Chapter 189 Iron Ambition 1
Although it is the end of the year, Paul Graman does not intend to be idle.
After many discussions with the State Council, he finally decided to launch an attack on the "heavy industry" field.
He must make a fortune before the situation of the civil war in the kingdom becomes clear. The kingdom's army will go south to quell the rebellion next spring. He must quickly take down this potential big customer. God bless them to fight longer.
Papermaking, canned food, and ceramics are just small means to solve the problem of insufficient funds in the early stage. It is undeniable that the invention of papermaking has a very important significance to the course of history, but the most important indicator for truly measuring a country's hard power for a long time is steel production.
Even in the information age before the time travel, steel production is an important reference data for comprehensive national strength.
Of course, iron production must be increased first, and only with this foundation can steel production be increased.
Before starting his "Ambition of Steel", Paul must first conduct an investigation and research on the smelting technology of this world. After communicating with blacksmith masters such as Herman, combined with some knowledge from his previous life, he has a more intuitive understanding of the current smelting technology.
Although Herman and other blacksmiths mastered the skills of making iron tools, they were also familiar with how to smelt iron.
The iron-making technology currently used by countries around the world is block iron-making technology, and the specific process is:
First, build an iron-making furnace, then put iron ore and charcoal into the furnace and ignite and roast. In the case of insufficient oxygen supply, a large amount of hot carbon monoxide is produced, which takes away the oxygen in the iron ore (iron oxide), and what is left is the reduced solid wrought iron.
The more troublesome thing is that since solid wrought iron cannot be taken out through the furnace body, the iron-making furnace must be dismantled every time the iron-making is finished.
Moreover, the solid wrought iron taken out is only 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 pores and impurities before it can become a usable metal material-iron ingots.
The process is quite troublesome, Paul sighed, it seems that it is impossible to achieve the expected output by simply expanding the scale of production, and his territory is still relatively short of manpower, so the current iron-making technology must be upgraded.
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 made all at once.
First of all, in terms of fuel, the current fuel used for iron smelting is mainly charcoal, but once large-scale production begins, using charcoal is a bit wasteful and the cost is quite expensive.
Paul does not want to see a large number of trees cut down to make charcoal. Even if we don’t talk about environmental protection issues - it’s too early to talk about this now, wood is also an important production material for many other industries.
Some people have tried to use coal - this fuel is currently only used in a few places - to replace charcoal, but the sulfur contained in the coal blocks will cause hot brittleness of pig iron, making it impossible to forge and shape. This kind of iron is called sulfur iron, which is very weak and cannot be used at all.
The only fuel that can replace charcoal and is both cheap and sufficient is coke - desulfurized coal has a high carbon content and is pure carbon. Although it still contains about 0.% to 1% sulfur, it can still be used for iron smelting.
So he has to build facilities to produce coke first, and to produce coke he has to increase the amount of coal mined. Although this thing has not been widely used all over the world, fortunately Northwest Bay has finally come to the forefront of the world this time, and the use of coal as fuel has become popular here.
But even if the fuel problem is solved, there is still the problem of insufficient wind power. Traditional wooden blowers and leather blowers cannot meet the wind force requirements for coke combustion, because the gaps in coke are much smaller than charcoal, so a higher wind speed must be used. Existing blowers and human and animal power alone cannot produce qualified and long-lasting stable wind speeds.
So a piston blower must be made, and the power can be driven by a waterwheel at the current stage, so that coke can be barely used for ironmaking. Even so, it can only meet the needs of small ironmaking blast furnaces. For large blast furnaces, the wind force generated in this way is still too small. To meet the wind force requirements of large blast furnaces, we can only wait until the steam engine is invented, which is a very distant thing.
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, they were handed over to the group of strange machine masters recruited from the capital. He also started from a relatively simple one, and he already had a preliminary plan.
...
Within a few days, a pit for coking was built near a coal mine in Arda.
The coal dug out from the coal mine was directly sent here, waiting to be refined into coke.
This is an open-air pit. First, a pit with a depth of more than one meter and a diameter of about eight meters was dug on the ground by hand, and the surrounding area was raised with stones or earth. The depth of the pit and the height of the masonry were added together, and the height was about more than 2.5 meters.
Dozens of workers were busy around this pit.
They first built two layers of flues. The first layer of the flue was built with coal blocks in the center of the kiln, and coal was loaded around the flue. These coals were all pulverized coal. When it was loaded to a certain height, the coal was stepped on and compacted, and then the second layer of the flue was built. The flues on this level are more complex than those on the first level. There is a center, and around the center, 16 or 18 flat flues 0.67 meters wide and 0.17 meters high are built with rubble. Each flue is connected to the center.
Then add coal for the second time, and use pulverized coal to cover all the flues, up to half a meter thick. At this time, start ignition, ignite the easily flammable wood chips and throw them into the center flue to the bottom flue, the coal blocks burn, and the pulverized coal burns. When it burns to the center flue of the second layer, throw in wood chips to help combustion.
Then add coal for the third time, still pulverized coal, with a thickness of 0.83 meters. During the burning, the center flue collapses, and the flame spits out from the small flue to the outside. The more it burns, the more it will penetrate from the center to the outside.
No mistakes, one post, one content, one 6, one 9, one book, one bar, one look!
At this point, the workers are busy, running around to surround the kiln with stones or brick and tile fragments. When the flame penetrates the bricks and the flame has blue smoke, it is a sign of coking, and it is busy again. Some of the dozens of people immediately blocked the hole, and some were busy raising sand and covering the soil. After the sand and soil were covered, everyone was busy spraying water.
After cooling, take it out and the coking process is completed.
Paul temporarily uses a relatively primitive and simple method to make coke. It is not too late to improve the process when it can really be used to make iron.
According to actual tests, the current earth pit can produce two pits per day, and produce one and a half tons of coke per day.
Of course, when blast furnace ironmaking officially starts in the future, more earth pits must be built, or new production processes must be used directly.