Once you have finished your ship salvage session, you have the choice of either selling your raw material (Rubble, Pieces, Salvage) as-is to the ore sales terminal in the refinery deck, or you can start a refinery job to convert your raw materials into Construction Material (CM).
Refineries process your raw material for a fee. All three raw materials refine into CM, the difference is in yield and resulting quality (which affects the quality of items crafted in fabricators beginning in 4.7).
Head to the refinery deck at a station and go to the refinery kiosk.
A Quick Balance Note about Refining Ore/CM:
Though some Starter Mining vehicles can carry 32 SCU of ore, and some Starter Salvage vehicles can carry anywhere from 13-27 SCU of salvage, most Starter Freight ships ONLY carry around 2-8 SCU of cargo. Due to this imbalance, and due to the changes they were already anticipating for Crafting gameplay, CIG changed refining in 4.5 to have significantly smaller output compared to the resources you input. They also generally increased the cost of these refined goods to ensure profit from these gameplay loops stayed relatively consistent. Anyways, on with the guide...
First, choose either your ship or the station's storage from the dropdown, depending on where your boxes of raw material are currently stored.
Choose SETUP WORK ORDER
Choose a processing selection from the dropdown. These vary in cost, yield, and time.
Dinyx Solventation ----------very low speed, low cost, high yield <<< best for high yield if you're not in a rush
Pyrometric Chromalysis ----low speed, high cost, high yield
Ferron Exchange--------------low speed, moderate cost, high yield
Thermonatic Deposition---low speed, low cost, moderate yield
Electrostarolysis --------------moderate speed, moderate cost, moderate yield <<< middle ground
Kazen Winnowing -----------moderate speed, low cost, low yield
Cormack Method ------------high speed, moderate cost, low yield
XCR Reaction ------------------high speed, high cost, low yield
Gaskin Process ----------------high speed, high cost, moderate yield <<< best if you're in a hurry
Choose which materials you want to refine (you can choose more than one if you have others available) in this job by toggling the slider on for each, and then choose GET QUOTE
The quote will show your yield, cost, and processing time. Confirm your selections to begin the refining job.
After you confirm, you will get a WORK ORDER ACCEPTED message
Visit the refinery kiosk again when you want to collect your refined goods. Click COLLECT to confirm. If the job is still in progress you can choose STOP & COLLECT to interrupt it and collect everything they have refined so far, but it will DISCARD the remaining unrefined material.
A finished refinery job will just say COLLECT, and can be delivered to your freight elevator's inventory at that station.
After collecting your refinery job, you can now sell your processed goods at commodity trading kiosks, or consolidate all of your collected goods and use them for crafting! If you want to sell, then the trading kiosks will be at the admin offices and at trade centers in landing zones.
If you're unsure of where to sell your goods, take a look at this excellent resource from UEXCorp
UEXCorp (pricing for commodity trading) uexcorp.space/
Commodities you can sell to that location will be listed under IN DEMAND. If you cannot sell them here, they will display under NO DEMAND or CANNOT SELL and you will be unable to select them for sale.
Choose how much of your goods to sell, confirm, and profit!