On June 2o, 1647, Dafeng Township, sunny, temperature 1o degrees Celsius.

It was already past ten o'clock in the morning, and the warm sun shone on people, which was particularly comfortable. Zheng Bin, vice minister of the Ministry of Agriculture, and his entourage, accompanied by the deputy head of Dafeng Township, who came to inspect the Yazi Lake basin in the north, entered the newly built grain deep processing base not long ago. The site has several production lines, all of which are exclusively invested by the Ministry of Agriculture, for the further processing of locally harvested grains, mainly wheat.

Before he came, Zheng Bin already knew what the so-called processing enterprises here were, so he was not surprised at all by the strange machines that were presented in front of him. The first production line he visited was the wheat milling production line, which was different from the modern automated flour production line in later generations, and Zheng Bin looked at the milling line in front of him for a long time, and he really couldn't see how much technological innovation it had compared with the traditional hydraulic and wind-powered mills.

The so-called wheat milling is actually to use the various characteristics differences between the endosperm and the cortex of wheat after soaking in water to separate the wheat bran, germ and flour through processes such as grinding, sieving, and winnowing, and then process them separately. The production principle of this line is still the same ancient milling process, which has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, but with some innovations in the details.

Cai De, who served as the director of the wheat deep processing base and the general manager of Dafeng Food Company, blushed, and after coughing twice, he stepped forward to explain: "In fact, our wheat milling line has made many technological innovations. For example, we pre-process the wheat we harvest. You see here, it's a flat rotary screen. After the wheat falls into the sieve, it is screened first. Some large particles such as stones and other foreign objects are screened out. Nowadays, some farmers who sell grain are very dishonest. Wheat will be deliberately mixed with some stones, clods of soil, etc., which will affect the quality of flour if it is not clear in advance. ”

Cai De has always been a soy sauce crosser before, and his education is only in Chinese. After more than ten years of fighting between various departments, he took the initiative to ask Ying to help in the Ministry of Agriculture. He also made great efforts to the success of the wheat milling production line, at least he first mentioned this project, and the researchers were also dug by him everywhere, so this time the Government Council appointed him as the general manager of the state-owned Dafeng Food Company as a reward.

"After the initial screening. We have also designed an air separation system consisting of a blower and an exhaust fan, which works in a circular manner to remove some of the denser substances from the wheat. The winnowed wheat is then soaked with water – this is done manually and then fed into the barn to prepare for grinding. ”

Zheng Bin stepped forward to take a look, and sure enough, there were some pre-processing processes mentioned by Cai De. After these tools, it is time for the core grinding equipment. And this so-called core equipment, in Zheng Bin's view, is just a few pairs of cast iron rollers. These iron rollers rotate in opposite directions at a certain degree to grind the wheat into a powder. Sometimes, depending on the processing requirements, a pair of grinding rollers, three grinding rollers, four or more grinding rollers can be used respectively (the linearity of different grinding rollers can be different).

The powdery material is then sieved through a square sieve. What remains on the sieve is the bran, and what falls from the sieve is the flour. There is usually a large amount of unground wheat in the bran. Therefore, it can be collected and poured between the grinding rollers for grinding, which generally needs to be repeated three or five times to maximize the powder yield and reduce waste.

"The wheat milling line has a flour yield of between 5o% and 6o%, which is a bit low, but we are also continuing to improve the equipment. The power of the entire production line is provided by a steam boiler system with a power of 25 hp and a coal consumption of 6o kg per hour (standard Tacheng refined coal). It can process 30 tons of wheat per day, and if the annual production time is calculated as 300 days, then it can process about 9,000 tons of wheat and produce more than 5,000 tons of refined flour in a year. Cai De looked at Zheng Bin's face, saw that the other party was listening carefully, and continued with a little reassurance: "The entire production line, including equipment, workshops, and worker training, has spent a total of more than 8,500 yuan in cash. The main reason for the higher cost is that most of the equipment is specially customized, but this is also good, the customized equipment does not have zài tolerance problems, and the processing accuracy of parts and components is low, that is, it is troublesome to maintain in the future, and the cost is slightly higher, but this is a small problem. ”

