Lu Ming

Chapter 608 Crowley's Fantasy Journey ([-])

During the construction span of three years, the original Zengcheng Cement Plant and today's "Model Cement Plant" project have been full of twists and turns.

In fact, at the beginning, Zengcheng Cement Plant was not considered a standout compared to a red-headed document with a magnificent content of "General Planning of Industrial Layout in the Greater Guangzhou Area", it was just a basic building materials factory.

However, with the rapid development of the construction of the new district in 1631, and the relocation of a large number of industrial and commercial enterprises from Tainan to Guangzhou, the decision-makers suddenly discovered one thing: the pace of infrastructure construction in the previous plan was a little smaller, and the production speed of building materials did not keep up. Social progress has led to a hot development situation encountering a bottleneck.

After discovering the problem, the cabinet made urgent adjustments to the previous industrial layout, changing the investment direction of some resources, and a group of building material manufacturers urgently launched projects.

In this process, Zengcheng Cement Plant, which had already been half-built, was suitable for expansion due to the completion of the preliminary work, so it changed from an ordinary building materials enterprise to a key enterprise supported by the Ministry of Industry.

Now the grass chicken has become a rooster.

The vertical kiln cement production line originally designed by Zengcheng Cement Plant has been transformed into an advanced wet rotary kiln production line.

The originally planned annual output has also been increased from 5000 tons at the village-run cement plant to 3 tons at the county level.

If the main production line is changed, the supporting auxiliary equipment must also be changed.This time, the overall scale of the entire factory has increased a lot in terms of land occupation, equipment and investment.Then, due to the increase in the total investment, the Ministry of Commerce introduced some indigenous shareholders to join the project.

In the end, even the name of the upgraded Zengcheng Cement Factory was changed, and the black-lacquered mahogany brand at the gate became the "Zengcheng Model Cement Factory".

Construction started in the second half of 1630, and it is planned to be put into production in the second half of 1631.As a result, I went through the toss of changing muscles and bones in the middle, and the time cost went up all at once.

In the end, when the expansion of the model cement factory was completed, the machinery and equipment were fully debugged, and the trial production test passed, the time was dragged abruptly to the beginning of 1632, which spanned three years.

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Master Bai Shenbai was wearing a beige suit, holding a civilized stick, wearing a tulle sandal hat, and leather sandals on his feet. He was dressed like an enlightened gentleman.

At this moment, Bai Juren, with a blushing face and laughter, was busy with other shareholders, receiving people from three mountains and five mountains who came to participate in the groundbreaking ceremony.

Undoubtedly, today is the only big day in the first half of Master Bai's life that can be compared with that of the middle school.

After once again appeasing a group of businessmen who were scared by the appearance of the cement factory, this time they were foreign businessmen, Mr. Bai greeted the guests under the specially set up ceremony shed with a smile, and then called out to the servants at home to help , Serve the guests some soothing tea, don't neglect these red-haired and blue-eyed Westerners.

As an enlightened gentry, Master Bai still knows the details of foreign businessmen.

As early as when he was young, he went to Guangzhou to rush for the exam, and he had seen Frangji.After that, Master Bai expanded his business channels. Every few years, as long as the seasons met, he would always meet Fu Langji in Guangzhou.

Afterwards, Master Bai took refuge in Marshal Cao, and the information channels became more extensive and comprehensive.Master Bai now has a good understanding of the word "Europe". He is one of the few enlightened people in this era who can clearly explain the relationship between Portugal and Spain, including geographical and political relations.

Giving followers some refined and advanced information is the unique wealth of the traversing forces.What's more, for people of Master Bai's class, the value of important information far exceeds that little money.

So, in the end, Crowley and the others were housed in a pergola in the cement factory compound.

Master Bai, who had worked hard for a long time, finally turned around and straightened up, took out a cotton handkerchief with machine-made plaid, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and took a sip of his favorite stir-fried greens.

While sipping tea, Master Bai stared at the iron hill of the cement plant, and once again expressed his heartfelt emotion: "It's so magnificent!"

Today Master Bai of Zengcheng will not despise those "country bumpkins" who lose their composure, no matter whether the bumpkins are from Guangzhou or foreign countries.Because even though he watched the cement plant being built from scratch with his own eyes, every time he came here, his heart still surged.

The sun was almost at the top of the head.At this time, the ordinary guests had already arrived, and it was time for the boss to come forward.

Sure enough, not long after, the traversers headed by the head of the new district, Ding Liqiu, walked into the factory gate surrounded by a large number of guards.

Since the Zengcheng Model Cement Factory is now a key enterprise, there are more travelers who come here today.Not only government departments, but also industry, urban construction and other departments have come.

The person responsible for welcoming the bosses is the acting factory manager, the time traveler Hou Jun.

