Chapter 189 Iron and Steel Ambition 1
Chapter 189 Iron and Steel Ambition 1
Although it was nearing the end of the year, Paul Greiman did not intend to be idle.
After many discussions with the Council of State, he finally decided to launch the “heavy industry” field.
Must hurry in the kingdom before the civil war situation is clear to make a big profit, the next spring the kingdom’s army will be south to quell the chaos, to quickly take this potential big customer, heavenly father bless them to fight a little longer.
Paper, cans, ceramics is just a small means to solve the lack of funds in the early stage, undeniable invention such as papermaking has a very significant significance to the course of history, but the real measure of a country’s hard power for a long time the most important indicator is still the production of iron and steel.
Even if the development of the information age before the crossing, steel production is also an important reference data of the comprehensive national strength.
Of course, you have to raise the iron production first, with this foundation to go to improve the production of steel.
Before starting his own “iron and steel ambition”, Paul first of all need to do some research on this world’s smelting technology. In and Herman and other blacksmiths masters exchanged some, combined with some of his past life knowledge, he has a more intuitive understanding of the current smelting technology.
Although Herman and the other blacksmiths mastered the skill of making iron tools, they were also familiar with how to refine iron.
The current iron smelting technology adopted by all countries in the world was the block iron smelting technology, and the specific process was as follows:
First build a good iron furnace, and then the iron ore and charcoal into the furnace ignited roasting, in the case of insufficient oxygen supply to produce a large number of hot carbon monoxide, take away the iron ore (iron oxide) in the oxygen, and finally left behind is to be reduced to solid cooked iron.
The trouble was that the furnace had to be dismantled at the end of each ironmaking session because it was impossible to get the solid cooked iron out through the furnace body.
Moreover, the solid cooked iron taken out was only soft and loose sponge iron, because it had not been melted and contained all the impurities in the iron ore, so it had to be repeatedly forged to remove the pores and impurities before it could become a usable metal material, the iron ingot.
The process is quite troublesome ah, Paul sighed, looks like tightly through the expansion of the production scale is not able to achieve their expected output, and their own territory is still relatively short of manpower, must upgrade the current iron refining technology.
He intended to use blast furnace to make iron, but after carefully combing through the relevant technology tree, he realized that this thing can’t be made all at once.
First of all, the fuel aspect, the current fuel used for iron making was mainly charcoal, but once mass production started, using charcoal would be a bit of a loser, and it was quite expensive in terms of cost.
Cutting down a large number of trees to make charcoal was something Paul didn’t want to see. Even if we don’t talk about the environmental protection aspect – it’s still too early to talk about that – wood is also an important production material for many other industries.
There had been attempts to replace charcoal with coal – a fuel that was only used in a few places at the moment – but the sulfur contained in the coal briquettes caused the hot brittleness of pig iron, which was called sulphurous iron, and was so weak that it could not be used at all.
The only fuel that could replace charcoal, cheaply and in sufficient quantities, was coke – desulphurized coal with a high carbon content, pure carbon, which could be used for making iron, although it still contained about 0.to 1 percent sulfur.
In that case, he still had to build facilities to produce coke first, and to produce coke, he had to increase the amount of coal mining, although this thing was not yet widely used around the world, but the good thing was that the Northwest Bay had finally gone to the forefront of the world this time, and the use of coal as a fuel had been popularized here.
But even if the fuel problem is solved, there is still the problem of insufficient wind power. The traditional wooden blower and leather blower can’t meet the wind requirement of coke combustion, because the gap of coke is much smaller than that of charcoal, so higher wind speed must be used, and it is impossible to make qualified and stable wind speed with the existing blower and manpower and animal power alone. So also have to make a piston blower, power at the current stage can be driven by a waterwheel, so that you can barely use coke ironmaking. Even so, can only meet the small ironmaking blast furnace, for large blast furnace, so the wind power is still too small. To meet the wind power requirements of large blast furnaces, it will have to wait for the invention of the steam engine, which is a very distant thing.
Now can only use small blast furnace ironmaking, step by step.
As for the more efficient blower and the matching hydraulic drive system, it would be left to the gang of Qi Mechanics recruited from the King’s Capital, also starting from the simpler ones, he already had a preliminary plan.
……
Within a few days, an earthen cellar for coking was built near a coal mine in the territory of Arda.
The coal that was dug out from the coal mine was sent directly to this place, waiting to be smelted into coke.
This was an open-air earth cellar, and first an earth pit more than one meter deep and about eight meters in diameter was dug manually on the ground, surrounded by stones or earth masonry height, the depth of the pit and the height of the masonry added up to a height of roughly more than 2.5 meters.
Dozens of workers were busy around this earth cellar.
They first built two layers of flue, the first layer of the flue is built in the center of the kiln with lump coal, around the flue to load coal, these coals are powdered coal. The coal was loaded to a certain height, stepped on and flattened, and then the second layer of flue was built. This layer of flue is more complicated than the first layer, there is a center, around the center with a mess of stones built into a width of 0.67 m, 0.17 m high plane flue 16 or 18, each flue is connected to the center.
Then a second addition of coal, with powdered coal to cover all the flue all the way, up to half a meter thick. At this point the fire is started, the easy-to-burn pieces of wood are ignited and thrown into the center flue falling to the bottom flue, where the coals burn and the pulverized coal burns. When burning to the second layer of the center flue, put into the wood chips to help combustion.
Then came the third addition of coal, still pulverized coal, to a thickness of 0.83 meters. In burning, the center flue collapses, and the flame is spit out to the outside from the small flue, and the more it burns, the more it will come through to the outside from the center.
The fire to this, the workers a busy, running to the stone or brick broken pieces around the kiln. When the flame through the brick outside, the flame has blue smoke, that is, into the coke signs, and a busy, dozens of people in some people immediately plug the hole, some people are busy with the sand cover the soil, sand and soil cover, the crowd is busy spraying water.
Waiting for cooling and then take it out, the process of coking is completed.
Paul temporarily adopted a relatively primitive and simple method of producing coke, until it can really use it to practice his iron to improve the process is not too late.
According to the actual test, now this earth cellar, can be two cellars per day, the daily output of coke one and a half tons.
Of course, when the blast furnace ironmaking officially starts in the future, it is definitely necessary to continue to build more earthen cellars, or directly use the new production process.
(End of this chapter)