Reprocessing

Refining is a miner’s second best friend, the first being powerful mining lasers. Refining allows a miner to refine their raw ore into usable minerals that can be sold or used for personal production. However, it is unlikely that new players' skill sets will allow for the efficient use of a refinery, and large portions of the refined minerals will be lost as ‘waste’, so new miners may find it more profitable to sell the raw ore they mine rather than refining it.

Ore

Before you can refine your ore, you must place the ore in your hangar at a station with a refinery. The following table lists the batch size and the minerals that you would receive from a perfect refine (some of these numbers changed with the release of Tyrannis):

Ore Batch Size and Mineral Content

Ore	Batch Size	Tritanium	Pyerite	Mexallon	Isogen	Nocxium	Megacyte	Zydrine	Morphite
Veldspar	333	1000
Scordite	333	833	416
Pyroxeres	333	844	59	120		11
Plagioclase	333	256	512	256
Omber	500	307	123		307
Kernite	400	386		773	386
Jaspet	500	259	437	518		259		8
Hemorphite	500	650	260	60	212	424		28
Hedbergite	500		290		708	354		32
Gneiss	400	171		171	343			171
Dark Ochre	400	250				500		250
Spodumain	250	3190	410				140
Crokite	250	331				331		663
Bistot	200		170				170	341
Arkonor	250	300					333	166
Mercoxit	250								530

If you have less than the batch size, none of that ore will be refined. If you have more, only even batch sizes will be refined. For example, if you had 700 Veldspar, 666 would be refined into 2000 Tritanium, and you would have 34 Veldspar left over in your hangar. If you have the more dense ore (see Mining), you will get that percentage more minerals. For example, 333 Dense Veldspar will refine into 1100 Tritanium.

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A pilot's ability to use a refinery is affected by three factors: equipment efficiency, refining skills and the equipment use tax.

Equipment

In New Eden there are two types or refining equipment: equipment owned by NPC corporations and equipment owned by player corporations. For the purposes of this guide we will only examine NPC refineries that can be found in almost all systems of empire space.

If an NPC station is capable of refining then its equipment will have an efficiency rating between 30% and 50% (you can search for stations with 50% reprocessing efficiency by criteria, for example npc-corp or solar system, at Station search page). Obviously using a station with 50% equipment is better so pilots should take care when choosing a refining station and check this value before use. (You can use third-party map tools like DOTLAN to quickly check this. A list of the stations in Aptetter is available)

Now, confusingly, you would think that you would receive 50% of the minerals using this equipment, but in EVE nothing is quite that simple. All pilots have a 'natural' 37.5% efficiency. This is added to the station equipment, in this case, 50% + 37.5%, making a beginning pilots refining efficiency 87.5% with 12.5% of the minerals lost as 'waste'.

Pilot Skills

There are two generic skills that affect a player’s ability to refine: Refining and Refinery Efficiency, both of which are available from NPC stations. Refining is the first skill you will need to improve efficiency, and will cost approximately 45,000 ISK. (This cost can be covered by the university's skillbook program.) Each level of Refining will increase the pilot's efficiency by 2% for a maximum of 10% increase. In this case, the pilot's natural efficiency of 37.5% is increased by 10%, .375 x 1.1 = .4125 or 41.25%. Using commonly found 50% empire equipment will now give you an output of 91.25% with 8.75% of the minerals being lost.

Refinery Efficiency has the largest impact on refining efficiency; as such it takes 3 times as long to train as Refining, as well as requiring Refining Level 5 as a prerequisite skill. This skill costs 252,000 ISK. Training Refinery Efficiency to level 3 gives an output of 96.2%. From this point, you have two different paths to continue reducing your refining waste. You can continue training Refinery Efficiency or train Ore Refining Skills. The Ore Refining skills have different prerequisites depending on the difficulty of the Ore, but are needed at level III if you are going to start mining with crystals. Refining Efficiency V is a prerequisite for some advanced Refinery skills such as Scrapmetal Processing or the most difficult Ore Refining Skills. So which you train initially to achieve 100% Refining skill is up to you. Training beyond 100% efficiency for a 50% station will help if you ever need to use a station with a lower base efficiency.

Net Yield with 50% Station Equipment

Refining	Refinery Efficiency	Ore Skill (zero)	Ore Skill I	Ore Skill II	Ore Skill III	Ore Skill IV	Ore Skill V
(zero)	(zero)	87.5%
I	(zero)	88.3%
II	(zero)	89.0%
III	(zero)	89.8%
IV	(zero)	90.5%
V	(zero)	91.5%
V	I	92.5%	95.0%	97.2%	99.3%	101.5%	103.6%
V	II	94.6%	96.8%	99.0%	101.2%	103.5%	105.7%
V	III	96.2%	98.5%	100.8%	103.1%	105.4%	107.8%
V	IV	97.9%	100.2%	102.6%	105.0%	107.4%	109.8%
V	V	99.5%	102.0%	104.5%	106.9%	109.4%	111.9%

Equipment tax

Unfortunately, even with 100% efficiency, you may not receive all the minerals to which you are entitled. The tax man needs his share. The Corporation running the refinery will take up 5% of the minerals. For example if you processed 333 Veldspar and you had 10% waste, you would not receive 900 Tritanium, but 900 - (900 x .05) or just 855 Tritanium.

In order to reduce the tax level your personal standing with the NPC corporation that owns the station needs to improve. You need a standing of 6.67 or more to reach zero tax.

Within the university there are many players who have already attained this 'zero tax refine' standing as well as 'perfect refine' skills and offer it as a service to newer players: see the Perfect Refine List for more details.

References

Halada's Mining Guide PDF