Mechanical Refrigeration System Using Aqua Vitae

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

I'd like to propose a late-game food preservation system based on mechanical refrigeration using Aqua Vitae (ethanol) as the working fluid.
The idea is to add a way of actively cooling storage areas using mechanical power (windmills, water wheels, gear systems), instead of relying only on passive methods like cellars or ice.
The goal is not to introduce a "magic fridge block", but a physically grounded system that fits Vintage Story's engineering style and progression.
Core Concept
The system would be based on a closed thermodynamic cycle:
Aqua Vitae is used as the working fluid. A mechanical compressor driven by axles or gears creates pressure differences. Heat is expelled through a radiator or heat exchanger. Expansion of the fluid produces cooling in a sealed chamber. The cycle repeats as long as mechanical power is supplied.
The result would be a controllable source of cold that can be used for food preservation or specialized storage rooms.

- Option 1: Mechanical Icebox (Single-Block Unit)
A standalone refrigeration block that acts as a localized cold source — essentially a mechanical "icebox" for the late game.
How it works:
It connects to the power network via axles or gears. It contains an internal sealed circuit of Aqua Vitae. It must have at least one exposed side to expel heat, serving as a radiator. It generates a cold radius around itself, lowering ambient temperature in nearby blocks.
What it does:
It preserves food items placed in adjacent containers such as chests, vessels, or shelves within range. It slows or halts food spoilage for items in the cooling zone. Multiple units can be stacked or chained for larger storage areas.
Performance factors:
Mechanical power input determines the result — higher power means lower temperature and larger radius. The exposed heat outlet is critical; a blocked radiator causes reduced efficiency or complete shutdown. Ambient temperature matters, as hotter biomes require more power to achieve the same cooling. Insulation around the unit extends the effective radius.
Placement:
Designed for indoor use in pantries, storage rooms, or kitchens. Multiple units can be arranged to cover larger spaces. It is not a magic solution and requires active mechanical infrastructure to function.

- Option 2: Structural System (Cellar-Style)
A larger system similar to how cellars or greenhouses work.
Instead of a single block, it would be a room-based setup. Insulated walls improve efficiency. A central refrigeration block drives the system. Aqua Vitae is stored in a tank or reservoir. Mechanical input comes from outside via shafts.
The entire enclosed space would gradually drop in temperature depending on insulation quality, power input, size of the room, and available Aqua Vitae.
This would allow players to build proper cold storage rooms or small industrial refrigeration setups.

[cjameshuff]

An efficient mechanical compressor will require high-precision machine tools and doesn't seem terribly consistent with the setting. It may be more plausible to implement an "icyball" style gas absorption refrigerator that doesn't require moving parts but needs to be manually recharged, but a more consistent approach would be an actual insulated ice house that you fill with ice made during the winter, or perhaps an evaporative cooling system.

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

7 hours ago, cjameshuff said:

Un compresor mecánico eficiente requeriría máquinas herramienta de alta precisión y no parece muy adecuado para el entorno. Quizás sería más viable implementar un refrigerador de absorción de gas tipo "bola de hielo" que no requiera piezas móviles pero necesite recargarse manualmente, pero una solución más coherente sería una nevera de hielo aislada que se llene con hielo producido durante el invierno, o tal vez un sistema de refrigeración por evaporación.

I still think this is a solid proposal, and I want to push back on the "too advanced" argument.
Vintage Story already includes teleporters, gliders, and complex mechanical power machinery. A mechanical refrigeration compressor is less  advanced than any of those. The game has clearly established that its tech level permits precision mechanical systems when built from the right materials.
The compressor doesn't need industrial CNC tolerances. Brass is in the game, it's ductile, self-lubricating, and easily worked into low-friction moving parts. Lead is in the game, it's resistant to ethanol attack, and it's trivial to cast or shape for components that contact the Aqua Vitae. Both metals are historically appropriate and already implemented.
This isn't about introducing anachronistic technology — it's about giving Aqua Vitae a meaningful late-game use beyond drinking. The closed-cycle design fits the game's engineering aesthetic: it requires active mechanical input, has clear trade-offs (heat rejection needs exposed sides), and scales with player infrastructure. It's not a magic block; it's a system that rewards building windmills, waterwheels, and gear networks you've already invested in.
The absorption refrigerator and ice cellar alternatives are fine ideas too, but they don't conflict with this. They could be earlier-tier solutions. A mechanical system fills a niche: active, controllable, scalable refrigeration for players who have already built mechanical power networks and want to put that infrastructure to new use.

