Storm urged Yan Changwu to build a dry dock, which was adopted by him, and there were two of them!

The so-called dry dock is a ship, very large, built on the seashore of a large enclosed space, there is a gate, the boat can be opened in, the gate is closed, let go of the water, people can repair the ship inside, most of them are below the waterline, and then put the water in after repair, open the gate, and the boat can go out.

"You have to build a dry dock!" Storm noted.

"Oh, what about your reasoning?" Yan Changwu listened attentively.

"It takes at least three years to build a boat, preferably six years, and in an emergency, it takes six months. ”

"But such a ship is prone to catastrophe at sea, once the hull structure is closed, the dark, warm, humid environment will be conducive to the growth of wood rot fungus, which will gradually reduce the strength of the wood, and finally destroy the compactness of the ship, leading to the collapse of the shelf.

At the same time, when the ship is sailing at sea, the wooden joints will rot when soaked in water, and a large number of parasitic sea creatures will grow in the places where the ship comes into contact with the seawater, and it will also erode the bottom and hull of the ship, and in the tropics, this erosion will seriously reduce the life of the ship, if not repaired! The dockyard can also be used to repair battle-damaged ships immediately after the battle, which is very useful! ”

"In the Netherlands, because there are many ships, hundreds of ships can be built a year, and rotten ships are not a big problem, and even ships can be sent to the cargo owners. This is the case in many countries, only the English built docks very early, but in our North Harbor, we have fewer ships, and in order to extend the life of the ships and reduce costs, we should build docks. Storm insisted on it.

What made him happy was that Yan Changwu followed the advice and built a dock, and also built two!

The dockyards in English are made of stone, while the docks in the North Harbor are made of cement!

Yan Changwu has a wide range of knowledge, knowing that the production of cement is limestone, clay, iron ore powder in proportion to grind and mix, at this time the mixture is called raw meal, and then put into the cement cellar for high temperature calcination, 1450 degrees to obtain clinker, and then with gypsum grinding fine, proportionally mixed, into cement.

It's easy to say, but it's not easy to do, but Yan Changwu has money and people!

He sent people across the sea and "invited" five masters, who were the most famous in southern Fujian to make pottery and porcelain, as well as burn bricks and limes, and all of them moved their families to Beigang to serve him.

Both soft and hard, only the settling-in fee was given a thousand silver dollars, which is definitely not low.

After arriving in Beigang, Chen Xinji had a cordial conversation with them, making them fully realize that "it doesn't matter if you obey, you have to accept your fate!" ”

As long as you serve the big dragon head and meet his requirements, then you will be rewarded, otherwise, you have to be the son-in-law of the dragon king!

Yan Changwu, who was once deeply influenced by the rule of law, is very handy when he does bad things.

The masters gathered together to tackle key problems,

There was no shortage of limestone, clay and iron ore powder, and they first mixed them together for experimentation, and they opened a cellar on the hillside, threw the ingredients into it, and constantly adjusted the fire to observe the results.

Anyway, the end result is powder, mixed with water, and it is ready to dry when it is dry.

At first, the masters were resistant, but when the first finished product came out, they became interested!

The resulting mud powder is mixed with water, and when it dries and hardens, it becomes a solid mud surface!

The feet are not broken, the punches are painful, the hooves are not broken, and the water is fine!

It's really true!

Of course, this cement is inevitably rough, and after a few more touches, the plaster falls down.

The masters keenly felt that a great invention was in front of them, which would change the history of architecture for thousands of years!

Although it is the funds and ideas of the big leader, the finished product is practiced by them, and Chen Xinji said very clearly: You will leave a name in history!

They no longer had to supervise, they fired day and night, all night.

After continuous experiments, they have tested more mature products, and summarized the cement production process, that is, from raw material mining to cement factory, which can be roughly divided into three stages, which can be simply called "two grinding and one burning".

The first stage is raw meal preparation.

That is, limestone (limestone, marl, chalk, shells, corals) raw materials and clay raw materials (clay, loess, shale, siltstone, phyllite, river mud and lake mud, mainly provided), plus iron slag, coal gangue, bauxite, etc., after crushing and drying, according to a certain proportion of matching, grinding, and blending into a suitable composition, uniform quality of raw meal.

Stage 2: Clinker calcination.

The prepared raw meal is sent into the cement kiln (in fact, it is the structure of the lime kiln) and calcined at a temperature higher than the burnt lime until it is partially melted, and the resulting cement clinker (granular or lumpy) is obtained.

The third stage: cement grinding.

It is to add an appropriate amount of gypsum to grind into cement in the process of grinding clinker.

The role of the masters lies in this, they constantly select materials, ingredients, and experiment back and forth, and get better results.

They invented a stone crusher. It is a water-powered machine, and at the heart of the machine are several giant pressure sticks. The pressure bar has convex and concave teeth, which can be quickly rotated when hit by the water flow. Hundreds of pounds of ore are fed into the pressure roller, which is immediately broken into stones the size of a human head, and then passed by the conveyor belt to the next set of pressure sticks to continue crushing. In this way, after several rolls, the ore turns into powder.

The crusher is getting bigger and bigger to be more efficient, and when you stand next to it, you hear a deafening sound and see the huge stones being rolled into small pieces, and you are amazed by the powder.

The cement kiln is steaming all day long, and the workers are in high spirits and busy with production.

The finished cement is wrapped in moisture-proof oiled paper, packed in a powder keg similar to Europa, and two circles of iron are used to make a hoop, but the amount of cement should be considered, too heavy or too light is not good. In this way, Yan Changwu built a barrel factory to hold cement and his own gunpowder, and later also sold wine.

After Yan Changwu accepted the cement, he expressed his satisfaction and named it "Beigang Cement", which came from his idea, and was perfected by the five craftsmen of Wang Zhao, Chen and Yucheng, and was successful, and will be famous in history, and will be rewarded with 2,000 silver dollars per person.

Yan Changwu ordered further improvements: to grasp the exact firing temperature and the correct ratio of raw materials, and to improve efficiency one step at a time, he also proposed to increase the preheating system, cooling system and blast system, etc.

From the perspective of today's people, this kind of cement is not as effective, the cost is also high, and the production process is backward, especially the lime cellar is used instead of the rotary cellar (the rotary cellar can be heated evenly and grinded more finely), which is neither energy-saving nor environmentally friendly.

But after all, it's cement!

Immediately come in handy, plastered on the dock wall, sturdy and durable.

It is used in the construction of the Beigang lighthouse, and then there is to repair roads and build houses, and the products of the cement factory are in short supply.