Taming Five Metal Volcanoes

If you're familiar with the game Oxygen Not Included, then you might have explored far enough to discover a particular type of volcano – one that spits out molten gold. Well, on one of the asteroids I've discovered, there's two gold volcanoes, two aluminum volcanoes, and a copper volcano. There's also one, ya know, normal magma-spewing volcano. But that guy is not what today is gonna be about.

Refined gold and aluminum are my two highest priorities. The volcanoes spit out the two metals in molten form, upwards of 1500 °C, so when I cool it down it solidifies directly into the refined version of the metal. No need to put it through the metal refinery. Gold is really nice to have because it has a predictable bonus to the overheat temperature of a building, which is handy when I don't want to invest steel to build instead. It's also a common ingredient in many even more valuable materials, like Super Coolant. Aluminum is also interesting because it is really conductive. Aluminum is the best way (with a few exceptions) to make sure cold and hot stuff equalize quickly.

So, I was pretty excited coming from my previous two planetoids, neither of which have renewable metals, to an endless supply of three different metals. Even better, the two more important ones have two volcanoes EACH. Even more betterer, the twins are located within 10 or so tiles from their other sibling.

So the question now is, how do I approach this the best? Since this isn't my main planetoid, I only have the materials I brought with me. This includes around ten tons each of copper and gold ore, and five tons each of refined copper, gold, and steel. Normally, taming a metal volcano is pretty simple. Build an insulated box around it, vacuum it out, dump some water in, build a sweeper and conveyor system inside using steel, and slap a steam turbine on top. For some volcanoes, maybe make it two or three steam turbines. Here's a simple example with an iron volcano that I took from Francis John's video:

The problem is that I also only brought about five tons of plastic... so that approach is not going to work. I can't build that many steam turbines. I also don't have an easy way of obtaining hydrogen - I'd have to electrolyze some water, which I could do, but I was really hoping not to. The game now offers the conduction panels, which in some ways simplifies temperate exchange within an insulated box... but hydrogen would be nice. So the only way this is going to work is if I actively cool at least some stuff with a Thermo Aquatuner. Let's get to what I did.

Gold and copper volcanoes are manageable with just one self-cooling steam turbine each. I built a simple double-turbine setup around the copper one, taking advantage of the salt water that was already flooding it to absorb the heat. Copper's specific heat is almost 0.4 (DTU/g)/°C, so you need a good amount of water mass to prevent the turbines from eating too much heat at once and stifling themselves.

I built a simple one for each gold volcano as well - I probably could have combined them, but it felt like a bit of a waste of space. Inside the hot box, everything will at best stabilize at 125 °C. I'd prefer them to be more around room temperature for safer transport. All the materials are shipped away to another system for additional cooling once they hit that 125 °C threshold.

Okay, taming aluminum volcanoes is harder. Aluminum holds a lot of heat - it has a specific heat of 0.910 (DTU/g)/°C... that's like eight gold volcanoes at once. This is where I switched to active cooling. I combined both aluminum volcanoes in one big box with an aquatuner. Put two steam turbines on top, and cooled the turbines with chilly water from the aquatuner. The heat removed from the no-longer-chilly water is removed by the aquatuner and subsequently eaten up by the steam turbine, so it works out.

When the materials come out of their respective ovens, they travel through a pool of chilly water before being released, ready for use. This pool of water is kept chilly by the aquatuner I just mentioned in the aluminum volcanoes' box. The aquatuner is responsible for quite a lot of cooling at this point. In hindsight, I think adding a second aquatuner might be beneficial; it struggles to adequately handle the times when multiple volcanoes erupt at the same time. Things spend more time sitting around waiting to be cooled. Thankfully, there are also times of low activity with nothing erupting, so the system can catch up then. Ideally though, I'd like it to always be able to keep up with current demand so my output stream is more consistent. It'd also mean that the bulk of my power consumption (the aquatuner(s)) occurs during the same time that my power production is high (hot molten metal creates hot steam), so I don't need to plan for much of a battery or external backup power generation.

I am still on the hunt for an iron volcano unfortunately. Finite iron means finite steel. I have plenty of raw iron to complete my playthrough without an issue, but saving the poor duplicants the labor of refining all that iron before steel production would be quite nice. Maybe on another planetoid.

With my metal needs satiated (for now, I do like hoarding things), the next order of business is to finish exploring the map! I'm going to need to graduate from steam-powered rockets though. My options are carbon dioxide (don't have enough), petroleum (big hastle to get sustainably), sugar (what?), radiation (just scary tbh), and hydrogen (yesssss) rockets. So, I'll just skip straight to hydrogen rockets - the best ones.

Which means I need to liquify hydrogen. Which means I need super coolant. Which means... I need to find and excavate a fourth planetoid.