Chapter 162 The Beginning of the Shock (Part 1) (6.2k)
Three weeks later.
Su Mansion.
It was still in the small yard where Xu Yun prepared the generator before.
At this moment, the surrounding area of the yard had been cleaned up, and even the stone tables, flowers and trees had been moved away.
throughout the courtyard.
Only a strange coffin-like device with an arched top made of bricks was left in the central area.
Standing next to the equipment were Lao Su, Wang Zhen and his two brothers, Zong Ze, Wang Hou, Siegfried and
An old man with white beard and hair but strong spirit.
Of course.
Xu Yun was naturally there too.
At this time, he was staring intently at the inside of the arched equipment, his eyes motionless.
Guessing that the time was almost up, he turned around and said to Mr. Xie:
"Old Du Guan, you can stop now."
After hearing this, Mr. Xie quickly agreed.
He turned around, stopped the donkey that was pulling the blower, and lovingly put a lot of grass in front of it:
"Hurry up and fill your stomach, I will need you later."
Brother Donkey:
"."
Xu Yun looked at Siegfried who was already waiting here, cupped his hands towards him, and said with a smile:
"Master Qi, I'm done."
"Young master, you're welcome, it's just a matter of duty."
Siegfried gave him a very reliable look, led several craftsmen to the equipment, and used an iron bar to pry open a preset lid.
As the lid was pried open, a stream of hot, viscous molten iron slowly began to flow from the slot into a small dug pond.
Then Siegfried followed Xu Yun's previous instructions and sprinkled pig iron powder lightly and evenly into the molten iron in the small pond.
Several others were stirring quickly with willow sticks.
See this situation.
Xu Yun felt a little more relaxed.
In ancient China, steelmaking and forging were the two most common methods of steel casting.
Taking the finished products of the Song Dynasty's Waremaking Bureau as an example, the sulfur content is about 11 parts per ten thousand, which is about one thousandth.
Mentioned previously.
Every ten-thousandth difference between sulfur and phosphorus in steel has a completely different effect. It is completely different from the same concept.
Modern steel technology basically uses this difference as the defining line of grade, and is divided into ordinary steel, high-grade steel, special grade steel, special grade peak steel, special grade Dzogchen steel, half-step super debonded steel, etc.
all in all.
Compared with the five ten thousandths of the most common steel in modern times, the ordinary steel products in the Song Dynasty were six orders of magnitude worse.
Even if we compare it with the best quality steel products in the Machine Making Bureau, the difference can only be shortened to about 4.5 at most.
Therefore, Xu Yun held the idea that "the task is to cause trouble anyway", so he just kept doing it and made a big one:
He combined Bessemer's Bescher steel-making method with the steel-filling method of the late Ming Dynasty, and used the local 1956 small-volume furnace as a template to design a two-cubic-meter reverberatory furnace.
The so-called reverberatory furnace.
Refers to a chamber-type flame furnace.
The fuel burns in its combustion chamber, and the heat generated is reflected from the top of the furnace to the heating chamber to heat the billet.
The heat transfer method in the furnace relies not only on the reflection of the flame, but also, more importantly, on the radiation heat transfer of the furnace top, furnace walls and hot gas.
Therefore, there are also certain requirements in terms of design specifications.
Xu Yun used a brick reverse arch furnace bottom this time, which is about 900 mm thick. From bottom to top, they are:
The furnace bottom cast iron plate, 20mm asbestos plate, 300mm clay bricks, 100mm ramming material layer, and the uppermost layer of magnesia brick reverse arch.
What?
You ask where magnesia bricks come from?
Magnesite is calcined at high temperature and then crushed to a certain particle size to become sintered magnesite.
After pressing, you can get magnesia bricks with good quality.
Considering that the melt ratio and depth of the trial preparation of horse iron shoes are small, Xu Yun used a reverse arch central angle of 129°. (The calculation should be correct, the magnesia brick is 300 mm, can anyone check the calculation)
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This way.
