The ore was found in the southwest of the base, where it was already hilly and not far away from the rolling mountains. It is more than ten kilometers away from the base, and most of the road is still a flat grassland, so it is not difficult to walk. Liang Hong organized people to go to the scene, and it took a whole day to dig and chisel, and finally came up with a wagon of ore.

It was close to evening when the ore was brought back, and it was sent directly to the ore smelter. Immediately, there was a noise in the large gray courtyard, smoke rising from the chimney, and a pungent smell was emitted. Industrialization is indeed the destruction of the environment, and the air pollution begins to be caused by just building an ore smelter.

The ore smelter was noisy for a long time, and it was almost midnight when it died down, and the chimney no longer smoked or emitted a new smell.

Liang Hong trotted all the way and rushed into the bluestone bunker. Click on the bronze mirror to check the fund account, and sure enough, the amount of funds in the account is 100 yuan more. The mining horse-drawn cart weighs two tons, and the previous attempt was made to dig up the coal and sell it to the system, and it was sent to the ore smelter to buy it directly without smelting, and the price was a little lower, and only five yuan was given for two tons. Now this ore can earn a hundred silver dollars after smelting, and the system purchase price has reached 20 times that of coal, which is really an encouraging result.

As for knowing what kind of ore this is, Liang Hong also has a way. Fingers directly clicked on the system call button in the interface, and Xiaobai's pretty face appeared, and the voice was as crisp and indifferent as ever.

"Captain Liang, is there anything wrong with the call system?"

"May I ask Comrade Xiaobai, what is the ore purchased by the system just now?"

Liang Hong asked in an almost flattering tone, asking for help, but he must not be angry with Xiao Nizi.

"This, I need to look it up."

Xiaobai disappeared from the mirror for a short while, and just when Liang Hong was waiting a little anxiously, the pretty face reappeared.

"The system has purchased the metal chromium produced by your ore smelter, and has allocated 100 yuan for the purchase."

"Metallic chromium?"

Liang Hong asked in surprise, not in doubt, but in shock. Rare metal, he did not graduate from engineering, and the command major of the Artillery Academy did not learn to make artillery, but to shoot cannons far and accurately. The most seen metals are only a few kinds of steel, copper, and aluminum, and chromium seems to have been seen in books, but now they have all forgotten.

"Yes, metallic chromium, silvery-white and shiny, density 7.20 g/cm3, melting point 1857 °C, boiling point 2672 °C, stable to oxygen and moisture at room temperature."

Xiaobai talks eloquently, like an announcer broadcasting, reciting scientific terms and data endorsements.

"Stop, stop, those things you said are too advanced, simple, what can you do with chrome."

"Chromium is mainly found in nature in the form of chromite, which is mainly used to produce ferrochrome alloys and chromium metal. Ferrochrome alloy is used as an additive to produce high-strength, corrosion-resistant, wear-resistant, and high-temperature resistant special steels, and chromium metal is used to smelt special alloys with other elements. These special steels and special alloys are the ...... of aviation, aerospace, and automobiles."

Xiaobai was like a machine starting, and when he began to read, Liang Hong hurriedly interrupted loudly again.

"So the ore we mine is chromite?"

"Yes, chromite is black in color, semi-metallic luster, hardness of 5.5, specific gravity of 4.2~4.8, is a special product of the Transvaal in South Africa, the reserves are extremely huge, and the reserves account for 30% of the world."

Very good and powerful, Liang Hong almost jumped up with excitement, so many reserves, even if you add a few hundred mining wagons, you can't dig them all. After the excitement, he thought about another problem, the smoke and smell coming from the ore smelter.

"Will smelting chromite cause pollution and endanger human health?"

"Chromite itself is a weathered rock, mostly trivalent chromium, which is not very harmful to the human body."

"I mean, are there any harmful substances in the smelting process, smoke in the chimneys, pungent smells in the workshops, are these things toxic?"

Liang Hong interrupted Xiaobai again, listening to this girl's words, she was obviously avoiding the important and trivial, which made him have to be suspicious.

"Soot is definitely harmful, such as increasing the amount of inhalable particulate matter in the air, so the system requires workers at ore smelters to wear masks."

