Lu Ming

In the eyes of the bright furnace workers in the workshop, the set of iron objects that the masters took half a month to build is not like an iron furnace, but like a monster.

However, in the eyes of the industrial people in the workshop, this electric furnace is an out-and-out treasure, a sexy lady exuding industrial beauty.

……

Naturally, it is not ordinary people who can manipulate young ladies.

Chen Jingtai, 33 years old, thin and capable, former manager of Yonghengli Metal Processing Company.The company specializes in producing all kinds of ground strip steel, accepting various orders, and processing profiles. Today he stands here, and he is definitely a professional counterpart.

But Chen Jingtai knew very well that if he dared to use this Swedish electric furnace to smelt a furnace of ground steel for everyone today...he would definitely be thrown into the furnace while it was still hot. There is no police in this damn place!

To put it bluntly, the Yongli Company founded by Manager Chen was a small private processing factory, specializing in providing low-quality steel strips to the market.The quality of Eternal Lee’s ground strip steel is still good. Others’ steel ingots will break when dropped from a height of one meter, while Eternal Lee’s steel ingots will only break after three meters, so they are more confusing and often get away with it.

Whenever the rumors from above got tighter, Chen Jingtai would close the store and close the business, and reopened after the rumors passed, and the small life was very enjoyable, until the regulation storm came and Manager Chen was destroyed by the joint investigation team.

Now in the 17th century, Comrade Chen Jingtai actually saw a complete set of electric furnace system produced in Sweden in such a barren land, and then looked at the furnace laboratory full of equipment in the corner of the workshop. I can't help but feel a little embarrassed.

You know, in his factory back then, apart from the two intermediate frequency furnaces, the rest were ground ditches and scrap steel, not to mention laboratory equipment, even the intermediate frequency furnaces were portable, the kind that could be loaded onto a truck before a major inspection. .

Alas, recalling the glorious past... Chen Jingtai came back to his senses after sighing lightly, looked at his watch, then stepped forward, drove all the cross-travelers who came to visit in the workshop to a safe place, and ordered everyone to wear Put on the goggles.After that, he personally checked the furnace material and all the power links that had been piled up, and greeted the cross-border people and Ming furnace workers from several steel factories to check their full-body protective equipment.

Chen Jingtai has to be careful. The full name of the electric furnace in front of him is "3-ton DC electric arc furnace". It is not the gentle intermediate frequency furnace in his factory; Human life, so have to be careful.

Chapter 140 Steelmaking

The round hearth has been filled with charge.For the iron quality of the Ming Dynasty, the lining of this electric furnace is alkaline. The bottom of the furnace is covered with a layer of lime, and above the lime layer is a layer of iron oxide and charcoal powder, and above that is some pig iron accumulated in the base during the past few days. Ingots and a small amount of wrought iron - the ship from Hangzhou is still on the way, and this is the only two and a half tons of pig iron.

Unlike open hearth and blast furnaces, which once turned on must be kept running, day and night.The advantage of the electric furnace is here: start and stop at any time, continuous smelting if there is material, but if there is no material... go home to play with your wife after get off work.

This is currently the most suitable steelmaking method for raw materials in the kiln area. The only disadvantage is that it consumes a lot of energy.

……

Following Chen Jingtai's order, Zou Guoqing, the guest operator in the control room, pressed the button with a smile on his face.At this time, a black graphite electrode column on the top of the electric furnace slowly fell down. After the electrode was inserted into the furnace, it immediately produced a violent arc reaction with the bottom electrode, and the smelting began.

First, there was regular, bright light coming out of the gap in the furnace cover, and then as the electrode column deepened, the arc increased, the temperature rose sharply, and the light began to become intense. It becomes like a disco, with bright and dark flickering.Soon, the pig iron began to melt into a liquid. At this time, with the flickering of the arc, fiery red iron slag sprayed out from the gap, and billowing smoke and hot wind also came out of the furnace at the same time.

Booming, flashing, thick smoke, fire rain... At this moment in the furnace, it seems that there is a low-quality ghost film crew in action, and the sound and light effects are perfect.

Seeing that the smoke collection system above his head started to work normally, Chen Jingtai heaved a sigh of relief. Up to now, the melting period has passed safely, and everything in the system is operating normally.Looking back at the Xikes standing outside the security line, he found that there were still a few old men who had never been in the industry whose faces were a little pale. Chen Jingtai grinned slightly—this kind of DC electric furnace with a rectifier is already considered a movement It's very small and very advanced. I think the old-fashioned AC electric stove when I was an apprentice was called ferocious.