"The whole production line only needs more than 40 workers and a few management personnel, and the annual salary expenditure is only three or four thousand yuan. According to the agreed price sold to us by Xinhuaxia Island, Tacheng refined coal costs eight dimes per ton, and it only costs one or two hundred yuan a year. Counting other miscellaneous expenses, such as maintenance, shipping costs, etc., the production cost of each ton of refined flour will not exceed one yuan. Cai De folded his fingers and said, "If there is really market competition, some wind and water mills currently scattered in China are afraid that they will all be closed." Their production cost per unit time is higher than ours, but the production efficiency is far inferior to ours, and the quality is not as strong as the products produced by our innovative process, so it is a natural choice to be eliminated. ”

"Well, with such a low production cost, even if it is transported by steamboat or train to the Inner 6 region for sales, it is very competitive, and it is inevitable that a large number of rural water-powered and animal-powered mills will close down." Zheng Bin also nodded at this time and said, "This is a good thing." We can free up a lot of people to do other work. In the East Coast, where manpower is scarce, a higher level of productivity is our eternal pursuit. ”

"Although this kind of equipment seems to be a little 'backward' and ugly, it is also a great technological revolution in this era." Seeing that his secretaries were still far away, Zheng Bin also joked with Cai De, "But you won't just come up with such a thing." Yes, I know, the first thing to show me must be something that is more certain, and most of the things to be seen below are not good things. ”

"I guessed it." Cai De's old face turned a little red again, and he only heard him say: "Our grain deep processing base currently has several production lines, mainly for deep processing of refined flour produced by the milling line. For example, there is currently a dried noodle production line next door, which looks decent when it is designed, but there are a bunch of problems when the equipment is really manufactured and debugged.

"In addition, we are still engaged in the research of instant noodles and biscuit production lines, but they are still in the theoretical research stage and have few results. There are many crops grown in the agricultural area of Huxi, such as soybeans - well, this is a large yield, but we have not yet put on the project of the oil mill, and it may be launched later; Sometimes local farmers also grow some miscellaneous grains such as potatoes and sweet potatoes - of course, there are very few nowadays because they cannot be harvested by machine, and it is too laborious - potatoes and sweet potatoes can be used to make vermicelli; In addition, the local corn cultivation area is not low in many cases, and of course the yield is not small, which can be used to make wine. ”

"Corn is a very nutritious thing, and if you eat it as a staple food, you can get pellagra, but it's also a very good feed. Whether it's corn stalks or corn cobs, they can be used as feed, maybe we will go to a corn feed processing plant in the future. The use of corn, soybean meal and bran residues to produce feed, supply to the majority of farmers to raise chickens and ducks, should have a lot of sales. ”

Zheng Bin listened to Cai De talk about a lot of projects, and just smiled: "Don't draw so many pies to fool me, it's not like you to cheat project funds." Before the end of the year, Dafeng Machinery Qì Flour Mill will be officially established, and the cheap flour produced can be supplied to the whole country. In addition, the bran and the like could be exported to Brazil, where the farmers were happy to buy cheap bran to make brown bread for indentured or black slaves. ”

"As for what you said about the noodle production line, biscuit production line, and aspect production line...... Zheng Bin was a little helpless when he said this, "Please do market research first to see if there is demand." The Navy may purchase some biscuits and instant noodles, but it is really difficult to say how much. You can't get on the production line, but now you only need to produce for one month in the twelve months of the year to complete the task of the whole year, and the other eleven months have nothing to do, right? What a system this becomes! ”

"How can there be such an exaggerated ......" The trick of cheating project funds was seen through at a glance, and Cai De was also a little embarrassed, but he quickly adjusted his feelings, and Zhengse said: "In fact, the next project we want to go on is the soybean deep processing project, whether it is to make soy products (tofu, tofu skin, etc.) or oil extraction, or to make feed (oil extraction by-products), you can do it." Now more and more people in Huxi choose to plant soybeans after the summer harvest, which can not only fertilize the field, but also facilitate harvesting and threshing, and is also rich in nutrients and has a wide range of uses. Didn't the four towns of Huxi harvest harvest 10,000 tons of soybeans in the autumn harvest this year? It seems that the soybean deep processing project is inevitable. ”

"That's pretty much it." Zheng Bin agreed and said, "The soybean oil project is actually promising. Our production costs are low, even if we ship to Brazil, La Plata, New Spain, Peru, South Africa and even the old big 6, why not? The Dutch imported large quantities of olive oil from the Ottoman Empire each year, which was then distributed throughout Europe. The quality of our soybean oil is so good and the production cost is low, we can talk to the Dutch, and it should not be a problem to enter the foreign market. (To be continued......)

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