Conduction Panel

The Conduction Panel is a building in the liquid pipe layer, not a background wall structure like Tempshift Plate or Pixel Pack. It functions like a bridge for liquid pipes: when its green outlet is not blocked, it can carry pipe liquid from the input side to the output side, and it does not store liquid internally. Unlike Liquid Bridge, however, its middle cell cannot be occupied by pipe segments, and it has a unique heat exchange behavior of its own.

For heat transfer, the Conduction Panel is treated as a building rather than a cell or an entity. It interacts thermally in three distinct ways: with overlapping cells across all three occupied tiles, with overlapping buildings through its middle tile only, and with the contents of pipes running through it. This makes it a specialized heat-transfer component that can move heat through solids, gases, liquids, and pipe contents in ways ordinary buildings cannot.

When exchanging heat with overlapping cells, the Conduction Panel behaves similarly to a bridge such as Liquid Bridge, Gas Bridge, or Conveyor Bridge. Because heat transfer depends on the thermal conductivity between the building and the cells it occupies, it is often more efficient to heat or cool a Conduction Panel through a solid tile at one of its end points than through piped liquids.

Its interaction with overlapping buildings is unique: only the radiator in the middle cell exchanges heat with other buildings. The end points, including the input and output ports, do not exchange heat with overlapping buildings. It is the only building that exchanges heat directly with other buildings; all other buildings exchange heat only indirectly through shared atmosphere. A Conduction Panel also exchanges heat with a Thermo Sensor like any other building, but this does not make the sensor read the panel’s temperature, since sensors measure ambient temperature rather than their own. In a vacuum, a Thermo Sensor placed next to one will still read absolute zero.

For pipe contents, the Conduction Panel first acquires liquid from its input port, then exchanges heat with the liquid, and finally releases the liquid from its output port. This heat transfer is similar to the exchange between pipes and their stored contents. If the transfer causes the liquid to phase change, such as freezing or vaporizing, the output pipe breaks and ejects the resulting material into the output cell.

The Conduction Panel does not exchange heat with entities such as critters, debris, duplicants, or plants, and no building currently exchanges heat directly with entities. Because of this, its best uses are often in setups where direct contact with a structure matters more than liquid throughput.

• It can exchange heat with overlapping buildings without needing pipes or liquid.
• For low-uptime applications such as Robo-Miner, Auto-Sweeper, Conveyor Loader, or a Telescope in space or vacuum, most building materials are sufficient.
• For high-uptime, demanding applications, Aluminum is often needed, such as a self-cooled Steam Turbine with input steam at 135 °C or a magma pump using a Mini Liquid Pump in vacuum.
• It can transfer heat effectively even when no liquid is passing through it, which makes it useful as a passive heat exchanger as well as a pipe component.