"I mean, are there any health-threatening chemicals in those soots, are there any other chromium at that price, five times or eight times the price, and it's higher than the trivalent chromium you said."

Liang Hong raised his voice, now he was sure that Xiaobai must know something, and he was deliberately hiding it from him.

"Chromite may produce hexavalent chromium during the smelting process, and hexavalent chromium is still harmful to the body." Xiao Bai slurred, and his voice became smaller and quieter, "So, Captain Liang, it's better for you to go to the ore smelting ground less." ”

"But what about the workers in the workshop?" He went into the workshop and knew that there were five smelters in it.

"The primary base is upgraded to a second-level base, and the ore smelter can be upgraded to a smelting workshop, and the advanced smelting process will reduce the emission of hazardous substances."

Xiaobai was obviously talking about him left and right.

As soon as the next day dawned, Liang Hong routinely got up early for a morning jog, which was a habit developed in military life for many years. Four years in the Artillery Academy, two years in the Special Forces, six years of military age, and the regularity of work and rest was cultivated almost instinctively.

Hearing the movement, Jia Zeroyi, who lived in the barracks, also came out and trotted behind him in silence. The rest of the base was still asleep, and only two soldiers were the first to get up. The soldiers made systematically and the soldiers trained by later generations have the same characteristic, that is, they abide by discipline.

Running in circles around the fence around the perimeter of the base is equivalent to patrolling, and by the way, check whether the fence is damaged or has loopholes. Usually, after the run, Liang Hong would go to prepare breakfast in person, but now he is a little depressed, more precisely, contradictory. Yesterday the chromite mine brought him a surprise, a cart of ore can bring a hundred yuan of income a day, plus the balance of two thousand yuan now in the account, it only takes another month to start building a weapons workshop. However, he figured out from Xiaobai yesterday that chromite smelting is harmful to health.

Unknowingly, he slipped into the ore smelter, pushed the door in, and saw two miners in the courtyard waiting for a carriage.

"Mr. Liang is early"

The miners stood up and greeted him, and all of them addressed Mr. Liang except for Jia Lingyi, who called him a commander or commander, and these people were all civilians in his eyes.

"Everyone's early"

Smiling in return, in fact, his heart was very entangled, especially when he saw the group of smelting workers who heard the news.

The facilities in the ore smelting yard are not complicated, they are all handmade goods, sledgehammers and anvils for smashing ore, small blast furnaces for soil smelting, and all the tools are driven by manpower.

There were five smelters in the ore smelter, all silently following him at the moment, following him everywhere. Silence is a common trait of almost all system builders. Although I know that they are all cyborgs, they have the same appearance and the same flesh and blood as themselves, and they can't be regarded as pure machines and consumables.

The small blast furnace in the workshop has been turned off, and there is still a slight residual residual heat in the furnace that has been burned last night, and the pungent smell in the air has dissipated a lot, and it is difficult to detect it without careful smelling. Liang Hong knew in his heart that once the mine truck was busy every day, the flames would never stop here, and the irritating gases would accompany these smelters day and night for a long time, slowly damaging their health.

After turning around, I roughly understood the process of soil smelting. The chromite is first smashed and then roasted in a small blast furnace to produce slag. The slag is soaked in a pond and a chemical reaction occurs when sulfur is added, resulting in a mineral concentrate with a very high chromium content, which is sold to the system. The smoke in the chimney is produced during the roasting process, and the pungent odor is generated by the addition of sulfur to the soaking pool. Liang Hong is not a chemist, and he doesn't know what the components of those gases are, so I'm afraid that there will be hexavalent chromium in it. In smelting, the coal is mined locally, the sulphur is exchanged from the system, and the cost is later deducted from the income on a regular basis, which is equivalent to buying on credit from the system.

Turning away in silence, he walked out of the courtyard, and his mood became heavier. Chromite must also be mined, and ore smelters must be operated, which is currently the only way to survive. Fortunately, there was still hope in yesterday's little vernacular, upgrading to a level 2 base as soon as possible, and upgrading the ore smelter to effectively reduce the health damage to the smelting workers, I only hope that they will still be safe by then.