The successful and safe trial production of the natural gas fire well salt boiling method is only the first step to increase the salt production of the well.

Even if the current wells in Gongjing Township are rectified and the salt boiling process is completed, the additional increased output will only be enough for the living consumption of two or three hundred thousand people.

Of course, two or three hundred thousand people is not a lot, which is equivalent to half of the population of Qianwei County. Originally, the output of the salt wells in Jiangyang and Han'an counties was to supply the needs of the whole county of Qianwei, and also to supply half of the county. (Shu County currently relies on the well salt of Qiongxian and Guangdu, which are near Chengdu, and does not eat Zigong well salt)

Now the extra salt, which is equivalent to forty percent of the population of the entire county, can be sold, but the scale is not enough to support the trade between Nanban and China, and this bait is not attractive enough to Nanban.

There are still many things to be done in the future, such as first of all, we must find a way to let the people continue to dig deeper wells that they did not dare to dig deeper.

Secondly, it is necessary to develop a tool that can be boring with a long rod, and it is best to directly boring off the bamboo in the rough bamboo, so that the construction cost of the expansion of the fire well in the future can also be lower - every time the bamboo is missing an interface, a batch of pigskin gelatin and lacquer will be used less, and the reliability is stronger.

Finally, the search for artesian wells that have not yet been discovered is continued.

And the time has entered July, and more than half a month has passed since Li Suchu came to Jiangyang. There is only one month left before the autumn harvest to send troops.

Originally, at this time, Li Su should have left for Zhuti to adapt to the climate of Yunnan in advance, but in order to get rid of the well salt quickly, he had to compress the climate adaptation period of more than ten days to ensure that he had to go to Zhuti in the middle of July.

Therefore, Li Su hurried the time.

A few days ago, while waiting for the gas pipe test, he was not idle, and kept sending his staff to visit the fields, looking for local elders who are familiar with geography to inquire about the situation, and to find the nearby "hardest geology and lowest terrain" place.

Because anyone who knows a little about hydraulic physics knows that the kind of inverted hard formation is the easiest to form a self-blowing well. Since the self-word in the place name of Zigong is the description of artesianism, it is certain that this geographical feature will not be wrong.

Under Li Su's vigorous search, there was still something to gain, and finally in the west of Gongjing Township, two townships were separated, about ten miles away, and some abandoned wells that failed to be mined.

After collecting enough information, the Hucao officials in Jiangyang County patiently explained to Li Su: "This place is the lowest basin around, sandwiched between two mountains in the north and south. Therefore, according to legend, as early as the period of the pseudo-thief Gongsun Shu, there were local wealthy families who felt that the low-lying places were easy to accumulate brine, so they wanted to dig wells here.

But only hit dozens of zhang deep, I encountered a very hard slate, gave up, and later in the Ming and Zhang years, there were also people who tried, but they couldn't wear it, and no one bothered to do it in the future. ”

Li Su heard that it was an abandoned well that had not yet produced water, but he was not afraid of violent means - he didn't dare to mess around in Gongjing, mainly because the well had already produced water and gas, and in case the black powder was blown up and exploded, the original good well would be abandoned, and it might lead to a gas explosion. But since there has never been water here, it is not a pity because the slate is too strong.

Li Su's tinkering black powder formula can be slightly optimized every year, and last year, it was only the "White Rainbow Moon" monkey that was released in the Taimiao Temple in Chang'an, and now it can try engineering blasting, but the power is a little less, and it may not be as good as the black powder blasting of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in history-

Until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the blasting of black powder basically stayed at the level of "filling a coffin with black powder, and detonating it tightly around it, so as to blow up the masonry city wall of the big city", and it had to be ensured that it must be sealed tightly, and if there was a slight leakage and pressure relief, most of the blasting power would be leaked out of the tunnel, and the city wall could not be blown up at all.

It is simply incomparable with the explosives that opened mines in later generations, which can break several meters of rock formations with a few catties at every turn.

But Li Su had no other choice - if it was to build a water conservancy project, he could do the same as Li Bing in Dujiangyan, using fire to pour hot water on the expansion and contraction of the rocks. But this is digging a well, and there is not enough oxygen in the well, and it cannot be burned by arson, only the blasting charge of its own redox can be used.

Li Su asked the craftsmen to chisel as many joints as possible in the slate with a long iron drill, and then fill it with a charge. He also did not dare to chisel a lot of scattered holes like modern blasting, because he knew that he did not have detonators and other efficient detonation techniques, and could only directly point long leads, for fear that the structure would be complex and the explosion would not be complete.

Because I didn't bring enough gunpowder to Jiangyang County, I waited for several days to get a large number of supplies from the warehouse in Chengdu.

Moreover, considering that there will be a major strategic development value in Zigong in the future, and the benefits are also very huge after the salt production is high, and important strategic secret materials must be used, in order to manage it strictly, Liu Bei sent his cousin and junior brother Liu Deran, who had eaten with him for several years, to supervise the salt business.

You don't have to worry about such mediocre talents as you do in technical matters, as long as you don't let people deceive Liu Bei and leak secrets and leak strategic material management intelligence. This can be regarded as Liu Bei's long-term prosperity for his uncle and cousin's family, and he repaid his uncle for sponsoring him to go to Luoyang to find Lu Zhi to study.

Before the gunpowder arrived, Li Su had people make holes for four or five days, chiseled huge cracks in the slate at the bottom of the waste well, and then poured about a coffin of crude black powder into it.

After a few loud bangs, the ground in the vicinity trembled slightly, and the walls of the abandoned well collapsed, completely crumbling and buried.

