Turning on my new favorite 100% hot steam vent tamer

[Zarquan]

I love how I can use a blob of liquid sulfur in my pump's blind spot to isolate the critical tile of the steam vent, enabling me to use a liquid-gas bypass to extract all the steam from the system.

I preheated this system by cooling down the biome next to it.  If the steam condenses, the system can fail to start.

One thing to note is that once the sulfur gets in to position, it can't have the petroleum run out, so I turn off the vent with the hydrosensor and send the petroleum from the vent to block the pump, ensuring that the petroleum will never run out. 

 

Edited December 14, 2025 by Zarquan

[myxal]

I'm a bit confused by what seems like vestigial liquid vent on the far right, but still hooked up to thermo sensor for automation..?

Sulfur boils at 340C - I don't suppose it's an issue with worldgen granite still in place. Any idea if the sulfur stays below boiling point with just aerogel blocks on the steam vent?

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, myxal said:

I'm a bit confused by what seems like vestigial liquid vent on the far right, but still hooked up to thermo sensor for automation..?

Sulfur boils at 340C - I don't suppose it's an issue with worldgen granite still in place. Any idea if the sulfur stays below boiling point with just aerogel blocks on the steam vent?

That's for future expansion for if I decide to geotune the steam vent.  It takes 6 turbines to deal with a 5/5 geotuned steam vent according to my math, so I need a second vent for when I decide to do that.

The sulfur is stable because I never let the pressure in the room go down too much.  With 20 kg of steam pressure minimum, it doesn't output enough mass at 500 C to boil the sulfur before the turbines kick on.  I've never seen the room go above 210 C.  There are also aluminum temp shift plates to make sure the heat spreads out quickly around the vent.  I have another one of these in my current colony whose aquatuner I'm using to cool my base, and even with that extra heat it has been stable for multiple eruption cycles.

Also, that's not actually aerogel.  That's the original granite the vent was buried in.  

EDIT: Misread about aerogel.  I don't think aerogel would be a problem.  For one thing, you can put more temp shift plates under the aerogel, which helps distribute the heat to the existing steam.  And the 20 kg/tile minimum steam will be enough to keep it below 300 C.

Edited December 16, 2025 by Zarquan

[myxal]

I'm taking a closer look at this in preparation for U58. I can't help but wonder - was exposing the liquid pump to the high-pressure steam required? Seems to me like exposing it to erupted steam, putting a solid floor above it, and shuffling the liquid valve + atmo sensor would also work, no? Surely in that second the petroleum in you build should do 2 swaps, which should lower the pressure at least in the cell left of the main eruption cell to allow for next second's eruption.

Spoiler

Anyway, also wanted to post a summary image with liquids, their temp. ranges and minimum horizontal flow to help myself and others find liquids suitable for possibly geotuned) taming of CSVs and HSVs - 110°C on the left, 200°C on the right:

Not included as I thought these are way too troublesome/expensive to use:

• Lead/327..1749°C/25kg; same density as uranium/LNW
• Viscogel/-30..480°C/10kg; least dense liquid in the game
• P-water/-20..120°C/0.01kg; only handles untuned CSV, evaporates into PO2, lighter than nectar
• Supercoolant/-271..437°C/0.01kg; density between mercury and biodiesel
• Sucrose/185..230°C/0.1kg; same density as sulfur

Edited March 25 by myxal

[myxal]

Oh, one more thing - a late-game retrofit for a build with no free space on one side of the vent. Using plastium mini-pump.

 

EDIT: One other more thing - a retrofit for the "Messy steam vent tamer" from the compendium (blueprint link😞

Edited March 29 by myxal

[Zarquan]

8 hours ago, myxal said:

I'm taking a closer look at this in preparation for U58. I can't help but wonder - was exposing the liquid pump to the high-pressure steam required? Seems to me like exposing it to erupted steam, putting a solid floor above it, and shuffling the liquid valve + atmo sensor would also work, no? Surely in that second the petroleum in you build should do 2 swaps, which should lower the pressure at least in the cell left of the main eruption cell to allow for next second's eruption.

  Hide contents

Anyway, also wanted to post a summary image with liquids, their temp. ranges and minimum horizontal flow to help myself and others find liquids suitable for possibly geotuned) taming of CSVs and HSVs - 110°C on the left, 200°C on the right:

Not included as I thought these are way too troublesome/expensive to use:

• Lead/327..1749°C/25kg; same density as uranium/LNW
• Viscogel/-30..480°C/10kg; least dense liquid in the game
• P-water/-20..120°C/0.01kg; only handles untuned CSV, evaporates into PO2, lighter than nectar
• Supercoolant/-271..437°C/0.01kg; density between mercury and biodiesel

There is no reason why the liquid pump needs to be exposed to steam.  But I was going for as small of a build as possible while remaining traversable, so building tiles in the steam room was undesirable to me when I was already pressed for space.  Plus, I'm not sure why exposing the liquid pump to high pressure steam is undesirable.

