When it was noon, Huo Gang rushed to the location where the iron mine was, if it weren't for the spirit of the Jade Gate to give Huo Gang a mark, it would not be easy for Huo Gang to find it by himself, before Lu Feng and they came over were also brought by the Turkic herdsmen who lived nearby before.

The environment here is not as good as that near Yiwu and the current Yangguan, on the whole, there is grassland and water here, but the water source is not too abundant, but it is enough for the time being, such as eating, drinking, and smelting iron.

But Huo Gang was thinking about whether he wanted to transport the iron ore back to the industrial city to start smelting, because it was difficult to feed the population on a large scale in the vicinity, and if it was iron smelting, there were not many workers needed, so the water source here was really not enough.

All things considered, if the iron ore is simply excavated in this place, then the iron ore is transported to the industrial city and smelted in the industrial city, first of all, the number of workers in the iron ore here will drop a lot, there is no large construction site here, there is no industrial water, and the water source must be sufficient.

Secondly, the grain transported in this direction can be carried directly by the horse-drawn cart that returns here to pull the iron ore, and the amount of grain consumed is not much.

The more people there are, the more food will be consumed.

But there are also disadvantages, first of all, the problem of the coal mine, the coal mine is about half a day away from the iron mine, but if the coal mine is also transported to the industrial city, the distance is a little far.

However, there is one of the biggest advantages in this, first of all, there is no need to worry about security, Huo Gang can concentrate his troops to protect, and the real secrets will be put in the industrial city, and secondly, it is conducive to maximizing human resources.

In this era, no matter what industry is labor-intensive, if these industries are concentrated, then those Turks around the industrial city will have jobs to do, and then Huo Gang's food stamp plan will have a way to implement it.

Secondly, the distance between the industrial city and Yangguan is very close, and Yangguan is also very close to Yumen Pass, and Yumen Pass must be repaired, because it is related to the spirit of Yumen.

So if all these are integrated, Huo Gang finally decided to transport all the materials to the industrial city for collective construction.

However, the iron mine will not be built at all, and the first cement houses will be built here.

Because the conditions here are relatively harsh, Huo Gang decided to build the first batch of cement houses here, and there are resident gathering points near the coal mine, so it is not so difficult to work in the coal mine, but here in the iron mine, there were originally only a few small Turkic tribes around, and these tribes have now migrated to the vicinity of the Huo Ci River because of Huo Gang.

This leads to the whole iron mine around is simply deserted, then it must be built here, of course, the construction of cement houses is not now, anyway, the weather is gradually starting to heat up, living in the felt tent is no longer cold, so there is no need to build a house for the time being.

The output of cement has now risen a lot, but the cement is naturally the more the better, the production capacity can never keep up with the amount of use, the entire industrial city has built the 11th cellar furnace for burning cement, and the improvement of the entire cellar furnace has also been carried out to the third generation, the first generation of cellar furnace is built in accordance with the furnace for firing quicklime, and the Tang Dynasty has already had a perfect experience in burning quicklime, so it is natural to build according to this at the beginning.

The second generation is the first generation of cement burning furnaces, the third generation is the latest at present, it can no longer be regarded as a simple cement burning furnace, it has been collectively discussed and improved by Yang Lao Wu and some craftsmen, that is, the firing cement and grinding limestone mines and other large mills have been made into an assembly line.

This is also thought of from the assembly line operation proposed by Huo Gang.

However, there is currently only one third-generation cellar furnace, and most of them are second-generation, but even so, the entire industrial city can currently burn about one ton of cement per day.

The theoretical output can reach about 10 tons, mainly because the ore grinding can not keep up, because the stone grinding is very laborious, and the stone grinding in the limestone ore and cement, although the wear amplitude is not large, but can not help the continuous grinding of a day, even if the diameter of the stone grinding is very large, but the output of a day is actually very limited.

But this thing is nothing more than a process of piling up quantities, one can't make ten, ten can't make a hundred.

But at present, the ability to produce one ton of cement per day is close to the limit, of course, there is another reason for limiting this output, that is, the population, because there is no large-scale recruitment of these Turks to work, so for the time being, the manpower has reached the limit.

As for the rest of the manpower, they have to wait for Huo Gang to go back, because with it, the role of food stamps will be increased together.

When Huo Gang arrived at the iron mine, he soon saw Lu Feng and them, the entire iron mine is a veritable mountain, but the volume of this mountain is not large, and there is no way to compare with the nature of the Qilian Mountains.