The temperature in the furnace can easily reach over 1600 degrees, or even close to 1800.
And besides the equipment.
Xu Yun also made some improvements in raw materials.
For example, bituminous coal is coked in isolation from the air, and coke is used as fuel instead of coal.
Another example is decarburization by pouring steel, etc.
Of course.
More importantly, there is another step:
Added pull-out bellows.
This step does not consume much resources, let alone labor costs, but it is quite tiring.
After a while, Siegfried raised his hand to Xu Yun:
"My lord, the molten iron has turned into a sponge."
Xu Yun quickly walked to the slot. As soon as he got closer, a hot breath came up:
"Master Qi, have you added the pig iron filings?"
"It's added."
Xu Yunjian nodded:
"Then cut the molten iron into pieces, put it on the second layer, and introduce oxygen."
Siegfried had already practiced the relevant operation methods before, so it didn't take much effort to transfer the molten iron filled with pig iron filings to the second layer of the reverberatory furnace.
The temperature of the second layer of the reverberatory furnace is much lower than that of the first layer. The main purpose of this link is not calcination, but
Introduce oxygen.
Or to be more precise
Pour in pure oxygen.
That's right.
Pure oxygen.
This is why Xu Yun is confident in forging steel with lower impurity content:
As everyone knows.
Preparing pure oxygen is an operation that only requires hands. Is there really someone who can't do it?
Ahem
Considering the extremely high temperature in the reverberatory furnace, Xu Yun did not use electrolysis of water to produce oxygen:
Not only does electrolyzing water to produce oxygen consume a lot of energy, but it is also easily mixed with hydrogen.
Once the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen reaches a certain limit, certain Deidara behaviors are likely to occur in the reverberatory furnace.
Therefore, this time Xu Yun chose the standard laboratory oxygen production method of later generations.
That is, heating hot potassium permanganate to collect oxygen.
First, Xu Yun found pyrolusite through Lao Su's connections. This is a very common ore and can be found in large quantities in Bianjing City.
This is then heated with potassium nitrate to produce potassium manganate.
Then conduct electrolysis with oxidant in alkaline solution.
In this way, potassium permanganate is obtained.
Clam?
Where does potassium nitrate come from, you ask?
Do you still remember the potassium nitrate salt bridge made by using the saltpeter from the sour plum soup shop when preparing chlorine? (See Chapter 123)
So it’s still the same sentence:
The generators and electrolytic cells Xu Yun created were far more than just for showing off his skills.
Then, he directed Siegfried to move the copper pipe that transported oxygen to the entrance of the second floor.
Although the melting point of copper is less than 1100 degrees, the temperature of the second-layer reverberatory furnace is not high.
In addition, the copper pipe is only connected to the slot, so there is no need to worry about the copper pipe melting.
"Be careful and push it in slowly. It's very sensitive. Be prepared. If it comes out, be careful and don't let the water inside splash out."
The copper pipe is connected to a self-priming pump designed by Lao Su. As the valve opens, a large amount of oxygen is quickly transported into the second layer.
This pure oxygen quickly combines with the carbon, phosphorus, and sulfur in the spongy molten steel. After oxidation, it escapes and overflows through the tuyere pulled by Brother Lu.
After just two quarters of an hour, the purity of the molten steel was stretched to an extremely high value - compared to this era.
"What a pity, what a pity"
Looking at the molten steel that had entered the final stage, Xu Yun couldn't help but shook his head slightly.
Wang Zhen on the side saw this and couldn't help asking:
"Xiao Wang, what are you regretting?"
Xu Yun sighed and said:
"We don't have enough time to prepare, we don't have enough relevant technical equipment, and the hardware conditions are a bit poor."
"So in theory, the durability of finished steel cast can only be about fifteen times that of ordinary steel."
Wang Zhen:
"o_O?"
