The adobe kilns on the south bank of the Dayu River are still firing bricks day and night. It's just that in recent times, it is no longer ordinary red bricks, but refractory bricks. In view of the huge demand for refractory bricks for projects such as ironworks and steel mills to be launched next, the Executive Committee decided to build a new 20-door wheel kiln next to the adobe kiln.

A wheel kiln is a type of continuous production brick kiln, and the flue gas generated during its production process can preheat the brick billet in front. When a 20-door wheel kiln is produced, 4 doors are roasting, 7 doors are preheating, 5 doors are cooling, and the remaining 4 doors are already producing bricks. As the flame moves between the kiln doors, continuous production can be achieved, and the efficiency is many times higher than that of small clay kilns.

For this reason, many projects that require the use of bricks, except for a few that have been specially approved by the Executive Committee, have been suspended to make way for the construction of wheel kilns.

Since the construction of the dam on the Dayu River, the use of water resources has been put on the agenda.

The first is the hydraulic mills used in cement plants. The structure of this mill is very simple, with a circular grinding disc below, a central axis in the center of the grinding disc, a transverse axis above the grinding disc, and rollers at both ends of the transverse axis. The bottom water wheel drives the central shaft, and then drives the roller on the horizontal axis to do sliding friction to grind the raw materials. The cement plant has built several such hydraulic mills downstream of the embankment, which can grind 2 tons of powder in one day and one night, and the labor efficiency is greatly improved.

Next up was the mechanical design office of the Industrial Bureau, which designed an ancient hydraulic forging hammer. After the water wheel is driven by the water flow, this hydraulic forging hammer converts the circular motion of the water wheel into the linear motion of the connecting rod through the crank, lifts the forging hammer from low to high, and then hits the forging hammer downward, and the frequency of hitting can be adjusted by the gear set.

Braun Beck, a veteran carpenter from Holstein, led a group of carpenters who crossed the two knives to make the whole set of equipment, the water wheel, the propeller shaft, the eccentric wheel, the crank connecting rod, and the gear set were all made of hardwood, and the forging hammer itself was a scrapped hammer that the vest found from the barge scrap steel.

Since the manufacture of the hydraulic forging hammer, the workers of the cement and lime factories have been freed up in large numbers, and it is too efficient to crush the limestone. However, although this thing is convenient to use, there are many faults. The most prominent problem is that the material strength of the gear is not enough, and the wooden gear is limited by the material, the driving force is limited, and the hammer that is too heavy cannot be pushed high, and it is often easy to damage. Of course, the solution to this problem is actually very simple, you just need to replace the current wooden gears with iron or even steel.

Speaking of this problem, we have to mention the vest that is trying to make graphite crucibles and steel. After automatically having graphite, the vest has been thinking about making a graphite crucible so that the shipload of scrap steel can be smelted. He listed several common crucible formulas according to the information found, and after careful consideration, he chose a formula for smelting high-carbon steel, in which graphite accounted for 50%~55%, refractory clay accounted for 38%~40%, and aggregate accounted for 5%~15%.

After the recipe is selected, the mold is made, and the mold is made of wood. The vest is ready to be made of a 50# crucible, which can smelt 43 kg of iron at a time. After the mold is made, the next step is to add water to mix graphite, refractory clay and aggregate to make a mud. Then the bottom of the outer mold is paved with mud, and then the inner mold is put in, and then the gap between the two layers of molds is filled with material and compacted, so that the crucible blank is completed.

After the crucible blank is completed, it needs to be dried over slow fire before being sent to the kiln for firing. The vest made a full 5 graphite crucibles in one go, and after drying, a layer of glaze to prevent oxidation was brushed on the surface, and then sent to the kiln for firing.

While waiting for the crucible to be fired, Ma Jia and his group of two-knife designers carefully considered the design of the melting furnace. The smelting furnace in the plan is made of refractory bricks, with a fire pit at the bottom, which can hold 6-10 crucibles at a time, and is heated by anthracite burning. The exhaust gases produced by combustion enter the grid-like regenerator, also made of refractory bricks, from the flue, which heats the refractory bricks to hundreds or even thousands of degrees, and then is discharged from the chimney through the outlet pipe.

In fact, the use of graphite crucibles to make steel, it is completely possible to consider the need to build a regenerative chamber. Because of the particularity of graphite crucibles, it is easy to make the internal temperature of the crucible exceed the steel melting temperature of 1600 degrees when heated. However, considering the requirements for reducing energy consumption and the possible open-hearth steelmaking project in the future, the regenerator was taken into account in the design of the vest.

This design requires the construction of two regenerators, A and B. The two regenerators are connected to the smelting furnace at one end and are made of thick bricks; One end is directly connected to the chimney through two pipes A and B. Between the two pipes, build another C pipe to connect A and B. The C pipeline is connected with the hydraulic blower, and a valve is installed at the connection between the C pipe and the blower, so that it can be manually controlled to blow air to any pipeline.

