Zeng Yuheng secretly figured it out, but his face was silent, but he was a little displeased with Tan Tingxiang's achievements in the drill camp. However, that's all, everyone has their own practices and ideas, and he can't interfere with other people's political achievements, so he can only do his best for the court and do his best.

Zeng Yuheng did not have too much disdain for Tan Tingxiang's behavior of trying his best to win the favor of the court and the emperor, in fact, there was some understanding and sympathy in his heart, after all, Tan Tingxiang was not like Zeng Yuheng, he was born as an old brother of the Guangxi Taiping Heavenly Kingdom who had worked with His Majesty, and His Majesty had always regarded Zeng Yuheng as a confidant, otherwise, he would not have let a literati with little credit control of the important Ministry of Public Works at the beginning. But Tan Tingxiang is different, he is a Manchu minister, he has no foundation, it can be seen from his attitude towards himself, even if the two are of the same official rank, but they are respectful to themselves, why, it is just because he is a close confidant of the emperor.

Therefore, Zeng Yuheng didn't say anything, as if he didn't notice this. Although Tan Tingxiang can't be a deep friend, he can figure out the above intentions and seize the opportunity to develop his political achievements, he is not a bad person, but he is just a little over-studied, but even if he likes to drill camps, under the general trend that the imperial court wants to develop industry and economy, drive the people to get rich, and finally enhance the national strength, drilling camps is not a bad thing, it is better than officials who eat vegetarian meals. The key point is that the imperial court controls the overall situation and does not let the other party make too extreme moves.

However, Zeng Yuheng was naturally overjoyed overall. There are many minerals in the north, but they are difficult to exploit because of the inconvenient transportation, and the fact that no industry has ever developed and cannot be digested locally, so it is very difficult to exploit. Nowadays, in Luanzhou, Yongping Prefecture, Zhili, which is close to the coast, such a large iron ore can be discovered, and the establishment of the Zhili Iron Plant is really to make up for the large gap in the northern industry.

Only Zeng Yuheng knew that the iron ore mines and iron and steel factories opened by various prefectures, prefectures and counties on their own could not be regarded as any industry at all compared with the goals and needs of the real iron and steel industry in the Chinese Empire today, at most they were just some rural earthen workshops and earthen iron kilns. Most of the so-called iron and steel plants, even the Zhenghe Iron and Steel Plant built in the southern Hunan region when it was still the Taiping Holy Kingdom, do not have the scale of the steel industry chain in today's Chinese Empire. Moreover, the iron and steel mills opened in such prefectures and counties are mainly in the south, and in the northern region, even such small workshops are not available in every county government. Therefore, under such a background, such a large open-pit iron mine with reserves of hundreds of millions of tons and an annual iron ore of more than 300,000 tons suddenly appeared in the territory of Zhili, and this large-scale iron plant was built nearby, which has to be said to be a huge progress!

Therefore, Zeng Yuheng began to plan, as the Minister of Imperial Public Works, he stood at an angle and height that was not limited to a limited area of Zhili Province, and he wanted to erect these iron mines and this Zhili Iron Factory as a typical example to encourage the development of the iron and steel industry in the northern provinces!

The sensitive Zeng Yuheng interrogated carefully, and he learned that this Sijiaying iron mine was an open-pit iron mine, so he called the officials of the Zhili Public Works Department who participated in the survey, and heard him talk about the fact that he was not familiar with the mountain road at the beginning of the survey, and he got lost in the mountain several times, and even the compass and other things were useless, and he suddenly became excited. Even, it is not excluded that a few mountains, a radius of a few miles and a dozen miles, are iron ore. According to Zeng Yuheng's experience, most of the iron ore in the north is a mixture of magnetite and hematite, and magnetite accounts for the majority, so the larger the range of iron ore, the compass or compass will fail there due to the influence and interference of the magnetite it contains.

But that's the stuff of the legendary giant veins. I didn't expect this situation to occur in this Sijiaying iron mine, but this just shows that this iron mine contains very amazing. Zeng Yuheng has a hunch that this Sijiaying iron ore mine not only has 350 million tons of reserves explored, but far exceeds this scale. From the understanding of the mining mode, except for a few steam engines driven by the excavator and crusher, the rest of the collection is almost the most primitive manual excavation and collection, the mining efficiency is very low, but under such conditions, it can still be thousands of tons of selected iron ore every day, from this point of view, it also shows the amazing scale of this iron ore.

Therefore, Zeng Yuheng made up his mind to take over the Sijiaying Iron Mine from Zhili Province and turn it into an iron ore mine directly controlled by the imperial court with the Ministry of Public Works as the mainstay, and this Zhili Iron Works was also directly funded by the imperial court to build it into an iron plant that can not only smelt molten iron, but also become a large-scale comprehensive steel company that makes steel and rolls steel in a variety of ways! Of course, even so, it is indispensable to the credit of Zhili Province. However, after returning to Shengjing, the matter was directly raised with the cabinet.

"Lord Zeng, it's time to get molten iron! You can lead everyone to open the door of the iron furnace! Tan Tingxiang urged softly in Zeng Yuheng's ear, so that Zeng Yuheng came back to his senses, he nodded hurriedly, took a chain without giving in, and shouted: "Everyone come together, one, two, three, pull!" ”

With an order, everyone worked hard at the same time, in fact, it was naturally more of those iron-making craftsmen who worked hard to open the door of the blast furnace to the molten iron, and suddenly, the iron flowers bloomed, and the first hot and dazzling molten iron gushed out from the taphole.

The heat wave at the scene was rolling and iron flowers were splashing. Molten iron up to 1500 °C is sprayed out from the tap hole of the No. 1 blast furnace, like a fire dragon meandering along the big ditch of the tap field, and finally merge into the torpedo tank of molten iron with a capacity of 50 tons under the furnace table, looking at the share, there is about 35 tons of molten iron.

Zeng Yuheng is quite proficient, knowing that the first furnace is the process of full combustion of fuel, the time required for molten iron is very long, about two days, and the subsequent continuous production, each time the time is saved, and the specific furnace time depends on the degree of molten iron conversion, depending on the temperature control in the furnace and the degree of heating reaction of the iron ore, which is actually the degree of heat preservation of the blast furnace and the combustion temperature of the coke in the furnace.

At the current state of the art, on average, it can be baked up to 3 times a day, of course, this is the theoretical situation, which is the so-called design output. If the temperature in the furnace is raised quickly, the iron ore can be quickly melted into molten iron, and it can be baked in about five to six hours, so that the molten iron can be produced four times a day, and the output is not only 100 tons of molten iron, but 140 tons.