"Ignition!" Snow gave the order, and several residents held torches to set the wood in the charcoal kiln on fire. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"Mayor Town, can this method really make charcoal?" Randolph asked with some skepticism, "And can it be used instead of coke for ironmaking?" Although Randolph didn't know the alchemist's untold alchemy method, he knew that the alchemy factory would buy large quantities of coke every day. But I have never heard of the purchase of charcoal in the alchemy field.

"Don't worry, you can just watch it with peace of mind." There is still some uncertainty about ironmaking Snow, but he dares to make charcoal. Charcoal is formed when the wood is not completely burned, so as long as the charcoal kiln is used, the wood inside is burned to a certain extent to block the oxygen.

Snow counted the time, and it felt like it was almost there. Ordered someone to open the door of the charcoal kiln, and a puff of smoke erupted. When the smoke had almost cleared, Snow had the wood that had been placed in the kiln removed. I saw that those woods of similar size had really turned into pieces of black charcoal. Snow once again calmly accepted the adoring eyes of everyone, and the eyes of Yalian and Brissy behind him were even more red.

With charcoal, you can officially make iron. Originally, according to the normal procedure, it was necessary to test it with poor-quality iron ore to see if all aspects had been perfected. But Snow and the others don't need to think about this step now, because all they have in their hands is poor quality iron ore, and the trial is equivalent to starting iron smelting normally.

Under Snow's command, the crowd pushed the cart and went straight up the dirt slope next to the shaft furnace to the mouth of the furnace. Then, the charcoal iron ore required for ironmaking is poured into the furnace, ignited, and blown, and the process is carried out in an orderly manner.

"Mayor, I see molten iron." The red-faced Tibaf stood by the mouth of the furnace, glanced at the shaft furnace, waved his hand and shouted excitedly.

At this time, about three small carts of charcoal were used, which was less than Snow expected. But this is not good news, the decrease in the amount of charcoal used indicates that the melting point of iron ore is very low, which also means that there are too many impurities in iron ore. The moment the slag outlet is opened, the residue gushing out also illustrates this point.

After another cart of charcoal, the exciting time is finally coming.

"Open the taphole." Snow waved his hand and said, as the tap hole was opened, the molten iron like magma flowed down the pipe made of temperature-resistant soil into the temperature-resistant deep tank that was neatly arranged in advance.

Looking at the slowly flowing molten iron, all the residents jumped happily. The members of the convoy and patrol were the happiest, and the success of the iron-making showed that in a few days they would have real weapons to use. Fu'o took the lead and came to Snow's side, and after a dozen young men saluted, they excitedly lifted Snow up and cheered around the field three times.

Landorf just wanted to scold, but seeing that Snow was not angry, he had to shake his head and smile bitterly: "These little guys are really unruly. ”

"Who's to say it isn't." Abra on the side was also full of smiles, and yelled at Fu'o and the others: "Be careful, don't throw the mayor down." ”

…………

After Snow's inspection, it was determined that the first batch of pig iron was undoubtedly produced.

Based on the quality of the long sword in Abra's hand, as well as his previous memories, Snow speculated that the smelting methods mastered in the alchemy field of this era were still very primitive. Coke is used as a dye, the heat is less, and the furnace body is small, and the blower equipment is poor. Therefore, the furnace temperature is relatively low, and it is difficult to reach the melting temperature of pure iron. Therefore, the iron smelted is a sponge-like solid, and the scientific name is block iron, also called sponge iron.

Block iron smelting is time-consuming and contains a lot of impurities. After sufficient combustion or forging, it can be used as wrought iron. If we follow the course of history, in the near future, people will find that in the process of forging and smelting iron, iron will become very hard after repeated heating by charcoal fire and absorbing the charcoal in charcoal, and it is not as easy to break as pig iron, which is the so-called hundred refining into steel.

However, people have obviously not discovered this problem, and they do not know that pig iron, wrought iron, and steel can be converted to each other by increasing or decreasing the carbon content in them. Occasionally, there are blacksmiths who happen to reduce the carbon content in a block of iron to the level of steel, and they don't know how they did it. I just think that steel is a new mineral with a similar surface to iron but a different nature.

So the price of steel was very expensive, and only the nobility and the church could get some. But they are also mostly used to polish them into ornaments, unless they are big nobles above the viscount, because of the large territory area, many alchemy fields, and countless blacksmith shops. Therefore, the chance of forging steel is relatively high, and most of this steel will fall into the hands of them, the Earth Emperor.

Over time, some of the great nobles gritted their teeth and stomped their feet, and made a dagger or a short sword with steel. These steel daggers and daggers were so sharp that they became the favorite of the great nobles. As far as Snow knew, Count Ropier had a steel dagger, which he hung around his waist all day long, and he slept next to his pillow, which he loved very much.

Originally, Snow intended to obtain steel by frying steel, that is, heating pig iron into a semi-liquid or liquid form. Then iron ore powder is added, and at the same time, a part of the carbon in the pig iron is removed by using the iron ore powder and oxygen in the air, so that the carbon content in the pig iron is reduced, the slag is removed, and then the steel is obtained. However, this method is difficult to master, and a careless approach will reduce the carbon content in pig iron to the extreme and turn it into mature iron. Many alchemists also use this method to obtain wrought iron.

So Snow was ready to use the steel-filling method to make steel. The steel filling method is also called the raw and cooked method, which is to use pig iron as a carburizing agent, melt it and pour it on the wrought iron, and after repeated smelting. Pig iron with a high carbon content and wrought iron with a low carbon content are balanced with wrought iron becoming steel due to carbon infiltration, and pig iron becoming steel due to decarburization.

It's easy and easy to grasp. If you want to get steel with different carbon content, you only need to mix pig iron and wrought iron according to a certain ratio, and then smelt it.

However, the first condition of the steel filling method is to melt the wrought iron. Because of the high purity, the melting point of wrought iron is also high. With the alchemy technology of this era, it was difficult to produce a high-temperature flame that was sufficient to melt wrought iron. But now that Snow has Arlene, this is not a problem at all. With the temperature of Yalian's black flame, melting wrought iron is not a problem at all.

Of course, what happened next couldn't be discovered by the rest of the town, and Snow had to do it in secret with Yalian.

After nightfall, under Elena's cover, Snow and Arlene slipped out of town and into the cattle ranch.

At this time, the pig iron had completely cooled down, and Snow took out the refractory clay stick he had prepared in advance, and motioned for Aarene to cast a magic spell to melt the pig iron.

Although I don't know what Snow's purpose is, after these days of getting along. As it turns out, many of Snow's seemingly unreasonable practices are well thought out, and the results are often more amazing than magic. The townspeople, as well as Arrn, now trusted Snow unconditionally.

So Yalian didn't ask too much, nodded slightly, released a black flame, and began to burn the pig iron in the deep groove.