On the huge screen, the asteroid capture spacecraft has successfully captured the asteroid numbered LKUJ-782719 and is heading towards Mars.

The vast cosmic space, the incomparably empty, the asteroid's capture and return path seems to be long, and it is clearly visible on the interface, but in the real cosmic space, it is like a thin rope thrown into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, incomparably small and inconspicuous.

In the ensuing time, Chen Mengchuan and the others' attention was quickly diverted by other things.

The good news came from Xu Shuwei's exploration team, confirming the previous uranium ore and confirming its approximate stock, which is unusually surprising and considerable. It can almost be read as a very high-quality bituminous uranium mine!

The discovery of these uranium deposits is of great significance to their understanding of Mars, such as the estimated age of Mars, and the mineral history of Mars.

According to the current use of uranium in the civilian sector, it is mainly used as nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants. You must know that if it is completely fissioned, the uranium-235 extracted from this asphalt uranium mine can theoretically produce 80 trillion joules of energy per kilogram, which is almost equal to more than 3,000 tons of coal, which can provide very sufficient energy support for the Mars nuclear power plant.

The reserves of bituminous uranium ore are expected to reach more than 1.4 million tons! Just this one uranium mine is comparable to the uranium reserves of the entire Australian countries on the planet!

There are three main natural sources of bituminous uranium deposits on Earth, hydrothermal veins, horizontal deposits in layered sedimentary rocks, and Precambrian pyrite conglomerate formations.

The sources of hydrothermal veins are mainly in the Katanga region of the Congo, the Erz Mountains in Saxony, Germany, and the Fire Bear Lake in Canada. Horizontal deposits in layered sedimentary rocks are mostly found in the highlands of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico in the United States, which were originally barren and barren because of the extraction of bituminous uranium, which brought them a lot of prosperity, and the last bituminous uranium mine of the Precambrian pyrite conglomerate was found in the Blind River region of Witwatersland, Canada, Ontario, Africa.

Is bituminous uranium ore important? Important, Huaxia's bituminous uranium ore is quite abundant, but compared with several large asphalt uranium mining countries, it is very limited, and the proven uranium reserves are only 10 tens of thousands of tons.

The bituminous uranium mine on Mars has already started mining, and with the arrangement of Xu Shuwei and a large number of experts and engineers, the mining work is progressing very smoothly, using a variety of mining methods including open-pit mining, underground mining, in-situ leaching and borehole mining. The mined low-concentration uranium ore consists of 0.01 to 0.25% uranium oxide, which is currently in reserve, and after the uranium ore refinery is established, uranium metal will be extracted from it through a complex refining process, and the high-purity uranium will be further extracted for power generation at the Mars nuclear power plant.

The current Mars nuclear power plant is also basically completed, and based on the high-purity uranium brought from the earth, the power generation is still relatively limited, and when the uranium ore refinery is formed and put into operation, the Martian nuclear power plant will begin to enter full capacity, and then provide a high degree of electrical power for the metal smelter.

At present, a certain number of metal smelters on Mars have been built, and experimental testing work has begun. The reserve personnel brought from the earth this time have learned a lot of knowledge related to metal smelting on the earth, and they are soon assigned to one metal smelter after another under the arrangement.

Nowadays, all metal smelters on Mars have adopted high-strength electric smelting technology, but different metal smelters have also divided many different methods of electric smelting metals, including arc smelting, resistance smelting, arc resistance hybrid smelting, high-strength electric induction smelting, high-strength electron beam smelting and high-strength plasma smelting.

Compared with general pyrometallurgy, the electrothermal metallurgical technology mastered by Tianzhi Technology has the advantages of high-speed heating, precise temperature control and high temperature of more than 2000 degrees Celsius compared with traditional metallurgical technology. It can be operated in a variety of environments, pressures and vacuums, and the amount of metal burn-out is very small.

It is the core method of Tianzhi Technology to smelt ordinary steel and dense steel, ferroalloy, nickel, copper, zinc, tin and other heavy non-ferrous metals, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, titanium, zirconium and other rare metals and semiconductor materials on Mars.

In the main control room, Chen Mengchuan was a little surprised that the progress of the current metal smelting plant was faster than he imagined, and dozens of metal smelting plants had already completed the construction and deployment, and began to carry out the first batch of tests, and the core engineer in charge of these metal smelting plants was a man in his 50s named Jiang Xiaomin.

"We've already started the first batch of smelting, and it's working well so far, with 16 metal smelters already in operation, and the smelted metal minerals are being collected from a mining area in the north of Mars. Although the amount is not much, it is possible to use it to try it. Jiang Xiaomin said slowly, the tall and thin man was wearing a thick-rimmed glasses, and the prescription was obviously very high.

"With Lao Jiang here, our metal smelter on Mars will definitely not have problems." Xu Shuwei said with a smile that Jiang Xiaomin was introduced by him, and he was also a somewhat depressed academic talent dug out from the Huaxia Academy of Sciences.

"Why are there so many types of metal smelters now? Isn't it more troublesome when the technology is scattered? Chen Mengchuan asked shamelessly, he still didn't understand the construction of 8 different types of metal smelters, but these were not arranged by him, so he still wanted to know.

Although Jiang Xiaomin was a little restrained, he answered Chen Mengchuan's question very well: "According to Mr. Zhao's requirements, we will collect and mine a large number of various metal minerals on Mars in the future, there are many types of metal minerals, and there are many metals and alloys that are smelted by different methods, and the effect is different." ”

"I'll take an analogy, alloy steel, such as our dense steel, is very good for arc smelting."

"Arc melting is the use of high-intensity electrical energy to generate an arc between electrodes and electrodes or between electrodes and the object to be melted to smelt metals. The arc of direct heating arc melting is generated between the electrode rod and the charge being smelted, and the charge is directly heated by the arc, which is suitable for refining various alloy steels. Vacuum arc melting furnaces with direct heating in a vacuum environment can be used to melt reactive and high-melting metals such as titanium, zirconium, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, and their alloys. These metals are very important in the plan. ”

"Another example is plasma melting, which uses the plasma arc generated by electrical energy as a heat source to smelt metals. It has the characteristics of high melting temperature and fast material reaction speed, which is very suitable for melting, refining and remelting metals and alloys with high melting points. In our future plans, it will play an important role in the production of various spaceships by smelting quickly and in large quantities. ”

"According to the current progress, after the asteroid is captured and its metal composition is confirmed, it can start cutting and smelting in large quantities, and in just one year, I am confident that it will achieve ten times the output of all steel and metallurgical plants on the entire planet combined!"

Jiang Xiaomin's words made the eyes of Chen Mengchuan and the others a little hot.

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