average fluid level of all tanks (sum of fluids / -num tanks) and each pump is connected to it's tank (red) and the average (green) and set to "fluid < 100" for filling tanks and "fluid > -100" for emptying. This keeps all tanks around the average level.

PS: one pump per pair of tanks works too if the throughput isn't too high. Tank-tank balances better than tank-pipe-tank.

something like this
connect the tanks horizontally for balancing
if your demand is not high enough work with deactivated stations

activate the station, when there is enough room to empty a train completly.
Each wagon has two tanks available which leaves you a buffer of 25k (50k total)

Or if you're into modding use a manifold:
https://mods.factorio.com/query/manifold?version=0.17
(which works on the same principle that circuit controlled pumps would do)