Confused about head lift and needing pump from Refinery to Packager

[NeXT]

I had to add pumps to two different installations from refineries to packagers even though they are built on the same ground level. I'm confused because I though refineries sent out 10 meters head lift which should be enough. Does underclocking the refineries lowers the head lift as well? When examining the pumps they indicate just below 1 meter of head lift provided (and without them the packagers don't work). What am I missing here?

[buchanant]

Does underclocking the refineries lowers the head lift as well?

No, over and under clocking has no effect on head lift.

Ok, what you are probably experiencing is back flow. Which means the fluid is sloshing back and forth between non-full pipe segments. Now in order to prevent this you need to use gravity. Placing a pipe segment elevated with a down ward exit allows pipes to naturally flow in the direction that you want them to with gravity doing most of the work. So, your refineries come with 10 meters (or whatever) of head lift. This means they can naturally have elevated pipes coming out of them I'd say up to 3 pipe splitters tall. This allows you to elevate your pipes coming out of the refinery with no pumps used. That should make you able to use gravity to direct fluid where you want it without pumps.

Also, I tend to use different level platforms for each stage of a fluid processing to assist with gravity doing the flow control work. So, refineries will be on the top platform. Go down one large platform for the next stage. So on and so forth.

[joe_schmoe_gamer]

Pumps do nothing when used horizontally. They only help with vertical head lift.

[kimba-rip]

Originally posted by joe_schmoe_gamer:

Pumps do nothing when used horizontally. They only help with vertical head lift.

well thats not correct, as pumps do work vertical or horizontal and don't tell me differently after over 4000hrs...

[Vectorspace]

I think what they meant was pumps don't help make liquids move horizontally, they only help vertically. A horizontal pump will still add headlift, but if the pipe after the pump never climbs vertically then all the pump is doing is acting like a valve and consuming power.

[kimba-rip]

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

I think what they meant was pumps don't help make liquids move horizontally, they only help vertically. A horizontal pump will still add headlift, but if the pipe after the pump never climbs vertically then all the pump is doing is acting like a valve and consuming power.

you are correct in 1 way but you miss the fact the pumps add pressure for very long pipes(15 refinerys long)i found the last couple of refinerys would struggle to be fed so by adding a couple of pumps along the line helps push the liquid(not gas)to the end of the line better and after over 4000hrs it hasn't let me down

[Remnar]

I find that when the math is right, but the fluid is not; I over clock a machine or 2 to add more fluid into the system, until the problem goes away. I had that issue on my recycled plastic. Recycled rubber, all working fine and at 100% efficiency, yet plastic can't seem to get the job done right. So I had to pump more of that purple fluid in to make it work. Before hand, I tried the pump method, which did not work.

[Vectorspace]

Originally posted by kimba-rip:

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

I think what they meant was pumps don't help make liquids move horizontally, they only help vertically. A horizontal pump will still add headlift, but if the pipe after the pump never climbs vertically then all the pump is doing is acting like a valve and consuming power.

you are correct in 1 way but you miss the fact the pumps add pressure for very long pipes(15 refinerys long)i found the last couple of refinerys would struggle to be fed so by adding a couple of pumps along the line helps push the liquid(not gas)to the end of the line better and after over 4000hrs it hasn't let me down

I suspect it's the fact that pumps don't allow backflow, like a valve, that is helping.
Also be aware that too many pumps may push headlift too far, which can overload and stall later pumps, and reduce flow.

Originally posted by Remnar:

I find that when the math is right, but the fluid is not; I over clock a machine or 2 to add more fluid into the system, until the problem goes away. I had that issue on my recycled plastic. Recycled rubber, all working fine and at 100% efficiency, yet plastic can't seem to get the job done right. So I had to pump more of that purple fluid in to make it work. Before hand, I tried the pump method, which did not work.

Pipes, especially mk2 pipes operating near the max 600/s flow rate, can have accuracy issues in the floating point maths that is used to simulate the fluid flow. This can result in losing a couple of percent of fluid.
The devs have said on stream have said they are considering scaling down all fluid numbers so as to reduce this issue

[NeXT]

So, if vertical head lift is not the issue here, that means the pump is necessary to build up the required pressure? I clocked my production line to produce exactly the amount of fluid that is needed, could that be the reason pressure isn't high enough and pumps make a difference?

[Vectorspace]

Hard to tell exactly without seeing your setup

[kcs123]

I'm kind of noob in this game, but I got similar problem as you. Spamming pupms helps, but it was not necessary. Even if you got enough production at source (300 m3 of water for 6 Refinery), if you feed refineries all "in line" then 4th refinery only have half of internal tank filled up while 5th and 6th have to shutdown process because of lacking resources. But, if you split water distribution in half, so that only up to 3 refinery is feeded "in line" then all of them have enough resources for production.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010310701

Notice gap in pipes in the middle.
Similar is with conveyor belts. Incoming belt is splited in half and then first half feed 3 refinery in row and other half come around and feed other 3 refinery in row.

That way you can distribute resources more evenly with lower grade conveyor belts. Mk3 class in my case. Of course, faster belts, bigger pipes and pumps helps, but why to waste expencive resources on high quality belts when you can get same result for much less price.

[NeXT]

Interesting stuff, thanks.

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

Hard to tell exactly without seeing your setup

In the simplest case, I have a refinery making fuel from crude oil (sending the polymer resin into a sink) and providing the fuel to a packager. Packager has plenty of empty canisters, both refinery and packager are underclocked 25%, everything is clocked to match inputs and outputs, everything is on same terrain level. That's it. I notice the packager fuel input is elevated a bit, I'm not sure how much this matters but it seems to me it's below the 10 meters head lift that I'm supposedly getting from the refinery. The packager would not run at all until I added a pump between the refinery and the packager.

[buchanant]

The pump doesnt seem to provide pressure. Not in a physical sense. It's more like a one way valve that over rides gravity for whatever length it's rated at. Which kind of explains why it's not that useful when you're trying to use it on flat pipes.

However, it does great when combined with gravity on the other end...

[NeXT]

ok, after playing more I think have a better grasp about what's going on here. The pipes have a buffer capacity and it takes time for them to fill up enough so that they can carry the fluid along. This is not unlike conveyor belts that need to carry resources all the way to the destination before the consumer can do anything with it. It can take several minutes for the pipes to buffer, then things seem to work as expected. This can be accelerated by producing more than is needed, pipes can be monitored directly to see how much they buffer, the producer can be monitored as well to see if it starts buffering output fluid. Then the producer can be adjusted to produce exactly what is needed and everything should be ok.