As the solid in the furnace was completely transformed into liquid, Chen Jingtai commanded the control room to adjust the depth of the electrode column insertion. When the molten steel in the furnace was rolling smoothly, the lime in the previous charge had fully reacted with the pig iron. scum.

The slag discharge will discharge part of sulfur and phosphorus, and the crane above the head moves slowly at this time, a bright yellow suspender with a steel claw slides above the electric furnace—the slag scraper.The steel claws easily scoop up the waste slag floating on the molten steel in the violent smoke dust and splashing molten steel, and the whole process does not require human operation.

The dispensable plug-in of the slag extractor was imported by Chen Jingtai: a completely inexperienced furnace worker from Chuanzhong and Mingren ran to the front of the furnace to extract slag every day in the environment of high-temperature flue gas and steel slag spray... This extremely dangerous job is completely unsuitable for the current situation. Every traversing and Ming furnace worker is extremely precious. If we don’t import slag scrapers now, we have to import them if there are too many people waiting to die.

……

After the slag is discharged, the environment in the furnace enters the next stage from the melting stage: the oxidation stage. The purpose of this stage is mainly to remove phosphorus and decarburization.

Theoretically, it is necessary to blow oxygen into the furnace at this time - it can not only decarburize, but also accelerate the reaction in the furnace, and the violent carbon and oxygen bubbles float up, which can bring up all the waste slag, which can serve multiple purposes.But, there is no pure oxygen in the time travellers. After Chen Jingtai added a little lime into the furnace, he waited for the furnace to react by itself... This is equivalent to avoiding some processes with the consumption of electric energy.

After 40 minutes of starting the furnace, he got the results of the on-site test and found that the phosphorus content of the molten steel had reached the requirements, so he ordered the second slag extraction, and then closed all the outlets, and the furnace entered the next stage: the reduction period.

The reduction period is also unique to electric furnaces, which is different from traditional steelmaking furnaces such as blast furnace converters. The purpose of this stage is deoxidation and desulfurization.

At present, the kiln area base lacks various minerals and metals, and temporarily cannot produce qualified deoxidizers such as silicon-aluminum powder, so this first furnace of steel is still using imported composite deoxidizers, which can deoxidize and desulfurize very well.During the final reduction period in the furnace, Chen Jingtai added 3 kg of deoxidizer and some lime, and then continued to wait for the reaction in the furnace.

At this time, it is basically considered a success—one hour and 15 minutes after the electrodes were activated, the first furnace of molten steel in the crossover was officially ready to be released.

This speed is already very slow: it only takes 25 minutes for a large-scale quantum electric arc furnace to produce a furnace of molten steel.However, because many conditions are not met here, the only way to ensure product quality is to extend the time and increase power consumption. There is no way to delay it for an hour.

……

After reading the second test report, Chen Jingtai officially ordered the steel to be tapped: the most important phosphorus and sulfur content in the molten steel has passed the standard, other trace elements are a bit excessive, and the carbon content of the entire furnace of molten steel is between low-carbon and medium-carbon steel ...But it's not important, it's just a small flaw, as long as the phosphorus and sulfur hazards are in place, the rest can be solved by adjusting the process later.

The graphite electrode column that has turned red slowly rises, and then the control room begins to manipulate the ladle on the slide rail to move forward. The next moment, the ladle lined with refractory bricks is in place, and the molten steel is officially released.If it is continuous smelting, then a part of the molten steel should be left in the furnace, but today is a test version, and the poor ghosts don't have extra pig iron ingots, so today is this furnace.

When the electric furnace is tilted 15 degrees by the hydraulic system, the eccentric bottom outlet begins to flow out molten steel and inject it into the ladle - here is a set of technology trees that can be lighted up: high-end refining outside the furnace.

The so-called out-of-furnace refining, simply put, is to inject oxygen or inert gas into the ladle, and then perform the above-mentioned various impurity removal processes selectively, so as to achieve the purpose of purifying molten steel and adjusting the content of elements... basically The more powerful alloy steel types have to pass this level.

Of course, the time-travelers don't need to do this.

As long as the process is adjusted properly, the molten steel coming out of the electric arc furnace in front of me can completely meet the standard of carbon steel in the future.Low-carbon steel is used to make reinforced steel plates, high-carbon steel is used to make tools and gun barrels, and stainless steel will be added at most in the future. This is enough to travel through the world and use it to death. There is no need to order extra technology trees.

