"Your Highness, relying on 5,000 slave laborers to build a fortified city covering an area of more than 4,500 acres in less than a month is our fastest speed. The reason why only one official office was built after the city wall was built, and the iron-making furnace and other facilities in the city had not yet been built, was that it would take a lot www.biquge.info of time to prepare for other work after the iron-making furnace and other facilities in the city were built, for example, iron ore requires a lot of manpower to dig for a long time to accumulate enough ore for smelting. ”

Zhang Xiaofan took a deep breath and continued: "So I proposed to my father that the slave laborers be divided into four engineering teams, A, B, C, and D, to be responsible for different projects to save time. For example, team A, which accounts for 60% of slave laborers, is only responsible for digging iron ore, team B, which accounts for 20%, is responsible for building iron-making furnaces, team C, which accounts for 10%, is responsible for cutting wood and digging coal, and team D, which is 10% of the slave laborers, is responsible for building houses. When Team B built an iron-making furnace and could use it, Team A dug up enough iron ore, Team C prepared enough timber and coal mines, and Team D built a hydraulic blower and barracks in the city with the support of Team C's timber. After the completion of the iron-making furnace, with the support of the other three teams, it can be put into use immediately. In this way, the time from the completion of various facilities in an iron mill city to the official ironmaking can be greatly shortened compared to the step-by-step completion of various facilities in an iron mill city. ”

Isn't this the concept of division of labor and cooperation in later generations? Splitting a project into several small projects and assigning them to different teams to start work at the same time saves a lot of time than concentrating all the manpower and material resources to do it one by one.

"Zhang Eryang's method is quite innovative, this king wants to see the effectiveness of the division of labor and cooperation between the four teams of Xiayou."

Li Yu was very interested, and Zhang Xiaofan was able to think of the concept of division of labor and cooperation that was only proposed in the mid-to-late nineteenth century at a young age. In the thirteen years since I came to this world, I almost forgot this production concept.

"Please come with me, Your Highness and all of you." Zhang Xiaofan invited

Zhang Xiaofan, who has a flexible mind and seems to be only two or three years older than him, is polite in his words and deeds, which makes Li Yu look at him with admiration, not at all like being born in a craftsman family, and his admiration is full of words.

Zhang Gensheng was even more apprehensive when he saw this, and he heard that the people in the wealthy families with a good male style preferred those handsome and brainy young men. Hey, that's a good thing!

"Your Highness." Zhang Xiaofan pointed to the northeast, northwest, and southeast directions of the city and said: "The construction of the barracks will be completed by the D team with the supply of timber cut by the C team. To the southwest is the iron-making furnace being built by Team B. ”

Li Yu and others went to the southwest of the city under the leadership of Zhang Xiaofan, and saw hundreds of slave laborers under the command of craftsmen, building iron-making furnaces with clay on rammed earth platforms about five feet high.

Li Yu, the dozen or so craftsmen who commanded the slave laborers, was quite familiar, when he was in Youzhou, these craftsmen built iron-making furnaces, and Li Yu mentioned a few opinions on blast furnaces that he had learned in his previous life, and then they were applied to the newly built iron-making furnaces, and the response was good.

Looking at the appearance of these iron-making furnaces under construction, they are all in the style of the blast furnace after Li Yu mentioned it. According to the experienced craftsmen, such a furnace can produce 10,000 catties of molten iron at a time, that is, five tons.

In the few iron-making furnaces, the slave laborers, under the guidance of craftsmen, applied white bricks with cement and built a refractory layer into the inner walls of the iron-making furnaces.

Li Yu didn't stop seeing the smile on his face, the suggestion made by the iron-making furnace under construction was only slightly modified in appearance, and the impact was not great. The core technology is the refractory layer that the slave laborers are building into the inner walls of the iron-making furnace.

Don't underestimate such an inconspicuous refractory layer, which can make this ironmaking furnace withstand high temperatures of 1800 degrees theoretically, which is a cross-era feat in the history of human metallurgy.

With this kind of high-temperature resistant refractory bricks, Datang has long been able to mature with the technology of frying steel and crucible steel method, and with the low-sulfur and low-phosphorus iron ore in eastern Liaodong, it can mass-produce cheap and high-quality steel to build weapons and armor.

The materials used in the refractory layer are very widely distributed in the land of China, a cheap high-alumina clay, also commonly known as Guanyin soil, white in color. In later generations, Fuzhou Bay, Liaoning, and now the western bay of Jian'an are famous for their abundance of this refractory clay.

This kaolin is ground into fine powder, and then pressed into bricks with quartz powder, which can be fired into refractory bricks after a high temperature of more than 1,300 degrees.

The cement used in refractory bricks is also not an ordinary color, it is calcined with high-alumina clay, and then mixed with limestone to make aluminum-containing cement, which has the characteristics of rapid setting ability, corrosion resistance and heat resistance.

It is the only special cement that Li Yu has painstakingly researched for three years by relying on the memory in his mind, and its formula is strictly confidential.

In addition to Li Yu, people like Zhang Gensheng and others only know that this kind of cement has fire-resistant effects, but it is not clear about the specifics.

Zhang Xiaofan only gave a brief introduction to the construction site of Team B, obviously not knowing the technology of making iron-making furnaces, so he led Li Yu and the others to the outside of the city without saying anything.