Xu Yun didn't notice Wang Zhen's expression. What Wang Zhen looked like was pretentious, but it was actually his true thoughts.
After all, if there are conditions.
It doesn't require too many steps. Just add nickel and chromium to the molten steel, and you can easily increase the quality of the steel ten times - which is an order of magnitude difference.
It's a pity.
Laterite nickel ores in the world are mainly distributed in tropical countries within 30 degrees north and south of the equator.
Although there are some laterite nickel deposits in the mainland, they are all distributed in the northwest and northeast, not in the Central Plains.
Such as Longyou, such as Zhuzhou, such as Baishan Songshui.
The latter two are currently not within the territory of the Song Dynasty. Although Longyou belongs to the Song Dynasty, it is an important frontier area in the war with Xixia.
At present, Longyou mainly focuses on defensive fortifications, and in terms of resource development, it is far from reaching the level of later generations.
Therefore, Xu Yun's idea of further purification could only be stillborn, waiting for the lucky ones in later generations to discover it.
Another hour or so passed.
He estimated that the time was almost up, so he said to Siegfried:
"Master Qi, the time has come, I will leave the rest to you."
Siegfried nodded to him and directed the other craftsmen to take out the softened molten steel and start forging.
Bang bang bang——
The marshmallow-like molten steel gradually began to solidify under Siegfried's stirring.
Siegfried felt that the heat had reached from the resistance, so he poured it into a horseshoe printing mold.
Many people in later generations have been influenced by some movies and TV shows or civilian horseshoes, and think that horseshoes are a very simple tool.
But actually.
The horseshoes of military horses and racehorses are very complicated, far from being as simple and light as it seems.
For example, a single horseshoe in the Olympic equestrian competition weighs 2.2 pounds, or 1.99 kilograms, and is made entirely of aluminum alloy.
In the Brisbane Museum of Kangaroo, there is still an iron horseshoe from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics obstacle course, each weighing up to 3 kilograms.
Why is this thing so heavy?
Because in addition to the shoe, the horseshoe combination also requires no less than seven nails for reinforcement, plus an iron sheet at the end similar to a leg guard.
With so many combined joints, it’s no surprise that horseshoes weigh a lot.
His gaze returned to its original position.
Another 20 minutes or so passed.
The molten iron is poured.
Xu Yun took over from Siegfried, holding the poured horseshoe with long-end tweezers and soaking it in water.
This kind of operation is common in TV dramas, which is quenching.
It is mainly used to quickly condense and shape the iron embryo into a hard entity.
But from a related professional perspective.
Although the quenching action is simple, the principle is still relatively complex.
呲——
With a burst of white smoke suddenly floated up.
The interior of the steel rapidly changes to austenite, and then is quenched at a rate greater than the critical cooling rate, forming metastable martensite.
Deformation brings high density of dislocations, and at the same time, the supercooling caused by rapid cooling causes the nucleation speed of new grains to be very high, and fine grain strengthening occurs.
The external manifestation of the above two feedbacks is.
Quenching and shaping completed.
The blacksmith shop in movies and TV shows is usually pretty much the same after quenching, but the electromechanical dog... ahem, students majoring in mechanics should all know that.
At this time, there is actually a lot of stress and brittleness inside the quenched part.
If the tempering step is not carried out in time, deformation or even cracking will often occur, causing various troubles in practice.
For example, a shovel that has not been tempered is likely to have chips after just a few digs.
Therefore, Xu Yun tempered the horseshoes again, and this completely ended the forging of horseshoes.
A quarter of an hour later.
Xu Yun held the cooled horseshoe with his bare hands, walked to Wang Zhen and others, and handed it to the old man:
"Zhong Cheng Xuan Envoy, this thing is a horseshoe. Please take a look at it."
That's right.
After hearing this surname, the readers must have guessed it:
This man is the famous Lao Zhongjinglue Xianggong, the contemporary leader of the Zhong Family Army, and the military spirit of the Song Dynasty after Liu Fa's death.
