Li Xiao and his entourage left Jinan, and then traveled all the way south, and three days later, they arrived at Tielong City in Shanxian County. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"My lord, please look, that is the Iron Dragon City built by our army!" An attendant shouted excitedly.

Li Xiao was very excited when he saw the majestic and majestic high city that appeared not far in front of him from a distance.

This is designed and planned according to Li Xiao's intentions, the circumference is 12 miles, the height of the city is 15 meters, the wall road is 6 meters wide, the whole city is covered with green bricks, there are three city gates in the east, west and north, each city gate is built with an urn city, and hides the city guard mechanism such as a jack pendant, the iron dragon city is dug around the wide moat, just use the river water of the Taihang embankment river in the south of Shanxian County to fill, make it pass around the city.

On the city wall, defensive measures such as pheasant moats, female walls, sheep and horse walls, corner towers, forts, and perforations were all built according to the system to ensure the city's defense capability.

Counting up, from the beginning of May to the end of September, it took nearly five months for this Iron Dragon City, which was about the future fate of Li Xiaojun, to be finally completed with the guarantee of sufficient funds.

Li Xiao sighed secretly in his heart, such a majestic Iron Dragon City, the Shanxian county seat with a circumference of only 4 miles in the north, compared to it, how shabby and simple.

Li Xiao and the others first saw that on both sides of the official road outside the north gate, more than a dozen large and small shops had been built, and in the shouting of the shopkeepers one after another, the people of Iron Dragon City went in and out to buy goods and all kinds of commercial goods, and the entire official road had a bustling feeling.

In the distance, on the east and west sides of the Iron Dragon City, you can see that there are a large number of ordinary laborers in both places, mining, crushing, and washing ore, and then loading and transporting them into the city.

When they marched outside the north gate again, Wang Yishou, the general stationed in Iron Dragon City, Wu Liang, the director of Iron Main City, and others had already led a group of generals and officials of Iron Dragon City to line up on both sides of the city gate to welcome the arrival of the commander Li Xiao.

Li Xiao hugged Wang Yishou, Wu Liang and others affectionately, greeted each other with a smile, and told them about their parting. Then, surrounded by everyone, they entered the Iron Dragon City together.

Entering the city, Li Xiao saw that in the Iron Dragon City, there were four central main roads with a width of 10 meters wide and crossed, all of which were paved with wide bluestone slabs, and the entire castle was planned into four regions: northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast.

Li Xiao saw that the Northeast District, as the garrison of the army, had built a circle of inner walls, separating it from the other three districts, and only two paths led to the outer avenues, so as to ensure that military secrets would not be easily leaked.

Among them, the barracks, stables, school grounds, arsenals, granaries and other buildings have all been repaired, and the soldiers of the Iron Dragon General Army of the brigade are shouting slogans in the school field for training, and in the vacant space near the side of the army building, various official offices have been built along a small street, including the mansion for Li Xiao to live alone, as well as various government institutions such as the Department of Civil Affairs, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Industry, the Department of Supervision and Maintenance, and the Department of Security.

Li Xiao stood in the middle of the cross street and took a cursory look at the situation in the other three districts.

The northwest area is the place where Li Xiao plans to build it into an artillery factory, a gun factory, an ammunition factory, a maintenance factory, and other military industries that are most closely related to Li Xiaojun. Now the factory buildings have been built, but they are still empty, with no equipment and no workers.

Of course, this is a helpless thing, in the case of steel production has not been solved, the manufacture of guns and cannons can only be a castle in the air.

In the southwest area, this place where Li Xiao set up a forging base, will be used to make various armors, swords, shields, and various living utensils and other items in the future. At this time, this forging and smelting base, like the northwest region, is also empty in the absence of qualified steel supply, except for the workshop.

Li Xiao noticed that in the southwest and southeast districts, near the main street, a large number of ordinary houses were built, as well as everyday buildings such as schools, bathhouses, wells, and public toilets.

Li Xiao's eyes were focused on the southeast region.

He saw that a large number of huge warehouses had been built in the southeastern region, which were supposed to be used to store ore, as well as pig iron, wrought iron, steel, and coal to be used as fuel in the future. Among them, two huge warehouses for iron ore are full.

Li Xiao also noticed that Yan Jun, the head of the iron field, was taking more than a dozen craftsmen to discuss the key points of the establishment of the blast furnace enthusiastically.

A faint smile appeared on Li Xiao's face.

He knew that now, it was finally his turn to be a college student who had studied steel smelting in his previous life to show his skills.