[Demoncyborg]

really like the idea of using aqua vitae as fuel for some kind of compressor/refrigerant.. I really love anything to give more reason to store and make gallons upon gallons of alcohol, and it feels perfectly end-game to me. (edit: the only thing you can do with vitae in vanilla is drink, or soaking some OK bandages that dry out. give me more..)

I think something like a mix of your two ideas sounds ideal and simple. Mechanical power on one end of the block, heat vent on another end of the block. you'll need to use passthroughs to keep cellar integrity and you'll need some kind of special vent block or the machine itself counts as a full block for the exhaust. Just keeping one powered might add some kind of passive, but keeping it full of fuel should help drop you way down to almost-winter cold.

not sure if it could do anything other than a cellar though- I'd love to use something like that to help cool down a blue cheese cellar for the ideal ripening temp all year, but with it being open air, you'd have to start doing volume and.. probably gonna get as laggy as the smoke mod on a big server.

Edited June 28 by Demoncyborg

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

30 minutes ago, Demoncyborg said:

really like the idea of using aqua vitae as fuel for some kind of compressor/refrigerant.. I really love anything to give more reason to store and make gallons upon gallons of alcohol, and it feels perfectly end-game to me. (edit: the only thing you can do with vitae in vanilla is drink, or soaking some OK bandages that dry out. give me more..)

I think something like a mix of your two ideas sounds ideal and simple. Mechanical power on one end of the block, heat vent on another end of the block. you'll need to use passthroughs to keep cellar integrity and you'll need some kind of special vent block or the machine itself counts as a full block for the exhaust. Just keeping one powered might add some kind of passive, but keeping it full of fuel should help drop you way down to almost-winter cold.

not sure if it could do anything other than a cellar though- I'd love to use something like that to help cool down a blue cheese cellar for the ideal ripening temp all year, but with it being open air, you'd have to start doing volume and.. probably gonna get as laggy as the smoke mod on a big server.

Actually yes, it would be viable for it to have a non-null cooling effect even when missing one of the conditions. If Aqua Vitae is missing, the compressor can still create pressure variations which also result in temperature changes. And if there's only Aqua Vitae but no mechanical power, evaporation and possible porosity cause a temperature decrease. Neither method alone would reach -5 degrees, but perhaps it could bring a closed room from 30 down to 25. I'd like to keep the cellar and have the refrigerator be a complement, like a fridge or as a cold bonus for the cellar. It could even work the same way an automated quern does with hoppers and tubes, which would also give more use to copper pipes.

Likewise, server lag and overload could be mitigated by having the initial calculations, once the system is built, be done gradually rather than all at once — for example, like animal rendering on farms, which causes terrible lag spikes when there are many animals. What would happen if you did that with the refrigerator? Nothing. The refrigerator doesn't need to calculate room temperature every tick; it could perfectly well do so every in-game hour or day.

Edited June 28 by Aarón Rodríguez Hernández

[Demoncyborg]

1 hour ago, Aarón Rodríguez Hernández said:

Likewise, server lag and overload could be mitigated by having the initial calculations, once the system is built, be done gradually rather than all at once — for example, like animal rendering on farms, which causes terrible lag spikes when there are many animals. What would happen if you did that with the refrigerator? Nothing. The refrigerator doesn't need to calculate room temperature every tick; it could perfectly well do so every in-game hour or day.

