"The blast furnace time is longer, the current technology is not mature, at least more than two hours, the blast furnace does not stop day and night, and can only produce four furnaces, which is already the fastest speed. Zhang Tan said helplessly, now the restriction of the smelting speed is not the temperature, after there is orange coke, the temperature rises quickly, as long as the amount of loess in the fuel is reduced, it can be quickly humidified.

However, the 10,000-jin furnace is too heavy, and the 10,000-kilogram molten iron plus the weight of the blast furnace itself is definitely not possible to use a crucible as before, with a high temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, and more than 12,000 kilograms of furnace molten iron, if you want to pour it out, the strength and danger required are too high.

Therefore, the altar adopts the groove method, the blast furnace is fixed, below the blast furnace, reserve a switch like the water pipe halter, when the molten iron in the furnace is smelted, turn on the switch, let the molten iron flow into the mold along the iron groove.

Seems more relaxed?

Don't talk about it, the crucible is convenient, when smelting, after high temperature heating, impurities will float on the top layer of molten iron because of the light specific gravity. When smelting with a crucible, as long as a person stands on a high place, he uses a long-handled iron spoon to fish out the miscellaneous products floating on it.

The blast furnace obviously can't do this, standing at the feeding port, even if it is dozens of meters away, tens of thousands of catties of molten iron emitting heat, no one can bear it.

Therefore, the filtration method can only be used, which requires that every time the material is fed, a filter screen is installed at the switch below, and the melting point of this filter screen is higher than that of molten iron. Renault uses tungsten wire mesh, the effect is not bad, thanks to the ultra-high temperature of orange coke, tungsten with a melting point of more than 3,000 degrees, at the high temperature of orange coke, it is not more troublesome than smelting iron ore.

It can take much longer than the time to use a crucible for each time to clean the chamber, replenish the refractory bricks, install the filter screen, and feed the material layer by layer, which makes the smelting speed of the 10,000-jin furnace not fast.

"Four furnaces a day?" General Wei groaned, Wei Wenchang, who would not frown if his bones were broken, was thundered by Zhang Tan, you produce four furnaces a day, and one furnace produces 10,000 catties, this is 40,000 catties of refined iron, you still look dissatisfied, is this appropriate?

After thinking about it, he understood the difficulties of Zhang Tan, and before he got here, he heard that Lei Shi had a crazy plan for the Iron City. Naturally, he didn't believe it, but Lei Shi was unpredictable, and with the idea that he would rather believe it, he invited the masters of arithmetic and asked them to calculate how much fine iron was needed for a city with an area of ten miles.

As a result, General Wei's question stumped all the arithmetic in Da Chu, and for more than a month, until he set off, he couldn't give an accurate result.

Anyway, it takes a lot, and all the fine iron in Da Chu for a year is transported here, which is enough to repair a few rooms.

Come here to take a look, the plan of the city of fine iron is not only true, but also has a certain foundation, a radius of several miles, the foot on it, is a five-centimeter thick fine iron plate, how much fine iron is this, take out enough to Da Chu to equip a million troops, just spread on the ground?

What's even more exaggerated is that so much refined iron is only a part of the smelting, and it is said that there are also a large number of alloys, cast into metal ingots, used to process weapons, daily necessities, and experiments.

These laid on the ground are just ordinary goods for the craftsman battalion of the Shengong Temple, except for the casting of iron basin kitchen knives and other external goods, they are not used by their own people.

Of course, there is more than that, when he saw that there were nearly 1,000 hydraulic stone crushers standing by the underground river, the coolies took hydraulic drill bits, took local materials, mined iron ore, and threw it directly into the stone crusher, and then along the hydraulic conveyor belt, the crushed small pieces of ore were transferred to the iron grinding edge, and the water power drove the huge iron mill to grind the ore to the size of a grain of sand.

It is then transported to the washing pond, where the clean concentrate powder is hydraulically transported directly to the smelter on the surface.

During the entire mining process, Renault used this huge underground river to the limit, otherwise he would not have been able to support such a large smelter with the manpower in his hands.

Don't look at how much iron ore is used in a furnace, but Zhangtan wins by quantity, hundreds of small blast furnaces, discharged more than ten miles, filled once, can consume millions of catties of mineral powder.

And this is not once a day, but more than five times a day, Zhang Tan simply uses the method of ants gnawing bones, turning the small blast furnace like a workshop into a cluster mode, and forcibly raising the output to the level of small steel mills on the earth.

Tens of thousands of people can smelt almost 500 tons of refined iron in one day, which is terrifying, and even if it does not reach 200,000 tons in a year, there are always 170,000 or 80,000 tons.

Moreover, this number will continue to increase, and it is not the blast furnace that restricts production at present, but human resources. Airships were transporting manpower from all over the world to the camp day and night, and in a few months, the population of the camp had doubled, to nearly 20,000 people.

The new blast furnace is to solve the problem of insufficient human resources, you know, it is not enough to have people, but also to solve the most basic problems of life, food alone, human life. There is no food to grow in the rainforest, and it is impossible for people to live on fruit.