Li Xiao walked over, and Yan Jun and the others realized that it was the commander Li Xiao who arrived, and everyone looked flustered, so they wanted to bow down in a hurry.

Li Xiao held them, then patted Yan Jun on the shoulder, and said to him with a smile: "Yan Zuotou, let the design of this blast furnace be completed with you." ”

Yan Jun and the others looked at each other, yes, the commander Master Li still knows how to smelt iron?

However, it seemed that Li Xiao's expression did not look like a joke, and after a little thought, everyone said together: "Since the adults are in charge of iron-making matters, I will listen to the arrangements." ”

After Li Xiao and others settled down, he began to carefully consider how to use new methods to carry out large-scale production in the steel industry.

Li Xiao knew that in this late Ming Dynasty, the most advanced technology that could be achieved among craftsmen was just like the iron-making methods mentioned in "Heavenly Creation". Moreover, because the steel production in various parts of the Ming Dynasty was basically in a closed and isolated state, and the exchange of advanced technology was not sufficient, many of the methods that craftsmen could adopt did not even meet the standards in "Tiangong Kaiwu".

Of course, Li Xiao knows how modern blast furnaces are and how they work, but Li Xiao doesn't think that he can completely copy modern technology in a short period of time. It is a more realistic method to combine the actual industrial level of the contemporary era and improve it step by step.

Li Xiao decided to build a charcoal kiln before building a blast furnace.

Li Xiao did this to ensure the effect of experimental ironmaking, because the purity of charcoal is much higher than that of coal and coke, and the impurity content is less than both.

However, Li Xiao's charcoal kiln setting is a strange pattern that has never been seen before by the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty, which makes the craftsmen feel very novel.

Li Xiao's charcoal kiln, half buried in the ground and half exposed, resembles a giant turtle, in the words of one craftsman.

Li Xiao laughed when he heard this.

Li Xiao did this because of his design reasons.

Because the semi-buried underground of the charcoal kiln can effectively keep warm, better improve the utilization rate of raw materials. Its specific structure resembles a small two-story building, the first floor is used for fire heating, and the second floor is placed for charcoal-fired raw wood.

Li Xiao asked the craftsmen to use the remaining bricks from the city wall to build it, and three days later, a charcoal kiln was built.

Subsequently, the wood was cut from the barren mountains in the vicinity, and after simple drying, it was moved into the upper part of the kiln, and the lower layer of the kiln was put into the coal purchased from the coal store in Shanxian County.

Next, Li Xiao asked the craftsman to light a fire at the nozzle on the first floor to ignite the coal seam, and at this time, the wood in the kiln on the second floor began to be roasted by the fire, and these woods, which were still a little wet, after the water evaporated, mixed with other volatiles, formed a cold white smoke, which emerged from the chimney and was quickly blown away by the cold wind.

The temperature gradually rises, and at this time, the coal on the first floor has been burned out, and the wood in the kiln on the second floor begins to oxidize and heat, and the wood material undergoes thermal decomposition reaction, and its composition begins to change. Unstable components, such as hemicellulose, decompose to form carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and small amounts of acetic acid.

The decomposition of the wood itself and the heating of the kiln push the temperature in the kiln to the highest point, about 400 degrees Celsius, the wood material is rapidly thermally decomposed, and there is a viscous oil flowing out on the surface of the wood, which is a large amount of acetic acid, methanol and wood tar generated by the reaction, and from time to time a bubble will be bulged, which is methane, ethylene and other flammable gases. These substances are slowly burned in the oxygen-deficient environment in the furnace to release heat and maintain the kiln temperature.

At this time, the smoke also begins to change, first yellowing, then blue, and gradually turning into a pale cyan transparent smoke.

Seeing that the smoke became transparent, the craftsmen began to seal the kiln and block the chimney on the roof of the kiln.

In this way, the firewood in the kiln begins to continue the chemical reaction in a very oxygen-deficient environment, and the oxidation reaction in the kiln slowly stops, and the kiln temperature gradually decreases.

After another three days, Li Xiao asked the craftsman to open the roof of the kiln for ventilation, and then cooled it for another two days, and Li Xiao asked the kiln to open the kiln to extract charcoal.

When the craftsmen opened the kiln door, a choking smoke came to their faces, making all the craftsmen present cough.

An older craftsman ordered everyone to quickly shut their mouths, wrap them in wet wipes, and then hunched their knees to scoop out the black and shiny charcoal from the kiln.