After the ladle is filled with three-quarters of boiling molten steel, it starts to move forward along the slide rail: a row of molds made of molding sand have already been prepared, and this moment is waiting.At this time, the trembling Ming Furnace Worker stepped forward, and according to the operation procedure during the training, he slowly shook the runner next to the ladle. At this time, the ladle was slightly tilted, and the molten steel flowed into the batch of molds along the chute in the next moment.

Chapter 141 The Farm

Watching the hot molten steel in front of him gradually cool down into steel ingots, Chen Jingtai fell into a trance again: Is this really the 17th century?High-quality electric furnace, molten steel that has repeatedly removed impurities, advanced furnace testing, beautiful sand molds...all these should appear in the 21st century!

And the broken factory that I was demolished in the 21st century is suitable for this barren land-the smelting process without any quality control, the migrant workers carrying the crucible and pouring molten steel into the trench in the open air, after hot rolling because there are too many impurities , had to use a welding torch to repair the hole in the steel plate...

……

Shaking his head back to reality, Chen Jingtai began to think about the future while accepting congratulations from various guests.Although the first batch of molten steel has been successfully released, there are still many areas that the steel plant needs to improve: the flue gas preheating furnace charge system is necessary, and the steel rolling system is also necessary. Tinplate, after that, of course, is the machine tool, and after the machine tool, the stamping machine...the children and grandchildren are endless.

Another important point is: to pay close attention to self-production including various steelmaking additives, ladles, and consumables such as electrodes and cables. This is the top priority for steel mills to survive.

Traveling through the crowd is equivalent to forcibly lighting up a node in the middle of the steel technology tree. However, the time for this node to be lit is limited. The rest of the nodes must be opened up as soon as possible to avoid stopping production due to consumables.

As the current time-traveling forces are spreading more and more stalls in the big staff, almost all aspects of production, life, military and medical care need imported materials to support consumption; The self-production rate of basic consumables will increase, otherwise, the imported material boxes will sooner or later evolve into consumable supplementary boxes, and the pace of development of the entire system will stagnate.

……

After the first furnace of steel ingots was successfully produced, it immediately received the treatment of the top post of the forum, and almost all departments congratulated it under the post.

And Chen Jingtai, who has swelled into a dog, also proudly listed a long list of imported equipment designated by his old man under the post: hot rolling line, cold rolling line, various supporting smelting equipment, various joint processing centers, various Models of CNC turning, planing, milling and grinding machines, various...

The old and young men were still in Pleasant Goat one moment, and knelt down the next moment.

Faced with the situation of quarreling, the big office finally came forward to explain after comprehensively analyzing the situation: currently there is not so much steel for rolling.Because for some time to come, most of the raw and wrought iron shipped from Hangzhou does not need to be smelted into steel, and only the refined cast iron after secondary refining is enough.

Cast iron is actually used for most of the expensive parts such as the skeleton of a ship, the base of various industrial equipment, and the shell, so the steel rolling line still has to wait.At present, there is no need for these equipments at all for the import of pig iron. The next step for steel mills is to build their own iron furnaces, and then import a few supporting machine tools and heat auxiliary pipes.

So when do you get on the device?It depends on the progress of the shipyard.

The strategic attitude of the generals is currently shrinking, because the traversing crowd does not have a fist that can be used - the fleet, the indigenous crew, the self-made guns, ammunition and artillery that can be used in unlimited quantities, these necessary conditions for offense are now all Not close hands.

Only when a fleet is formed, and it is a Chinese-style fleet similar in appearance to Guangzhou Shipyard and Fuchuan, can the navy cost-effectively send a pilot ship to lead the fleet through many obstacles, dock at Guangzhou or Fuzhou wharf, and find a way to buy bulk commodities—— "Population", grain, raw and wrought iron, iron ore.

Therefore, before the shipyard explodes the fleet, or before the problem of Zheng Zhilong is dealt with, the staff can only passively receive external resources.

... After Chen Jingtai's lion opened his mouth and was blocked back, the people who eat melons were almost relieved. If this guy succeeds, at least in the first half of this year, everyone will have to watch him alone. This can't be tolerated, importing supplies , everyone has a share is the kingly way...

……

Liang Letian and Mi Shuo were sitting on the tricycle, one was smoking silently, the other was fanning the wind with a bamboo hat, looking very leisurely.

There are currently 4 electric tricycles in total, two from the infrastructure department, one from the kiln base, and one from the farm department.

Liang Letian and Mi Shuo are the current big and small kings of the Farm Department.

The Farm Department currently has no farms.

