"Industrial Sauna"

On Industrial Saunas

"Wait, I was promised an Industrial Sauna! This isn't an Industrial Sauna!"

Sure it is. Look in the lower right, there's saunas in an industrial area right there!

"That's not what an Industrial Sauna is and you know it! I want an Industrial Sauna!

Trust me. You don't actually want a traditional Industrial Sauna. They don't actually work as advertised.

• They don't actually make more power than actively cooled industrial bricks.
• They produce hot metal and other output materials that then get brought into your base.
• If they have lots of tempshift plates, and most do, they take absolutely ages and tons of materials to build.
• They can take a long time to heat up to operational temperature.
• If it has petroleum generators the mixed gasses often lead to deletion of the steam and loss of water.

Oh and did I mention they are less power efficient than actively cooled industrial bricks? In fact in my testing I found that a metal refinery that is actively cooled by an aqauatuner produces around 7.5% more net power than a metal refinery in an Industrial Sauna.

What causes this inefficiency? That's pretty simple. The metal refineries have a fixed output temperature of 40℃ so any heat that transfers to the metal ore while it is waiting to be refined is simply lost and when the refined metal comes out of the refinery it is 40℃ which is much cooler than the 125℃ or hotter that the steam in the sauna will be so it quickly begins stealing even more heat from the steam. This heat loss causes a sufficient loss in power produced by the steam turbines that it would have been cheaper to run an aquatuner to cool the metal refinery.

"But I saw <insert big name YouTuber here> building an Industrial Sauna so surely they must be good!"

Ok, I will admit that Industrial Saunas do one thing, and only one thing well: they make good YouTube thumbnails.

Actively Cooled Industrial Brick

"So if I don't want an Industrial Sauna what do I want then?"

What you want is an actively cooled industrial brick also known as a cold industrial brick. "Cold" here is a relative term signifying is colder than a traditional Industrial Sauna. In actuality it is roughly room temperature. You cool your metal refinery coolant by running it through a steam area and then you cool the machines themselves with an aquatuner.

Really you can build these in more or less any shape or arrangement you want. What I have here is just an example to give you inspiration. Or if you like the layout feel free to copy the whole thing. Here's a few notes on my design:

• The design is mirrorable although you will have to re-arrange the pipes a bit to do so.
• The second aqautuner is optional if you don't plan to run the metal refineries at full capacity. The overheat protection automation will throttle the big heat producers if necessary.
• For the metal refinery coolant you can use petroleum, crude oil, naphtha, or gunk more or less interchangeably. Just be sure to not overfill the pipes. Don't queue up any refining jobs while filling the pipes and be sure to leave at least a few segments empty.
• The valve for the glass forge output should be set to 1000 g/s. Getting the glass forge to stop deleting glass was actually the part I spent the most time and effort on.
• The carbon dioxide output of the polymer presses is just being sent to a tiny infinite storage never to be seen again. Feel free to store or dispose of the carbon dioxide however you prefer.
• Yes, I do in fact think I'm funny for including saunas in my "Industrial Sauna".