The next day, Zhu Shun took Song Shihui to the bank of the Yongding River to choose a suitable location for building a steam mill.

The selection of the plant must meet two main points, one is convenient transportation, can use the river to transport large quantities of potato flour.

Second, the place should be empty, there are no trees around, easy to circulate the air, the biggest problem of the flour mill is the dust explosion, if there is really an explosion, the power is no less than a bomb.

Picking and choosing, the final choice was the Yongding River section near Huangcun, which is in the center of Liangxiang County, which can radiate to the whole county and facilitate the transportation of potatoes from the whole county.

Yongding River is originally a large river with a basin throughout several provinces, and is connected to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and in the future, it is completely possible to transport potato flour to more state capitals at a lower cost through the Yongding River, so that more people can have food.

Biji's promotion of potatoes is not a matter of one mouth and one sentence, nor is it an overnight thing, it is an agricultural revolution that needs to be persisted in for a long time.

There are too many interests involved, and the bloodshed brought about by the industrial revolution is estimated to start here.

Zhu Shun has built so many factories and has formed a complete set of processes, and he found the old lady Song and said, this old man heard that he was going to do something to let the people of the world have food.

Immediately rode a Liaodong horse, hurried to the selected factory, and recruited more than 100 strong men to obey Zhu Shun's arrangement.

Zhu Shun took Song Shihui to draw the outline of the factory with lime powder first, pointed to the lime powder and said: "The wall is built according to this lime powder." ”

After painting the wall, Zhu Shun walked to the bank of the river that had been treated very well, and taught Song Shihui little by little: "The flour mill is divided into five departments. ”

"Mr. Production, Handling, Warehouse, Weighing Room, Management, and the Accounting Office in charge of property shall be assigned to the management department."

Zhu Shun lifted the lime bucket and continued to sprinkle lime, dividing the area of the flour mill.

As the most important production sector, the steam mill is the farthest away from the Yongding River, and the moisture is too heavy, and the flour produced is easy to mold.

Next to the steam mill is the warehouse, which is also far from the Yongding River, after all, where flour is stored.

The weighing room is next to the warehouse, and the management department is opposite the steam mill, keeping enough distance to reduce the impact in case of a dust explosion.

Zhu Shun originally wanted to build a waterway next to the warehouse to transport the heavy flour into the Yongding River, anyway, a slender waterway would not produce too much moisture.

However, there is no cement, which is easy to cause the ground to collapse, so I can only give up this idea for the time being, and ask Song Shihui to pave a road with bluestone slabs, all the way to the small wharf on the edge of the Yongding River.

After dealing with these, the day has passed.

At noon the next day, when the two continued to draw lines to finalize the public toilets, blast furnace water towers, and clothes poles, seven or eight more donkey carts came around.

This time, instead of bricks and timber, the 1.7-meter-diameter round mills were transported, all of which were made of bluestone.

Zhu Shun's original plan was to use steel to build it, but at least a dozen tons of steel would be consumed, and the cost was too high, so he had to temporarily abandon this idea before the initial industrialization of the metallurgical system was realized.

Bluestone mills are not as durable as steel mills, but they also have benefits, and the cost is relatively low, which also reduces the cost of steam mill construction.

However, when the diameter of these bluestone mills is less than 1.1 meters, it needs to be replaced with a new one, and it is estimated that it will have to be replaced with a stubble in two or three years according to the degree of loss.

Zhu Shun explained this point to Song Shihui: "Hui'er, remember that when these mills are less than 1.1 meters, they will be replaced with new ones." ”

"Don't waste the old grinder, polish it, and pave it in the factory to pave the way."

In the afternoon, Zhu Shun stood in the steam mill area, thinking about how to solve the biggest problem of the steam mill, dust explosion.

The composition of potato flour is starch and sugar, which contain elements such as carbon and hydrogen, which are substances that can be burned.

Only 9.7g of potato flour is contained in every cubic meter of air, and once it encounters an open flame and the right temperature, it will burn instantly, producing a violent explosion.

There is only one way to solve the problem of dust explosions, which is to reduce the concentration of flour per cubic meter.

A few years after Watt established his first steam mill, a dust explosion occurred in a flour warehouse in Italy.

Zhu Shun has been thinking about this problem for the past few days, and basically has a complete plan in his heart: "Hui'er, remember the next plan carefully." ”

Song Shihui clenched the hard brush.

Zhu Shun thought about it again in his heart, felt that there was no omission, and continued: "First, strengthen ventilation, add a set of gears to the steam engine, and use steam power to add four large exhaust fans on the four sides of the plant. ”

"There are also warehouses, and the warehouses also need to add exhaust fans."

"Second, avoid high temperatures and open flames, especially your behavior of smoking dry tobacco, which must be prohibited in the flour mill."

"Thirdly, sprinkle water regularly, not too much, a little sprinkle is enough, well, one more thing to remember, all alkali metals and alkaline earth metals can react violently with water."

"In the future, if you build a factory to mill these metal powders, you must not have water."

"With the above three points, it is estimated that it is almost the same, and you must remember it."

Song Shihui smiled mellowly, put the notebook into his arms, and quickly extinguished the fire with the cigarette pouch pole in his hand: "Remember, teacher." ”

After explaining this, it was almost over, and Zhu Shunmai left: "I'll leave it to you here, and I have to go to the spinning mill to see it." ”

"I don't know how the steam factory has been renovated."

Zhu's Spinning Mill.

Old lady Song, Cao Wenyao, Xing'an Bogongzi, and many generals and younger brothers, all stood in front of the new-style factory, looking at the steam factory that they had never seen before.

When Zhu Shun came here, Zhu Shou, the owner of the factory, took a new shovel tied with red silk and handed it to Zhu Shun.

The new machine building has a special boiler room, where the boilers of the second generation steam engine are placed, which are connected to the new building by an iron pipe.

The black smoke from the burning of coal completely kept away from the spinning woman.

Zhu Shun symbolically shoveled a shovel of coal, filled it into the boiler, and handed it over to the workers in charge of the boiler room.

Zhu Shun led everyone to the steam factory, and was immediately attracted by the spectacular scene inside, and he couldn't move away.

The white gas from a steam engine drives the belts and transmits them to the roof through a complex gearing system.

There are rows of gears on the roof, driving rows of transmission rods.

The transmission rod drives the belt, and through the belt, it is driven to each 300-spindle semi-metal spinning machine.

As the movement of the steam engine accelerated, a hundred semi-metal spinning machines began to rotate rapidly, and the spinners kept moving among the semi-metal spinning machines.

The era of the steam engine officially began.

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