Rust
Rust is a Consumable Ore, available in the Rust Biome.
Usage
The Rust Deoxidizer can produce Oxygen, Chlorine, Iron Ore with Rust and Salt: 750 g/s Rust + 250 g/s Salt = 570 g/s Oxygen + 30 g/s Chlorine + 400 g/s Iron Ore.
Heating Rust over its melting point will turn it into liquid iron with a 1:1 ratio, which can then be cooled into refined iron. The conversion is 87.5% more efficient than what can be achieved with a using Rust Deoxidizer, but doesn't produce Oxygen or Chlorine.
Production
It can be harvested on rocket missions to renewable Space POIs:
- In Oxidized Asteroid Fields at a rate of 432 – 1296 kg per cycle.
- In Radioactive Asteroid Fields at a rate of 18.2 – 72.8 kg per cycle.
Tips
Magma spawns from Volcanoes with a high enough temperature to melt rust. That temperature can also be reached by using Liquid Steel as "coolant" in a Metal Refinery. In both cases, reusing the heat from the resulting iron to preheat more rust will make the process much more heat-efficient. A properly designed rust melter may later be used to refine most other Metal Ores faster than with a metal refinery or it can be converted into a Regolith melter.
