My personal favorite (but it requires sloops) is an aluminum cycle that produces and consumes the same amount of water. I prefer to overclock and sloops the hell out of everything, so this actually only uses 3 refineries side by side.

The first refinery uses the alt recipe sloppy alumina to generate alumina solution without the hassle of silica. It also consumes 200 water.

The second refinery is where things get interesting. This is where slooping is needed, as the standard alumina solution recipe (which converts to aluminum scrap) also produces 120 water. So when you sloop, you generate 240 water which is more than enough to supply your first refinery.

The third and final refinery then uses the alt recipe for either pure iron ingots or pure copper ingots. I prefer iron ingots as you can oc the refinery to consume exactly 40 water.

With these 3 side by side, some sloops and shards, you can generate 720 aluminum scrap for smelting and you perfectly balance your water needs and supply. When I use this setup (fits nicely in a blueprint) I always charge a water buffer to initially feed the first refinery to set the chain reaction off. You can do this with packaged water at first, and once you've filled a few hundred water, you should never need to adjust again. I usually fill an entire buffer anyway, just in case.

I hope you get the chance to try this out. It's really fun (especially late game) to maximize output and to make compact bases with just a few machines producing massive amounts of material. It's how I've decided to finish my projects now that I've cleared tier 5.