It was a square building made of bricks and mortar, and the bottom of the building was about two meters long and more than six meters high, and it looked thin and tall, like a thick chimney.

This is actually a furnace, at the bottom of the furnace is the ash outlet, 60 centimeters from the ground is the furnace feed port and combustion chamber, above the combustion chamber is a layer of hollow squares, each square grid is 1.7 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, more than 30 centimeters high, the shape of these squares is easily reminiscent of the cabinet with drawers removed.

In fact, these squares are really used to install drawers.

The drawers installed in these squares are welded from wrought iron, surrounded by iron plates, and at the bottom are grids woven and welded with iron bars.

These drawers are filled with raw materials and placed in spaces above the furnace chamber, and when the stove is lit, the flame passes through the grid at the bottom of the drawer and heats directly to the raw material in the drawer.

From the first drawer, which is 50 centimeters from the combustion chamber, to the top, there are more than 10 drawers in total.

In order to obtain sufficient furnace temperature, four huge bellows are installed at the very bottom of the furnace, which are driven by a cam mechanism driven by two water wheels, which can provide uninterrupted air blast for this huge furnace.

The building is actually a primitive cement calcining kiln.

Historically known as the barn kiln, this cement calciner was invented in England in the late 17th century.

In fact, whether this is a warehouse kiln or not, Chen Xian himself has no score in his heart, and the furnace he designed was designed by himself based on the rough information in the online writers' database.

In that document, only a few characters were used to roughly describe the invention and development process of cement, without drawings and detailed data descriptions, Chen Xian could only explore the design by himself according to the general idea of the article.

The furnace in front of him is the product of his trial and error improvement with a small stove, and then scaled up after being finalized.

After enlarging the furnace, Chen Xian found that the material box was too large and too heavy, and loading and unloading the material box became a problem.

Chen Xian also designed a set of peripheral devices for loading and unloading materials for this furnace.

In order to facilitate loading and unloading, he separated the draw-out directions of the bins, facing the left and right sides of the furnace, so that the loading and unloading of the bins could be carried out from both sides of the furnace at the same time.

In order to load and unload these heavy bins, Chen Xian designed a simple gantry crane.

The so-called gantry crane is actually to install a fixed pulley at the top end of a square frame, and a sling is installed on the fixed pulley, one end of the sling is four hook claws, and the other end leads to the ground after bypassing the fixed pulley, so that the people on the ground can lift the material box through this fixed pulley and sling.

Of course, it was not enough to have a sling, someone had to operate the bin, and Chen Xian built scaffolding on both sides of the furnace.

The advantage of this kind of kiln designed by Chen Xian is that the internal air circulation is smooth, and with the blower equipment, it can provide a high furnace temperature, which is one of the key factors in the production of cement.

There are three key factors in the manufacture of cement, first, furnace temperature, second raw material ratio, and third raw material crushing.

In terms of crushing, Chen Xian didn't think of any good way, with the accumulation of technology in his hands, the pulverizer and ball mill were things he never dreamed of.

In desperation, he could only use the most primitive crushing tools, water mills and grinding troughs.

The so-called water hammer is actually a hydraulic hammer, but the hammer is not an anvil under the hammer, but a nest similar to pounding garlic, filling the material into the nest, and the hammer is constantly lifted and smashed under the action of water power, and the material in the nest is smashed.

The material crushed by the water mill is then transferred to the grinding trough for further processing.

In order to facilitate the use of the water turbine, Chen Xian used an annular grinding groove.

He used the cast bevel gear to change the rotation direction of the water wheel from horizontal rotation to vertical, and used the vertical shaft to drive the mill, rolling and rolling along a circular grinding groove repeatedly, and finally rolling the material into a very fine powder.

The crushed limestone and clay are mixed in a certain proportion, mixed with water, and stirred evenly to make mud strips, which are then cut into mud blocks of uniform size.

The cut mud is loaded into a bin and placed on the upper level of the furnace to heat it.

The preheated raw material is transferred to the lower level along with the bin to be heated again, and generally speaking, only bins below three meters can be heated to a sufficient temperature, and bins above three meters cannot be heated to a sufficient temperature and can only be used as a preheating area.

The production efficiency of this kind of kiln is not high, and it can only be processed by one kiln, and after the processing is over, the blast equipment continues to blow cold air into it, cools down the furnace temperature, and carries out the work of reclaiming, moving the box and loading the materials.

After calcining, the material is crushed again, and after being mixed with gypsum powder, it is Portland cement.

In cement production, the ratio of raw materials is also very important, and if the ratio is not reasonable, inferior cement will be produced.

Unfortunately, in the rough information of this online writer, there is no specific cement raw material ratio data.

Fortunately, it is mentioned in this material describing the history of cement development that when Portland cement was first invented, the quality was very unstable, and in the subsequent improvements, it was found that it was due to the unreasonable material ratio, when the limestone component in the cement material ratio was too much, resulting in the calcined cement if it contained limestone components, the resulting cement would be easy to crack.

Based on these limited materials in the data, Chen Xian finally determined the correct ratio of cement raw materials after trial and error.

The cement production line designed by Chen Xian is not bad in terms of cement quality, but the production capacity is not high, a large furnace, 24 water mills, six grinding troughs, an average of a day, can only produce a few hundred catties of cement, the efficiency is really low.

Fortunately, one turbine can drive four water mills and one grinding groove through a long axis, and this cement plant only occupies six water turbines, otherwise Chen Xian would really be reluctant to build this cement plant.

The reason why Chen Xian wanted to build this cement factory was because cement was needed for the sluice gates of the irrigation system on the other side of the Qingya River.

With cement, many things have become simpler, such as the base of the sluice, the shaft of the turbine, the construction of the canal, the construction of the dam......

……

Chen Xian, with most of the workers, moved to Xiangshuizhuang before the end of the eighth year of Taihe.

Xiangshuizhuang is larger than the new Zhuangzi, with a side length of more than 100 meters, and has been designed with classrooms, dormitories, canteens, bathrooms and other functional buildings in mind, so it is not only more spacious than the new Zhuangzi, but also more comfortable to live in.

Moving, especially to a new home that is more spacious and bright, is a very happy thing for Chen Xian's boys whose average age is only fourteen or fifteen years old.

Chen Xian was also very happy, he used the cement produced in small batches during the trial production to build a two-story small brick building with a balcony for himself, and the living space suddenly became spacious.

Chen Xian built the brick building next to the public bath, and connected a copper pipe from the hot water tank in the bathroom to his bathroom, so that he had hot water available for most of the day.

The improvement of the quality of life made Chen Xian's mood very happy.

But there are also things that give him a headache, because he opened the "mine", he had to think about the management of the new Zhuangzi after he left.