After listening to the report of the director of the Tieling Special Steel Plant, Qi Wangping listened to the report of the management of the Western Rolling Mill, and it was already more than 10 o'clock in the evening. Because it was too late, he simply rested in the train station for one night, and the next day he went to the Tieling Mining Bureau with great interest to visit and investigate.

The Tieling Mining Bureau is famous, and its fame is faintly more than that of the Ping An Mining Bureau, which was established earlier and has earlier qualifications, but in terms of production scale, it is really not much. The reason for this is that the industrial scale of the East Coast itself is still very limited (the internal and external markets cannot digest too much production capacity), and the second is that it is mainly based on the production of iron, manganese, gold and other metal ores, and the production capacity of coal is not very large.

Qi Wangping didn't have much interest in the production of coal and iron, but only listened to the report briefly, asked the person in charge of the mining area about the mechanization of coal mining, the mechanization of transportation, the ventilation and other safety facilities in the mining area, and praised it in a programmatic way, and finally turned his attention to the production of the Tieling gold mine, which he was most concerned about.

The Tieling Gold Mine is the only gold mine that has been discovered and has mining value in the East Coast Republic of China, and it took 60 years for Uruguayans to mine gold in the 19th century before gold production began to decline and gradually dried up. If the East Coast is far from 60 years old, and therefore the mine is still in its prime of life, it will provide the East Coast with a steady supply of 300-500 kilograms of gold worth 150,000 to 250,000 yuan each year (in fact, more than that, because silver is added when the gold coins are minted), and it will not be a small supplement to the East Coast's finances - at least last year (1676), the Admiralty paid for the construction of the third ship of the "Executive Committee" class three-deck battleship "Liberator".

Of course, the East Coast receives more gold every year. The gold mined by the Far East Denglai Pioneer Team and the Heishui Pioneer Team every year, the gold obtained by the East Coast Japanese Company from Japan, the gold traded or looted from Africa, and the gold traded or looted from Chinese mainland are twice the output of the Tieling Gold Mine, worth about 400,000 yuan. It's just that the cost of obtaining this gold is higher, and it is far less expensive than the East Coast's own production.

The gold produced by the Tieling Gold Mine on the east coast is also currently being refined at the Tieling Special Steel Plant. Unlike the Old World's jewellers or bankers, who handled gold, the East Coasters were able to separate the silver, copper, and platinum metals from gold more efficiently, thanks to their chemical knowledge that was many times higher than that of the Old World.

Generally speaking, it is common for gold to be mixed with silver, copper, or platinum metals, and it is not possible to effectively separate it according to the usual methods, unless a strong acid such as nitric acid is used (this substance existed in the Old World, but the properties of this strong acid are not necessarily understood, and it is prepared by accident and is relatively rare). On the East Coast, however, chlorine became known as a result of the emergence of the chlor-alkali industry (currently mainly used to sterilize or bleach cotton cloth) and was therefore used in the refining and purification of gold.

This purification process can only be devised by the people of the East Coast, and it is very simple to say, that is, to heat molten gold in a crucible and add borax. When chlorine gas enters the crucible, the metals that are cheaper than gold will react to form volatile chloride fumes, and at this time, impurity metals such as silver, copper, and lead will be slowly purified. Of course, some people will try to recover the silver inside, but it is very simple: the liquid silver chloride is poured into a container with strong acid, and then obtained by electrolysis (which is also incomprehensible to Europeans).

Of course, the above method can only separate silver, copper and other metals, but it has no effect on the platinum group metals in gold, especially the gold produced in South America, which has a high platinum group metal content. That is, the gold is put into aqua regia, dissolved, and then heated to evaporate the acid, and ammonium chloride is added (laboratory made, ammonia is obtained through dry distillation coal, and then ammonium chloride is prepared, the cost is extremely high, the yield is low, and it is very expensive), so that the platinum group metal precipitates, generally in the form of platinum powder.