However, its overall height is also close to 300 meters high, its length is about 2,000 meters, and its width is about 1,000 meters wide. Huo Gang roughly estimated that this volume is probably close to 200 million cubic meters, right? In other words, the approximate reserves are close to 1 billion tons?

And this is the volume of the ground, a vein can not only have the ground, and often more underground than the ground, this more than 1 billion tons of iron ore is no longer a small vein, this thing does not seem to have heard of such a large iron ore in the Hami area in later generations.

Of course, Huo Gang only estimated the reserves purely by volume, but the outside of this hill is not completely iron ore, only part of it is composed of iron ore, and it is possible that the other part has stones.

However, even if there is a stone, it is estimated that its reserves are not low, what are the specific reserves, Huo Gang is too lazy to calculate, anyway, for him, this iron mine is basically enough to use.

"How?" After Huo Gang found Lu Feng, he asked as soon as possible.

"Chief, this is an iron-rich mine, and it has a very high iron content." Lu Feng was a little excited, "And although this mountain is not too big, but we have taken a look, it seems that there are iron ore veins under this mountain, and for us, there may not be a shortage of iron ore in the next few decades." ”

Huo Gang smiled, he just smiled at Lu Feng's last sentence, iron ore, after it is not developed, you will never know how much it will do, although iron is the second most abundant metal element in the whole earth, and the first is aluminum, but it is strange to say that aluminum has more content in the earth than iron, but it was discovered more than a thousand years later.

And steel has been used since thousands of years ago.

Of course it may be related to the active type of aluminum.

"It shouldn't be too difficult to mine, right?" Huo Gang raised his head and looked at this mine, to be honest, Huo Gang had already wondered if he had made explosives, such a mine, if it was ore when it was blown up, then the effect of explosives mining would be much faster than that of human mining.

Even if the explosives of this period are very poor, you only need to put them in a confined enough space, and no matter how bad the explosives are, as long as the space is confined enough, they will still have amazing effects.

But the explosives, after being produced, are like opening a magic box, but Huo Gang knows that he will definitely not be able to endure it for long, and this magic box is much stronger than others opening it by himself.

"It's not high, this natural iron ore mine is the easiest to mine." Lu Feng nodded immediately, "According to the scale of this mine, it should be no problem for everyone to mine hundreds of kilograms of ore every day." ”

Hearing this amount, Huo Gang couldn't help but nodded, the efficiency of this era, this is already quite high, before the invention of large tools, if you want to increase the efficiency of mining, only explosives are the simplest and rudeest.

Especially in this kind of natural mines, some closed and deep mines on the mountain, directly send explosives into it, and then ignite it with a fuse, and then people can hide in a safe place, and the energy generated by the remaining explosion can solve all problems.

Even if the mountain is sometimes too large to be blown up, it will cause the mountain to loosen, making it easier to mine manually.

Lu Feng said that it is not difficult for each person to mine hundreds of kilograms per day, Huo Gang thought about it, and calculated according to 500 kilograms, 100 people, that is, 50 tons, and 1000 people, that is, 500 tons. There are more than 100,000 tons a year, and if 500 kilograms are more, then according to 200 kilograms, a thousand people will have 200 tons of iron ore a day.

Of course, such an open-pit vein, calculated at the ancient level, is estimated to be fast at the beginning of mining, and will become slower and slower later.

But this speed is enough, it's a big deal that Huo Gang can send more people.

If a thousand people don't work, then two thousand.

In fact, what a country like Datang lacks is not the mining of iron ore, but the smelting of steel is the most laborious, because all they use to smelt steel is charcoal, but there is no coal for them to use.

Coal is much more efficient than charcoal.

And the consumption of trees by charcoal alone is a huge and terrifying place. Many people wonder why Tang and Datang used to have the capital of Chang'an? Not because Chang'an is located in the center of China, but because at this time, the Guanzhong region near Chang'an, which was the richest place in the whole country, was rich in vegetation, developed agriculture, and the irrigation capacity of the Yellow River basin was strong.

Why did the capitals of various dynasties gradually move eastward after the Great Song Dynasty? It is because at that time that after thousands of years of development here, the crazy felling of various trees and land has led to soil erosion has been very serious, and by the time of the Song Dynasty, it gradually became yellow and sandy, and the capital was naturally impossible to be here.