Chapter 189 Iron Ambition 1
Although the end of the year is approaching, Paul Graiman has no intention of resting.
After many discussions with the Government Affairs Council, he finally decided to launch an attack on the "heavy industry" field.
We must make a fortune before the civil war situation in the Kingdom becomes clear. The Kingdom’s army will go south to quell the chaos next spring. We must quickly win over this potential big customer. God bless them to fight longer. Bar.
Papermaking, cans, and ceramics are just small means used to solve the lack of funds in the early stage. It is undeniable that inventions like papermaking have great significance for the process of history, but it takes a long time to truly measure a country’s hard power. The most important indicator for a period of time is steel production.
Even in the information age before time travel, steel output was an important reference data for comprehensive national strength.
Of course, iron production must be increased first. Only with this foundation can we increase steel production.
Before starting his "Iron Ambition", Paul must first do some research on the smelting technology in this world. After communicating with Heman and other master blacksmiths, and combining some knowledge from his previous life, he had a relatively intuitive understanding of the current smelting technology.
Although blacksmiths such as Heman have mastered the skills of making iron tools, they are also very familiar with how to make iron.
The iron-making technology currently used in countries around the world is block iron-making technology. The specific process is:
First build an iron-making furnace, then stuff the iron ore and charcoal into the furnace and ignite it for roasting. When the oxygen supply is insufficient, a large amount of hot carbon monoxide is produced, taking away the oxygen in the iron ore (iron oxide), and finally leaving is the reduced solid wrought iron.
The more troublesome thing is that since the solid wrought iron cannot be taken out through the furnace body, the ironmaking furnace must be dismantled every time ironmaking is completed.
And the solid wrought iron taken out is just soft and loose sponge iron. Because it has not been melted, it still contains all the impurities in the iron ore, so it must be repeatedly forged to remove the pores. and impurities to become usable metal materials - iron ingots.
The process is quite troublesome, Paul sighed. It seems that he cannot obtain the output he expected by expanding the production scale, and his territory is still relatively short of manpower, so he must upgrade the current iron smelting. technology.
He planned to use a blast furnace to make iron, but after carefully combing through the relevant technology trees, he found that this thing could not be created all at once.
First of all, in terms of fuel, the current fuel used for ironmaking is mainly charcoal, but once large-scale production begins, using charcoal becomes a bit of a waste and the cost is quite expensive.
Chopping down a large number of trees to make charcoal was something Paul did not want to see. Even without talking about environmental protection issues, which it is too early to talk about now, wood is also an important production material in many other industries.
Some people have tried to use coal - which is currently only used in a few places - to replace charcoal, but the sulfur contained in the coal will cause the thermal brittleness of the pig iron, making it impossible to forge it into shapes. , this kind of iron is called sulfur iron, which is very weak and cannot be used at all.
The only cheap and abundant fuel that can replace charcoal is coke - desulfurized coal has a high carbon content and is pure carbon, although it still contains about 0.% to 1% sulfur, but it can still be used for ironmaking.
So he has to build coke production facilities first, and to produce coke, he has to increase the amount of coal mining. Although this thing has not been widely used around the world, fortunately, the Northwest Gulf finally finally We are at the forefront of the world, and the use of coal as fuel has become popular here.
But even if the fuel problem is solved, we still have to face the problem of insufficient wind power. Traditional wooden blowers and leather blowers cannot meet the wind requirements for coke combustion, because the gaps in coke are much smaller than those of charcoal, so higher wind speeds must be used. It is impossible to manufacture it with existing blowers and human and animal power alone. Producing qualified and long-lasting stable wind speed. Therefore, a piston blower must be made. At the current stage, the power can be driven by a water wheel, so that coke can be used to make iron. Even so, it can only satisfy small ironmaking blast furnaces. For large blast furnaces, the wind generated in this way is still too small. To meet the wind power requirements of large blast furnaces, we have to wait until the steam engine is invented, which is a long way off.
Now we can only use small blast furnaces to make iron, step by step.
As for the more efficient blower and the matching hydraulic transmission system, it was left to the group of magicians recruited from the royal capital. They also started from a relatively simple one, and he already had a preliminary plan.
……
Within a few days, a coking cellar was built near a coal mine in Arda.
The coal dug out of the coal mine is sent directly here, waiting to be refined into coke.
This is an open-air earth cellar. First, a pit more than one meter deep and about eight meters in diameter is dug manually on the ground. It is surrounded by stones or earth and the depth of the pit is equal to the height of the masonry. Plus, the height is about 2.5 meters.
Dozens of workers were busy around the cellar.
They first built two layers of flue. The first layer of flue was made of lump coal in the center of the kiln, and coal was loaded around the flue. These coals were all pulverized coal. Install it to a certain height, trample the coal flat and solid, and then build the second layer of flue. The flues on this floor are more complicated than the first floor. There is a center around which there are 16 or 18 flat flues with a width of 0.67 meters and a height of 0.17 meters built with rubble. Each flue is connected to the center.
Then add coal for the second time and cover all the flues with pulverized coal, up to half a meter thick. At this time, the ignition begins, and the easily flammable wood chips are ignited and thrown into the center flue and fall to the bottom flue. The coal blocks burn and the pulverized coal burns. When the combustion reaches the center flue of the second layer, add wood chips to support combustion.
Then there was the third coal addition, still pulverized coal, with a thickness of 0.83 meters. During combustion, the central flue collapses, and the flame is spit out from the small flue to the outside. The more it burns, the more intense it will be, and it will penetrate from the center to the outside.
When the fire is done, the workers are very busy, running around the kiln with stones or broken bricks. When the flame came out of the brick and there was blue smoke in the flame, it was a sign of scorching, and there was a lot of work. Some of the dozens of people immediately blocked the hole, and some were busy blowing sand and covering it with soil. After the sand was covered, Everyone was busy spraying water again.
Wait for cooling and then take it out to complete the coking process.
For the time being, Paul used a relatively primitive and simple method to make coke. It would not be too late to improve the process when he could really use it to make other iron.
According to actual tests, the current cellar can produce two cellars per day and produce one and a half tons of coke per day.
Of course, when blast furnace ironmaking officially starts in the future, we will definitely continue to build more earth pits, or directly use new production processes.
(End of this chapter)