The Dachuan River in the southwest of Gujiaocheng, a large area of the river bank has been leveled out on both sides, and the river has been cut off, relying on a diversion channel dug by hand to join the Fen River. A mud barrage is gradually taking shape, and the construction of this iron-smelting workshop, which Li Qi values the most, is progressing very quickly, and the front of the earthen dam has been built with a two-foot thick wall of two feet wide and four feet thick and four feet long, and two main canals have been opened on each side, and then they have been divided into four branch canals. At the intersection with the dam, there are four huge gates that make people feel new when they look at it.

Since the start of the project, Li Qi has come to Gujiaocheng to inspect it whenever he has time, supervising the construction progress of the iron-smelting workshop.

Three new iron ore mines and several coal mines have been under construction for some time, and the dikes and aqueducts on the Dachuan River are required to be built before the autumn rains, and when the autumn rains are abundant, the sluice gates will begin to store water. Brick kilns, charcoal kilns and lime kilns have also been built, and a batch of red bricks and refractory bricks have been fired.

What is needed now is the construction of coke ovens and iron-making blast furnaces.

Due to the need to use water drains for blasting, ironmaking blast furnaces and coke ovens needed to be built not far from the ditch culverts so that they could be powered by water turbines.

The technical preparations were almost completed, and Li Qi not only organized his own blacksmiths to visit and study in the Datong Prison and the Zezhou Iron Supervisor in Jiaocheng, but also recruited dozens of experienced craftsmen from the two iron supervisors in Zezhou and Luzhou. The newly planned iron mill is built on the bank of the Dachuan River in the southeast of Gujiaocheng, near the mouth of three iron ore mining tunnels, and the transportation distance of raw materials is very close.

Iron-making blast furnace is the most important equipment necessary for iron-smelting workshops, this kind of thing can only be gradual, initially can only be built with the same two-zhang blast furnace as Jiaocheng Iron Supervisor, the volume is about 15 cubic meters, each furnace is about three tons of iron, in this era, such a two-story iron-making blast furnace in China is also considered large-scale equipment.

In addition, it is a coke oven, fortunately, Gujiao itself is the largest producer of high-quality coking coal in China, so there is no need to worry about this kind of thing. In the later generations, Shanxi was a large coal and iron province, which itself was very suitable for the development of the coal and iron industry, except for the lack of water resources, there were no other major problems. Thanks to the joint efforts of carpenters and blacksmiths, very primitive hydraulic hammers have been made, and iron-making workshops have been built above these canal culverts, and the most important equipment is the huge water hammer driven by four water wheels, with which the efficiency of forging steel will be increased by dozens of times.

Li Qi didn't expect that before the autumn harvest began, the first iron-smelting furnace of Gujiao Iron Workshop began to be put into trial production, so he hurried over to visit.

The ten-zhang high chimney of the Gujiao Iron Workshop was the most difficult part of the construction, compared to the iron smelting furnace, which was only more than one zhang high, it was relatively easy to build. This first blast furnace was not built on the bank of the Dachuan River, but on the east side of the Tunlan River in the west of Gujiaocheng.

Due to the small flow of water, the embankment was built first, the small reservoir was already filled with water, and several pre-built machine blacksmithing workshops had been started, and from the workshops there was a loud and noisy sound of metal knocking. Some of the machinery needed for iron-making furnaces and coke ovens is being built, as well as tools for mining.

At present, the main source of raw materials for the Gujiao ironworks is still the kind of small iron-making furnaces that are common in urban and rural blacksmith shops.

However, thanks to the use of water hammer, the quality of the iron produced in the workshop has improved significantly.

Under the current circumstances, the main role of this iron-making workshop is to experiment and improve the current steelmaking technology, train talents, and lay a solid foundation for future development.

Metallurgy, like chemistry, production processes and production formulas, raw material combinations, equipment improvements, etc., are summarized from continuous experiments. Most of the knowledge in his memory is not used at all, mainly because the knowledge of later generations is mainly based on the industrial raw materials he already has, and now he is the most lacking of these basic industrial materials.

Therefore, the progress of technology and the improvement of craftsmanship mainly depend on the continuous practice of craftsmen.

Another important practice is steelmaking.

The workshop has learned advanced crucible churning steel smelting methods from Zezhou Iron Supervisor, and will be able to carry out large-scale production after the ironmaking furnace is completed. At present, production experiments are carried out on sintered pig iron and wrought iron transported from outside.

A small iron-making furnace in Tunlanchuan has begun to ignite iron-making, and there is also a steel-making furnace using the churning method using techniques learned from Zezhou.

The only thing he knew about Li Qi's advice to the craftsmen in the ironworks was to add lime powder to the mixed molten steel to remove impurities such as phosphorus and sulfur. There is also the addition of soda ash to it, but unfortunately, the source of soda ash cannot be hit at all now.

In the steelmaking furnace, the raw materials of pig iron and wrought iron plate are mixed with each other in the morning, and after more than an hour of high temperature heating, the two raw materials have been melted and mixed into molten steel in the steelmaking furnace, and the craftsmen are adding lime powder to it according to the requirements of the craftsman, and they also need to endure the high temperature, and control the porcelain rods fired from refractory clay to stir in the steelmaking furnace constantly.

The stirring method of Zezhou Jian can be regarded as a real steelmaking method, while the other two so-called steel-filling methods and forging steel-forging methods are completely pits, and the internal carbon content of the steel smelted and forged by these two methods is not uniform at all, which is equivalent to a mixture of cast iron, steel and wrought iron.

Thanks to the developed information dissemination in later generations, Li Qi knew that most of the major iron ores in China were rich in phosphorus, sulfur and other harmful substances, and required the inner sleeve of the steelmaking furnace to be made of dolomite bricks in gypsum mines to make an alkaline lining, and quicklime should be added to dephosphorization and desulfurization in the steelmaking process. Although the current level of craftsmanship is far from meeting the requirements, the billets smelted in the workshop are almost equivalent to the quality of 100 steels on the market in terms of performance.

The market price of this kind of 100-made steel is actually 150 wen a catty.

Li Qi estimated that with the current steelmaking process, the production cost of Gujiao Iron Mill is about 15 Wen per catty, this discovery made him startled, when will steelmaking actually have ten times the profit?

This discovery makes him now very much looking forward to the iron mill in Gujiao City to be put into production as soon as possible!

The biggest cost of the iron-smelting workshop is the consumption of fuel.

Li Qi knew that the larger the volume of the iron-making furnace, the lower the iron-coke ratio consumed, and the iron-coke ratio of the large-scale iron-making blast furnaces in later generations could almost drop to less than 0.5, that is to say, for every ton of iron, the coke consumed was less than 500 kilograms. And now it is highly efficient to use 10 catties of charcoal to smelt a catty of iron.

Larger blast furnaces require stronger ventilation and steel walls to withstand the pressure inside and provide enough oxygen. This requires sufficient steel materials, and in addition, a large hydraulic blower needs to be developed.

That's all for later.

Li Qi is full of hope that the "township enterprise" he personally planned will be fully put into operation before the winter, so that the steel raw materials for his own research and manufacturing machinery will have a certain guarantee.