it's probably pretty easy to keep it with the regular room/cellar mechanics way of updating temp since those bounds are already made, but when you get outside of that i'd imagine it's a lot different. for areas that don't count as a room, have holes and just function as outside space, you'd likely have to do some complex volume and gradient kind of calculation, and it can't just check every minute or hour if you're using wind power especially- the mechanical speed will fluctuate and change the output of our condenser here and make it work better/worse, as well as the ambient temperature changing, fuel running out, ect.

what i'm saying could easily be a load of horseshit- i don't know anything about the processing load on a server or client, i just know another mod that deals with a lot of room-volume calculations tends to be laggy when a server has to do it for 8-10 different people's houses across a map- and it's just smoke, that's only when firepits are on. this would be 24/7

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

1 hour ago, Demoncyborg said:

Probablemente sea bastante fácil mantenerlo con la forma habitual de actualizar la temperatura en habitaciones/bodegas, ya que esos límites ya están establecidos, pero cuando te sales de eso, imagino que es muy diferente. Para áreas que no cuentan como habitaciones, tienen agujeros y simplemente funcionan como espacio exterior, probablemente tendrías que hacer algún tipo de cálculo complejo de volumen y gradiente, y no puede simplemente verificar cada minuto u hora si estás usando energía eólica especialmente: la velocidad mecánica fluctuará y cambiará la salida de nuestro condensador aquí y hará que funcione mejor o peor, así como también cambiará la temperatura ambiente, se agotará el combustible, etc.

Lo que digo podría ser una completa tontería; no sé nada sobre la carga de procesamiento en un servidor o cliente, solo sé que otro mod que maneja muchos cálculos de volumen de habitaciones tiende a tener lag cuando un servidor tiene que hacerlo para las casas de 8 a 10 personas diferentes en un mapa, y eso es solo humo, solo cuando las fogatas están encendidas. Esto sería 24/7.

I don't think it would be a performance issue. A condition could be added so that the cellar must exist before the refrigerator can be placed and function. It would only update while the chunk is loaded. The mechanical energy received could be a value to determine how much the temperature is reduced relative to the ambient temperature. If the chunk isn't loaded, a static variable could store the last received values. In that case, the cellar's volume and the machine's mechanical energy requirements would be ignored. Using static values simplifies the calculations and doesn't necessarily detract from the essence of the game.

 

[Demoncyborg]

3 minutes ago, Aarón Rodríguez Hernández said:

I don't think it would be a performance issue. A condition could be added so that the cellar must exist before the refrigerator can be placed and function. It would only update while the chunk is loaded. The mechanical energy received could be a value to determine how much the temperature is reduced relative to the ambient temperature. If the chunk isn't loaded, a static variable could store the last received values. In that case, the cellar's volume and the machine's mechanical energy requirements would be ignored. Using static values simplifies the calculations and doesn't necessarily detract from the essence of the game.

 

Maybe it isn't coming through in translation but that's what I'm saying already. this should be easy if it only works in a cellar, but not easy when you get to the hyper specific scenario of blue cheese cellars. blue cheese need a 'false' cellar, that's open to the air but not sunlight, and has very specific temperature requirements. It's like the only reason I mentioned it haha

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

50 minutes ago, Demoncyborg said:

Maybe it isn't coming through in translation but that's what I'm saying already. this should be easy if it only works in a cellar, but not easy when you get to the hyper specific scenario of blue cheese cellars. blue cheese need a 'false' cellar, that's open to the air but not sunlight, and has very specific temperature requirements. It's like the only reason I mentioned it haha

oh sorry, i dont speak english so was traslating to spanish all time jaja, what we need to do for devs consider add the suggestion in road map? personally i have a lot of rotted food, and is hard sell prepared food in stores because rot fast

 

 

[Kulze]

I can see multiple options here for it to work:

- The mentioned 'single block' cooling unit. Potentially even attaching multiple of those units together in a line. The Aqua vitae isn't used up anyway, mechanical power though is needed.
- A room-cooler, which does exactly that, only working in a actual room, not a 'false' room. Cooling side, wall-block, power access and heating side are 4 different blocks to build together for it to work.
- A dedicated multiblock structure, room-freezer. Piping, tanks, heat exchangers properly built into a room-shape and internally (outside of the heat intake) being for example glazed... or made with vitrified ceramic. That would enforce it being late end-game only with those mechanics introduced. Hence vanity primarily.

