The round furnace is already filled with charge. For the iron of the Ming Dynasty, the lining of this electric furnace is alkaline, the bottom of the furnace is covered with a layer of lime, above the lime layer is a layer of iron oxide scale and charcoal powder, and above is some pig iron ingots and a small amount of wrought iron saved in the base during this period - the ship from Hangzhou is still on the way, this is the only two and a half tons of pig iron.

Unlike open-hearth and blast furnaces, once the furnace is opened, it must be kept in operation day and night. The advantage of the electric furnace is here: it can be smelted continuously when there is material, and there is no material...... Go home from work and play with your wife.

This is currently the most suitable steelmaking method for the raw material conditions of the kiln area, and the only drawback is the high energy consumption, but this is what the people don't care about the most.

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With Chen Jingtai's order, Zou Guoqing, who controlled the guest operator in the room, pressed the button with a smile on his face. At this time, a black graphite electrode column on the top of the electric furnace slowly falls, and after the electrode is inserted into the furnace, it immediately produces a violent arc reaction with the electrode at the bottom of the furnace, and the smelting begins.

At first, there is a regular, bright light from the gap in the furnace cover, and then as the electrode column deepens, the arc increases, the temperature rises sharply, and the light begins to become intense. Soon, the pig iron began to melt into liquid, and as the arc flickered on, fiery red iron slag erupted, and billowing smoke and hot air came out of the furnace at the same time.

Boom, flash, smoke, fire...... At this moment in the furnace, it seems that there is an inferior ghost film crew in action, and the sound and light effects are just there.

Chen Jingtai breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the overhead cigarette collection system had begun to work normally, and as of now, the melting period had passed safely, and everything in the system was operating normally. Looking back at the happy guests standing outside the safety line, he found that there were still a few old men who had never engaged in industry, and his face was a little pale, and Chen Jingtai grinned slightly - this kind of DC electric furnace with rectifier is already very small and advanced, and the old-fashioned AC electric furnace when he was an apprentice is called fierce.

As the solid in the furnace was completely converted into liquid, Chen Jingtai commanded the control room to begin to adjust the depth of the electrode column insertion, and when the molten steel in the furnace rolled smoothly, the lime in the early charge had fully reacted with the pig iron, and he ordered the slag to be removed.

The slag will discharge a part of the sulfur and phosphorus, and the overhead crane slowly moves at this time, and a bright yellow boom with a steel claw slides to the top of the electric furnace - the slag machine. The steel claw easily removes the waste residue floating on the molten steel in the violent smoke and splashing of molten steel, and the whole process does not require human operation.

The dispensable plug-in of the slag scooping machine is mainly imported by Chen Jingtai: a completely inexperienced furnace worker who crosses the crowd and Mingren, runs to the furnace every day in the environment of high temperature flue gas and steel slag injection to remove the slag...... This kind of extremely dangerous work is completely unsuitable for the existing situation, every crossing the public and Ming furnace workers are extremely precious, now do not import the slag machine, waiting for more people to die, the same has to be imported.

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After the slag is discharged, the environment in the furnace enters the next stage from the melting stage: the oxidation stage, which is mainly used to remove phosphorus and decarburize.

Theoretically, at this time, it is necessary to blow oxygen into the furnace - not only can decarburize, but also accelerate the reaction in the furnace, and the violent carbon and oxygen bubbles float up, which can bring up the waste residue, killing multiple birds with one stone. However, there is no pure oxygen under the eyes of the traversal, Chen Jingtai added a little lime and toner to the furnace, and waited for the furnace to react...... This is tantamount to the consumption of electrical energy to circumvent some processes.

After 40 minutes of opening the furnace, he got the results of the on-site test and found that the phosphorus content of the molten steel had reached the required level, so he ordered a second slag removal, then closed all outlets, and the furnace entered the next stage: the reduction period.

The reduction period is also unique to electric furnaces, which is different from traditional steelmaking furnaces such as blast furnace converters, and the purpose of this stage is deoxidation and desulfurization.

At present, the kiln base lacks various minerals and metals, and can not make qualified deoxidizers such as silicon aluminum powder for the time being, so the first furnace steel is still imported composite deoxidizer, which can be very good for deoxidation and desulfurization. In the final reduction period in the furnace, Chen Jingtai added 3 kg of deoxidizer and some lime, and then continued to wait for the reaction in the furnace.

By this time, it's almost all over the place – an hour and fifteen minutes after the electrode starts, the first molten steel is ready to be baked.

This speed is actually very slow: it only takes 25 minutes for a large quantum electric arc furnace to produce a furnace of molten steel. However, due to the lack of many conditions here, we can only use the method of extending the time and increasing power consumption to ensure the quality of the product, and there is no way to delay it for an hour.

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After reading the second test report, Chen Jingtai officially ordered the steel: the most important phosphorus and sulfur content in the molten steel has been qualified, other trace elements are a bit excessive, and the carbon content of the whole molten steel is between low-carbon and medium-carbon steel...... However, this is not important, it is just a small flaw, as long as the phosphorus and sulfur two hazards are controlled in place, the rest can be solved by adjusting the process.

The graphite electrode column, which had turned red, slowly rose, and then the control room began to manipulate the ladle on the slider under his feet to move forward, and the next moment, the ladle lined with refractory bricks was in place, and the molten steel was officially baked. If it is continuous smelting, then a part of the molten steel should be left in the furnace, but today is the beta version, and besides, the poor ghosts do not have extra pig iron ingots, so today is this furnace.

When the furnace is tilted 15 degrees by the hydraulic system, molten steel begins to flow out of the eccentric bottom tap hole and into the ladle – here there is a set of tech trees that can be lit up: the tall refining outside the furnace.

The so-called refining outside the furnace is simply to inject oxygen or inert gas into the ladle, and then selectively do the above-mentioned processes to remove impurities, so as to achieve the purpose of purifying the molten steel and adjusting the element content...... Basically, the more awesome alloy steel grades have to pass this level.

Of course, the traversal doesn't need to do that.

As long as the process is adjusted, the molten steel coming out of the electric arc furnace in front of you can fully meet the standards of carbon steel in later generations. Low-carbon steel is used to make steel plates, high-carbon steel is used to make tools and gun barrels, and stainless steel will be added at most in the future, which will be enough to pass through the public to death, and there is no need for excess technology trees.

After the ladle is filled with three-quarters of the boiling molten steel, it continues along the slide: a row of moulds made of molding sand has already been prepared, just waiting for this moment. The trembling Mingren furnace worker stepped forward at this time, and slowly shook the runner next to the ladle according to the operation process during the training, at this time the ladle was slightly tilted, and the next moment, the molten steel flowed into this batch of molds along the chute.