Refinery | |
---|---|
Category: | Facility |
Status: | Functional |
Function: | |
Used to process ores into useful ingots for the Assembler. | |
Fits large ship and station | |
Mass: | 25,208 kg |
Capacity: | 7,500 L |
Power: | Standby -1 kW Active -560 kW |
Data Controls: | [edit] [purge] (?) |
The Refinery is a block in Space Engineers, necessary for converting raw ores into useful refined materials.
The Refinery can process all ore types while the similar Basic Refinery (now called the Basic Refinery) only processes iron, nickel, cobalt, silicon, magnesium and stone; however, it can process those ores faster than the Refinery and uses less electricity.
Usage
The Refinery takes raw ores and turns them into refined materials, which the Assembler can use to create components and tools. To begin the process, simply place the ores into its input (top) inventory.
Much like the Medical Room, the Refinery is another key target on a raid of an enemy vessel or station, due to the immense amount of Steel Plates required to build it, and its likelihood of containing valuable minerals inside of it, like Platinum or Uranium Ore.
The Refinery works at maximum speed when supplied with 560 kW of power. Supplying it with less will cause it to stutter and process ores more slowly, but it will still be functional.
Inventory
With Realistic settings, the Refinery has two inventories, both with a capacity of 7,500 L on large ships and stations. The input inventory accepts ore type items. The output inventory accepts material type items, typically ones that have just been processed.
If attached to a conveyor system or directly to other inventories, the input container is flagged to receive pushed items from other inventories. The output inventory is flagged to send pulled items to other blocks. It will automatically issue pull requests if it is running out of ores to refine. If its output is getting full, it will automatically issue push requests.[1]
Placement
The Refinery takes up a 2x2x4 block space, having a square footprint and being quite tall. It has 4 inventory panels: one on the front near the base, one on the back, one on the bottom face and one on the top. When placed, it attaches to blocks on its top and bottom face, as well as the first block around its base on the other four sides.
Conversion
During the conversion process from ore to Ingot a bit of the mass of the raw material is lost. For example; 1000 kg of Uranium Ore will not give you 1000 kg of Uranium Ingots. The following table will present the percentage of how much of the raw material gets converted into the refined product.
Raw material (ores) | Conversion ratio | Refined material |
---|---|---|
Stone | 1.4% | Gravel |
3% | Iron ingots | |
0.24% | Nickel ingots | |
0.4% | Silicon wafers | |
Scrap Metal | 80% | Iron Ingots |
Iron | 70% | Iron ingots |
Silicon | 70% | Silicon wafers |
Nickel | 40% | Nickel ingots |
Cobalt | 30% | Cobalt ingots |
Silver | 10% | Silver ingots |
Gold | 1% | Gold ingots |
Uranium | 1% | Uranium ingots |
Magnesium | 0.7% | Magnesium powder |
Platinum | 0.5% | Platinum ingots |
To clarify: 1000 kg of Uranium Ore will give you 10 kg of Uranium Ingots, 1000 kg of Iron Ore will give you 700 kg of Iron Ingots, etc...
Production/Consumption Rates
Refining different materials does not happen at the same rate. For example; Iron Ingots are produced at a much faster rate than Uranium Ingots. The following table will present both the consumption and production of the different materials through the refinery at "Realistic" speed.
Input (ores) | Kilograms CONSUMED per hour | Seconds to CONSUME one kilogram | --- | Kilograms PRODUCED per hour | Seconds to PRODUCE one kilogram | Output(Ingots) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stone | 468000 | 0.008 | 6552 | 0.55 | Gravel | |
14040 | 0.256 | Iron Ingot | ||||
1123.2 | 3.205 | Nickel Ingot | ||||
1872 | 1.923 | Silicon Wafer | ||||
Scrap Metal | 117000 | 0.03 | 93600 | 0.04 | Iron Ingot | |
Iron | 93600 | 0.04 | 65520 | 0.055 | Iron Ingot | |
Gold | 11700 | 0.31 | 117 | 30.77 | Gold Ingot | |
Silicon | 7800 | 0.46 | 5460 | 0.66 | Silicon Wafer | |
Magnesium | 9360 | 0.38 | 65.5 | 54.95 | Magnesium Powder | |
Silver | 4680 | 0.77 | 468 | 7.69 | Silver Ingot | |
Nickel | 7091 | 0.51 | 2836.4 | 1.27 | Nickel Ingot | |
Platinum | 1560 | 2.31 | 7.8 | 461.54 | Platinum Ingot | |
Cobalt | 1560 | 2.31 | 468 | 7.69 | Cobalt Ingot | |
Uranium | 1170 | 3.08 | 11.7 | 307.69 | Uranium Ingot |
Upgrade Modules
On May 7, 2015, update 1.081 brought upgrade modules to the game in order to improve some of the capabilities of the Refinery. You can attach up to 4 of those modules and in order for them to be active, the attachment points at the bottom of the module must be connected to two of the attachment points on the Refinery.
The Speed Module will increase the speed at which the refinery works by 100% but will also increase the power consumption of that Refinery by 100% per module added to it (Up to a maximum of 500% increase). This can effectively turn one Refinery into an high-speed processing block but ramping the energy usage up from 560 kW to 2,800 kW. It will, however, save space, building materials and, since Refineries can affect performance when in large numbers, it will also help save CPU power on your machine.
The Yield Module will increase not the speed but rather the efficiency of the refining process up to 200%. Also, it will not increase the power consumption of the Refinery, and will save some trips to your mines. It's important to note that the effectiveness module affect the conversion rate, which cannot go higher than 100%. This means that if you have a 200% boost and you refine Iron Ore, which already has a conversion rate of 70%, you won't get 140% conversion rate but it will rather cap at 100% meaning every kg of Iron Ore that you process will result in a kg of Iron Ingots.
The Power Efficiency Module does exactly what it says by reducing the power usage of the Refinery by a certain amount. This can be very useful if you are running on solar power alone, especially at the beginning of the game, but as the game progress, Uranium becomes easier to find and power consumption is no longer an issue, therefore rendering this module a bit obsolete in a regular world. That said, on some servers where the Uranium Ore is extremely hard to get, this module can be a life saver since it will reduce the power consumption of the Refinery from 560 kW down to a mere 112 kW. But when refining uranium productivity modules provide more power per ore and hour.
Finally, those modules can be mixed and matched any way you want. For instance, you could add 1 Productivity Module, 1 Power Efficiency Module and 2 Effectiveness Module to the Refinery to get 200% increase to the speed while keeping the power consumption low and refining more ores per kg.
Recipe
Refinery | ||||
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Component | Large Ship/Station Required | Large Ship/Station Optional | ||
Computer | 20 | — | ||
Metal Grid | 20 | — | ||
Motor | 16 | — | ||
Large Steel Tube | 20 | — | ||
File:Icon Item Construction Component.png Construction Component | 40 | — | ||
Steel Plate | 1,100 | 100 |
Video