This gentleman majored in engineering automation before time travel, which was not needed in the [-]th century, so he was sent to the kiln area for secondary employment from the very beginning. The group is responsible for "high-tech applications" such as brick kiln drying kilns on a daily basis.

Later, the group of four also established the first party within the Crossover Congregation: the Xiaoyao faction.

Now, Hou Jun, who has already illuminated the application skills of various engineering kilns, has become a technical master of the Ministry of Industry.

It is natural for a master of technology to take care of everything.This time, Hou Jun served as the chief worker and temporary factory manager of the model factory. There was no way.

Seeing the inspection team enter the door, Hou Jun, wearing a rattan helmet and ordinary overalls, led a group of cement factory shareholders in different costumes to meet the leadership inspection team.As soon as Pu Yi met, the two parties shook hands, exchanged greetings, thanked each other for their hard work, and the scene was harmonious.

To be honest, Ming people like this kind of tone very much, especially when they are in the lower position, who doesn't want the superiors to be approachable and amiable to them?

The inherent equality thought of the traversers and the simple etiquette they brought to future generations will naturally make followers feel like a spring breeze in the seventeenth century, an era when people often bend down and kowtow.

Even Crowley, a bystander, guessed the next process: the leaders took turns to speak on stage, and the audience clapped their hands with smiles on their faces.

By the time the bigwigs had finished speaking, it was just at noon.Hou Jun looked at the Tudor watch on his wrist, and when the minute and second hands merged, it was the auspicious time of 18.18.

The next moment, Hou Jun officially announced that the trial production of Zengcheng Model Cement Plant had started.

The workers who had been waiting for a long time at their workstations heard the order from the loudspeaker in the workshop, and started to activate the entire set of equipment in the cement plant in sequence according to the previous training process.

The spectators who were invited to visit outside the security line quickly felt uneasy and panic, because there was a rumbling roar from the steel monster in front of it, which looked extremely evil no matter how you looked at it.

However, at this moment, the faces of all the wise shareholders wearing suits, robes and straight embroidered expressions showed excitement and anticipation—they knew what would happen next during the equipment debugging process. .

The process of starting the production line was originally very long, because the power equipment of the cement plant is a steam unit, which needs to be preheated.

It is different from vehicles and ships powered by ordinary gas furnaces.Even for a county-level cement factory, the operation of the whole set of equipment requires a huge amount of power, which cannot be brought up by a few gas stoves.

However, the reality is that the industrial system cannot provide electric energy, and even a decent transformer cannot be produced, so the power of the model cement plant can only be the most simple, thick and old-fashioned steam power.

The first thing to start in the whole production line is the power plant.The unit that makes a loud noise is a combined power system composed of several reciprocating steam engines.These steam units, which had been preheated and boosted before, successfully transmitted power to the raw meal workshop through bearings and connecting rods.

The principle of cement production is actually very simple: the limestone-based mixed stone is first ground and then calcined, and the final clinker is the finished product.

Of course, there are many technical details in the middle, which cannot be explained clearly in one or two sentences.

After the power is transmitted, the various crushers and pulverizers in the raw material workshop start up.Workers wearing masks and helmets began to get busy, constantly feeding the raw materials prepared in advance into the machine.

Usually at this step, two branches of cement production emerge: dry process and wet process.

As the name implies, the dry method is to directly grind the raw material and then calcined, while the wet method is an additional process: first add water to the raw material to prepare a slurry state, and then grind and calcinate.

Anyone with a little common sense knows that using a machine to grind raw materials in a mud state is definitely better than directly grinding dry stones.In addition, there is another advantage of wet preparation, which is less environmental pollution, and dust pollution during the preparation process will be greatly reduced.

Of course, there are pros and cons.The preparation of raw meal by wet method not only consumes a lot of water resources, but also consumes more energy in the calcination step, after all, the raw meal is in a wet state.

In later generations, wet-process cement production, which was extremely wasteful of resources, was a backward industry that was shut down by the state.

Knowing the difference between the two routes, it becomes clear which method the model cement plant uses to prepare the raw meal: the wet method.

A model factory in the [-]th century, surrounded by water resources.In addition, the cement produced here is easy to sell, and there is no competitive pressure at all, so the factory does not consider the cost of buying coal at all.

On the contrary, due to the imperfection of the industrial chain, all kinds of dust removal and environmental protection equipment are extremely scarce at present.If raw materials are prepared by dry methods, not to mention environmental pollution, it will also make workers more susceptible to various occupational diseases, such as pneumoconiosis.

On the whole, in the seventeenth century, it was more cost-effective to use the world's leading high-tech wet-process cement production line.

After the well-proportioned raw material slurry was ground, the next process that shocked the natives began: a yellow dragon kept rolling, breathing fire and smoke, and the workshop was full of terrifying roars.

Several Ming masters who came from Guangzhou for the first time, when they saw this scene, they immediately knelt down for Huanglong.

(End of this chapter)