How so!

Looking at the appearance of the extrusion billet machine slowly squeezing out the bricks, Shi Yiwen was dumbfounded.

This...... It's too slow!

The extrusion billet machine is not as he imagined, it can make tens of thousands of bricks per hour, and according to the current speed of brick making, it can make thousands of bricks, which is already very good.

"Childe, with this brick making machine, our brick price can be at least fifty percent cheaper!"

Zhao Guoye obviously didn't notice the change in Shi Yiwen's face.

Shi Yiwen, who looked quite ugly, looked coldly at the "inefficient" brick making machine, and it took almost a minute to squeeze out a row of bricks, a row of sixteen, and an hour was ...... It's only a thousand.

This efficiency is too low!

How so?

What's the problem?

After looking around, Shi Yiwen finally found the problem - lack of power!

"The efficiency of the brick making machine is too low, mainly because of the water wheel!"

Standing on the embankment, Shi Yiwen's eyes stared at the continuous row of drainage trucks in the diversion canal on the bank of the river, and asked with a frown.

"Guangqi, you have also learned a lot of physics knowledge in the past few months, do you know why the waterwheel is inefficient?"

The teacher's rhetorical question made Xu Guangqi slightly stunned, carefully observed the waterwheel, and connected with the physics knowledge he had taught himself, and after a while, he tried to answer.

"Water usually has a velocity after it leaves the wheel, which can waste a lot of kinetic energy from the wheel."

Xu Guangqi's answer made Shi Yiwen nodded, for a thousand years, all kinds of waterwheels have actually used the weight of the water itself to drive the up-shot waterwheel, this kind of waterwheel is inefficient, and there is also a biggest drawback, this kind of up-shot waterwheel cannot be used in winter, because the river will freeze.

And the winter in the capital ...... Thinking that the north will only get colder and colder in the next few decades, Shi Yiwen pursed his lips and nodded.

"It's true, the waterwheel uses the weight of the water itself to drive, which does not give full play to the water power, and the water flow itself is a more powerful power, we can design a new waterwheel, and use the water flow to impact the waterwheel to obtain energy."

Turning his head to look at Xu Guangqi, seeing that he still seemed to be puzzled, Shi Yiwen said with a smile.

"How about it, would you like to try it with Weishi?"

Actually, there is no need to try it at all, after all, there are many articles and books about water turbines in the library, although they are often related to electricity, but they can still give him a lot of inspiration. After all, water turbines were originally invented not to generate electricity, but to power factories.

Hydraulic machinery, until the end of the 19th century in some areas with abundant water resources, although not comparable to the steam engine, but as a cheap energy source is still popular in many factories, especially when the new type of hydraulic turbine can provide dozens or even hundreds of horsepower.

And all thanks to the invention of a more efficient water turbine in 1832 by the French engineer Fournillon Benoit. The waterwheel, which had remained unchanged for nearly 2,000 years, was finally replaced by an efficient water turbine.

Hydraulic turbines are easy to manufacture, and the iron factory has accumulated rich experience in metal processing, but the problem is how to design the entire hydrodynamic system.

"That's it!"

In the end, after repeatedly searching and comparing materials in the library, Shi Yiwen chose a small low-head run-of-the-river hydropower station designed in the 60s, which is designed to bring light to "tens of millions of peasant brothers" "small hydropower", not only the overall structure is simple, and even the water turbine can also use wooden propellers, although in the library of the space, only a few pages of sketch and thousands of words of text introduction, but Shi Yiwen still figured out its principle. This type of run-of-the-river hydropower station is built on a diversion weir. The water trapped by the diversion weir is washed to the low level of the water wheel through the waterway under the action of gravity, which pushes the water wheel to rotate and drives the generator to generate electricity. This water then flows into a normal river channel. Because this type of hydropower station does not need to store a large amount of water, of course, the amount of work is much less.

It was chosen because of its short construction period, according to the book, with 500 laborers and only one month to build, except for generators, other equipment can be produced locally, including raw materials including cement.

Because the construction period is short, and only the generator needs to be changed to a transmission shaft, and the drawings can be directly applied, it naturally becomes the best choice. And more importantly, compared to those huge old waterwheels that can only provide a few horsepower, it can provide a dozen, or even twenty or thirty horsepower.

In the following month, the banks of the Lugou River became a busy construction site, where nearly 2,000 craftsmen were busy digging aqueducts, while Xu Guangqi, who had been studying water turbines with Shi Yiwen, was in charge of casting water turbines and other equipment in the iron factory.

As for Shi Yiwen, he became a civil engineer and guided the craftsmen to build the aqueduct, but in the process of building the aqueduct, he encountered a problem - cement!

Because it is soil and hydropower, it does not use pressure steel pipe to divert water, but uses a masonry diversion weir, whether it is bricks or stones, cement masonry is needed, but the cement in the space has already been used almost, after all, not only the construction of the wheel kiln needs to use cement, together with the frame of the previous construction of the water wheel, and even the workshop, also use cement, although there are hundreds of tons of cement on the construction site in the space, but can not withstand such use.

At the most critical time when the project was carried out, with the news brought by Sun Ming'an, the project had to be stopped.

"Childe, this cement is running out, I don't know when, I will send new cement over?"

Sun Mingan looked at Childe and asked. Like his master, he used to work in the Ministry of Works, and after coming here, what surprised him the most was that when he was mixed with water and sand, it would become solid as a stone.

Although he was very curious before, he never asked where the cement came from and how it was made, after all, as a craftsman, he knew that some things were people's magic weapons, and he should never ask what he could not ask.

But now that the cement is running out and the work is about to stop, he can't help but ask.

"This ......"

Facing Sun Ming'an's inquiry, Shi Yiwen's face was filled with bitterness,

It was so easy, he originally thought that there was a lot of cement on the construction site, but he thought that the cement would be so useless and run out so quickly...... Really.

"I don't have to send it, but if I have it, let's make it ourselves now......"

The big chimney that has been erected towards the wheel cellar yard is the one that has used up its own cement, so let's use it to make cement first!