Cooling Loops
The Thermo Aquatuner plus Steam Turbine loop that genuinely deletes heat and recovers part of it as power. Inputs, outputs, and coolant choices.
At a glance
| Purpose | Genuinely delete heat, and recover part of it as power |
| Solves | The mid-game heat wall |
| Core | Thermo Aquatuner in a sealed steam chamber, Steam Turbine on top |
| Inputs | A liquid coolant to run through the loop, plus power for the aquatuner |
| Outputs | Cooled coolant, plus some recovered power from the turbine |
How it works
A Thermo Aquatuner cools a liquid coolant, but it dumps a large amount of heat and draws heavy power. So you put it inside a sealed steam chamber. The dumped heat boils water into steam, and a Steam Turbine mounted on top converts that steam heat into power while returning cooled water to the chamber. The net effect is real heat deletion with partial power recovery.
Passive and cheaper options first
Not every colony needs an aquatuner on day one. Cheaper heat sinks:
- Insulate the base perimeter. Insulated Tiles cut heat transfer, and Abyssalite is a near-perfect insulator that keeps hot biomes out.
- Wheezeworts. Passive gas coolers, best in a hydrogen atmosphere. A free heat sink while your loads are small.
- Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier. Deletes heat using hydrogen. Found in the Tundra biome.
- Ice and cold biome resources. A one-time cold dump, useful for early spikes.
Reach for the aquatuner loop when passive cooling can no longer keep up.
Coolant choice
| Coolant | Trade-off |
|---|---|
| Water | Cheap, but freezes and can burst pipes |
| Polluted Water | Preferred cheap option, lower freeze point and fewer burst pipes |
| Super Coolant | Far more heat-efficient, stays liquid to very low temperatures, lets a tuned loop run close to energy neutral. Made from Petroleum |
Watch out for
- The aquatuner draws heavy power. Budget for it, and let the turbine claw some back.
- The Steam Turbine stops at 100 C and takes damage near 1000 C, so keep the steam chamber in range.
- Water and polluted water can freeze inside the loop if the aquatuner outpaces the heat load. Polluted water buys margin.
- Cooling is a permanent tax. A mature colony runs one or more of these loops forever, because every generator and machine adds heat.
Related
Read the heat management deep guide for the why behind the wall. The SPOM produces hot oxygen that these loops cool, and power covers the generators that create the heat. See it in sequence on the crisis order cheatsheet.