Mercury is technically a better liquid than petroleum in this build, but I sadly didn't have any yet.

Edited March 21 by Zarquan

[MinhPham]

I had some weird case where the liquid sulfur get pushed to the left... i used visco gel instead because i don't want to build a sour gas boiler just to get sulfur but it should be the same ... After some reparing attempts it suddenly stable, and i have no idea too

[Zarquan]

6 hours ago, MinhPham said:

I had some weird case where the liquid sulfur get pushed to the left... i used visco gel instead because i don't want to build a sour gas boiler just to get sulfur but it should be the same ... After some reparing attempts it suddenly stable, and i have no idea too

Werid.  I've built a few of these now and haven't had that problem.  Did you preheat the room to above boiling?  Liquid water could do it.  How much sulfur did you use?

Edited March 24 by Zarquan

[MinhPham]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

Werid.  I've built a few of these now and haven't had that problem.  Did you preheat the room to above boiling?  Liquid water could do it.  How much sulfur did you use?

I forgot to set the value of hydro sensor, that's all 

Edited March 24 by MinhPham

[Zarquan]

On 3/21/2026 at 12:06 PM, myxal said:

Oh, one more thing - a late-game retrofit for a build with no free space on one side of the vent. Using plastium mini-pump.

Oh, I didn't see this one.  Nice use of geyser liquid displacement. 

Edited March 24 by Zarquan

[bv55]

That's a really nice build, was able to get my cool steam vent tamer to work using it, as with my bead pumps it was somehow constantly loosing 2/5 of the expected output which was driving me insane. I only switched sulfur for petroleum and petroleum for mercury due to lower temperatures, everything else is pretty much the same.

Edited March 27 by bv55

[Zarquan]

10 minutes ago, bv55 said:

That's a really nice build, was able to get my cool steam vent tamer to work using it, as with my bead pumps it was somehow constantly loosing 2/5 of the expected output. I only switched sulfur for petroleum and petroleum for mercury due to lower temperatures, everything else is pretty much the same.

Are you saying this build is losing that much steam?  Or a previous build using a bead pump?  Because everything looks good here to me.

EDIT:  Reread, sounds like your old build.  Glad you like the build.  It gets even better when you geotune the cool steam vent and don't need to inject heat anymore.

Edited March 27 by Zarquan

[bv55]

Just now, Zarquan said:

Are you saying this build is losing that much steam?  Or a previous build using a bead pump?  Because everything looks good here to me.

Previous ones, spend a couple of days on them but in the end they all failed to handle 10kg/s+ CSV. This one works like wonders.

[myxal]

9 hours ago, bv55 said:

Ooh, I like this. I shelved my Univent mk.2 design due to low-pressure steam condensing and teleporting upwards from the airflow tiles in U58, but it's not like a bit of condensed water is going to make a difference to the water bath you have here.

Have you measured stats on this? My CSV tamers with AT cool the outgoing water, so I reckon a good measure of efficiency is the temperature of the pool of that water. I'm guessing the brick on the turbine inlet is boosting efficiency by stopping the >125°C steam from drifting away (particularly important when taming a CSV with high volume of a single eruption), I wonder how it compares to the negative effect of extracting the steam at lower rate.

[bv55]

6 hours ago, myxal said:

Ooh, I like this. I shelved my Univent mk.2 design due to low-pressure steam condensing and teleporting upwards from the airflow tiles in U58, but it's not like a bit of condensed water is going to make a difference to the water bath you have here.

Have you measured stats on this? My CSV tamers with AT cool the outgoing water, so I reckon a good measure of efficiency is the temperature of the pool of that water. I'm guessing the brick on the turbine inlet is boosting efficiency by stopping the >125°C steam from drifting away (particularly important when taming a CSV with high volume of a single eruption), I wonder how it compares to the negative effect of extracting the steam at lower rate.

Seen a variation of your build, that's actually where I got an idea of using a couple of airflow tiles to save some space.

Yep, you are right, it is in there to keep steam in place, as in my experience otherwise with 4kg/s+ vents 2+ tiles of steam are getting heated instead of just 1, or 2/5-4/5 of the incoming steam, which is much worse then 1/4. 

Here is the build with all the details
 

 
Preferably all regular pipes, wires and non-overheating buildings in the steam room shoud be made out of lead/gold/gold almagam (maffic rock in case of liquid bridges) to make preheating easier, and generally to make its first few active cycles smoother.

Transofrmer and all the related stuff are in there so when it will be geotuned it would be possible to get some extra energy out of it.

Temperature of outgoing water stabilized at around 85C, (but due to cooling block size it generally fluctuates between 84 and 85.5) but to get it I had to continiously brush in tons of 110C steam. During normal eruptions it stayed at around 84.5C, although imo eventually it will slowly climb to 85C.


  Edited March 28 by bv55

[MinhPham]

21 hours ago, bv55 said:

Previous ones, spend a couple of days on them but in the end they all failed to handle 10kg/s+ CSV. This one works like wonders.