After more than two hours, the sweaty craftsmen finally finished taking all the charcoal.

The total weight of charcoal is 5,000 catties.

Li Xiao's charcoal burning with experimental properties was a great success.

Charcoal, which can be used to smelt high-quality iron, is thus fired. It has extremely high carbon content, low content of impurities such as phosphorus and sulfur, strong reducibility, and also has a loose and porous structure, full combustion, uniform heating, and is better than coke in blast furnace ironmaking.

In the past few days of charcoal firing, an iron-making blast furnace built of green bricks and covered with red clay mixed with salt mud inside and out, about six zhang high and with a volume of about 30 cubic meters, also rose from the ground in the southeast area of Tielong City near the corner of the city wall under the guidance of Li Xiao.

This one has a wide belly, the neck is narrowed, the appearance is a bit similar to the blast furnace of Jingdezhen vase, more than half of the furnace body is underground, the furnace body is like a bottle, its mouth is wide, the bottom thickness is three zhang and five feet, because it is convenient to add materials, so most of the furnace body is in the pit. Among them, the narrowest part of the bottleneck of the furnace mouth allows only one person to drill into, and from a distance, it looks a bit like a wine bottle, and it is also very much like the absurdist works of modern social performance art.

Compared with the iron-making blast furnaces of the Ming Dynasty with a maximum volume of only 10 cubic meters, this blast furnace is almost a behemoth in the eyes of Yan Jun and the blacksmiths, but in Li Xiao's view, it is just a pediatric, and it is really unbearable to compare with the iron-making blast furnaces of later generations.

Because in the 21st century in Li Xiao's previous life, China basically had large blast furnaces of more than 3,000 cubic meters, and blast furnaces below 200 cubic meters had to be forcibly shut down, and Japan was even using 5,000 cubic meters of blast furnaces in the 80s of the 20th century.

What really worries Li Xiao is that in the modern iron and steel industry, in the internal structure of the blast furnace, the building bricks used are refractory bricks made of high-alumina clay, which can ensure that the blast furnace can be used for a long time.

In this way, because the main component of the green bricks in the furnace wall is silica, when lime and other slag making agents are added to the furnace, it will produce phosphoric acid with impurities such as phosphorus in the molten iron, and this phosphoric acid will react violently with the acidic furnace wall, resulting in erosion and damage to the inner wall of the blast furnace. The traditional ancient Chinese iron-making method of applying salt mud on green bricks is actually quite dangerous, which directly led to the frequent occurrence of explosive furnace incidents in various parts of the Ming Dynasty.

According to Li Xiao's estimate, this blast furnace is likely to be in danger of burning down if it is used less than 20 times.

This high-bauxite, Li Xiao remembers that it is recorded in China's contemporary mineral chronicles, and it is produced in the Lunan region, especially in the Linyi Mountains, but Li Xiao can only control the Tielong City and the nearby range of thirty miles, and cannot reach out to cross the border, so he cannot completely solve this problem for the time being.

Li Xiao secretly made up his mind in his heart that he must find a way to solve this problem in the future, and strive to make the blast furnace safe to use time and reach a level close to that of modern industry. Although the workers of the Ming Dynasty did not have a labor insurance system, Li Xiao still hoped to do his best to ensure the personal safety of these workers, after all, behind every worker, there was a family that counted on his salary to survive.

In order to ensure safety, Li Xiao repeatedly told the blacksmiths that such a blast furnace could only be used sixteen or seventeen times, and it must be dismantled and rebuilt.

For the sake of safety, Li Xiao made major improvements to the blower attached to the blast furnace.

In the Ming Dynasty, the bellows made of folded leather were used for iron-making blasts, which looked like a large accordion. When using the ground, step on the air with your foot one by one. The biggest problem with this type of blower is that it is easy to age at high temperatures, and if the blast furnace fryer that does not use high-alumina clay refractory bricks collapses due to poor air blasting, the hot molten iron can instantly vaporize the nearby craftsmen.

Now this detachable movable push-pull wooden box blower is a new type of blower equipment designed by Li Xiao after careful consideration.

In appearance, it resembles a large drawer with wooden handles that can be pushed and pulled to blow the air. In addition, if a breakage is found, the detachable wooden structure makes it easy to replace the damaged parts immediately.

Yan Jun and the blacksmiths looked at Li Xiao with almost adoring eyes.

What really shocked them was not the iron-making blast furnace, but the newly built iron-frying furnace next to the blast furnace.