Since passing through the occupying officers, Liang Letian and the others who engage in agriculture have basically been invisible.There is no way, all the land is in a wild state, with savages running and flying mosquitoes floating on it, which cannot be handled by farmers with hoes.

Liang Letian and the others are known as the Farm Department, but in fact they have never had a farm for them to cultivate. Since they took over the leadership, they have basically no sense of existence. The most common job is to eat grass, cough...plant grass.

Idle is also idle... Starting from the Chikan area, after many barren grasslands were burned, Liang Letian and the others directed their agricultural workers to repair the salted land, and then sowed salty grass seeds on the spot.

The seeds are bought from Hangzhou - salty grass is a kind of rush grass, which is resistant to salt and alkali, has good elasticity, strong tensile strength, and bright colors. It is an excellent grass for straw mats and sandals. During the Japanese occupation period in Taiwan, Beitou Rush is a well-known specialty.

The Tainan Plain is an alluvial plain. In the 17th century, nearly one-third of the coastal land was saline soil. The beautiful Tainan farms like a green carpet in later generations are all after large-scale land transformation. results.

Liang Letian and the others have neither the ability nor the mood to carry out any salt-altered land transformation.The arable land area of ​​the Tainan Plain in later generations is 3200 square kilometers. For the poor size of the crossing people, it is like a mouse falling into a rice jar. Trouble on the ground.

So we can just plant a little grass and pull it down.

Later, with the expansion of the Chikan New District, they opened experimental fields outside the new district and planted some vegetables and some salt-alkali-tolerant crops—sweet sorghum and alfalfa.

This half-dead situation lasted until the Tainan Suppression General settled the Madou Club.The bosses in the big office, who have long been restless about the current agricultural development situation, have been meeting with Liang Letian and Mi Shuo continuously these days, asking the two former agricultural technicians to act quickly to solve the serious problem of grain outsourcing for the regime as soon as possible.

Liang Mi and the others extorted an electric tricycle from the big office today, and then ordered a German Fendt electric tractor.

"Do you still want to produce your own food?" Pooh, what about nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, pesticides, and improved seeds?

The two of them left the door of the business hall, and while riding a three-wheeler for a ride, they raised their middle fingers and scolded the ignorant princes of the court.As soon as he spoke, he ran to the wharf, yelling at people to carry the tricycle into a small boat, then crossed the Taijiang River, set off from Chikan, and drove all the way to the Yaoqu base. Drive past and head straight to the other side.

... Yes, the farm newly selected by the Farm Department a few days ago is on the other side of the Xingang River, across the river from the Kiln District.

Chapter 142 What is good

The site selection conditions for the farm are actually very simple: no salty land along the coast, nor land close to the central mountain range: either solid rock or rocky rock under the topsoil.Therefore, the slightly acidic alluvial land in the middle of the plain, which is barely considered fertile, is the first choice.

Considering the vital power supply, the address is naturally ready to be revealed: on the other side of the kiln area, a little upstream.

The location of the new farm is very close to the kiln area. As long as a power line is pulled over, the problems of raising water for irrigation and charging equipment can be solved. Of course, there is another prerequisite for irrigation, which is to repair the water conservancy.

Liang Letian only planned 200 mu of land for the farm at the beginning, because he was worried about water conservancy issues.The land of the farm is located a little upstream of the kiln area, and a tributary of the Xingang River flows through the periphery, which is just used for irrigation, and there is no need to worry about the industrial sewage in the kiln area.

However, the Daxi River in Tainan has a violent period of 3 months every year. The water volume in the summer flood period and the winter trickle period is very different, so Liang Letian dare not take it lightly. He allocated 300 of the 200 warriors. Nowadays, this tributary is being refurbished - clearing, digging, building water storage stations along the way, and irrigation of various diversion channels...

There is no vegetation to be seen around the farm now. Adhering to the usual style of travelling, the local people who worked in the Madou Club started a large-scale expansion of the "rotten land" campaign on the other side of the Xingang River.

The remaining 100 people on the farm have basically cleared 200 acres of land these days: the forest was cut down and sent to the opposite bank, all the roots and rocks in the field were dug out, and the rest of the low vegetation was all felled and exposed to the sun. A few days later, it was burned to ashes and then sprinkled into the soil as fertilizer.

When Liang Letian and the others came to the farm in electric tricycles, the first flood irrigation after leveling was being carried out, and the water pumps were continuously pumping water into the newly built ditches.The newly opened land does not consider the yield at all, especially now that there is no fertilizer and pesticide, the first task now is weeding.

