Chapter 184 The uses of our peat are too broad
Riding a horse to the entrance of the village of the capital of Carthage, a villager immediately came to lead the horse.
The capital of Carthage was about fifty or sixty meters long and wide, with a large population of three hundred people.
The entire royal capital is composed of about seventy or eighty thatched houses, and the rickety fences and walls on the periphery.
Only Queen Cardage has a two-story wooden palace, but Queen Cardage is not here today.
She went fishing on an ocean-going fishing boat. Even though she was a queen, fishing was currently the most important production task of the entire Carthage Kingdom.
Otherwise, when the weather gets cold, these fish will move to deeper lakes in Nanze, and it will be difficult to catch them.
The queen will take a boat to pull nets to catch fish, and she will also patrol the waters to prevent other kingdoms from crossing the border. Sometimes she will engage in gang wars, as well as civil and military fights with the queens of other kingdoms who cross the border.
However, few people dare to offend Queen Carthage. Firstly, her family is indeed prosperous, and secondly, this bitch has dirty hands and mouth.
Walking from the entrance of Wangdu Village to the Royal Pier, you can see a dozen lycanthropes, old and young, standing around watching. The ones being watched are Paslik and others who are performing an alchemy ceremony.
Passing through these lycanthropes, Horn walked closer and saw a square pit on the ground.
The pit is about a yard deep, about a yard long and wide, with wooden boards inserted on all sides and at the bottom.
“This is to prevent the alchemical reaction from escaping, resulting in only shallow swamp soil distilling out peat.” The young man on the side introduced to Horn.
Horn knew the big-headed young man in front of him. He was actually the person in charge of the White Mountain Monastery at Castle Joan, and his name was Robert.
Different from others with lower status, he is a wealthy workshop owner who makes dyes during the day and uses leftovers to make alchemy products at night.
After shaking hands and nodding with the young man, Horn stepped forward and observed carefully.
The six holy alchemists, three ordinary alchemists and Paslik each held a walnut tree in front of their chests, perpendicular to their elbows, and their whole bodies looked like a big cross.
Both the Saints and Paslik had no expressions, while the ordinary alchemists had reluctant expressions, beads of sweat on their foreheads, and their steps around the pit were a little frivolous.
As they walked, they danced like dance steps, swaying neatly from side to side, muttering words in their mouths, and making strange low "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" sounds.
Dragging walnut wood and walking around the deep pit in front of them, the eyes of these alchemists emitted a faint light, which is an external manifestation of the Tarot meditation image.
But if you get closer to them, you will find that the soil in the pit begins to emit light steam, and the air above the pit is actually slightly distorted.
In the white steam, black mud seeped out bit by bit, slowly covering the surface.
The two lycanthropes held shovels and shoveled out the black peat from the deep pit from time to time, and then used rakes to turn over the swamp soil to reveal the lower swamp soil until there was no more mud. coal generation.
Shovel after shovelful of peat fell into the rattan baskets. Horn stretched out his hand to lift it. It was very difficult. Each basket weighed about 80 pounds.
When the alchemy ceremony ended, ten rattan baskets full of peat were lined up in the open space.
Bending down, Horn got closer to the black peat. He reached out and touched it, and it actually felt a little warm.
With a slight exertion of his fingers, a hole was made in the ball of peat.
Robert stepped forward and said with a smile: "Normal peat is like this when it comes out. It can be used after leaving it for a while or drying it."
"In fact, there is no need to dry it. "After finishing the alchemy ceremony, Paslik walked to Horn's side, "It's just that it's more difficult to light a fire, and the smoke is bigger."
"Can you demonstrate the effect of lighting it?" Horn asked. Slick asked. Paslik stepped aside, and the Salvation Army soldiers on the side had already built a small stove with stones, and a layer of reeds and hay was spread at the bottom of the stove to start the fire.
Shoveled a shovelful of peat, poured it into the stove, and used tinder to light the reeds and hay at the bottom. In a short time, blue flames shot up from the bottom of the stone stove.
Paslik put his finger into the fire to explore it, then put it there and finally licked it: "Yes, the quality of the swamp soil here is very good, and it burns much better than wood. ”
Ignoring Paslik’s abstract behavior, Horn called over the excited Carthaginian envoy and asked him to get a flat-bottomed clay pot specially made for boiling salt, and poured in the prepared Good brine is placed on the stone stove.
After a while, a layer of light salt crystals condensed on the surface of the inner wall of the pot.
"Two thousand pounds of swamp soil requires about ten alchemists to participate in the alchemy ceremony." Standing next to Horn, Paslik pointed to the peat in the rattan baskets and said, "It can produce 800 to 1,200 pounds of peat." Peat, it takes about a quarter of an hour."
Paslik glanced at the ordinary alchemists sitting on the ground: "If it is an ordinary alchemist, it will take 300 to 500 pounds of swamp at a time. If you are an earthly person, you will probably have to rest for half a day. If you are a saint, you can rest for two or three hours, and you can even work continuously. "
"What about refining 100 pounds of salt?"
"About seven or eight baskets of peat. This peat is much faster than us using firewood to boil salt." The hand of the King of Carthage who was watching was obviously very familiar with boiling salt. He made a slight estimate and gave it based on his own experience. For this number, "one cooking time takes about 3 hours."
Calculated based on 5 grams of salt per person per day, subtracting Horn's own salt, there is still a gap of one month, 25,000 people are about 7,500 pounds of salt.
The salted fish prepared for 4,000 soldiers, based on three ounces (90 grams) of fish per person per day, is 32,400 pounds of salted fish in three months, and the required catch is approximately 50,000 pounds.
The ratio of salted fish to salt is ten to one, which is 5,000 pounds of salt. In total, it is 12,500 pounds of salt. The fuel required to cook the salt is 75,000 pounds of peat.
Through this calculation, under ideal circumstances, ten alchemists spending 19 working hours can meet the fuel demand of salt for more than 20,000 people in the Salvation Army, and the cost is almost zero.
The only thing worth considering is whether their brine extraction speed can keep up with the peat production speed.
Assuming that there are 4 million people in the Thousand River Valley, the basic monthly demand for salt is roughly 1.2 million pounds, and the basic demand for peat is 7.2 million pounds.
Then Horn only needs to dispatch 200 alchemists and 90 working hours to meet the fuel demand for boiling salt in the entire Qianhe River Valley.
You must know that fuel is not only needed for boiling salt, but also for pottery, brewing, dyeing, printing and dyeing, baking, textiles, etc. The market demand is astonishingly large.
Even wet-forged iron requires fuel to heat the medicine tank!
But this is only under ideal circumstances, such as transportation costs and a series of losses and even customs duties have not been taken into account.
But the production efficiency of this alchemy ritual is beyond Horn's imagination. The only problem is probably the raw materials.
You know, the empire may lack everything except swamps.
However, just in case, environmental protection boy Horn still asked Paslik: "Can this peat be regenerated? How long will it take?"
"Soon, how soon? Ten years, if there is a special wizard to catalyze it, more than ten years will be enough."
Paslik glanced at Horn inexplicably, how did this kid know that peat can be reborn.
Horn immediately determined that this thing is probably similar to Brimstone, a kind of different time and space homotopic with the same name. Although the functions are similar, the essence is completely different.
"In this way, the fuel problem is solved." Looking at the pan licked by the flames, Horn said to himself, "Then only the problems of fishing and brine remain."
While thinking about these things, Horn suddenly heard a loud noise not far away. He immediately realized that it should be Hariba returning with the barbarian prisoners.
(End of this chapter)