Pipe with two fluids is only transporting one single unit at a time

[ralfaltmann]

Hi,

I'm a bit lost: I've a single type 2 pipe, transporting sewage water and clean water to a waste pipe. The combination point of sewage water and clean water is far away from the waste pipe. It seems that over the whole length of the pipe only a single sewage/clean water item is transported, so especially the sewage water producer is now stuck.
Is this behaviour of pipes intended? I thought it works the same way as the transport belts where items are directly one after another.

Regards

[Austin]

I tend to keep one product per pipe. I don't think there are sorters for pipes? What I have noticed is if I accidentally connect say a fresh water into a brine pipe, then correct it, some fresh water stays in the pipe, and stops the brine from flowing. You have to empty each section of the pipe manually until the place where the brine is used (e.g. salt maker), before it will work again.

[ralfaltmann]

Yes, a fluid sorter would be cool. The same for the melted ores, etc.

[Wanderer]

This is currently normal expected functionality.

Workaround it to stick useless junctions that go nowhere to break up the pipe into smaller sections if you need to mix your pipes. I do it for mixing Organic and Fert II occasionally.

However, yes, in general, a pipe should carry one thing presently if you want it to work consistently. It is electricity free, thus has its own limitations.

[Stryderunknown]

The only really valid place to use the same pipe is if you have low amounts of fluid going to the same destination like a fluid outlet dump, (e.g. brine and wastewater)

Theres probably some workaround using a pipe balancer (since strict equal input or output should mean it attempts to send a bit of each and will not send more until it's cleared) however you still need a multiple segments of pipe long enough for it to switch out.

[Kaery]

Yes, pipes usually only carry one type of fluid or gas at once. They don't consume electricity and you can even bury them, so I think it's a good trade-off.

Then again, it's even quite realistic. Using your example of clean and waste water in the same pipe... In reality you'd get diluted waste water out the end of that one.

[ralfaltmann]

As I said, the end of the pipe is a waste pipe outlet :) So I don't care about diluted waste water, but I care of that now it takes much longer to get rid of both the waste water and the clean water - currently I've simply too much clean water. If get not rid of it, my production chain will stop.

[jhughes]

Originally posted by ralfaltmann:

As I said, the end of the pipe is a waste pipe outlet :) So I don't care about diluted waste water, but I care of that now it takes much longer to get rid of both the waste water and the clean water - currently I've simply too much clean water. If get not rid of it, my production chain will stop.

You can put a pipe balancer connected to the liquid dump (very close to the liquid dump). You can connect both pipes to it. You can dump both water and waste water out of a liquid dump and select 'force even inputs'. It will still not mix the items in the small pipe out of the balancer, so you want to minimize its length. But it will dump both items that way. Pipes do not allow mixing of contents.