As for blue cheese: Nobody makes blue cheese anyway despite it being a nice recipe. You gain 0.4 years (without waxing) for shelf-life baseline and you loose 4x40 satiety from it. It's not worth it at all sadly. Also it's a complete exception as a recipe,mandated to use the proper time of the year to do it rather then 'anytime'.
So plainly spoken I would simply ignore the existence of it for this suggestion, it makes no sense to include it anyway as the demands are specifically built around not using a proper room.

It's likely a unfeasable suggestion overall, a nice idea though. By the time it would become accessible food is already an abundant source and hence we wouldn't need it without substantial additions to the game.

Though where I see it becoming a interesting mechanic would be greenhouses. Created heated or cooled greenhouses in biomes that usually wouldn't be able to support the respective plantlife. That would be a viable end-game solution as it allows expansion into different places with the increase food variety being fully available this way.

[Aarón Rodríguez Hernández]

5 minutes ago, Kulze said:

I can see multiple options here for it to work:

- The mentioned 'single block' cooling unit. Potentially even attaching multiple of those units together in a line. The Aqua vitae isn't used up anyway, mechanical power though is needed.
- A room-cooler, which does exactly that, only working in a actual room, not a 'false' room. Cooling side, wall-block, power access and heating side are 4 different blocks to build together for it to work.
- A dedicated multiblock structure, room-freezer. Piping, tanks, heat exchangers properly built into a room-shape and internally (outside of the heat intake) being for example glazed... or made with vitrified ceramic. That would enforce it being late end-game only with those mechanics introduced. Hence vanity primarily.

As for blue cheese: Nobody makes blue cheese anyway despite it being a nice recipe. You gain 0.4 years (without waxing) for shelf-life baseline and you loose 4x40 satiety from it. It's not worth it at all sadly. Also it's a complete exception as a recipe,mandated to use the proper time of the year to do it rather then 'anytime'.
So plainly spoken I would simply ignore the existence of it for this suggestion, it makes no sense to include it anyway as the demands are specifically built around not using a proper room.

It's likely a unfeasable suggestion overall, a nice idea though. By the time it would become accessible food is already an abundant source and hence we wouldn't need it without substantial additions to the game.

Though where I see it becoming a interesting mechanic would be greenhouses. Created heated or cooled greenhouses in biomes that usually wouldn't be able to support the respective plantlife. That would be a viable end-game solution as it allows expansion into different places with the increase food variety being fully available this way.

jmm, yea, definittelly would be very good for greenhouses, i have problems for plant rice or some fruit trees in winter, more than half year cant produce that things

[LadyWYT]

45 minutes ago, Aarón Rodríguez Hernández said:

what we need to do for devs consider add the suggestion in road map?

Posting in the Suggestions forum, or otherwise posting somewhere else the devs are likely to see(Discord, YouTube, etc.) is really all there is to it. Of course, the devs actually have to like the idea enough in order to add it to the game, and even then there may not be any word of such until it's actually added.

As a general rule, the suggestions that get the most traction are those that are both thought out well and fit the developers' vision for the game. 

For my personal take on this suggestion, I don't really think a mechanical refrigeration system is necessary or fits very well with the game as a whole. Icebox storage with ice blocks and sawdust is a simpler way to offer an alternative long-term storage solution, and one of the core parts of the game is managing your food stores by acquiring fresh food from time to time and figuring out how to preserve what's not used immediately so that it doesn't just rot. Allowing the player to build a freezer/refrigerator and thus store fresh food almost indefinitely means that farming and other preservation methods can be ignored almost entirely after a year or two.