At the south gate of the city, on the bank of the river, there was the other half of the slave laborers belonging to Team B, all covered in white plaster. He laboriously cut open the hemp bag that was piled up on the side and filled it with a knife, poured out the white kaolin inside, and pressed it full of an abrasive. Eight people work together to press the kaolin in the abrasive tool into a brick, make a yard, put it aside and press another piece.

These kaolins were dug up from the bay in the western part of Jian'an and transported here, and the labor for digging and transportation was naturally part of the slave labor captured by Zhang Shi and Wang Hu.

There was nothing to talk about when slave laborers pressed masonry, so Zhang Xiaofan took Li Yu and others to see the power part of the hydraulic blower not far away.

Looking at the row by the river, there are hundreds of people either banging and beating to build waterwheels, or carrying the objects needed for waterwheels, there are five waterwheels under construction, and they will be completed in seven or eight days.

"These are the five waterwheels that are being built by Team D, and when they are completed, they will be able to provide hydraulic blows to the blowers of the iron-making furnaces in the city one zhang away." Zhang Xiaofan proudly introduced that he also personally participated in the design and construction of this waterwheel, if it weren't for the sudden arrival of King Yan, he was supervising the construction of the waterwheel.

After watching the waterwheel, I went to see the most important iron mine - Dagushan Iron Mine.

Sixty percent of the manpower occupied, and 3,000 people waved the tools in their hands to dig rocks under the supervision of the supervising army. The mined iron ore is chiseled to a certain size and stacked on both sides of the road below.

Li Yu estimated that the iron ore piled up was about hundreds of tons, but when he thought that the grade of Anshan iron ore was only 31.28%~34.79%, and the number of iron-rich ores ranged from 100 to 100, his heart was not so hot.

Most of the vegetation on Dagu Mountain has long been shoveled away by the slave laborers who are mining, revealing reddish-brown rocks and soil, giving people a bare feeling.

Zhang Xiaofan pointed to the bare hill in front of him and said arrogantly: "Your Highness, this is the big iron ore we found, the whole mountain is a big iron mountain, after our exploration, there are rich iron ores in a radius of ten miles, so we also call this place ten miles of iron mountain." ”

Later, he visited the logging site of Team C at the foot of Qianshan not far from Dagu Mountain, there were only 500 people in Team C and Team D, and only half of them were logged, and the other half Zhang Xiaofan said that he was going to dig coal.

There is a large coal mine in the ravine northwest of Dagu Mountain, and half of the people of Team C are assigned to mine coal.

In the Tang Dynasty, most of the iron was still made of charcoal, and the use of coal to make iron was only used to make some agricultural tools, and it was not until the Song Dynasty that coal was commonly used to make iron.

One of the important reasons is that there are too many impurities in coal, and the content of sulfur and phosphorus elements is high, and if it is directly used to make iron, it will only get a bunch of inferior iron with high sulfur and phosphorus content.

Although Li Yu was not an engineering student in his previous life, he was interested in checking the specific situation after reading those novels that talked about using coal to make iron, and he could be regarded as having a set of theoretical knowledge about using coal to make iron.

The best way to make iron with coal is to coke coal into coke, and the role of coke in ironmaking is: 1, reducing agent 2, skeleton role 3, heat source, these properties are not possessed by coal. The carbon content of reducing agent coke is more than 85%, and in the blast furnace ironmaking process, coke can play a skeleton role because of its high strength, while coal cannot, and the air permeability of the blast furnace decreases after being crushed.

Teaching this set of theoretical knowledge to experienced craftsmen to experiment, in the past few years, the coke technology has already been developed by the craftsmen under Li Yu, after all, this is not a technology that surpasses the productivity of the times.

Of course, the secret of coke is also sealed.

Not far from the east gate of the city, there is a large coking kiln under construction, and there is a pile of black coal mines outside.

After visiting the construction site near Dagu Mountain, Li Yu was very satisfied, and according to the progress of this project, iron can be produced in half a month at the longest.

Go out of the south gate, spare a circle and enter through the east gate.

Zhang Xiaofan at the gate of the city begged: "Your Highness, our manpower is still very short, can we send more slaves?" ”

After some inspection, Li Yu noticed that the manpower required for the iron mine was really insufficient, such as only 250 people for coal digging and logging, and the progress was obviously lagging behind the other three teams.

The matter of the iron mine is very important, Li Yu has already planned in his heart, since Zhang Xiaofan proposed it, he replied: "Don't worry, after I go back, I will send an additional 5,000 slave laborers over, if the manpower is not enough, it is not too late to report to me." ”

Zhang Xiaofan, Zhang Gensheng and several craftsman leaders were excited after hearing this, and the progress of the project in their hands could be accelerated with the increase in manpower.

When Li Yu was about to enter the city, he unintentionally looked up at the city gate and found that there was no city name on the city gate.

"Hasn't this city been named yet?"

"Back to Your Highness, this city has no name, and please give it a name." Zhang Shi, Zhang Gensheng and others bowed their hands and asked.

"This city is where the ironworks are located, and it's called the Cast Iron City!"

Since then, a large steel city was born more than 1,300 years in advance of the land of Liaodong.

After entering the city, Zhang Xiaofan was summoned alone in Li Yu's room, and Zhang Gensheng looked at the back of his son entering, and his face became more and more sad.

Zhang Shi and Xue Ne and the others glanced at each other secretly, and left tacitly.

Soon, a gossip circulated in the cast iron city, which made Li Yu later furious when he learned about it.