Plant the way of a teacher!
When Xu Yun was on the line with Wang Hou, he specifically asked Wang Zhen to take the trouble to inquire about Laozhong.
Finally, it was learned that Lao Zhong had indeed returned to Bianjing with the Western Army.
After all, the core center of this Western Front battle was Weizhou. As the magistrate of Weizhou and the deputy propaganda envoy of the Yingdao Army, Lao Zhong needed to transport troops, horses, grain, grass, and uniforms through his hands.
Now that he has returned from a staged victory, the probability that he will return to Beijing together will not be less than 70%.
After all, although the old man is not greedy for money, he also has a high integrity and has no black spots in his life except a few defeats or two.
But that doesn't mean he has no desires.
Quite the opposite.
Being able to be the contemporary leader of the Zhong Family Army, Zhongshi Dao is a must-win for almost every achievement:
After all, it was the result of his own blood and sweat, so there is nothing to be embarrassed about.
If you don't fight for the welfare of the people below, how can others believe you?
Later, Xu Yun used horseshoes as a guide and invited Lao Zhong to his house through Lao Su's book stickers.
However, when he returned to the house, Lao Zhong's attitude towards Xu Yun was quite lukewarm, and his face looked a bit stinker than Lao Jia's.
Such as this moment.
Seeing Xu Yun, a young man with a hairless mouth, carrying a horseshoe, he said with certainty that it was ten times as hard as ordinary steel.
The old man's eyes were full of doubt.
After all, he is different from civil servants like Lao Su.
Most soldiers are straightforward in nature and say whatever they want, but it's just because of Lao Su's face that it has always been difficult for him to do so.
I saw him glance at Xu Yun a few times and take the horse's iron hoof.
He stroked it around with his hand and flicked it lightly with his index finger.
After a while.
The old man's expression condensed slightly, and a hint of surprise flashed across his face.
As a military commander stationed abroad all year round, his familiarity with steel has reached an astonishing level.
Basically get started.
He can judge whether it is low-grade steel, medium-grade steel or high-grade steel through quality, flatness and syllables.
Following the tactile feedback he just got.
The horseshoe weighing several kilograms in front of me seems to be made of the same material as high-grade steel.
That is to say
The young man in front of me seems to have a lot of brushes?
After all, he has also seen the forging process of the Ordnance Bureau, and it is much slower than Xu Yun in terms of process and efficiency.
But what the old man didn't expect was.
Some steels are called top-grade steel because they are just top-grade steel.
Some steels are judged to be high-grade steels because of the existing cognitive system.
Only top quality steel.
Then Lao Zhong pondered for a moment and took out a saber from his body.
This sword was a fine sword given to him by the late Zhezong of Song Dynasty. The material was a batch of the highest quality fine steel produced in the 5th year of Shaosheng's reign.
Not to mention cutting iron like clay.
At least it is not difficult to leave a gap in the steel wheel axle of the chariot with one cut.
In several life-and-death fights, Lao Zhong even used it to pierce the enemy's breastplate, which was much thicker than a horseshoe.
After preparing the knife.
Lao Zhong put the horseshoe on the table, made a few gestures on the edge with his knife, and asked Xu Yun:
"This little brother, can I give it a try?"
Xu Yun quickly made a gesture of invitation:
"I have my wish, but I dare not ask for my ear."
The old man looked at him again thoughtfully.
If nothing else, this young man should still have some skills.
But he seemed a little arrogant, or rather confident.
But if he can really produce high-quality steel on a large scale.
For the imperial court, especially for the Western Army, it was a good thing.
So he hesitated for a few seconds.
He didn't exert all his strength on his hands, intending to make a small opening to save some face for Xu Yun.
Hands up.
The knife fell.
Qiang——I saw a contact sound accompanied by fire splashing, and the short knife in Lao Zhong's hand
Suddenly it split from the edge and eventually collapsed in two.
(End of chapter)