However, since it was an abandoned well, it was enough to clean it up violently, so Li Su asked people to dig up all the gravel and earthwork and transport it away, and it took several days to hollow out all the collapsed wells, and then chisel the part of the bottom that became easy to dig, at least several feet deeper than the original well.

As for the reinforcement of the borehole, let's wait until the slate layer is completely solved and normal drilling is entered.

The salt wells of Zigong are very deep, and the wells of more than 100 zhang were very popular at the end of the Han Dynasty, that is, two or three hundred meters, and the deepest individual can reach more than 400 meters. In the Tang and Song dynasties, it could reach 800 meters, and in the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was nearly 1,000 meters.

The deepest record is that during the Qianjia period of the Qing Dynasty, it was dug until the early years of Daoguang, and after 90 years of digging, a well was dug to a depth of more than 1,100 meters, which was deeper than when the West entered the second industrial revolution 30 years later and began to dig for oil.

In the West, until the end of World War I, in the 1920s, the British only dug 1,200 meters in the Maracaibo oil field in Venezuela; In the 1930s, the Japanese only dug 1,500 meters of oil in Daqing, so they failed to find 1,800 meters of oil.

The abandoned well suspected to be an artesian well here is only 100 meters away, and it still needs to be dug. Li Su can't wait to see it come out, at most he will find a way to break through this thickest slate layer, and the follow-up slow work will be handed over to the specific person in charge to take it slowly.

According to the technological speed of the late Han Dynasty, within 200 meters, it can basically dig seven or eight meters to more than ten meters deep every month. Between 200 and 400 meters deep, it drops to four or five meters per month. Up to 400 meters, there is only one or two meters per month, and the difficulty increases exponentially.

Li Su supervised the artesian well for more than half a month, and after blasting twice, he smashed and dug it, and really broke through the most difficult slate layers.

The craftsmen tasted the salty and bitter sandstone soil again, although it was not yet wet, but they felt that at least the direction was fine, and the final results would be at least until the end of the southern expedition. When the situation is good enough, it will be more than 20 feet deeper than now.

……

No decisive results have been achieved in the artesian well for the time being, but Li Su has not stayed in vain in the past ten days, because in the follow-up mass production and running-in process, the Gongjing side has also drummed up some useful good things that can facilitate the expansion of production and reduce costs.

It turned out that it was Li Su who asked people to use a long and straight enough hydraulic forging iron rod, with the foot mechanism of the tooth chain drive, and finally created a "human foot boring machine".

This thing is not very technical, it is at least an era easier than a sewing machine, and the West will use it in Milan in Italy during the Renaissance, and it can be used in the manufacture of weapons and armor. After all, it's just a rotating shaft plus a cutter head.

If the cutter head is fixed and does not rotate the workpiece, it is a lathe. If the cutter head rotates with the shaft and the workpiece does not rotate, it is a boring machine.

The renaissance pedal lathes could only be used to turn wood, that is, similar to the rudimentary machines of later generations to drive beads, and it was certainly not possible to process metal. In this era, there was no operation to add coolant to the knife, and it was easy to rub the hard things and burn the red knife.

But Li Su doesn't need them to process metal, he just wants to achieve "boring off the bamboo without cutting the bamboo", so this kind of broken machine with wooden sticks is just enough, the bamboo is thin, not very hard, and the steel knife is easy to puncture.

As soon as this machine appeared, the craftsmen tried it, although at the beginning they bored a few bamboo poles, and also boring several sets of rotary knives. But then I thought of a way, poured some water into the bamboo tube, sloped down slightly, and the end of the bamboo was lower, so that the blade could be stained with water when it turned over, lubricated and cooled, and sure enough, the bamboo was boring off.

In this way, Li Su can use the whole bamboo to make gas pipes, and the number of interfaces has also been greatly reduced.

Of course, there are disadvantages of water-cooled boring, that is, the knife is easy to rust and wear, but this is a small problem, Li Su then let people use phytic acid oil as sharpening oil to cool, but only a little more, after all, phytic acid oil is expensive, and the best way can always be found by slowly running-in.

In this way, after Li Su "reduced costs and increased efficiency" to solve the problem of the scale of boiling salt in Gongjing, he also made a primitive bicycle lathe that "can be used for wood and bamboo". Although I don't see any significant value for the time being, it's better than nothing.

On July 15, Li Su, who could no longer delay the salt work, hurriedly said goodbye to Chen Shi, and then took his own soldiers and dozens of boats of pepper and salt to Zhuti County to adapt to the climate and prepare for the southern expedition.

Li Su never joked about his health, saying that if he wanted to adapt to the climate of Nanzhong and alleviate the water and soil discomfort a month in advance, he must ensure that he had enough time. And after arriving in Zhu Ti, Li Su had to relax and recuperate for a while to adapt, and he couldn't go to work as soon as he landed.

Considering that the progress of increasing the production of salt in Zigongjing was slower than he expected, Li Su felt that he still had to slap his swollen face a little and become fat, obviously he only achieved three points, and he had to brag about it to ten points, so as to cause the greatest temptation to the salt-deficient Nanban.

"If you don't pretend to advertise in advance that Zigong has drilled a self-blowing well with fire, you can use no one to make brine, and the brine will be automatically sprayed out, and you can also bring your own fire gas to cook salt, which is inexhaustible......"

On the boat to Zhuti, Li Su pondered how to draw cakes and brag in advance. This blows in advance more vigorously than the bosses of those start-ups in later generations when they pulled venture capital.