Yan Jun they know the Ming Dynasty iron furnace, that is, the kind of open iron furnace recorded in the "Heavenly Works", is a kind of equipment that is completely made of manual stirring, the shape of the furnace is similar to a water tank, there is always a strong man by the stove, holding a willow wooden stick made of fried iron rod, sweating back and forth, so that the carbon in the pig iron liquid oxidizes, and matures the iron. However, this method is extremely inefficient and extremely harmful to the health of craftsmen.

This method is different from the steel filling method commonly used in Europe at that time, in which wrought iron is heated and carburized into steel, and is called the frying method.

So why is this method of mixing and refining wrought iron with willow sticks so popular in China? This is because, this humble method has an unexpected benefit.

That is, while stirring, the willow sticks will be gradually burned, which is equivalent to mixing elemental carbon into the pig iron, through this step, sometimes you can try your luck and directly fry the steel with a carbon content lower than that of pig iron but higher than that of wrought iron, and even have the opportunity to fry medium carbon steel and high carbon steel. In the words of the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty, it is the grandfather who opened his eyes and rewarded the hard-working craftsmen with gifts.

It's just that this method of frying steel, this kind of luck-like steelmaking production method, is too primitive and simple compared to the large-scale steelmaking industry in Europe at that time.

As the times continued, China's rudimentary iron-making technology became even more decaying after the Qing Dynasty, in stark and sad contrast to the rapid development of modern industry in European countries.

During the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing troops of the Green Battalion, who were fighting in Korea, were horrified to find that their broadswords were often broken by the bayonets of the Japanese army, which made the already low morale of the Green Battalion even more fearful of the sun and collapsed when encountered. The Japanese contemptuously called these Chinese troops, who were unable to fight the First World War and were extremely poorly equipped, the "Chinese garbage army".

To the surprise of Yan Jun and the blacksmiths, the iron-roasting furnace designed by Li Xiao completely subverted their original perception of the iron-frying furnace.

This iron furnace designed by Li Xiao is a bit like a teacup of Kung Fu tea, it is built as a whole with salt-covered mud bricks, the bottom of the hearth bed is concave in the middle, surrounded by arched furnace walls, the lower part is the combustion chamber, and the air inlet duct is at the bottom of the combustion chamber. It is a reverberatory furnace type that has never been seen before, and the flame is isolated from iron ore.

Its structure can be seen as three layers, the upper and lower floors, the top and secondary floors are isolated from each other, and in the middle are multiple iron fences that can be turned. When the molten iron flows from the blast furnace to the top floor, the coal piled up in the second layer lies flat on the iron fence and burns, heats the molten iron on the upper floor, and after the coal is burned, the iron fence is overturned, and the cinder falls into the slag removal room at the bottom floor, and the iron fence is flattened, and coal can be added to it from the coal inlet road that is inclined down 45 degrees.

Next, Li Xiao designed a bracket, placed above the center of the iron furnace, under the bracket there are three wrought iron rods obliquely stretched out to the hearth, the outside is used to push the winch, there are three handles stretched outward, can be pushed by three strong men from a distance together to push the iron, so that after the improvement, although it is still driven by manpower, it can effectively maintain the health of the craftsman, and can also make the iron fry more efficient.

After more than 20 days of preparation, all the preparations were made.

Looking at these newly built iron-making blast furnaces, iron-frying furnaces, blowers and other iron-making equipment that condense their own efforts. Li Xiao was very excited in his heart.

Compared with the modern iron-making industry, these equipment, although still rudimentary, have greatly surpassed the actual industrial level of the Ming Dynasty in this era.

Li Xiao suddenly remembered the comments of some celebrities in the Ming Dynasty on the state of ironmaking in various places.

At that time, the iron was most famous in Fujian, and Fang Yizhi once said in "Physics Knowledge": Southern Iron is the highest in Fujian Iron, followed by Guangzhou Railway, and Chu Iron can only be used as a hoe.

Mao Yuanyi said in "Wu Bei Zhi": Fujian iron is used to make Weiyuan cannons, and Jin iron is second.

Zhao Shizhen said in "Artifact Spectrum or Question": Fujian iron must be used to make guns, and other iron cannot be used. Iron smelting, charcoal fire is the top, the north charcoal is expensive, and coal has to be used instead, so there are often many explosions.

Li Xiao secretly thought in his heart, the quality and quantity of the iron and steel I made in Tielongcheng must be on top of the best Fujian iron in the Ming Dynasty. Ladies and gentlemen, I agreed. (To be continued.) )