Traveler Major League

Chapter 118 Industry
(The number of words is a bit too much, there is only one chapter today)

After the public execution three days ago, all the red-haired barbarians, whether they were new captives or old people, were shocked beyond measure. The old belief in primitive nature worship was broken, and before the new mass meeting program had taken root in the hearts of the people, Myths about the People's Army quietly spread.

The bursting effect of this kind of explosive package is far beyond what the priests can match by pretending to be gods and ghosts, and far exceeds their imagination.

The result is that the red-haired man is very obedient, and he completely loses the sense of resistance.

These people are the largest forces within a few hundred kilometers nearby. If they are taken down, the People's Army has completely obtained the human base for advancing technology.

At this time, climbing technology is actually a process of reproducing the urgently needed industrial system, which can be roughly divided into heavy industry and light industry.

The most important part of all industries is the steel industry system, and the direct goal is to realize the manufacture of cold weapons and hot weapons.

This production industrial zone is chosen to be near the river not far from the bastion, and the supporting workshops in the future will be developed along the river to make best use of the abundant water resources here.

In the future, the expansion direction of the People's Army will mainly spread forward along the river, because the cost of finding ore in the dense forest is extremely high in this kind of plain area full of forests, and the easiest way is to follow the river. At this stage, water transportation is the most expensive. Simple and capacity-saving, ordinary two-wheeled mule carts can only have a capacity of four to five hundred catties at most, but ships are completely different, at least calculated in tons.

The first step in everything is to find mines, whether it is coal mines, iron ores, or copper mines. The good news is that these red-haired barbarians have already had the germination of metal mining and smelting, but their smelting It is extremely primitive, and only charcoal is used as fuel for primary smelting. In the furnace, iron ore is smelted into a spongy solid block. This kind of block iron has low carbon content and many impurities. A successful sword can cut people and bend it.

For example, the dagger unearthed in the Roman era had extremely poor metal heat treatment technology, and it was not even quenched.

This is also the case with a small amount of iron in the weapons seized by the People's Army. Regardless of these, the only useful thing is that there are mines, all of which are swamp iron ore and open-pit iron ore.

The only flaw is that there is no coal mine, which can only be solved by relying on the caravan formed by Liu Zexin to explore and find it.

In fact, charcoal can also be used to make steel. Although charcoal fire cannot melt iron ore very well, you can add some sulfur ore, limestone and other minerals into the iron-making furnace in proportion.These things lower the melting point of iron ore.With the help of these things, molten iron can be smelted using charcoal with a limited combustion temperature. This is a tricky method.

For example, lump iron made from charcoal is heated in a carbon fire to absorb carbon to increase the carbon content, and then undergo forging to remove impurities and infiltrate carbon to obtain steel.This kind of steel is called block iron carburizing steel.

However, the quality of this kind of steel is not good enough. During the refining process, it is very difficult to control the amount of carbon infiltration, whether the distribution is uniform, and the degree of removal of impurities, and the production efficiency is extremely low.

At this time, the block ironmaking can be heated, folded and forged repeatedly, so that the structure of the steel is dense, the composition is uniform, and the impurities are reduced, thereby improving the quality of the steel. This is the steelmaking technology.

In modern times, in the case of electric furnace auxiliary energy, it is possible to use charcoal instead of coke to make steel. Even because of the low sulfur content and low ash content of charcoal, the effect of coke steelmaking is better than that of coke, but this is in the presence of electric furnace. Under such circumstances, the People's Army at this stage does not yet have this technology.

Now the step-by-step construction from scratch is not so easy compared to the battle with the Ming army.

It took more than 2000 laborers to build a wharf, build freight ships, build roads, build clay kilns, etc. to get a general appearance.

Before finding coal mines, there are still many pre-industrial industries that need to be built, the most important of which is cement.

Cement is also necessary for infrastructure construction. The production method of cement is similar and the principle is the same. At the beginning of his business, Liu Ze chose a simple cement production method
[-]. Select raw materials:
1. Clay bricks, fragments of various pottery, fragments of various ceramic dishes, and various refractory materials, such as fragments of cylinders, basins, etc., water-quenched slag (the waste slag in the ironmaking furnace is directly put into the cold water pool for quenching You can refer to my previous video on indigenous steelmaking), slag ash (residue after various coals are burned), each of the above materials can be used alone to take 75%, or they can be mixed to take a total of 75%.

2. Take 20-25% of quicklime (the method was introduced in my previous sugar-making video);
3. Gypsum of paris (that is, hemihydrate gypsum C2SO40.5H2O), gypsum ore or waste gypsum model is crushed, heated to 130-1 degrees in an iron pan and fried until yellowish gray, and it is used to adjust the cement solidification speed. However, it is not necessary to add (the cement will solidify faster if it is not added), which will affect its quality.

130. Production method: Wash all the above raw materials, dry them in a fire pit, and grind them into powder.They can be blended and ground together, or they can be ground separately and then blended uniformly.The degree of fineness should be able to pass through a 4900# noodle basket (2 holes/cm[-]).It can be ground with stone in the countryside, and then sieved, or it can be ground with a small steel mill for grinding.Mixing the above various finely ground materials together in proportion is cement, also known as cement.