17 minutes ago, Aarón Rodríguez Hernández said:

i have problems for plant rice or some fruit trees in winter, more than half year cant produce that things

As far as I'm aware, that's intentional game design. Players aren't supposed to be able to grow everything in every climate; some resources are going to be unique to specific environments and the player will need to adapt to whatever the regional resources are. For example, pineapples can technically be cultivated in the temperate zone, but it's going to require a greenhouse and otherwise be very difficult to get an undamaged harvest. That doesn't mean the player is locked out of fruity foods; it just means that pineapples are probably going to be a special treat if they live in a colder climate.

[Demoncyborg]

22 minutes ago, Kulze said:

As for blue cheese: Nobody makes blue cheese anyway despite it being a nice recipe. You gain 0.4 years (without waxing) for shelf-life baseline and you loose 4x40 satiety from it. It's not worth it at all sadly. Also it's a complete exception as a recipe,mandated to use the proper time of the year to do it rather then 'anytime'.
So plainly spoken I would simply ignore the existence of it for this suggestion, it makes no sense to include it anyway as the demands are specifically built around not using a proper room.

i'm right here, i make blue cheese!! for the same exact reason I still put mushrooms in meals at the endgame. it's just nice to have some variety. you actually can make it any time of the year with a good enough elevation, or being somewhere a bit colder.

I just think it's worth mentioning since it's one of those unique temperature mechanic things in the game that could benefit from it. and because I like making cheese.

58 minutes ago, Aarón Rodríguez Hernández said:

what we need to do for devs consider add the suggestion in road map? personally i have a lot of rotted food, and is hard sell prepared food in stores because rot fast

Just putting it here or in the discord is all you can do! there's no guarantee or confirmed way to get something into the game on an official level, that's the devs choice. however..

there's a forum here for mod suggestions and ideas since i'm not sure if there's one that adds a condenser like we're describing, but plenty of mods out there add stuff like cellar ice, better containers and shelves, ect

my advice with your rotted food is to seal that rot in some barrels and use that compost to upgrade all your farmland to terra preta

[Kulze]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't really think a mechanical refrigeration system is necessary or fits very well with the game as a whole.

Necessary? Absolutely not.
Fitting? Absolutely so! We're moving slowly but gradually towards Jonas-Tech after all, and there was big-scale machinery existing on eldritch concepts. So having something to keep food fresh in a situation where food is already extremely limited will probably have been a prime concern anyway. The question is only which form it takes.

One upside of it is that it allows together with the ships and - hopefully - future carts and similar things to expand the range of access for players. Hence enabling to actually deal with more then the climate you're settled at directly. So for that part it might become useful.
 

1 hour ago, Demoncyborg said:

for the same exact reason I still put mushrooms in meals at the endgame. it's just nice to have some variety.

Yes, and that's fine. Vanity has a place, absolutely so! But... it's vanity, not functionality.
Vanity doesn't need to be taken into big consideration. But I'm all for things which increase the options there, like mushroom farming for example. You don't need it... but it would be nice to have it.

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Kulze said:

We're moving slowly but gradually towards Jonas-Tech after all, and there was big-scale machinery existing on eldritch concepts. So having something to keep food fresh in a situation where food is already extremely limited will probably have been a prime concern anyway. The question is only which form it takes.

One upside of it is that it allows together with the ships and - hopefully - future carts and similar things to expand the range of access for players. Hence enabling to actually deal with more then the climate you're settled at directly. So for that part it might become useful.

Sure, but refrigeration just feels too modern for the theme the game seems to be going for, and I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to add an item that essentially renders the other preservation methods obsolete. Currently, machinery in general is geared towards making the most tedious processes(such as milling or refining iron blooms) much less so, with the Jonas tech items being novelty items or otherwise highly situational uses(such as the base return pylon or night vision helmet).

Hence why I think it makes more sense to have a basic icebox that the player has to keep supplied with ice and sawdust, rather than an actual refrigerator or freezer. It's a bit more grounded for the setting and won't be raising questions of why one modern appliance exists but others do not(like ovens, lasersguns, cars, etc).

