Wheezewort

Wheezewort is a cooling plant that can be dug up and replanted in a Planter Box, Farm Tile, or Hydroponic Farm. It requires fertilization with 4 kg/cycle of Phosphorite to be domesticated, and once planted it cools the surrounding gas by drawing in gas from its bottom tile and returning it at a lower temperature. Despite its appearance and behavior, the in-game database classifies it as an animal rather than a plant.

A Wheezewort grows only within a temperature range of -60°C to 95°C and has no air pressure requirement. A domesticated Wheezewort cools 1 kg of gas per second, while a wild Wheezewort cools 250 g of gas per second. The plant’s cooling is based on an absolute temperature drop rather than energy removal, so gas properties such as thermal conductivity, heat capacity, and volume do not directly change the temperature decrease. In practice, it is most effective on dense gases with high heat capacity, especially Hydrogen.

The plant does not cool gas below 5°C above that gas’s condensation point, so it will not directly liquefy the gas it is cooling. However, its own body can exchange heat with nearby gas well enough that the plant’s temperature can slow overall performance, and if the surrounding gas is cooled too much the Wheezewort can stifle itself. Because vacuum has no thermal conductivity or heat capacity, it does not function in vacuum as a normal cooler.

• The strongest cooling comes from Hydrogen, which reaches 12,000 DTU/s for a domesticated Wheezewort.
• Other useful atmospheres include Natural Gas and Sour Gas, while Chlorine provides the least cooling among the listed base-game gases.
• Carbon Dioxide is a usable atmosphere, and Nuclear Fallout allows cooling while also producing additional radiation.
• In one-tile-wide tunnels, Wheezeworts can act as unpowered air pumps because their bottom tile creates a vacuum effect.
• This air-pump behavior resets if the gas feeding the bottom tile rises above 2 kg of pressure or becomes vacuum itself.

In the Spaced Out! DLC, Wheezeworts also emit radiation from the lower half of the plant, at 480 rads per cycle in a vacuum. This makes them less safe for cooling living areas, but their radiation can be harvested with Radbolt Generators. For that setup, it is best to place the Wheezewort as close to the generator as possible, while also choosing a Farm Tile with low radiation absorption if the generator is placed underneath it. The emitted radiation can also help keep food storage cold and reduce Food Poisoning germs. The exact radiation output can vary slightly between individual Wheezeworts.