Stellar Crossroads - Processing Tutorial
Overview:
Mineral processing is utilised to convert mineral ores into a range of metal billets, graphene, glass, quartz and diamond. These items are automatically sent to the warehouse and may be sold (via Alexia) or made into more advanced items using the manufacturing system.
The system may be expanded from the starting equipment by speaking with Krog in the workshop. You will however need the required prerequisites. Beyond materials handing and bin storage, blast and arc furnaces are available to turn ore into metal, concentrator to split sand into components and the purifier to extract the required product from feed material.
Whilst the system is somewhat based upon real-life mineral processing, it is incredibly simplified in terms of equipment used for the processing steps. The grades, mineral names and products are based on real world mining.
The game reports progress in mineral processing when the time is advanced to the following day. Any bins set to auto will review the relevant destinations and will adjust if required. If there is an issue with the processing configuration a red “!” icon will be shown on the main interface and the issue listed by clicking this “!” button.
Materials Handling:
Following return from a mining trip Maive will hook up the mining vessel to transfer material to the Run-Of-Mine (ROM) Bin. Provided the ROM Bin contains compatible material, or is empty, the mining ship contents will transferred from the mining ship to this bin. Should the mining vessel transfer be unsuccessful, an error message will appear of the main interface. Maive however will simply go mining the next day and discard the ore obtained from the previous day that is still in the ships hold.
Material within the ROM bin may be directed to the desired storage bin my selecting the relevant blue destination button displayed on the right of the ROM bin. Note that you can only send material to a storage bin with the same material or an empty bin. The same applies to the Import bin, which is filled with materials should you procure them via Alexis in the Hangar. Note that it is easiest just to leave the ROM and Import bins on auto via the gear icon at the top. This will send material to the first bin of compatible material type or first empty bin.
The Export bin is used to sell ore that you do not wish to process. Note that there is a transportation fee, hence if the grade and/or quantity is very low, you may incur a loss. The waste bin dumps material with no fees, however no sales either. The blue bar on the right side of the bin indicates the threshold above which the bin will be emptied or sold. This may be adjusted by clicking on the bin itself.
Refinery Upgrades:
You will initially start with a set of two import, storage and export bins and a series of conveyors. Krog will recommission an old blast furnace, so this will be added to your system without requiring upgrades. Processing however may be upgraded to include additional bins and equipment as seen above. You will see that I have only upgraded to 5 of 7 possible storage bins, however I have procured the additional processing equipment. Following receiving the blast furnace you will be able to gain additional equipment by visiting Krog in the workshop. Nothing comes for free and you will need to have the materials and credits as listed in the required field. Should you have the prerequisites a blue arrow will be available for you to upgrade your facility.
Processing Equipment:
Sand Concentrator:
The sand concentrator splits feed sand into silica, rutile and zirconia. By clicking on the hexagonal icon and then the relevant blue source bin, the concentrator is made active as indicated by the green ACTIVE text. Should you wish to do so, you may bias the concentrator to favour recovery of one of the three products. This will however be to the detriment of the other two.
Blast Furnace:
The blast furnace converts mineral ores into metal via the use of coal as the heating source and to strip the metal of its oxide. The quantity of coal consumed is half the amount of metal ore processed, but is also dependent upon grade. Hence if you have 200t of iron ore you will need 100t of coal which would be 167t of coal ore at 60% grade. The quantity of iron billets that results is also dependent upon the grade of the feed iron and the processing recovery. If the Iron Ore grade was 60% you will produce 114t Iron Billets (95% recovery).
In the graphic above, Feed 1 is the metal feed (Zircon), for which the bin would need to be selected if you had material such as iron. Feed 2 is the coal source for which the bin source is also selected. Once again, the green ACTIVE button will be displayed if you have it configured correctly.
Arc Furnace:
The arc furnace achieves the same purpose as the blast furnace but replaces coal with hydrogen and electrical power from the station generator. The hydrogen is sourced from water via electrolysis which splits it into hydrogen and oxygen. The water formed from the furnace reaction of the metal oxide / hydrogen is then recovered from the exhaust. This process is the same as green metal technology, however with the advantage of a fusion generator, which mankind has yet to master.
The implication for the game is that this furnace only requires a metal ore feed with the other ingredient being power from the station’s generator. There is however a helium 3 fuel cost.
Purifier:
The purifier sorts the feed ore to extract the desired product. The quantity of quartz extracted is proportional to quantity of silica feed. The quantity of gold and diamond is proportional to the grade of the feed material. Graphene however is highly dependent upon feed grade and is proportional to the square of the grade. As with the other processing equipment, it is just a matter of selecting a desired product and the source bin.
Suggested Mining / Processing Path:
The following is offered as a potential guideline to mining / processing. It should not be seen as the only alternative or optimal.
- Survey Coal Ore (hopefully finding a grade greater than 50%) and leave Maive to mine for about a week.
- Survey Iron Ore (hopefully finding a grade greater than 55%) and leave Maive to mine for about a week.
- Process Iron Ore / Coal Ore into steel using the blast furnace.
- Procure additional bins as required.
- Survey Sand and leave Maive to mine for about a week.
- Procure Concentrator and process Sand into Silica / Rutile / Zirconia.
- Process ZrO2 / Coal Ore to produce Zircon Billets in blast furnace.
- Survey Copper Ore and leave Maive to mine for about a week.
- Process Copper Ore / Coal to produce Copper Billets in blast furnace.
- Survey Nickel Ore and leave Maive to mine for about a week.
- Procure Arc Furnace.
- Process Nickel Ore to Nickel Billets in arc furnace.
- Procure Purifier.
Within my play through, from which the screens are taken, I reached the following position by day 59. From what I recall, I think I surveyed seven times.
You will note that I did not mine any Gold / Diamond, as I don’t have the Phantom mining vessel and would be unlikely to be able to mine a decent grade of these minerals, due to the depth / probe limitations of the Mule mining vessel.
At this stage it is better to hold on to any produced materials, other than upgrading your processing facility. With further updates you will be able to manufacture into components and eventually be able to construct your own customised fleet. With every process step you are value adding to the material and increasing the profit margin from selling items. It will be far more profitable to sell final products such as ships, than the mineral ore used in their construction.