When fresh air is blown into the A pipe from the blower, the air enters the smelting furnace to support combustion, and the high-temperature exhaust gas generated by combustion and reaction in the furnace enters the B regenerative chamber, and after heating the dense grid-like refractory bricks in the regenerator, it is discharged from the chimney through the B pipeline; When the temperature of the refractory brick in the B regenerator is about the same, then the valve is changed, and fresh air is started to be blown into the B pipeline, and the cold air enters the smelting furnace after being preheated by the B regenerator, which can greatly increase the temperature in the furnace, and then the high-temperature exhaust gas generated enters the A regenerator again, and the refractory brick is heated and discharged from the chimney through the A pipeline. In this way, the cycle can be repeated, so that the temperature entering the furnace is fully preheated, which greatly increases the temperature of the melting furnace and makes it possible to melt the molten steel.

Since the project required a large number of refractory bricks and ordinary red bricks, Ma Jia lobbied a lot in the Executive Committee, focusing on painting a wonderful picture of the steel smelting to the members. After getting the support of Ma Qianzu, it was easy for it to be approved by the Executive Committee.

The construction team that was working in the wheel kiln yard was newly divided into 30 people, and the executive committee allocated another 60 Swiss immigrants to form the steelmaking project construction team, and the team of 90 people drove into the steelmaking workshop the next day to start construction. The steelmaking workshop is built on the north bank of the Dayu River, which is convenient for making use of the abundant hydraulic resources of the Dayu River. At present, the factory is still the original wooden structure thatched shed, but now the conditions are difficult, and the resources should be prioritized where they are most needed.

At the request of the vest, the Swiss blacksmith Pierre first smelted some scrap iron from a simple clay crucible, and began to make some of the various tools that were urgently needed to cross the public, such as saws, axes, files, arrowheads, farm tools, iron drills, spoons, crucible pliers, etc.

The industrial side is in full swing, and the agricultural side is also in full swing.

Jin Kola lingered in front of the newly built horse shed, cowshed, sheepfold, and pigsty, and looked at those livestock with gentle eyes as if he was looking at his relatives, which made Zheng Bin, who was following him, shudder a little. It's autumn in South America, and in just half a year, in October and November, the animals will come into heat and start to breed. With the favorable climate and natural conditions on this side of the Uruguayan grassland, these livestock populations will snowball.

This time, the Executive Committee assigned about 20 Swiss immigrants, mostly women, to the newly established Animal Husbandry Bureau, whose daily job was to help take care of the animals in the barn and to clean them regularly. The manure in the livestock barn is cleaned daily to maintain hygiene, and the manure itself is a valuable fertilizer that is useful for agricultural production.

"Are the saplings ready? Tomorrow we will organize people to plant the plant. "The soil here is high in organic matter, and the soil is rich in potassium, so you don't even need to apply fertilizer." It's a pity that the Dutch don't save the saplings, and the apple trees, pear trees, peach trees, and grape seedlings together are less than a hundred, but it's a pity, it's a pity. ”

"Commissioner Kim, what about those wheat seeds? When will it be planted? Zheng Bin asked.

"What wheat seeds, bullshit! Then the Dutch fooled us, obviously just bought a bunch of wheat casually, and it was not a seed. Only less than 1,000 catties of wheat is enough to sow 60 or 70 acres. Forget it, we should do a good job of serving these wheat fields this year, strive to select some excellent seeds, and expand planting next year. Jinkola sighed, and said: "The greens and leeks planted in the vegetable field before can almost be transplanted, remember to apply more fertilizer, and when the yield can be stably supplied to the table, our agricultural department will be a hit." ”

"It's good, I'll go over with my classmates to transplant in the afternoon." Zheng Bin said excitedly. Before the crossing, he and a total of 60 teachers and students in his class happened to take the Yunsheng No. 1 group tour, and they were extremely lucky or unfortunate to cross over. These students are already in their second year of high school, and most of them are assigned to do non-heavy physical tasks such as sanitation, fishing, and brick making. A small number are assigned to the agricultural sector, where they are responsible for farm work such as watering, fertilizing, and weeding. After a few months of training, these students are already doing a lot of decent work.

"By the way, the Dutch brought some potatoes this time. I looked at it yesterday, and most of them have sprouted, so you cut off the parts with the sprouts with a knife and plant them in the ground, just the few acres of land to the west that have been leveled, don't make a mistake. This is a high-yielding plant, and many Europeans in this era can count on this life. Jin Kola instructed again, "Wait for more than half a month for the soybeans to be harvested, and the yield per mu can reach almost fifty or sixty catties." ”

Compared with the high yield of modern soybeans with an average yield of 150-200 kilograms per mu, the yield of this thousand acres of soybeans planted by the public is simply weak. However, considering that there are no chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the crossing, and it is the first year of planting, it is already very good to have this kind of yield, which fully shows that the soil is still very fertile.