Throughput unlimited fluid balancer. How?

[coppercoil]

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.

FluidBalancer4x4.jpg (226.11 KiB) Viewed 4436 times

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?

[DaveMcW]

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.

[nuhll]

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!?

[eduran]

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.

[mrvn]

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.

[JimBarracus]

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)

[eradicator]

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)