Faster transportation of liquids

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Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Waterloo, Ontario
Playing Direwolf20 pack.

I'd like to move a large amount of liquid, say steam, from a large Iron Tank (say 7x7) to another one. Lets say the other one is like 15 blocks away.

I'm finding a liquiduct will move the liquid at 100 mb/t (the 160mb/t I see in wikis everywhere notwithstanding).

I'm experimenting with ways to move it faster with the caveat that the end point can have only one input. So while I can extract from, say, 6 different points on Tank A, I can only input into tank B at one point. We can't simply have 6 pipes running the full route now can we.

One thing I tried was keeping a large number of liquid barrels in a logistics pipe system. The iron tank could keep them filled and I'd move these large (10 bucket?) items around. But I couldn't figure out how to extract the barrels from the tanks.

One method that worked was using 6 logistics liquid extraction pipes feeding into a single liquid basic logistics pipe. It was even better when I extracted with liquiducts into a liquid insertion pipes first instead of using liquid extraction pipes. This seemed to provide around 3x the throughput of the single liquiduct.

I can also feed a liquid tesseract with a liquiduct to each of its faces; I tried 3 faces and it moved the liquid at 300mb/t.

I don't know anything about railcraft/trains, so I have no idea if some sort of liquid unloader system would work.

Any thoughts? Appreciate any clever ideas.

PS: The top secret real reason is feeding a Powercrystals Energy bridge (modded in. Its ridiculously cheesy and quite fun.)[DOUBLEPOST=1377634416][/DOUBLEPOST]I should also mention that I think I found a fully upgraded liquid transfer node worked around the same speed as a liquiduct. I had higher hopes for that one...
 

Bibble

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm afraid that the main point here is that you aren't supposed to store steam. I think that most tank interfaces have a max throughput, although I remember hearing that Soaryn forgot to put them in his tanks.

Also, discovered recently that iron tank components can be force wrenched. To move the contents of a large iron tank from one location to another force wrench the middle bottom block and wander off with it. This could also be useful to prank people by "hiding" large amounts of liquids.
 
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Bigpak

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Jul 29, 2019
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I also would like to know as liquiducts somehow don't seem to be as fast as buildcraft pipes somehow? I am utterly confused by this.
 

Malexion

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Jul 29, 2019
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Ender tanks move liquid surprisingly fast.

Could also try logistics liquid pipes.

Edit: realized you tried the liquid tess
 

Pyure

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Aug 14, 2013
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Waterloo, Ontario
I'm afraid that the main point here is that you aren't supposed to store steam
Hey Bibble, thanks for responding. I haven't heard this steam-storage argument before. This is particularly surprising considering Iron Tanks and Steam come from the same mod, and the author allowed the tank to store steam.

Maybe it is the output gauge throttling me to 100 mb/t, I hadn't considered that.

I guess at the end of the day though, people do store steam, and I'm curious if there's particularly brilliant ways of moving it around quickly (automatically though...again, I hadn't even considered stealing the control block, but it doesn't really help anyway. Cool idea though.)[DOUBLEPOST=1377635218][/DOUBLEPOST]
I also would like to know as liquiducts somehow don't seem to be as fast as buildcraft pipes somehow? I am utterly confused by this.
This isn't my experience. Even the newer buildcraft pipes aren't piping at liquiduct speed for me.

Could also try logistics liquid pipes, and liquid tesseracts.
Tried both as per my tl;dr :)


Ender tanks move liquid surprisingly fast.
Will check those out asap :)
 

Harvest88

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well Liquiducts and tesseracts were good while they lasted but now they're gone on my IC2 Gregtech server Extracells and Enderstorage got that covered.
 

isnowcrash

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Jul 29, 2019
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I've been using transfer nodes, mainly for looks and they don't require a redstone signal. Fairly slow without upgrades but around 280mB/t per node with 19 upgrades.
 

Whovian

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Jul 29, 2019
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This is particularly surprising considering Iron Tanks and Steam come from the same mod, and the author allowed the tank to store steam.

Eh, Covert wanted pipes to be able to transport Steam, and this requires making them Liquids, which means they can be stored in Iron Tanks unless he specifically disallows them from storing Steam.
 

Hydra

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hey Bibble, thanks for responding. I haven't heard this steam-storage argument before. This is particularly surprising considering Iron Tanks and Steam come from the same mod, and the author allowed the tank to store steam.

If you look at the amount of steam produced / used per second and the amount you can store you'll see steam is very much NOT an energy-dense 'liquid'. That alone should have tipped you off. The 18 steam engines of an 36 HP boiler together use 14.4 buckets of steam per second. A max size tank can store 20k buckets. This means the tank will be empty in 23 minutes. Not even close to being enough as a backup when the power dies.
 

Mirality

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Jul 29, 2019
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I have a steam tank (Xycraft max size) in my current (1.4) base. It's not for backup though, it's for buffering. I'm powering both IC2 and RECs from the same steam network, and they don't draw evenly because my output on each energy network is not uniform. Most of the time I have one type going full throttle and the other idling (I tend to use less IC2 steam power during the day, because I also have solar panels). Occasionally both will drop to idle, and then the steam will build up for a little while, and then both will go active and the steam will disappear again. If the steam builds up and stays there then I know that it's either time to build more engines or some more machines, or move my quarry.

I realise that this is probably not the most efficient way to run a steam power system (I haven't bothered to run the numbers) but it works for me, and it looks fancy. And I lucked into finding a HUGE oil well so I have fuel for months. (Literally, I haven't moved the oil pump in months -- though granted it's SP so it's not running all the time.)
 
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dn_nb

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Jul 29, 2019
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I tested with the Liquid transfer pipe (fully upgraded) in Extra Utilities, and one node was feeding a tesseract at a little over 200mB/t.
Tested also with Liquiducts. You're correct, the wikis are wrong, and Liquiducts only provide at 100mB/t at each connection.

If you have GT installed you can extract with a Machine Box @ 1000mB/t.
 

666Lumberjack

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Jul 29, 2019
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The machine box is amazing, and it can do this: http://imgur.com/a/1ygxC
Unfortunately, you don't have gregtech installed, so I'd suggest just using a bunch of liquid tesseracts. If you're playing SSP you could always install it, of course. Almost any feature you dislike can be disabled with a bit of work in the config files.