The weirder behaviors for water generally crop up when it is allowed to move around or mixes with another liquid. A fully filled container of H2O that slowly gets heated will get hotter, the increase in temperature will increase the local pressure as the water expands. The higher pressure will raise the boiling point of water depending on the strength of your container it will either explode or may eventually achieve what is called a super critical state

Not professionally associated with the clock work rover proposals but I have spent time reading up on the tech. Tom Scott did a cool video where he visited a museum that had a 1930s built “spacesuit” that had been proposed for a moon mission. Mechanical computers have some solid heritage, with mechanical analogue computers in destroyers being very cool (this video does a great job explaining how they worked and would give context for potential Venus mechanical rovers https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4 ) Back when I was doing my undergrad DARPA was sponsoring a nano mechanical computer https://www.cnet.com/science/darpa-funds-mechanical-nanocomputer/ (personally haven’t done much follow up on that) And for a personal project I wrote a few blog posts about making air hockey tables on the moon. The idea being you could provide a flexible launch augment using waste oxygen. Oh and while less stereotypical steam punk, if you haven’t already seen it you may want to check out compliant mechanisms. https://youtu.be/uvPSsUkLypY (this YouTube channel has some great explainers from a Prof at UCLA who is doing cool stuff in the field. While compliant mechanisms are less overtly steampunk as the field is relatively new itrepresents making smarter materials through mechanics instead of electronic processing

As I understand the post, by using controlled application of ions to promote phase change, and do so in a reversible fashion using solids to liquid, you could move heat with less need for things like a compressor. Depending on specific heats and heat of fusion could have some cool uses. Also not needing to allow for a pressure change (or at least as much as liquid refrigerants need) would be pretty helpful on a noise front