Chapter 1015 Founding Celebration (15)
Being able to have so many high-level officials from Haihan gather together for a meeting on the night of National Day, the matters discussed were naturally not trivial. On the cover of a stack of handwritten documents placed on the table in front of each participant, Xing Mu’s words were written on the cover. The word "top secret".
Baikes continued: "Our current industrialization process is indeed far ahead of this era, but for those of us, the current development speed is still too slow, and there is still a considerable gap between the industrial society we want to build. Especially in terms of production efficiency, the mechanical equipment we can use now is still limited to the hydropower station with a small installed capacity built six or seven years ago, as well as the primitive steam power manufacturing technology. We have already had it, but we have already had it. Limited by fuel supply, we cannot put it into practical applications. However, this shortcoming will not limit our development for too long, because the project we are going to implement next is to solve the fuel supply problem of internal combustion engines. . I believe everyone here understands what taking this step means to us.”
In the original history, it was not until 1794 at the end of the next century that the British man Street proposed the concept of mixing air and fuel and obtaining power from fuel combustion. By 1833, the Englishman Wright proposed a design that directly used combustion pressure to push the piston to do work. After that, various internal combustion engine plans appeared, but it was not until 1860 that the Frenchman Lenoir imitated the structure of a steam engine and created the first practical gas internal combustion engine. However, the thermal efficiency of this thing was only about 4%. In 1876, German inventor Otto created the first four-stroke internal combustion engine, which was truly an internal combustion engine that could be mass-produced and practically used.
The invention of the internal combustion engine has far more significance in improving social productivity and technological development than the steam engine. However, this more advanced power equipment has far higher fuel requirements than the steam engine. Although internal combustion engines can also be manufactured using gas, gas, which is not convenient for transportation and storage, is obviously not the best solution. Travelers from later generations know this very well. To put the internal combustion engine into practical use, the fuel problem must first be solved - first, oil must be mined and refined oil refined to ensure the fuel supply for the internal combustion engine.
Although the time travelers possess dragon-slaying skills, they are limited by the objective environment on this issue. There were no known oil fields within the land area controlled during the first few years of the crossing. There are many large oil fields with astonishing reserves on the bottom of the South China Sea. For example, 120 kilometers southeast of Vung Tau Port in southern Annam is the location of the Baihu Oilfield, which later had the largest proven reserves in Vietnam. But before the time travelers enter the coffin, they will definitely not be able to realize the production technology and large-scale equipment required to exploit the seabed oil fields, so even if they know that there is oil on the seabed, they can only look at the sea and sigh.
However, the Ministry of Industry, which has always been obsessed with internal combustion engines, is not helpless at all. Thanks to the all-encompassing database, time travelers have already confirmed that there are underground oil fields on the island of Taiwan that can be exploited. exist. Since then, the Ministry of Industry has made up its mind to advance the history of industrial oil well extraction from a small town in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1859, to Taiwan Island two centuries ago.
In the original history, during the late Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, people in Chushuangkeng, Miaoli County, Taiwan, discovered that oil was gushing out of the ground. The locals used manpower to dig a well more than one foot deep, and they could harvest seventy or eighty kilograms of crude oil that gushes out of the ground every day. However, the real internal combustion engine had not yet been invented at that time, and the locals only used it for lighting. In the third year of Guangxu's reign, Shen Baozhen, the governor of Liangjiang, inspected Taiwan. After hearing about this, he took over the oil field as a government operation and hired American technicians to mine it with machines. He once increased the oil production to 1,500 kilograms per day. In the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu, Taiwan Governor Liu Mingchuan established the Mineral and Petroleum Bureau and drilled five wells with a maximum depth of 120 meters. However, the production was too low to make ends meet, and the company went bankrupt within a few years of operation.
