Ironmonger Field Refinery

Hauling rock across the Belt is expensive. Hauling refined metal is not. The Ironmonger Field Refinery exists to close that gap. It is a complete processing plant in a 48-metre hull, designed to be parked beside a working claim and to turn crushed ore into concentrate before it ever leaves the site.

Ore is fed in from a Sieve Ore-Sorting Rig and passes through a carbonyl line that strips iron and nickel as volatile gases, leaving a residue enriched in iridium, platinum, rhodium and the other platinum-group metals. That residue then goes through electrowinning cells. Each batch produces up to 120,000 kg of concentrate, with platinum-group grades typically lifted from around 30 g/t in raw ore to more than 2,000 g/t.

The plant runs on an 8 MW fission core, a power draw of 8,000 kW, and needs four operators on the control floor at all times, with a total deployment crew of fourteen. It serves every drill pad and sorter within a 60 km radius. Because it does not search for anything itself, its survey depth is listed as zero.

An Ironmonger is far too big to land. It is towed across the Belt by a Leviathan Ore Hauler, then nudged into a stable parking orbit or onto anchor points by a pair of Basilisk Salvage Tugs. On small rubble piles the guild pins it in place with a ring of Tether Anchor Kits. The first unit went live on 19 May 2184 at the Ferric Twins Metal Binary, and Vesta Crucible Refining Combine now operates three.

Commissioning costs 58 million credits, the most expensive item the Toolworks builds. Refinery Superintendent Maren Adebayo-Cruz supervises installation and trains every new control-floor crew.