How to deal with Aluminum setup idling

[Corporal Caveman]

Hello all.

I've got an issue with how to deal with smelting aluminum. I started out in the Grassy Fields and have worked my way up to it. Set up on that first bauxite node at the top of the really tall cliff area with the reddish trees. Set up a Mk2 Coal Miner, 2 Coal Power Plants, a Mk2 Miner on the Bauxite, and a Water extractor on that little river. Sat down a Refinery, an Industrial Storage for the Silica, an Industrial Liquid Buffer for the Alumina Solution, an Assembler to get Alumina Scrap, Foundry to get Aluminum Ingots, then the belts to get the ingots to main industrial area.

The problem is that the pipes and buffer fill way too often, leading to a general idle/shutdown of the plant until I come back to flush the buffers manually. Otherwise, it works fine and I get my aluminum. I need to know what to do to get it to...well...balance so that the shutdowns stop happening because it's a real pain in the ass heading back so often to flush that buffer.

[Wolfgang]

If you need to flush buffers them your math is incorrect. Properly calculate the line through from start to end.

Btw. without any details we can not really help you besides stating the obvious of your math being incorrect.

[Corporal Caveman]

That is singularly unhelpful. I KNOW there is a problem. I need to know what is necessary for it to balance. As in, what buildings, what overclocks, etc., are necessary for an aluminum setup with what I described as having built, to not need flushing.

I listed exactly what I have built in that location.

[Schekelberg73 DiNase]

Originally posted by Corporal Caveman:

That is singularly unhelpful. I KNOW there is a problem. I need to know what is necessary for it to balance. As in, what buildings, what overclocks, etc., are necessary for an aluminum setup with what I described as having built, to not need flushing.

I listed exactly what I have built in that location.

You need a way to get rid of the water. There are multiple ways to do exactly that. Easiest would be to disconnect a water pipe from the fresh water and connect the waste water from the refining process to generate that. Cus you need to get rid of the waste water otherwise zour szstem shuts down. Other possibility would be wet concrete alternate and put the waste water there.

[Wolfgang]

And you have provided none of your math. No one, other than you, knows your math and clock rates.
Which means we can only guess.

If you want us to properly help you you need to state exact numbers. No one here knows how much of what you built and with how much of what resource you supply it with.

[RadioIesbian Fluid]

easiest way to balance it is focusing on the aluminium solution.
120 bauxite + 180 water = 120 aluminium solution + 50 silica
then
240 aluminium solution + 120 coal = 360 scrap + 120 water.
so you can either double up on first one, or halve the second one

240 bauxite + 360 water = 240 solution + 100 silica
sink the silica, pipe the solution into next stage
240 solution + 120 coal = 360 scrap + 120 water. then pipe the 120 water back into the first machine, place two valves, one on the return line to prevent water going into it from the extractor. then one valve on extraction line coming in set to 360-120 = 240 water.

then the 360 scrap + 300 silica = 240 aluminium ingots
you have 100 silica from step 1 so need to add 200 more to balance it out.
Or just sink the rest.

should keep the thing running constantly.

There are alt recipes which are helpful like sloppy aluminium solution, pure aluminium ingots which eliminate silica from the equation fully.
Instant scrap is a personal fave of mine, but needs sulfuric acid, but i like it cause it just does it in one machine rather than two. Refinery fatigue is real :p

[Kage Goomba]

Dont need containers/buffers at all.

You can recycle via gravity very easily.
I feed the water back in to the setup - scilica can be sinked or used for other purposes so long as whatever you choose doesn't stop up.

Got this running on my nuclear power and main aluminium plant without issue for many many hours.

Got screenshots of it on my profile.
course I'm not using the standard recipe (sloppy) - but the concept is still sound.

[Man's Best Friend]

What are you doing about the wastewater from making scrap? Judging by your description, nothing. Which is a problem.
If you're recycling it into the main feed, your balance is wrong.

[RadioIesbian Fluid]

Also getting scrap out of an assembler is an impressive feat since they dont have a pipe input for the solution :p

[GlowWorm]

Dealing with fluid byproducts is absolutely a right of passage in Satisfactory.

In general, you need to find a way to "sink" the water being produced. You can't sink Water directly, but you can use it in a production line and sink the (solid) output of that production line. For example, you could combine Water and Limestone to get Concrete, and sink the Concrete.