The rest of the work is to collect the platinum powder and put it in a crucible, then heat it, and finally forge and calender it into a platinum sheet. This kind of platinum sheet, in the east coast is mainly used in the jewelry industry, the production of a variety of rings, earrings or something, swept the entire high society, for the government to recover a large amount of currency, said and South African diamonds, is a gold weapon, the annual benefits are quite small, although not allowed steel, copper alloy and other metals profits, but steadily ranked third, every year for Tieling special steel production to earn a 5-100,000 yuan is not a problem, and this number is also very year-on-year upward trend, Because there are too many "stupid women" who love these things.

Qi Wangping's wife and daughters also have a lot of platinum jewelry, especially his old wife, who has a lot of collections, and probably also has the factor of nostalgia for the time before the time.

Chairman Qi himself naturally does not have much interest in platinum metals, he is only interested in the continuous progress of the East Coast people in the field of metals. In particular, they import a large amount of silver bars from Chalcas every year (because they are not refined, so the price is relatively cheap), and the Tieling Special Steel Plant can separate a considerable amount of gold and platinum series metals from it, which is also a large industry, and if it is large, the future income should be considerable.

Qi Wangping finally stayed in the Tieling Mining Bureau for three days, and then he spent some time visiting the Western Steel Rolling Mill, Tieling Boiler Factory, No. 1 Heavy Machinery Factory and other key enterprises, especially the latter, he made a key inspection, and was very happy that the precision of the machinery produced by the plant was improving day by day. Especially after learning that this improvement was due to the invention of the epoch-making treasure of the town and country, such as manganese steel high-speed cutter heads and engraving machines, he was even more excited, so much so that he inquired about all kinds of marine and land equipment produced by the factory, and it took several days to end the trip.

And after the inspection of these large enterprises, the trip to Tieling is almost over. Because to tell the truth, this city that has flourished because of industry is a bit "boring", the development of commerce and art is very uncoordinated, and the residents seem too "serious" and "boring" in the eyes of the people of Qingdao and the East, so he only spent a day looking at it and listening to some reports on the contents of the documents that he had seen a long time ago, and then on February 7, 1676, he boarded the long-awaited Star de La Plata special train again, and set off to continue westward. Passing through Yuexi County, it arrived at Daxing Port, the end of the Northwest Railway and the end of Wujiang shipping.

Of course, it may be inaccurate to say that Daxing Port is the end of the Wujiang River shipping in the East Coast Republic, because strictly speaking, this is only the limit of what a large ship can trace. Further up from Daxing Port, the 72-ton small steamer can still "play" well, although there is also a lot of danger in the voyage.

The biggest "selling point" of Daxing Port - well, it should be said that it is the focus of Chairman Qi's visit - is actually the Daxing Lock, which is being planned. The main purpose of this lock is to allow all types of ships to freely pass between the lower and middle reaches of the Wujiang River, so that they are no longer blocked by the sudden appearance of waterfalls.

It's just that perhaps the project is too large, or the Ministry of Communications does not have the courage to build such locks on the river, so the project has not been finalized after several years of repeated planning and demonstration. No, Qi Wangping went to the riverside to take a look and found that the construction site was almost empty, only a small engineering team was repairing the flood control embankment, which made people lose their appetite.

"The locks can't be repaired, and large-scale water conservancy projects like the Shipu Reservoir are probably useless, right?" Qi Wangping, who was sitting on the boat, pointed to the spectacular Daxing Waterfall and said: "A little bit of the Shipu Reservoir can even produce hundreds of horsepower, and it can supply dozens or even hundreds of various types of machinery with water power as the power source, which shows how great this is." Daxing Waterfall I am willing to ten times, a hundred times the other, but unfortunately I can't make good use of it, it's a pity. The Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Construction, still don't have the courage to build water conservancy facilities of this scale? ”

"I'm afraid it's still a little hot." The county magistrate of Daxing County, who accompanied him, explained in a low voice: "When the regional administration was still there, the regional and county governments jointly responded to the above, and the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Communications, and the Ministry of Construction also sent a joint working group to inspect many times, but finally did not give a clear letter that construction could be started. Of course, the financial aspect is also a problem, the amount of work is too large, and the cost will be extremely staggering. ”

"That's a pity, it's a pity." Qi Wangping shook his head, as if he was also slightly disappointed by this. Of course, he also has the sense, knowing that such a large project must be the strength of the whole country, and it may not be able to be completed, because the technology and construction may not be able to meet the requirements. Coupled with the fact that it is not a particularly urgent need, it is not surprising that the project has been caught in a cycle of "argument and argument" for many years.