This is not the only oil and gas field that has been discovered and exploited on the island of Taiwan in later generations. There are oil and gas fields with considerable reserves in Jinshui and Tiedan Mountains in Miaoli County, Qingcao Lake and Qiding in Hsinchu, but their exploitation The technical difficulty is different, but it is not as close to the surface as the oil field in Miaoli Chusangkeng. The oil field out of Shankeng was said to still have stable output until the crossing operation. Considering its geographical location, it is the closest oil producing area to Sanya, and it is relatively difficult for Haihan to control the local area, so it has become an industrial The preferred mining target identified by the ministry.
Haihan only officially set foot on the island of Taiwan in October of the previous year. By the first half of last year, it basically completed control of the west coastline of the island. The Ministry of Industry only started formal preparations for the oil project last year.
The relevant preparatory work is mainly divided into three parts. The first is the production of drilling equipment. The drill bits are the finished products brought during the crossing, and only the drill pipes and drilling rigs are needed. Although Haihan's steel production capacity is still very limited, it is not difficult to squeeze out part of it to produce drill pipes. Drilling rigs and beam pumping units can only use steam power. The production technology in this area is basically mature. Just make some adjustments based on the needs of oil extraction. Although the production efficiency is definitely not as good as the professional equipment of later generations, as long as the local method is implemented and can be used, the existing problems must be solved first, and then the equipment upgrades will be slowly considered.
The second part is the construction of oil refining facilities. The extracted oil must be refined to obtain refined oil used in internal combustion engines. Although due to the limited productivity conditions of this era, it is impossible to build a large-scale oil refinery, but with Haihan's current industrial level, it is not too difficult to build a tube furnace, a vertical kettle, and use the kettle distillation method to refine oil. , but the processing capacity is limited, and the quality of the refined fuel cannot be as high as that of later generations.
Although they are both local oil refining methods, the resources that the Ministry of Industry intends to invest in the oil project are not comparable to those of private workshops in later generations, and a series of technical improvement plans have been formulated for this purpose. For example, designing a more efficient furnace kettle structure and heating system, building a catalytic tower and increasing the kettle temperature, configuring a fractionation tower, using continuous feeding and rapid slag discharge to improve production efficiency, etc. Although these technological improvements will greatly increase the initial investment and increase the workload in the production and debugging stage, the Ministry of Industry believes that these are a price worth paying. Ushering in the era of internal combustion engines faster and earlier will allow Haihan to continue to prosper. A greater advantage is ahead of this era.
The third part is the organization and training of production personnel, which is divided into two parts: drilling and refining. There is already a certain reserve of professionals required for drilling. In recent years, the well drilling team organized by the Ministry of Industry has drilled many artesian wells on Hainan Island. This is a disguised form of actual training, and they have already mastered basic drilling techniques. I have become more proficient in mastering it. It's just that there are no corresponding facilities for oil refining. It is difficult to train skilled industrial workers purely on paper. This can only be done after the project is implemented in Taiwan and trained at the same time.
These preparations are not difficult to say, but they are not easy to say. They require the coordination and cooperation of many departments, mainly the Ministry of Industry. In addition, it depends on the budget and staffing that the Executive Committee can finally approve. So far, the executive committee has given the green light to this. Basically, the project preparation team will give them whatever they want. The drilling equipment required for the initial stage has basically been in place. In addition, the local situation on Taiwan Island has stabilized. Everything is ready now. Ready, just waiting to start work. After the celebrations have passed in the past few days, the first batch of engineering personnel, composed of the exploration team from the Ministry of Industry and the construction team from the Ministry of Construction, will go to Taiwan to carry out initial oil field exploration work. "At present, the personnel and production equipment are in place, and the drilling plan and local construction site infrastructure have also been planned. The next step is to arrange transportation and safety protection." After Bai Kesi introduced the preparations for the project, he The right to speak was given to those at the back.
"Then let me continue." Sun Changmi, the former Minister of Shipping and now the Deputy Minister of Transport, took the initiative to take over. He and Yue Zhiyun were both idle this evening. They attended two meetings led by the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Industry. They were also considered to be one of the busiest departments.
"We have mobilized 22 ships at Sanya Port for related materials and personnel, striving to complete the transportation work at one time." Sun Changmi said: "There are also some daily supplies that will be organized in Guangdong and will be shipped directly from Hong Kong. The required ordinary laborers will be selected from the nearest immigration camp in Penghu, which can also save some long-distance transportation capacity. In addition, because there are troops accompanying this time, the route selected is based on the opinions of the military."