As for ships and other long distance travel...that's the purpose of pickled foods, salted meat, alcohol, and other foods that keep well(like hardtack), and every climate already has options to support this. And like I mentioned before, if the goal is for players to rely on the resources available in their region specifically and make special expeditions/trade for more exotic things, then it's counterproductive to give players methods to just grow anything they want at their base(ie, if you want a steady supply of tropical products, you either need to live near the tropics or trade with someone who lives there).

[Demoncyborg]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

Yes, and that's fine. Vanity has a place, absolutely so! But... it's vanity, not functionality.
Vanity doesn't need to be taken into big consideration.

it's kinda not the place for it, but i'll leave it at this: i don't think they would've added so many apple colors, fruit and berry varieties, 5 veggies with the same exact saturation.. ect, if vanity & variety wasn't at least a medium consideration for things that get added or changed.
there's countless things that are just vanity without 'functionality' in the game, and more get added almost every update.

[LadyWYT]

I suppose the better question is...exactly what kind of niche does a fridge fill, that's not already covered in the game? Jonas tech items are not cheap, and keeping it powered is going to be extra cost on top of that. If the storage time is the same as the current cellar/standard temperate winter, then there's no real reason to build such a thing because the existing methods are much less effort. If the storage time is considerably longer, then you run into the problem of farms and orchards being useless because fresh food isn't needed nearly as often...which begs the question, what exactly does the player do with that time? Part of what keeps the game interesting in the long-term is needing to deal with the natural cycles of the world,

[Kulze]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

refrigeration just feels too modern for the theme the game

Eh... maybe, I'm not fully on board with that evaluation.
It depends on the cooling method.

The most likely I would argue fits very very well into VS is 'Pot in pot' cooling, which is a watertight internal pot, then a layer of wet sand and a porous external pot. The evaporation cools the internal chamber down massively. In 40C° exterior temperature it can reach sub 10C°.

For the ethyl based cooling? Maybe... with more Jonas tech absolutely a possible thing. The technology is there since 1650 after all at the basis, they just didn't realize the phenomenon before 1755.
That's quite early, kinda fits similar to what we see in overall technology from 'jonas', so access would be potentially possible.
Powering would be mechanical as well, not with gears, it's not a eldritch device but instead a physical one, lore-wise easily explained with 'we didn't have much food left and needed to preserve everything as well as we possibly could'.

1 hour ago, Demoncyborg said:

i don't think they would've added so many apple colors, fruit and berry varieties, 5 veggies with the same exact saturation.. ect, if vanity & variety wasn't at least a medium consideration for things that get added or changed.

Wasn't my point.
Vanity as said has a place.
It's distinct form functionality though.

Vanity improves immersion and allows more choices for basically no extra effort for a developer to be introduced. They're variants, based on the same systems.

Functional systems need a ton of effort, so you really need to think about if they've got a viable place which people will actually use, that time could've otherwise been used to improve a lot of other things... like creating the variety to reduce the need of complexity.

[Tj Pepler - Critcher]

I am working to fix the ugly wood, it will be fixed soon but my icebox is not free, it's based roughly on real world lifespans for delivered ice blocks and the building requires charcoal insulation like real life iceboxes.  It IS ugly, I'm sorry but it works very well, just load in an ice block and it will be absorbed and charge the icebox for a while, depending on the quality of ice used.  If you all are interested it can be found here https://mods.vintagestory.at/cmicebox 

[Slam]

This would serve multiple purposes then just “ice box” we talking about an A/C unit and a heater.

I wouldn’t have to light a fire every time I go inside during winter, and if overheating ever exists, it’d deal with that too.

An important thing is that the “A/C unit” heating and cooling should be piped around, via water, as to A not get in the way of builds, and B, wouldn’t need a power source on site ie windmill/waterwheel.

now how realistic is pumping water in the 1300s is? Dunno, but I mean if a commoner is smart enough to make aqua vitae, using boilers and condensers, and make windmill and automation using copper scutes, then they probably are smart enough to make an automated pump, and some water pipes.

anyway I love this, and I would kill a drifter in real life for this.

Edited June 29 by Slam
Added more stuff.