Mix cement.This kind of cement has good acid and alkali corrosion resistance, low early strength, and the strength increases rapidly under high temperature (such as steam) curing. It has strong water absorption and low heat release when used. It usually takes 2-3 months to reach the standard strength.The frost resistance is not as good as ordinary modern cement, and the curing period needs 20 days.

Summary of test results: the cement has better anti-corrosion effect than ordinary cement, especially for underground engineering, the effect is better than ordinary cement, and it can also be mixed with ordinary cement for casting of beams, slabs, piles, etc.The degree of fine grinding of this kind of cement, the finer the strength, the faster the setting speed, generally up to 200-400 marks.

With the emergence of a new thing like cement, it completely changed the appearance of the entire ruling area of ​​the People's Association. This is an artifact that no one has ever seen before, and it has raised everyone's spirits to a higher level.

According to the current social model of the People's Army, it is completely unhealthy. All departments are forced to implement construction and production according to Liu Ze's plan. Everyone has become a laborer. There are not many material rewards and free time. Only time for personal life.

Although there is Cheng Mo's propaganda team to meet some spiritual needs, it is like a bowstring, which is getting tighter. Will get worse over time.

The best thing is to have positive incentives, so that everyone can see the changes in life with their own eyes. Although the changes are small at first, if they really change, it can really greatly improve morale.

Liu Ze waved his hands and stood in front of the first small brick building, dreaming loudly about his future life and future plans. In a short time, everyone will be able to live in this kind of cement bunker-like building, without having to be crowded Collective dormitory, this is the first step to change your life.

For the adult red-haired men who are still working collectively in the labor camps, they are encouraged. After the project is completed, the activists who work hard and support the program of the People’s Association will have the same rights as the People’s Army. The adult red-haired men do not agree They are too interested in the rights that they don't understand, but as a tribe that has already had business enlightenment, there are some things they care about very much, that is, everyone is also allocated fields, and the most important thing is the opportunity to share iron farm tools, cattle and horses livestock.

The most important thing is the incentives of the reform-through-labor system in the labor camp. All adult red-haired barbarians are divided into several groups, and there is a competitive relationship among the groups on the same construction site. The last ones will only get 80% of the food supply of the normal group.

Although it is cruel, it is undoubtedly extremely effective for these red-haired barbarians who have never participated in collective labor.

It was not until the news of coal came from the northeast that the steelmaking industry really started: the exploration and research of indigenous blast furnace iron smelting and heat storage technology, refractory brick technology, and coke technology.

The initial local method of coking basically only needs refractory bricks such as silica bricks (refractory bricks with a SiO2 content of more than 93% are called silica bricks) and ordinary masonry, plus some iron materials at most.

You can refer to the modern coke oven consisting of a carbonization chamber, a combustion chamber, a regenerator, a chute area, a roof, a foundation, and a flue.

Sound complicated?But the principle is just one sentence: the reaction process in which the coal material in the carbonization chamber is heated to about 1000 degrees Celsius under the condition of isolating the air.

To explain in detail is:
Processes that produce coke, coke oven gas and other coking chemical products by thermal decomposition and coking,
The coke produced is the core fuel and reducing agent of blast furnace ironmaking, and also the support and loose material of the entire blast furnace column.
Its by-product coke oven gas has a high calorific value and is an excellent gas fuel for open hearth furnaces and heating furnaces.

All other coking methods are basically the same,

The only thing that needs attention is the details.

For example, the steps can be divided into:

1. Coal washing: Before the raw coal is coked, it is first washed.The purpose is to reduce the ash contained in the coal and remove other impurities in the coal;

2. Coal blending: Blend various coals with different coking properties in a certain proportion and then coke; this requires you to have a special person record the experiment many times before it can be done.
3. Tamping: It is to feed materials evenly layer by layer, tamp them layer by layer, and then put the tamped briquettes into the carbonization chamber;

4. Coking: Put the prepared coal into the carbonization chamber of the coke oven, heat and carbonize through the combustion chambers on both sides under the condition of isolating the air, and finally form coke after a certain period of time; the main part of coking has silica bricks (SiO2 content in More than 93% of refractory bricks are called silica bricks).

5. It is relatively simple to use the wet coke quenching method, which is to spray the red coke out of the furnace with water.

6. Treatment of coking products: Send the red hot coke released from the furnace to the quenching tower to extinguish the flame, then crush, sieve and classify to obtain coke products of different particle sizes, which are sent to the blast furnace and sintered respectively;

Coke is generally screened into three grades: >35mm (metallurgical coke), 15-35mm (small coke), <15mm (coke powder).

Various by-products can be collected in clay pots for storage and research, and the red coke that comes out of the oven is sprayed with water.

6. Treatment of coking products: Send the red hot coke released from the furnace to the quenching tower to extinguish the flame, then crush, sieve and classify to obtain coke products of different particle sizes, and send them to the blast furnace and its sintering users respectively;

Coke is generally screened into three grades: >35mm (metallurgical coke), 15-35mm (small coke), <15mm (coke powder).

