After the Imperial Army withdrew from the Shuntian Prefecture, Beiping City enjoyed a brief period of peace. Under the protection of the Beiping Army, a mining team consisting of thousands of people headed to the Huanghuashan Mining Area to conduct mining operations. Due to the urgent need for iron in Beiping City,
Ore, so only iron mines have been developed. As for the gold and tungsten mines, they have not been developed yet. However, during the war, gold bars are not more practical than a firecracker.
In order to speed up development, the original call for tenders was changed to joint mining. Under the leadership of Wan Lei, 20 large merchants worked together to hire laborers and purchase mining and washing tools, striving to get back 1,000 tons within five days.
, that is, a thousand cartloads of iron ore, used as raw materials for the iron smelting plant that has just been built.
For this reason, Wan Lei also lost a lot of money. He took out 5,000 taels of silver from the more than 7,000 taels he earned from selling cosmetics, and used it to buy iron ore. The remaining two thousand taels were used to buy coal mines, and he returned immediately.
He was in a state of extreme poverty. Fortunately, Zhao Hongru was an honest man and gave him 3,000 taels of royalties for the patent on making paraffin. Otherwise, Wan Lei would have been the poorest person in Beiping City.
However, before these three thousand taels were enough to keep him warm, Wan Lei used them to pay for the 150 carts of graphite he ordered from a wealthy businessman in Shandong, and he immediately returned to abject poverty.
Due to the high temperature resistance of stone grinding stones, they can be used to make graphite crucibles in the metallurgical industry. In addition, they are also used in the linings of metallurgical furnaces. Of course, they are also used to make molds when casting cannons. Shandong only uses them to make graphite crucibles.
It is the main producing area of graphite, so Wan Lei had to spend huge sums of money to purchase it.
Compared with Wan Lei, who was in a state of extreme poverty, Zhao Hongru had already joined the wealthy class. This old guy was a mature man. While pouring kerosene, he bought food, wine, vinegar, tea and other daily necessities and sold them back, earning two cents from one place to another.
, he is the one who is said to be extremely rich.
Although the current kerosene business is affected by the situation, this does not affect Zhao Laocai's pioneering spirit. Instead of exchanging the money for land, he built an ink-making workshop in the city, specializing in using heavy oil to produce carbon black, and then making
The ink strips are sold at high prices. In addition, he also intends to build a papermaking workshop to develop high-quality rice paper.
Zhao Hongru invested in the paper industry, and Wan Lei supported it, not only spiritually, but also technically, because paper is a necessity for printing books and spreading culture. Without mass-produced paper, there would be no mass-printed books.
There is no way to launch the cultural popularization movement.
In fact, although papermaking has been invented for more than a thousand years, it is still produced in manual workshops. The output of paper is low and the price is high. Ordinary people cannot afford it. To put it in detail, there are only two processes in papermaking, one is pulping and the other is pulping.
Papermaking, and the difficulty in papermaking lies in pulping.
Since there is no bleach, the common practice is to use a long-term soaking method to remove the color of the pulp. It takes more than half a year from raw materials to paper production. The low productivity can be imagined. Wan Lei promised Zhao Hongru that in a short time
He worked out a bleach for him within a short period of time, which allowed him to invest confidently.
In fact, the commonly used bleaching agent in the paper industry is chlorine dioxide, which is produced by the reaction of sodium chlorate and sulfur dioxide. Sodium chlorate is obtained by the electrolysis of salt water. The process is complicated, and the key is to have electricity, not to mention a generator.
At the very least, we need to make a battery. However, besides chlorine dioxide, there are other alternatives. If that doesn't work, then we can use a whitening agent such as titanium dioxide and lead oxide, and apply it on the paper.
into bright white paper.
Under a tense atmosphere, April finally came to an end. The weather in May was already very hot. Wan Lei wore a short brown jacket, completely dressed as a migrant worker, and led a group of Taoist priests to the newly built ironworks to preside over
Iron-making work. Since this was the first time for iron-making to be started, Wan Lei had to go to the scene in person to take charge, because if an improper operation was performed, the result would probably be scrap iron.
Ironmaking is mainly done by the blast furnace method. In addition to iron ore, the materials used in blast furnace ironmaking also include coke, coke oven gas and limestone for slagging. Solid raw materials such as iron ore, coke and limestone are
The proportions are mixed into ingredients and sent into the blast furnace in batches from the top of the furnace. Hot air of about 1,000 degrees is blown from the lower tuyere of the blast furnace, and fuels such as heavy oil and coal are sprayed in to raise the temperature.
At high temperatures, the carbon in the coke and the injection material and the carbon monoxide generated by the combustion of the carbon take away the oxygen in the iron ore and obtain molten iron. This process is called reduction. The molten iron is released from the taphole, and the impurities in the iron ore,
The ash in the coke and the injection material combines with the limestone added into the furnace to form slag, which is discharged from the slag outlet. The gas is discharged from the top of the furnace, and after cooling and recovery, some ammonia can also be obtained.
The blast furnace is divided into five parts from top to bottom: throat, shaft, waist, bosh and hearth. The process is relatively simple and has the advantage of large production volume. However, the upfront investment is high. Just to build such a blast furnace, it will cost
I went to Shuntian Mansion with nearly one hundred thousand taels of funds.
In addition, the blast furnace must be equipped with a hot blast stove to heat and blast the blast furnace; a coke oven to produce coke; and a molten iron car to transport molten iron. Of course, the blast furnace only produces pig iron, which is suitable for casting iron pots and cannons.
, but cannot be forged and cannot be used as gun barrels or water pipes. If you want to make steel with better performance, you need to go through the open-hearth steelmaking process.
However, it is still too early to refine steel now. We will first look at the quality of blast furnace ironmaking.
When Wan Lei came to the ironworks, he found that Tiexuan had also arrived early with a group of officials. Since this ironworks was the first large government-run factory in Shuntian Prefecture, Tiexuan attached great importance to it.
The craftsmen also personally check that every component is made according to the drawings given by Wan Lei.
This blast furnace alone is more than ten meters high and can be filled with tons of materials at a time. It is expected to produce several tons of molten iron at a time when the furnace is started. If it is continuously produced, it can produce more than ten tons a day. If there are enough molds, it can produce thousands of molten irons a day.
Iron pot.
"My dear nephew, everything is ready. Let's announce the start of work." Tie Xuan saw Wan Lei coming and gave up the position of commander to Wan Lei.
"Are all the craftsmen familiar with the process?" Wan Lei asked.
"They're familiar with it. I've had them practice more than a dozen times without making any mistakes, so I dared to let them go to work." A master behind Tie Xuan said.
"Let everyone wear safety helmets, pay attention to safety, and start work."
After Wan Lei gave the order, dozens of workers began to work. First, they heated the hot blast stove, used a blower to send heat to the blast furnace, and then sprayed coal pulverized into the oil drum. Soon there was a rolling heat wave in the blast furnace.
Coming, everyone's faces suddenly turned red, and their heartbeats accelerated. With the addition of raw materials such as iron ore and coke, the fiery iron-making movement began...