After the first flood irrigation, within a few days, the grass seeds catalyzed by the heat will emerge when the ground is burned. At that time, the big office promised Liang Letian that their electric tractors are expected to arrive, just in time for plowing, and will The new grass is killed in the ground.

Then continue flooding and plowing... This unpretentious, brutal, but effective work that does not require pesticides will be repeated one or two times depending on the situation, until the number of weeds that are trapped is reduced to a tolerable level.

The next step is to plant the seeds.

Taiwan's climate is warm all year round, Taipei is warm and humid, and Tainan is dry and warm.Even in the Little Ice Age, the coldest winter climate in Tainan never fell below 15°C; so common grains can now be sown.

Of course, the people across the world will not grow rice in the foreseeable long period of time.

Rice is a kind of stuff that needs high input to produce high output.With good seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides in place, it is not a dream to produce 1500 jin per mu; if you have good farming facilities and import some super hybrids from the druids of later generations, it is also possible to produce [-] jin per mu.

Of course, the hybrids don’t taste good, but that’s not important—the Chikan people who smile when they see greasy meat don’t care about the taste of rice.

Cough, the above is all a dream.

Good seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides are not available in the cross-country at present, so the rich and handsome rice is not handsome, just like the rich second generation who left the luxury car, the beauty and the father. One hundred catties, Liang Letian probably will burn incense.

Therefore, honestly planting some soybeans first to explore the way is the kingly way.

Soybean belongs to the small flower with its own flow - natural nitrogen fixation, so in the eyes of the impoverished Liang Letian, soybean is the best pioneer.

First plant a season of soybeans, which will definitely require crazy manual weeding N times, and then after finding out the local soil, fertilizer and climate conditions, the farm will then launch potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. Three kinds of explosive population killers, combined with various seafood side effects Food, this is the correct route to solve food self-sufficiency across the regime.

As for rice... As long as Hangzhou is still the water transportation terminal, the rice for the officials and gentlemen is not a problem. Isn’t there Taicang Bailiang, the emperor loves to eat it, and there is one of the officials here, wandering around every day, Arrogant and extravagant, I don't look like a gentleman.

Of course, there is another important reason for not growing rice: malaria.

……

Here we want to focus on the cruelty of malaria.

Malaria originated in Africa and is a severe infectious disease transmitted by mosquitoes. It is commonly known as pendulum, fever, and cold fever. In the 17th century, malaria was a terminal illness.

Smallpox, plague, and malaria are the same level of killers, but malaria is more durable than the former—after smallpox has long been extinct, malaria still infects more than 2 million people, and more than 100 million people die directly and indirectly from malaria every year .

Europeans began to immigrate as early as the 15th century after discovering America, but no one cares about Africa, which is close at hand-malaria.

Until 1870, Europeans controlled less than 10% of the African land, and the vast interior of Africa could not go deep - malaria.

After the Aryans who came running from the sand pile conquered India, they defined the dark-skinned aborigines as "untouchables" - malaria.

Therefore, malaria, like smallpox plague, is a disease that has been profoundly affecting the course of human history.

During tens of millions of years of confrontation, human beings were forced to evolve biological weapons such as thalassemia and multiple births to resist malaria: twins in the African indigenous areas of later generations have a much higher probability of multiple births than other populations.

A small number of Banda slaves can live for a longer period of time in the terrifying logging environment of the big officials, because they are mildly anemic and are genetic carriers of thalassemia: thalassemia originated in Africa, and has been distributed along tropical South Asia to In the hot and humid areas of Fujian and Guangdong, this is consistent with the map of malaria transmission. There are 3000 million carriers of the thalassemia gene in later generations.

However, these passive resistances are not the solution after all. Mutant genes with huge side effects such as thalassemia can only ensure that about one percent of mildly ill individuals live to the age of leaving offspring, so that the population will not be wiped out.As for the wildly contagious malaria, in the 17th century, it was still the culprit that killed a large number of indigenous people in the tropics efficiently. It is not without reason that Europeans did not approach the interior of Africa until they discovered the bark of the cinchona tree.

……

Travelers are too aware of the power of malaria.

Since the day of the occupation of Dayuan, burning vegetation, burying stagnant water, and building drainage systems are necessary prerequisites for territorial expansion, and they have never changed.

Prevention is more important than cure, everyone knows this, besides, the cross-travelers will not use medicine to treat indigenous malaria.

There is a big ethical issue here: Who should be treated or not?

Medicines are limited, and the number of people who will be sent to senior officials will increase geometrically in the future. Once malaria prevention and treatment is not done well, there will be many sick people waiting there, can they be cured?