Smelting is a high-temperature and high-risk physical work, and adequate nutrition must be ensured. Seventy percent of the airship troops of the Shengong Temple are used to transport daily necessities, of which grain and meat are the mainstay.

With the increase in the carrying capacity of the airship, for the sake of everyone's mouth, not only jerky meat, but also live cattle and live sheep are transported here, if there is no suitable ship, Renault will also supply a large number of marine fish, which is very close to the sea.

Ever since Wei Wenchang boarded the airship, he was shocked, shocked, and shocked......

Until this time, he still hadn't come back to his senses, Zhang Tan took a pen and paper, wrote and painted, and said words that he didn't understand at all, and the final conclusion was that according to the current smelting and upgrading speed of the Shengong Temple, at most, this fine iron city could be built in five years, and the speed was no slower than that of the brick and stone wooden structure, after all, this was a big city with a side length of more than ten miles.

Of course, for the ...... of the chapter altar Cow, oh, the cow is definitely not enough for him to blow, he has to blow the whale.

Because there are still a few conditions in his conclusion, within two years, the smelting workers will reach 300,000, and the efficiency of the blast furnace will be increased by ten times.

In the same time, a furnace smelts 100,000 catties of iron, how big a furnace are you.

"General, please go this way, this is a musket workshop, which can already mass-produce Shengong type muskets, which can produce fifty per day, and with the laboratory overcoming the spring project, as long as the hydraulic drilling machine can be successfully tested, the output will be increased tenfold. Zhang Tan said proudly.

Muskets, outsiders really don't know, after all, there are few of them, and most of them are sent to resource camps. The few musket teams left in the camp were all sent to the underground world to hunt, and there was nothing left on the ground at all, not to mention outsiders, and the coolies who had not been seen later, so Wei Wenchang didn't know that there was an extra weapon of war in the Shengong Palace.

"Oh, what is this musket?" he instinctively thought that a musket he had never heard of was probably a weapon.

The weapon developed by the secret technique of the Lei Master, Wei Wenchang is still quite looking forward to it. There is a lot of pressure on Da Chu, and it took Chu Ren a year and a half to grasp most of the right to speak in the court, as well as the support of the military. This is also thanks to the full support of King Wu Zhuo, otherwise Chu Ren would not have been able to straighten out the internal affairs of Great Chu so quickly.

Although the decree is basically accessible, and it is rare for the Wuwang Mansion to cooperate with the Emperor of Chu, there are too many problems in Da Chu, and even the food and clothing of the people have not been solved, and the vast majority of issues such as army expansion, armaments, military training, and increasing naval warships are still on paper now, especially the problem of the expansion of the naval army, which cannot be done in a short period of time, not to mention that Da Chu has no money, even if he has money, the warship does not mean that it can be built.

As for the army, the military department opened its mouth to triple the expansion of the army, and now the completed expansion is not even one-third, and the number of recruits has reached 800,000, but only half of them have complete armor.

As for the heavy cavalry, which the generals wanted the most, the expansion of the army was less than 20,000. In the world of Great Chu, heavy cavalry is a tank, which not only requires sophisticated equipment, the best war horses, but also has very high requirements for personnel.

A full set of horse armor, heavy armor, and weapons, adding up to more than two hundred catties, even if you ride on a horse, the burden of a knight is not light.

Heavy cavalry is not for you to stand still with heavy armor, you need to swing your weapon to kill, without the strength and endurance of a warrior, you can't last long.

Not all warriors can become qualified heavy cavalry, and it takes at least two to three years for a heavy cavalry to become an army from selection to formation.

Obviously, the Aoren would not give Da Chu such a long time. As early as half a year ago, Da Chu City had all withdrawn to Da Chu, and now there are less than 2,000 people left there, as well as hundreds of fast boats, to transmit information.

The first fleet of the Austrians arrived in the Solmon Islands three months ago, and there are as many as eight flags found so far.

The military system of the Austrians is different from that of Dachu, not according to the corps, but according to the army, with 30,000 people in each army. In other words, the Austrian army discovered so far has eight armies and 240,000 people. There were 1,200 warships and nearly 10,000 transport ships.

In addition to the Eighth Army, there were three times as many civilians, and the total number of Austrians in the Lomon Islands today is close to one million.

The strength of the Great Chu Navy is very average, the two Navy Forces, the number of real warships is less than 2,500, which is about twice the first fleet of the Austrians, and there is no small difference in both tonnage and quality.

No one believes that this is all the combat power of the Austrians, building battleships is very slow, Chu Ren can't afford to lose, plus the six major legions don't understand water warfare, the military department thinks that it is better to defend than to attack, and wants to take advantage of the fact that the Austrians are not stable, even if they win, the losses of Da Chu will be very amazing.

The sea station is different from the land war, one bad thing is that the whole army is annihilated, and Da Chu really can't afford to play.

That is, Renault does not know, otherwise he will definitely scoff at it, the importance of sea power, the Great Chu Military Department does not understand it at all.