For high output CSV you need 2 liquid droplet :

 

Smallest size i can get is 12x10, but it is not self-powered without super coolant

 

You can get rid of the aquatuner by doing 1x geotune

[myxal]

1 hour ago, MinhPham said:

Smallest size i can get is 12x10, but it is not self-powered without super coolant

Have you tried using something with higher SHC for the hot liquid loop? Naphtha, or better yet, liquid nuclear waste. My Univent mk.4 isn't as compact, but you could regain 4 cells for steam by merging the AT loop with the turbine output:

 

 

[bv55]

9 hours ago, MinhPham said:

For high output CSV you need 2 liquid droplet :

 

Smallest size i can get is 12x10, but it is not self-powered without super coolant

 

You can get rid of the aquatuner by doing 1x geotune

I wasn't able to get your first tamer to work, but maybe I am missing something.

Overall I am really happy with the build I ended up with (even if it isn't that space efficent), as it is fully self powered, works with 5x geotuners and without them, and is very robust. Plus it makes sure to ouput any extra energy into the grid.

 

Edited March 29 by bv55

[MinhPham]

I understand, we have a lot of space to waste, but the longer you play, the more you obsess with making everything as compact as you can

[bv55]

4 hours ago, MinhPham said:

I understand, we have a lot of space to waste, but the longer you play, the more you obsess with making everything as compact as you can

Okay, actually now I am as happy with it as I can be  Used some ideas from Myxals design to squeeze it further

EDIT: Changed desing a little bit as I found out that actually there was some extra space for a second transformer

 

 

Edited March 29 by bv55

[myxal]

Loving this CSV tamer workshop

Presenting the Univent mk.7. Inspired by all the ideas here, self-powered (barely) with just water. Benchmarked against mk. 4 and mk. 3:

Spoiler

 

EDIT: Turns out a slightly simplified design can work just as well. Better in fact, what with the eliminated "battery flat" flags. First time automating an aquatuner by a battery, for sure.
 

EDIT2: The battery-driven AT will opportunistically heat up its hot bath. The temp will rise until it reaches equilibrium with heat leaving through the steam. With particularly weak CSVs, this equilibrium might be beyond 175C, breaking the aquatuner if made from gold amalgam. A simple fix is to add a 2nd wire bridge between the nuclear waste and steam. Or use steel AT from the get-go.

Edited March 30 by myxal

[bv55]

2 hours ago, myxal said:

Loving this CSV tamer workshop

Presenting the Univent mk.7. Inspired by all the ideas here, self-powered (barely) with just water. Benchmarked against mk. 4 and mk. 3:

 

Good job, I think that I won't shrink my setup any further, as then I won't be able to have all the extra stuff in it. After doing some math I switched one transformer for a battery and right now I am using one battery to control an aquatuner, second one to control when there is enough power to output it into the grid and a third one to accumulate any extra energy that is produced while second one is connected to the grid, so I will be able to get it into the grid when the second battery will be recharging. Overall with 5 geotuners it will be able to produce aprox 1600-1650w of power, of which 600-700w will be spend on aquatuner, so during active period it will constantly provide around 1k of extra power. Water temperature with 5 geotuners is 80C, but maybe it will climb up over time

Edit: just noticed all the extra tamers you benchmarked against in your vid 

 

Edited March 29 by bv55

[bv55]

4 hours ago, bv55 said:

Good job, I think that I won't shrink my setup any further, as then I won't be able to have all the extra stuff in it. After doing some math I switched one transformer for a battery and right now I am using one battery to control an aquatuner, second one to control when there is enough power to output it into the grid and a third one to accumulate any extra energy that is produced while second one is connected to the grid, so I will be able to get it into the grid when the second battery will be recharging. Overall with 5 geotuners it will be able to produce aprox 1600-1650w of power, of which 600-700w will be spend on aquatuner, so during active period it will constantly provide around 1k of extra power. Water temperature with 5 geotuners is 80C, but maybe it will climb up over time

Edit: just noticed all the extra tamers you benchmarked against in your vid 

 

 

I managed to fit an extra transformer in there, and had to add a ribbon on top to fit in all the automation, also lost half of my sanity with all that wiring. Now it has 2 batteries, 2 transformers and with 5 geotuners it can output 97C water and aprox 1300w of power. Also it works without any geotuners. Power/temp output can be controlled with sensors.

Edit: also added some petroleum on liquid vent tile to prevent overpressure

Edit2:removed the extra heat chamber on the bottom as it was unnecessary

There are only 3 free tiles left, so I think now I am done 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, myxal said:

Loving this CSV tamer workshop Presenting the Univent mk.7. Inspired by all the ideas here, self-powered (barely) with just water. Benchmarked against mk. 4 and mk. 3:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Turns out a slightly simplified design can work just as well. Better in fact, what with the eliminated "battery flat" flags. First time automating an aquatuner by a battery, for sure.
 

 

 

aquatuners waste tons of power when starting up, so doing an efficent build without this automation in place is quite a challenge😅

Edited March 29 by bv55