Sorry for the delayed response and thanks for the input.
You're right, you can usually get where you need to go using combinations of discrete states; what you're correctly referring to as binary coding.
For anyone curious but maybe a little befuddled by the lingo, you can use your on/off input states on a given number of inputs as a matrix with different combinations assigned to discrete states (outputs). In mathematics, they'd describe the potential density of the matrix as n!/k!(n-k)!, where n would be the number of states (2: on or off) and k is your number of available inputs. it's essentially the math that makes your computer go zoom. It's a great and (if you ask me) under-employed trick.
In the end, the means of pursuit in the endeavor were muted by the fact that what I was trying to do proved to be impractical. I was muddling with an eco-freindly coolant system, using Peltiers to super-cool some modified canola oil (yeah, go ahead, I'd be laughing too...).
Unfortunately, the canola turns into mud at around 5c and the stuff that made it "modified" comes out of solution well before that.
On the plus side, the modified canola (without the refrigeration) turned out to be a very competent coolant, roughly equivalent or superior to "Tap-magic". The final recipe ended up at about 80% canola, 15% naphthalene and the remainder made up of various stuff I'd be reluctant to list publicly in the modern world (basically, all the stuff that makes any cutting fluid work: sulfer, moly, etc.). The naphthalene serves in making the latter stuff miscible in the canola. And there you go, for what it's worth.