Various by-products can be collected centrally and stored in clay pots for future research.

Ironmaking and steelmaking are different. The term steel is often used as a general term for steel and iron. Iron is smelted from iron ore. Adding an appropriate amount of carbon and other elements to iron turns it into an iron-carbon alloy. Referred to as steel, steel is divided into various categories according to the carbon content:
Carbon content less than 0.25% is low carbon steel
0.25% to 0.6% is medium carbon steel
More than 0.6% is high carbon steel
The reason for this division is that the higher the carbon content of the steel, the higher the strength, but the toughness and plasticity will be weakened. The less carbon content, the lower the strength, and the toughness and plasticity will increase. Carbon content has a great influence on the quality of steel. important.

Carbon content is the most common standard for steel, and there are other elements in steel, such as ash, manganese, phosphorus, and sulfur, etc., and these elements also have an impact on the quality of steel.

The function of the blast furnace is to heat the iron in the iron ore to melt it into a liquid state.However, molten iron absorbs a large amount of carbon during heating.Therefore, the molten iron obtained has a very high carbon content, and there was no way to remove carbon in ancient times, so the iron from the blast furnace can only be cast, not forged, so it is also called cast iron.

At the same time, other impurities in raw materials and fuels also affect the performance of molten iron, so they need to be removed during the smelting process.

You can use clay, steel plates, or bricks to build a blast furnace. You can imagine a blast furnace as a chimney with a small head and a big belly. There are two high and low openings on the furnace wall near the bottom. The lower one is the iron nozzle, and the higher one is the slag discharge. Add a few more ports above the slag outlet, this is the air supply port, and the top is the feeding port.

Iron ore is first crushed, mixed with lime and slag, water is added, and then sintered (without using a blast furnace).

Coal is heated with oxygen to make coke.

Feed from the blast furnace feed port, a layer of coke and a layer of iron ore, and then burn and heat.This process can be carried out continuously.

Because there was no steam engine, Liu Ze built the steel factory by the river, and used water power to drive the blowers and mixers.

The blower here is mainly to provide wind power for the regenerative furnace. The efficiency of ironmaking with regenerative furnace and without regenerative furnace blast is not the same, at least three times the difference.

Refining high-quality iron ore into high-quality molten pig iron, and then pouring the molten pig iron on the wrought iron sheet, the wrought iron becomes steel due to the infiltration of carbon, and the pig iron becomes steel due to decarburization. The method is easy to master, saves time compared with steelmaking, and can greatly improve the quality and output of steel.

It is also possible to directly make steel with pig iron and coke, which is also the same principle as above. The main principle is to control the carbon content in iron, which can be determined by watching the number of carbon flowers in the furnace.

In steelmaking work, people cannot directly observe the changes of a series of physical and chemical processes in the furnace, but can only indirectly judge the situation in the furnace by relying on the flame changes at the furnace mouth.Since there is no good instrument that can automatically control the entire operation process of the converter, the operation is mainly based on the worker's judgment of the situation in the furnace from the characteristics of the flame and sparks during the blowing process.

This kind of operation that uses visual observation and judgment to identify the smelting situation is called "fire watching operation".

The operation of watching the fire is of the nature of operating by experience, and it is difficult for steelmakers to judge the quality of a furnace of steel they are blowing when they are not proficient.

For example, the steelmaker misjudged the temperature indicated by the flame (it did not match the correct degree required by the smelting process), resulting in low-temperature steel, and could not correctly grasp the characteristics of sparks, so it was difficult to control the carbon content. The above situation caused fluctuations in steel quality The problem.

"Fire watching operation" is the same as other labor activities, including a series of psychological processes from feeling, perception to thinking.Cognition and discrimination of flame characteristics belong to the perception process;
In order to better compare the flame characteristics of different furnaces, the steelmaker needs to keep the image of the flame characteristics of the previous smelting in his mind (and understand the relationship between this characteristic and the smelting effect) in order to adjust the blowing of this furnace, which is belonging to the memory process;

To understand the regularity of the whole smelting process, making a comprehensive judgment on compound stimuli belongs to the thinking process;

This is an extremely complicated operation. After checking the fire to determine the carbon content, you can turn off the fire and start pouring steel ingots. At this time, the carbon content can only be estimated and recorded. After testing the quality of the steel, it will go on forever In order to obtain stable quality steel.

The blast furnace in the ironworks undertakes the work of turning iron ore into molten iron. It is the core of the entire steel production process. The complete version of ironmaking requires tens of thousands of steps. This is an extremely huge project. The only thing to be thankful for is Liu Ze Not so much to ask for at this point.

After several months of experiments, the People's Army's first four-cubic-meter small blast furnace with a full brick structure that can continue to produce normally has finally been put into operation. Although the pig iron produced by the small blast furnace is only a mere five tons per day, it belongs to the modern The small output cannot be smaller, but this finally enabled the People's Army to obtain a large amount of high-quality steel far exceeding other forces.

(End of this chapter)