In other words, the use of copper, a metal with a long history, is also very common on the east coast, such as the thin copper plate covering the bottom of the main warship of the Navy, such as a large number of bronze or brass guns cast in military factories (but still mainly steel artillery), such as copper pipes, valves, propellers, bolts (for shipbuilding), gears, gaskets, connectors, clock parts, printing copper plates, distillation pots, heat sinks, etc., in addition to the power research on the shore of Xuefeng Lake in the South Cone also needs copper.

Some of these applications are pure copper, while others are copper alloys, such as bronze, brass, and manganese bronze that is being studied. But there is no doubt that the use of copper as a raw material in the East Coast is becoming more and more extensive, because whether it is industry, agriculture, commerce (coinage), military or people's daily consumption (copper consumption), there is an extremely strong market demand for copper, the second largest metal in the hardware manufacturing of the East Coast.

And because the East Coast does not produce copper - the Ministry of Geology does not know how much effort it has spent for many years, how many teams have been sent, and how many places where there is copper in Indian legends, but it has not been able to find copper mines in the local area - so the Republic of East Coast of China has always been a major importer of copper, and the import volume has been increasing day by day in recent years, spending a huge amount of money every year, and this is also one of the few metal mines in the Old Continent that can be exported to the East Coast in large quantities.

At present, the copper imported from the east coast has the following sources. One is a copper block from the ballast bottom of the Dutch East India Company. As early as the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, because of the huge consumer demand brought about by the war, the price of copper produced in Sweden, Hungary, Germany, England and other places soared, and the price even soared five or six times at the peak, making it possible for the Dutch East India Company to transport Japanese copper from the Far East back to Europe for sale. At that time, the East India Company made huge profits by placing large quantities of copper blocks and sheets purchased from Japan at low prices as ballast on the bottom of the ship and then shipping them back to Amsterdam.

Later, the price of copper in Europe slowly returned to normal due to the end of the war, but the demand of the people on the East Coast began to increase day by day, and they were willing to pay a higher price for copper bullion, so the East India Company continued to ship Japanese copper sheets to the East Coast as ballast for sale, and this business has now become a regular pattern and is an integral part of the foreign trade of the Dutch East India Company.

The second way of importing is copper ore from the Old World, which is mainly done by trading stations in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean, and the quantity is quite large, not much less than that of Japanese copper. It's just that the price of these copper mines fluctuates a lot, the output is sometimes too high, and there are other buyers competing, which is a problem for the East Coasters who are responsible for the purchase. Otherwise, in order to balance the trade of the Old World, the purchase of copper ore from here will also be increased.

All the copper ore purchased will basically be transported to the commercial terminal of Dongfang Port, and then transported by train to Tieling Special Steel Plant for smelting and processing. Of course, the Tieling factory produces mostly refined copper ingots, copper plates or copper alloy plates of different sizes, and to finally process them into a variety of finished products, it has to rely on the efforts of many small workshops, small enterprises and even individual craftsmen who rely on these state-owned factories to survive - this part of the population is undoubtedly huge, according to incomplete statistics, at present, relying on Tieling Special Steel, Western Rolling Steel, Tieling Boiler, the first heavy machinery and other factories to do supporting small workshops have reached more than 100, and the number of employees has reached thousands. A large number of various hardware products are produced every day, in addition to meeting the needs of the domestic market, a large number of exports can be exported to foreign countries to make profits, which shows the potential of the hardware industry on the east coast, and this is only a production area, there are many such processing enterprises in other places, but they are more scattered, and the scale is not so large.

