Factorio Heating Tower Guide: Unlock Requirements, Recipe, Fuel, and Aquilo Uses

The Heating Tower was introduced with Factorio's Space Age expansion. It burns unwanted biological products and turns them into useful heat, which is especially important once the game starts asking you to keep factories alive in places that hate warmth.

How to Unlock the Heating Tower

To unlock the Heating Tower recipe in Factorio, research Nuclear Power. That research requires the following science packs:

• 800x Automation Science Pack
• 800x Logistic Science Pack
• 800x Chemical Science Pack

These packs can be made manually or with Assembling Machine 1, Assembling Machine 2, or Assembling Machine 3.

Before Nuclear Power becomes available, players must first complete the Uranium Processing research tree. In normal progression, reaching Gleba before this point is generally expected.

After Nuclear Power is researched, the Heating Tower becomes available alongside the Heat Pipe, Heat Exchanger, and Steam Turbine.

Heating Tower Crafting Recipe

Use the following materials to craft one Heating Tower:

• 20x Concrete
• 2x Boiler
• 5x Heat Pipe

Heating Tower Uses

The Heating Tower's main role is to burn biological products for heat. Nuclear Power Plants may look like the more obvious power option, but the Heating Tower becomes a critical heat and fuel source on Aquilo, where freezing temperatures make heat management part of basic survival.

A Heating Tower has a heating capacity of 5 MJ/C. Across its working temperature range of 500°C to 1000°C, one tower can buffer 2.5 GJ of energy. Because of its efficient fuel generation, it only needs 0.97 GJ of fuel to reach its minimum operating temperature.

Accepted Fuel Types

The Heating Tower can burn the following resources:

• Wood
• Coal
• Solid Fuel
• Carbon
• Rocket Fuel
• Nuclear Fuel
• Yumako Seed
• Jellynut Seed
• Tree Seed
• Yumako
• Jellynut
• Spoilage
• Yumako Mash
• Biter Egg
• Pentapod Egg

Heating Tower Stats

• Health: Normal: 500 | Uncommon: 650 | Rare: 800 | Epic: 950 | Legendary: 1,250
• Efficiency: 250%
• Dimensions: 3x3 tiles
• Energy Consumption: Normal: 16 MW | Uncommon: 20.8 MW | Rare: 25.6 MW | Epic: 30.4 MW | Legendary: 40 MW
• Heat Output: 40 MW
• Pollution: 100/m

On Gleba, Heating Towers also help dispose of excess organic items before they clog production. On Aquilo, they are less of a convenience and more of a survival tool.