"This time the military will send four exploration-class warships, two supply ships and a troop transport ship to accompany the Ministry of Shipping's fleet to Taiwan. After arriving there, a dock will be built and stationed in the area. Considering that Desu This place is still under the control of local indigenous tribes. We have prepared two companies of the army to protect the safety of the construction site and construction workers. In addition, I will stay there for a period of time to serve as both military and medical personnel. The head of the department.” The next person to speak was the military representative Morgan. This time the Ministry of National Defense also assigned him a task. Although he is not yet a local official, he at least has more power than leading apprentices at the medical school in Sanya. .
"Minister He, can you also say a few words?" Tao Donglai suggested to He Xi after Morgan finished speaking.
The Security Department is also one of the few departments that needs to attend the two meetings tonight separately. He Xi and Hao Wanqing are each responsible for attending one side. After hearing Tao Donglai's proposal, He Xi nodded and said, "Let me just say a few words. The Miaoli project is a key industrial project supervised by the executive committee this year. Everyone knows its significance for the future development of our country. Therefore, the confidentiality level for this project is also Level A. The Ministry of Security will station personnel locally to cooperate with the military to maintain intelligence security.”
As for how many people would be sent there and under what cover-up identities, He Xi did not say more. Although everyone here is a time traveler, the Security Department is only responsible to the Executive Committee, and these specific work arrangements do not need to be reported in detail to other departments. Moreover, the oil mining area in Miaoli will definitely be a military-controlled area in the future. The role of the Ministry of Security in the local area is actually relatively limited, and it basically only plays a surveillance function.
The last person to speak was the new Minister of Construction Liu Shanxia. He learned about this project the latest among the heads of these departments. However, this was also because the role of the Ministry of Construction in this project was relatively limited. In the early stage, it was mainly responsible for Build infrastructure projects and living facilities for local production personnel and troops. The technical difficulty of this kind of work is not very difficult. If it were not for political considerations, there is actually no need for him, the head of the Ministry of Construction, to supervise the work personally. There are at least several foremen of the construction team who can do it. It is precisely because of this that Liu Shanxia's statement is really just a statement, and there is not much substance that needs to be emphasized in this kind of meeting.
These two meetings held on the night of April 1, 1634, basically established Haihan's military and industrial goals for the next period of time. The two decisions of entering the northern coast of the Ming Dynasty and extracting oil will have a profound impact on Haihan. There are various descriptions and speculations about these two meetings in the historical records of later generations.
There are two main doubts that have attracted the most speculation from the outside world. One is why Haihan took the initiative to choose to go north when the situation in the South China Sea was very good. Is it because the leaders of the Executive Committee at the time had judged that the situation in the Ming Dynasty was about to deteriorate and seized the opportunity? Seize this opportunity to intervene proactively. The second reason is that Haihan did not have personnel stationed in Miaoli, Taiwan at that time, so why did it suddenly send an entire engineering team to the local area to explore and successfully find the oil field, which was used as fuel to drive the advent of the subsequent internal combustion engine.
However, like many other unsolved mysteries in the history of Haihan, there is no generally accepted reasonable answer to these two doubts. Most historians can only understand them as the prediction talent possessed by the first generation of Haihan elders. This talent whose authenticity cannot be confirmed allowed Haihan State to develop at an unimaginable speed in the early decades of its establishment, leaving its contemporaries far behind.
However, the time travelers at this time have no time to consider the opinions and questions of future generations. They just want to end the meeting early and go home to have a good rest. For the heads of these departments, although they do enjoy superior power in their daily work and life, the level of hard work they put in at work is indeed not comparable to that of ordinary people. This founding celebration is both a great honor and an extremely hard time for these travelers who hold high-level management positions in Haihan Kingdom, and many of them will go on missions far away after the celebration. Here Every minute I spent with my family was even more precious.
(End of chapter)