After seeing this waterfall from a distance, in the afternoon of the same day, the boat carrying Qi Wangping and his party drove into a dock in Daxing Port for maintenance. Coincidentally, a large three-masted sailing ship belonging to the South China Sea Transportation Company and running the mainland-New Huaxia Island route is also undergoing maintenance.

The ship was repairing the ship's propeller thrusters, and at this time the dock had been drained and workers were disassembling some damaged propellers. The magistrate of Daxing County, who accompanied Qi Wangping, also seemed to be a master who was more knowledgeable about industry, and when he saw that everyone was watching with interest, he gently explained on the side: "This ship is also an old acquaintance of our county, because the port of departure is our place, and the focus is Xinhua Port, which will transport all kinds of machinery and equipment, iron products, hardware products, and mechanical parts from here, pull them to Xinhua Port to unload, and then load a large number of rubber, sisal, dried fruits, coffee, cocoa, cane sugar, tobacco, coconut and other special commodities there, and transport them back to our Daxing Port for sale." You can see that the bottom of this ship is covered with a thin layer of copper plates, and the parts below the waterline are also copper bolts instead of iron bolts, which is also at any cost. ”

"The ship was retrofitted like this about two years ago. At that time, the bottom of the ship was covered with a layer of copper skin, and as a result, there was only a little wear and tear (seawater corrosion) after sailing, and the good news was that there were no weeds and barnacles on the bottom of the ship that greatly affected the speed, and the twists and seams were intact, and there were no annoying sea maggots entering the bottom of the ship to affect the life of the ship. Therefore, it is very necessary to cover the bottom of the ship with copper plates, that is, the demand for copper may be somewhat large. The magistrate of Daxing County continued: "In addition, at the beginning, iron bolts were used for the bottom of the ship, but the result was almost rusted out of shape, so that the connections in many parts became not strong at all. Of course, experts from the Academy of Natural Sciences later gave an explanation, they believed that this was caused by the electrolysis between copper and iron, because iron is more active than copper, figuratively speaking, even if copper rusts, iron can sacrifice itself to replace copper. Oops, this is what the expert said at the time, I don't know too much, I don't know how to sacrifice iron, I saw that the iron was all rusty, so now the bolts on the bottom of the ship are almost all copper bolts. ”

"Europeans don't have this kind of awareness, and they don't have the capital to cover the bottom of a ship with copper, right? They couldn't even cover the bottom of a boat with cheaper brass, let alone pure copper. Their boats, like our sail-powered boats, had the bottom treated with a mixture of tar, sulfur, broken glass slag, and iron nails, but it was very unreliable, and it didn't take long to sail and the bottom was full of plankton or seaweed, and the bottom planks were full of disgusting, fat sea maggots, so that it didn't take long to replace the cost, clean the bottom, and the maintenance cost was high, and it didn't feel much less than covering the bottom of our ship with copper plates. The county magistrate pointed to a 650-ton flute-type transport ship that was flowing down the Wujiang River outside the dock and said: "We are now cladding copper to all the 1,200-ton sailing ships and the main warships of the navy, I think it is correct, and we have money." ”

The county magistrate's words made everyone laugh, and Qi Wangping also laughed, but he did laugh at the progress of the East Coast Republic of China in metal materials and processing in the past 50 years. The progress of this basic industry, which affects all aspects of society and the economy, is of immeasurable value and is definitely something to be proud of. 7kankan