"Copper is found in nature in the form of sulphides, for example, we recently imported a batch of copper ore from England (from Ireland, Cornwall, etc.), mainly chalcopyrite. This ore is more common and easy to smelt, both for us and for copper manufacturers in the Old World. The director of Tieling Special Steel Plant said: "But the biggest difference between us and our counterparts in the Old Continent is actually the difference in smelting methods, which began more than ten years ago, and it was also the era of explosive growth of China's copper demand." ”

"Our smelting method, in simple terms, is to roast about a few tons of ore to remove some of the impurities and crystalline water that can decompose at high temperatures. In the second step, we put the cooled raw material (usually brownish-black) into a melting furnace – usually a reverberatory furnace – for melting, and in the process we continuously remove the residue to form a metal liquid with a copper content of more than 35%. When the copper-containing liquid in the furnace is almost full, it is allowed to flow into a nearby sink to cool, and in the process the liquid metal condenses into a large granular solid. In the smelting system of the Old World, these steps are actually similar to ours, but they lack the design of qualified reverberatory furnaces, and the life of refractory bricks is not very satisfactory, so they need to engage in some more complex smelting processes to make up for it, and the effect is not necessarily good. ”

"The granular intermediates that condense in the water are collected and placed in another furnace – also a reverberatory furnace design, but with a preference for a brick kiln similar to ours – for at least a day and a night. In the calcination process, a blower is indispensable because it allows the furnace to reach its highest temperature, which is conducive to the smelting of metals. At this point, the impurities in the granular copper are further reduced, and then it enters another melting furnace to melt to form a metal liquid containing about 75% copper. ”

"This 75% molten copper is introduced into the mold again to solidify, and then sent to the third melting furnace for melting, at which point the blower is maximized, so that the impurities in the molten copper continue to oxidize, and form a copper block containing about 95% copper. These copper blocks are still not our final products, we still need to refine them in the last step, in fact, to put it bluntly, it is to carry out a redox reaction in the fourth melting furnace, so that some impurities on the surface of the copper block are turned into slag or exhaust gas through chemical reaction - the slag produced by this process is also extremely valuable, which can be added to the previous steps for melting to improve the utilization rate - and then the rest is the so-called refined copper, which has a copper content of more than 99%, Some of the best ones can contain no less than 5% copper. ”

"Europeans or Asians in the follow-up smelting process can not reach our extremely high temperature, and at the same time, some chemical reactions in the copper liquid are not very clear, and the refining process is also flawed or simply omitted, which makes their so-called copper ingots or copper blocks have low copper content, far inferior to our products, and the performance is naturally inferior. We are now basically smelting copper ore from Europe together with Japanese copper nuggets imported by the East India Company, and finally producing refined copper. Of course, Japanese copper nuggets will often give us some surprises, because it is likely to contain gold, and the Japanese do not realize the huge benefits in this, so it can be regarded as a disguised subsidy for our company, hehe. The director of Tieling Special Steel Plant finally said.

"Most of the refined copper produced by our factory is used to produce various copper alloys (except for the thin copper plates distributed to the South Cone Xuefeng Lakeside Electric Institute and the Navy to cover the bottom of ships), of which the largest output is undoubtedly brass, which is also the most in demand. You see, from soldiers' buttons, cockades (brass pentagrams), objects such as candlesticks, incense burners, gongs, coffee pots, etc., to brass cannons (the navy has trial-produced some huge heavy guns with large aspect ratios and placed them in several important ports, and this kind of extra-long barreled guns can only be made of copper for the time being), and brass sheets covering the bottom of large sailing ships (the ratio of copper to zinc is 3:2, and this brass sheet alone corrodes quickly and must be replaced frequently). ”

"It's really a huge industry, with an annual turnover of hundreds of thousands, right?" After listening for a long time, Qi Wangping nodded and said with a smile: "The hardware industry such as metallurgy, materials, and metal processing is the foundation of a country's industry and the foundation of the national economy. Don't look at how prosperous and prosperous those enterprises that export machinery and equipment, weapons and ammunition, and metal utensils, in fact, the basis of their existence is entirely because of your existence. Without you, they can't make so much money, the cost of our industry will be as high as the old continent, and our citizens can't enjoy such a high quality of life, so don't be modest, you are the big brother of the national economy, the production of gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin, the traditional hardware, has given us a strong skeleton in the East Coast Republic of China, great, continue to work hard. ”

"Our annual turnover of selling refined copper and various copper alloys has indeed exceeded 300,000 yuan, and last year's sales figure was 320,000 yuan, which is also due to frequent wars and sharp rise in copper prices. Seven or eight years ago, I didn't make so much money, but now the demand for copper is getting bigger and bigger, and even if the war ends in the future, this figure should not shrink, and it should rise slowly, and I am very confident in this. Another point is that the profit margin of copper and copper alloy is larger, although the price has been suppressed a lot (speaking of which, the factory director still can't help but complain about the downstream manufacturers, because they buy refined copper or copper alloy at a very low price), but it still makes us feel very considerable, and we intend to continue to develop more copper alloys and make our own contribution to the country's materials science. The director of the Tieling plant said again.

