GregTech 6/Ore Processing

Getting useful crafting materials out of the world-generated Ore Blocks in GregTech 6 has become less forumlaic than it was in GregTech 5, but more optional side paths have been added. This document details how processing chains evolve from the manual 'forge age' through to 'electrical age', and finally contains a reference listing of byproducts by ore and refinery process.

Forge Age
Manual processing of Ores offers little in the way of choice and bonus products. One crushes raw ore with the (preferably on the  for 66% extra material), washes, and then smelts it.

Using the filled with liquid Mercury can guarantee specific refined ores while washing some ores; a matching amount of Mercury is consumed in this process. Tossing the crushed ore into a full of fresh Water will also wash it while having a chance to produce each of a Tiny Purified Ore, a Tiny Dust, and a Nugget of every byproduct listed below for that ore. It is a small chance, so getting all 24 will basically never happen, but one could get a dust ore and nugget of the same material from a single crushed ore being washed, or get a sample of every byproduct at the same moment because they are independent chances. More likely, a single byproduct or none will be returned.

I recommend piping water into the Cauldron. A Cover immersed in the local River for infinite water removes much of the tedium from this process.

Sand and Gravel Ore blocks must be put through a instead of being crushed and washed. They are doubled and have a good chance of getting the first listed major byproduct along with lower chances of the second and third in order.

Steam Age
Machine processing starts with doing the same thing better and automatically. Try to get a to double the Ores as it crushes the blocks.

The only makes Tiny Purified Ore byproducts, but is 3% for a Tiny Crushed Ore (nine rolls per full Ore) in each of the eight byproduct output slots. If the material has fewer byproduct varieties listed, the remaining slots are filled with the base ore. The waste Sluice Juice can have useful materials extracted from it too.

The and  automate the Mercury Wash and Sifting steps as they were done in the. They offer the ability to bath in gasses, or capture gasseous by products; this matters for Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) to refine Coal-like ores with three chances of 50% getting a Tiny Refined Graphite Ore bonus, and for any ore with a 'refractory metal' byproduct to have the steam captured from bathing in water with Firestone / Octine / or Pyrotheum dust as it extracts 9 tiny purified ores of that byproduct.

A major option for every ore starts with the. This machine can process a Purified Ore into a unit Dust and three Tiny Refined Ores, one each of the three major byproducts (or base ore, if the list is too short). This process increases the total material return but sacrifices primary ore to make the byproducts and is the only process in GregTech 6 to do so. A Centrifuge can also be used to break down some ores into component minerals at a better recovery rate than smelting directly; this often requires a tiered-up machine.

Late game Options
To support the recently implemented GregTech 6 nuclear fission and fusion systems, Isotopes of Lithium, Beryllium, Carbon, Cobalt, Uranium, Plutonium, and Americium are present. It takes a Titanium or Tungstensteel tier Centrifuge to separate the Refined Ore into a unit Dust and eight chances of 27% (split between) Tiny Dust for each enriched isotope. Unlike other processes mentioned in this guide this process loses material on average. Similarly, the Purified Ore can be centrifuged into a Refined Ore and some Tiny Refined Ores with the same chances.

As of version 6.15.0, setting up a for molten materials opens two more ore processing paths. Crushed ore of a pure metal can bathed in half a unit of Blazing Pyrotheum to produce two to six (4.075 on average) chunks of that metal, and no byproducts. A Sluice can use 45L Tectonic Petrotheum instead of water to wash a Crushed ore while doubling it (with 1 or 9 50% of additional tiny Purified ore) and making dry Sluice Sand, with no other byproducts.

Low Voltage
With electricity more optional paths open. The begins to replace smelting as the go-to process for many ores as it not only has a higher recovery rate of the primary material, but actually recovers all the other chemically bound materials as well. Many minerals have a minimum voltage that will require MV or even HV tier electrolysis. Electrolysis can also be used to process some byproduct chemicals, such as the six Manganese Chloride (MnCl2) Small Dust from Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) bathing to refine any Purified Ore with Pyrolusite as a byproduct.

Persulfates in Water solutions can be used instead of Mercury to wash some Crushed Ores and get a specific Refined Ore byproduct. It takes LV Electrolysis to convert the Bisulfate waste product of Hydrochloric or Nitric Acid production into this useful material.

processing will refine a Purified Ore while pulling out two (eighteen Tiny) Refined Ores, at 6% chance, of each byproduct that does not share the magnetic character of the primary ore. These are tabulated below for reference.

Now it is possible to recover the Vitriols and Chloro-Acids in the. These corrosive liquids contain additional byproduct metals from refining Pure Ore in a of Sulfuric Acid or Aqua Regia; gases are also produced. Once electrolyzed at 64 EU/t, the remaining materials can be re-processed into the original acid, often as a closed loop. Such acid soaking always has three 50% chances to produce a Tiny Refined Ore byproduct in addition to the liquids and gases, or 36 chances at tiny refined Platinum Group Sludge. Sulfuric acid washing's byproducts are simply more of the original ore.



Geochemistry
Most Ores in GregTech are complex chemical assemblages, similar to real life. The processes discussed above guide the ore toward a single mineral and single chemical composition, while often producing small amounts of byproduct ores.

As of version 6.11.25 these are the possible uses of each ore:

Semi-Refined Mixtures
There are mixtures that come out of the refinery processes described above that have no primary component, therefore they require additional refinement to become useful.