Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Great Steelmaking

Thanks to ffdffdf for the tip.

After the bed crossbow was modified, Changsun Tang did not rush to Chang'an to report his merits.

For Changsun Tang, hoarding fields in the northwest is a very urgent and important matter, and it can also be considered the most important thing among all his current affairs.

But that doesn't mean everything should be centered around this thing.

If we divide the things around us into the following four categories according to their importance and urgency: important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither important nor urgent.

Normally, if we are hungry, eating is important and urgent, but that doesn't mean we can put everything at hand down to eat.

Therefore, the eldest grandson arranged these four types of things in the following order: give priority to the important but not urgent. Important but not urgent usually means that the matter is long-term, and if delayed, it means that there will be less in the future.

Therefore, the eldest grandson stayed behind to carry out something that had been prepared for a long time: iron smelting. Tuntian is important but urgent, while ironmaking is not urgent but important, and what to do is clear at a glance.

It can be said that since he came to the Tang Dynasty, Changsun Tang's heart began to plan, there was no way, until the end of World War I and even in the fifties and sixties of the Republic, the two most important indicators to measure a country's industrial strength are the output of coal and steel.

It wasn't until he arrived in Jinyang and saw the metallurgical level and the emergence of coal at this time that Changsun Tang decided to officially put ironmaking on the agenda, so he sent Wang Xuance to Jingzhou to send a group of cement workers from Wu Yuanqing.

In his previous life, Changsun Tang's impression of the ironworks was stuck in chemistry textbooks and the towering furnaces and chimneys near the county seat, and the billowing smoke coming out of the chimneys, nothing more.

So there's a lot more that needs to be done.

Taking advantage of the gap between the cement workers to choose a site to build a kiln, the eldest grandson led Zhang Zhong and Old Man Zhang to make a small attempt in the place that had already been selected.

In fact, the principle of ironmaking is basically the same, from the Spring and Autumn Period to the eve of the Industrial Revolution, it is the principle of using reducing agents to reduce the iron in iron ore.

It's just that for the eldest grandson, if you want to make it, you naturally have to make it big.

The small experiment was very successful, blowing air from the bottom of the blast furnace with a hydraulic blower, and adding coke and iron ore from the top in a ratio of one to four.

Seeing that a furnace of about 100 catties of molten iron slowly flowed out in only an hour, Old Man Zhang, who had been in the ironmaking and casting industry all his life, couldn't help but have some tears in his eyes.

"Eldest grandson, this molten iron has been practiced like this?" I know that Old Man Zhang is a little unconvinced now.

Old man Zhang's real name is Zhang Ze, he has experienced too many joys and sorrows in life, he lost his father in his early years, his wife in middle age, and his son in his later years.

"Yes, Uncle Zhang. It's experimental, and it could be faster. Changsun Yu said.

"Can it be any faster? It's already going to be fast, and the workers can't stand it anymore. Zhang Ze was a little puzzled.

"No, Uncle Zhang, you just saw that we used it for about an hour from beginning to end, but did you know that in order to heat this stove to the point where it can be refilled, we started to light a fire yesterday."

"I know this, the new furnace is a little damp, this is normal, the second furnace will be soon." Uncle Zhang was a little convinced.

"No, let's not talk about the humidity of the furnace, this furnace can continuously produce molten iron, as long as the speed of feeding is controlled above, and the blower below is more powerful, the output can be increased several times." Changsun Yu explained.

"Really? It can be like this, it can be ...... like this," Zhang Ze muttered, and the eldest grandson did not bother.

A gust of wind blew, the black smoke in the distance was blown away, and as soon as the wind left, it continued to stretch out its teeth and claws towards the blue sky, and Changsun Tang really didn't know whether this was good or bad.

The difference between us and animals is that we can analyze the mood of the prey from the perspective of the prey, and under normal circumstances, if human beings encounter something difficult, such as solving the problem of species extinction and survival, we will pray first, and what should we do after praying, this may be the power of religion.

There is no essential difference in the emotion of the eldest grandson looking at the sky obscured by black smoke with sadness.

So, the pollution can only continue.

In many people's concepts, steel and iron are linked, and with iron, there is steel, but this is not the case.

Take the first furnace of iron smelted by Changsun Tang as an example, basically nothing can be done, and it can be used as an iron pot. Because the iron is too brittle.

This is not caused by other reasons, but because the coke added during iron making is not completely consumed, and the gap between steel and iron is also here, and the composition of the vast majority of logarithms is the same, and the difference lies in the presence of other components in it.

Therefore, the iron smelted in this blast furnace cannot be used directly, and it is necessary to continue smelting to remove impurities such as coke in it, and then add some other components that can improve the properties of steel.

The modern industrial practice is to blow in a high concentration of oxygen to let the coke react to enhance the toughness of the steel, but unfortunately, Changsun Tang is currently unable to do this anyway, so he can only use some not very good methods, that is, continue to add suitable iron ore powder.

Unless you know exactly what the iron ore is made of, anyone who gets here will need a little bit of experimentation until they find the best ratio.

This is also the difference between the modern scientific system and the ancient scientific system, which is more reflected in the chemical and biological sciences and engineering.

The ancient scientific and technological system did not have many systems and systems, which was the most representative of China and had advanced technology, but there was no corresponding system to support it, and everything was for the purpose of application.

On the contrary, the modern scientific system represented by the West is based on theory. We may all think that Watt invented the steam engine, but in fact Watt is just an improvement, and we think that Bell invented the telephone, but Hertz had already made all this theory earlier, and the rest was left to time and luck.

It cannot be said which is more advanced, but the Western system guided by this theory is more suitable for scientific "crowd tactics".

The eldest grandson has already listed everything he knows, but this can only ensure that there will be fewer detours, and the rest can only be left to time and luck.

With Li Tao sitting in Jinyang, the eldest grandson can leave with confidence. (To be continued.) )