"I heard that in addition to manganese and copper, your production of lead, tin, zinc, and nickel is also quite large-scale? Good guys, the products are very miscellaneous, I think it's time to set up a company specializing in the production of non-ferrous metals, so that you don't have a good management. Qi Wangping said with a smile, but the words made the director of the Tieling Plant on the opposite side chuckle in his heart, secretly wondering whether the establishment of this non-ferrous metal company was a casual remark by Chairman Qi or the central government had a plan, if it was the latter, it would definitely be a bad news for the Tieling Plant, which has invested a lot of money in the research and development of the above metals!

In fact, the director of the Tieling plant was right. Long before Qi Wangping left for Tieling County, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce had already submitted a report to the Government Council, intending to set up a metal smelting company, that is, the East Coast Nonferrous Metals Company, in the convenient Shangcheng Port. In the future, the company will use copper, lead, tin, zinc and nickel ores imported from abroad for smelting, and then produce various alloy materials, laying a good foundation for the industrial development of the East Coast Republic of China.

Among these metals, copper, lead and zinc are almost all imported from the Old World, mainly Sweden, England, Turkey, Poland (daigou) and northern Germany; More than 90% of the tin came from the Chalcas Inquisition District of the Kingdom of Spain next door, and was transported by land and the Paraná River to the territory of the east bank; Nickel is a special metal, since the East Coast people accidentally imported some of it from the Old World and studied its chemical properties, and the expedition team discovered a lot of ore on a large island in the South Pacific (that is, the later New Caledonia), and now it is planned to send people to the island to build a colony and wharf, ready to small-scale trial mining of nickel ore on the island, and then transport it back to the East Coast for smelting and processing.

"This, Chairman Qi, I think it's good now, in fact, our more popular products are brass, bronze, tin-plated flakes (tinplate) and so on, and nickel-copper alloys are just trial production of a batch of coins (cents), and it has not yet reached the time to set up a special institution to manage and operate them." The director of the Tieling factory said with some sneer: "And we are now investing heavily in the study of the ratio of various alloys, the refining process of gold and silver, and the optimization of the production process of various metals. ”

"Why do you ask others to pick peaches, it's so ugly. It's all the country's industry, and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce is your majority shareholder (the East Coast Company holds another 20%), do you need your approval to do what the major shareholder wants? Qi Wangping lightly tapped the factory director, and then, perhaps feeling that the words were a little too heavy, he softened his tone a little, and said: "Of course, it is still a bit far to say this, and the central government has not decided when to establish a non-ferrous metal company." Even if it is established one day in the future, rest assured, it will give your factory a certain amount of compensation, and you will not be allowed to do it in vain. ”

"On the other hand, how is the ferrochrome alloy that you were looking for and researching going? I heard you've found some finished products, right? Qi Wangping suddenly asked again.

"I got some, but not too much, mainly in the interior of the eastern part of South Africa by an expedition sent by the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Geology, and it took a long time and a lot of money. It's just that the area is still under the control of the natives, and we can't send people to establish a solid mining base in depth, so the progress is not very large. And this kind of thing is not much demand at present, it seems that this metal is not needed in machining, the existing manganese steel cutter head is completely sufficient, and our machinery does not seem to have such high requirements for machining accuracy. The director said.

"This still has to be followed up quickly, and we can't be sloppy about laying the foundation for our future mechanical processing industry and metal materials industry." Chairman Qi Da said with a rare straight face: "As for the mining obstacles faced by South Africa, I will find a way to coordinate with the War Department, and we must do such things as chromite." ”