If you want to explore it yourself without being given the full details, you should do that - I found it to be a fun exercise. Or, the YouTube has numerous videos on "dealing with liquid byproducts in Satisfactory".

[Eiko]

When merging water pipes, the lower pipe gets more priority. So just make sure your waste water pipes merge from lower than the fresh water coming in from the extractors and it'll just work automatically. The easiest way to make absolutely sure this'll work is to have a vertical junction and put the extractors into the upper input and the waste into the lower input.

[PhoenixFury]

Route the wastewater back to the water input as described, and place a valve with a restricted flowrate from the input (such that wastewater out + valve setting value for water input = water used by system) to prevent the system getting flooded by the extractor input.

[Eradiani]

The biggest issue I ran into with aluminum was that as most require input of water and an output of water into the mix, you have to deal with the fact that this will stop working if what you are using the aluminum on backs up. The easiest way to make sure the refineries never backup is run your lines to make the ingots/frames but if those have excess feed it using a smart filter into the awesome sink. This ensures that you never have to worry about the water lines backing up causing your output flow to not have enough room.

Alternatively you come up with a design that eats the output water flow such as wet concrete or something but you still have to ensure that the concrete doesn't backup or you'll run into the same issue

[Mochan]

Originally posted by Corporal Caveman:

That is singularly unhelpful. I KNOW there is a problem. I need to know what is necessary for it to balance. As in, what buildings, what overclocks, etc., are necessary for an aluminum setup with what I described as having built, to not need flushing.

I listed exactly what I have built in that location.

It is the correct solution. But you need to figure out the math yourself. Just listing what you have built does not help because clockrate per facility is what matters. Out of the box the Aluminum Refinery will produce too much water and you will clog it up and idle. That is by design the devs expect you to do the math and set the clockrates per facility correctly so you are producing the exact amount of water into the loop.

I repeat: You have to match the outputs of each facility to the inputs of the next facility or you will stall. You can get away with not doing it in some factory lines, but when you have an output byproduct material that needs to be disposed of you will stall if you don't do it correctly.

You are supposed to loop the Alumina Solution Refinery's water output back into the start of the loop, only produce minimum amount of water from Water extractor/water fracker to make up the difference, this will allow the production to continue forever without flushing.

The alumina solution itself of course the amount output should match the input required in your refinery turning it into Aluminum Scrap. The Silica should either feed into your foundry creating aluminum ingots, or into a sink if you are using Pure Ingot recipe. Better if you have no silica at all by using the Sloppy Alumina recipe, less hassle.

Matching inputs and outputs are the basic gameplay mechanic of the game, and dealing with byproducts is another. You don't need to in the first phase but in the later phases you absolutely need to learn how to deal with byproducts.

[Qbert ⭐]

Originally posted by RadioIesbian Fluid:

easiest way to balance it is focusing on the aluminium solution.
120 bauxite + 180 water = 120 aluminium solution + 50 silica
then
240 aluminium solution + 120 coal = 360 scrap + 120 water.
so you can either double up on first one, or halve the second one

240 bauxite + 360 water = 240 solution + 100 silica
sink the silica, pipe the solution into next stage
240 solution + 120 coal = 360 scrap + 120 water. then pipe the 120 water back into the first machine, place two valves, one on the return line to prevent water going into it from the extractor. then one valve on extraction line coming in set to 360-120 = 240 water.

then the 360 scrap + 300 silica = 240 aluminium ingots
you have 100 silica from step 1 so need to add 200 more to balance it out.
Or just sink the rest.

should keep the thing running constantly.

There are alt recipes which are helpful like sloppy aluminium solution, pure aluminium ingots which eliminate silica from the equation fully.
Instant scrap is a personal fave of mine, but needs sulfuric acid, but i like it cause it just does it in one machine rather than two. Refinery fatigue is real :p

I did this with some small changes due bad math (never build a factory when you cant sleep!) and after some minor tunning it works quite well

[Bobucles]

Don't worry about making a "perfectly balanced" system. No matter how perfect your math is, the game engine isn't perfect. Don't design something that breaks outside its ideal conditions.
Aluminum both needs water, and it produces water at the same time. Fluid priority can be managed with altitude. Fluid will try to use low pipes, before it overflows and uses high pipes. Water overflow can be managed with any recipe that consumes water, including Coal power.