After getting the messenger from the attendants, Zhu Shuren quickly wandered to the Mechanical Research Institute of the Daming Academy of Sciences in Jiangning Town. The two places are not far from each other, and I walked to the pre-dinner point.

In the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, several academician-level academic experts and several other researchers have already been passed on and are waiting for the regent's inspection.

As soon as Zhu Shuren entered the door, he saw the British scholar Robert Murphy, who is now the deputy director of the institute. Hook (the main director must be a Han Chinese of Ming nationality, there can be several deputy directors, Hook is not the only deputy director), and a Dutch researcher Anthony. Leeuwenhoek, plus some little-known public faces that even Zhu Shuren didn't know.

There is no doubt that Hooke and Leeuwenhoek were both brought back from Britain, the Netherlands and other countries by the Ming merchant fleet that had returned from Europa eight and a half years ago.

It can be seen that Zhu Shuren's courtesy to Professor Barrow and Newton and others was not in vain. Those chiseled gold enamel cloisonné porcelain tea cans, and the best frozen top oolong, as well as Su embroidery, were not given in vain.

It was all because of the great plague in London that the medicine was sold in the snow, and the subsequent display of the thirst for talent, so that a large number of young European scholars and skilled craftsmen saw the potential of coming to the East to pan for gold, and were pocketed by the Ming Dynasty.

This Robert. Hook was 34 years old when he was a teaching assistant at Oxford University, but he did not have an Oxford degree.

Because he was a typical apprentice skilled craftsman, he was mixed with the trade guild in his early years, and was better at hands-on research of machinery, but the theoretical foundation of mathematics and physics was not solid.

It was just because he had a relatively high accuracy in making telescopes and clocks, and he was also very skilled in making other chemical experimental instruments, so he was pulled by Boyle, a leading scientist in the field of chemistry at Oxford University, as a teaching assistant.

Boyle himself is often responsible for using his brain to think about needs, and then asking Hook to help him design and manufacture the experimental equipment.

Later, during the Great Plague in London, the Ming merchant fleet went to sell medicine, didn't it connect to the Cambridge Professor Barrow's line, but Barrow was a mathematician and did not understand chemistry and pharmacy.

As a result, because Boyle himself was already a titan at Oxford University, he couldn't dig it. In the end, the matter was done, but he poached his 30-year-old low-education teaching assistant who had no academic status.

After Hook was dug into the Ming Dynasty, it can be regarded as a flowering of theory and practice in recent years. With the funding of the Ming Dynasty, he could do what he wanted to do as much as he wanted, so he proposed the "Hooke's Law" a few years earlier than the same period in history-

In the original history, Hooke's law should have been proposed by Hooke in 1678, that is, the law in junior high school physics textbooks that "in elastic deformable materials, stress (elastic potential energy/elastic force) is linearly related to the strain variable (elastic deformation)".

Now, four years ahead of schedule, Hooke proposed this law in 1674. Later, he also helped Daming to create standardized springs in advance, and also proposed a new design concept of the elastic escapement mechanism of the clock.

When Hooke proposed Hooke's law and its initial mechanical application, Zhu Shuren also made an exception and personally allocated 20,000 taels of silver from the royal property of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to reward Hooke.

That was three years ago, when Hooke got the money, and he was grateful, thinking that he would not get that much money for a lifetime in the position of a mechanical trade guild in London or in an assistant professor in Oxford.

So from then on, he worked harder to do research and tinker with machinery. It has contributed to the tinkering of various higher-precision optical instruments, clocks and other elastic energy storage machinery.

As for the other researcher who awaits the inspection today, Anthony . Leeuwenhoek, who has taken junior high school biology classes in later generations, should have heard of it, that is, the Dutchman who invented the microscope to see microorganisms.

He is also a craftsman from the Mixed Trade Guild, and his education level is lower than that of Hooke, but he has a strong hands-on ability, and he also has an instinctive talent when designing many mechanical devices, which can be regarded as practice makes perfect.

When the Ming merchant fleet took advantage of the London plague to poach people in Europe, Leeuwenhoek worked as a city hall clerk in Delft, the Netherlands, and engaged in some small innovations in mechanical design in his spare time.

Because the cultural level is not high and the theoretical foundation is not solid, Leeuwenhoek does not have the ability to do projects on his own, so he has teamed up with Hook in the past few years to help him do some hands-on and detailed implementation work.

……

Zhu Shuren saw the excitement on Hook and Leeuwenhoek's faces, and the expectation in his heart couldn't help but rise sharply.

There is no other reason, Zhu Shuren has often been concerned about the work of Nanjing University and Daming Academy of Sciences in recent years, of course he knows what projects Hook is worried about in the past two or three years-

Even in this project, Zhu Shuren took the initiative to order the other party with the mentality of having dates and not having dates. It's just that Zhu Shuren didn't dare to expect too much, and he didn't put pressure on the other party to produce results on a deadline.

Seeing the other party's excited appearance at this moment, Zhu Shuren couldn't help but feel that it was the success of that thing......

He actually took a deep breath nervously and asked in a low voice of inquiry, "Is that thing successful?" ”

Robert. Hook's face was full of pride: "That's right, Your Highness, it is the machine you ordered to use steam to drive the crankshaft flywheel to do work, and finally the first sample has been prototyped." It's been running so far, although it's only been running steadily for 20 minutes in the morning, and it's a bit leaky. In addition, the success rate of the startup link is not high, but at least we made it. ”

Although Zhu Shuren was mentally prepared, he still couldn't help but be shocked: Isn't that just the steam engine? It can't be so fast.

Even if Daming has standardized rubber seals, standardized gears, screws, springs, and some other auxiliary advances in the fields of chemical engineering and materials science, it is impossible to build a steam engine so quickly, right?

Speaking of conscience, Zhu Shuren actually never thought that he would have to see the steam engine in his lifetime, in his original plan, he could roughly pick the "low-hanging fruits" in the field of "vigorously producing miracles" where these stupid birds of biochemical ring materials fly first and make crazy trial and error, and then lay the foundation of science and engineering education for Daming, and his life will be worth it.

Even if it takes another generation or even two generations for future generations to make a steam engine, he thinks that it is a qualified speed, not slow, and we don't ask too much.

Unexpectedly, the final breakthrough was so fast, and with a manic mood, he hurriedly asked Hook to lead the way and visit it.

Hooker and Leeuwenhoek also took him around neatly. When he saw the clumsy big machine, Zhu Shuren's heart was full of excitement, but as time passed, the excitement slowly calmed down.

It was not easy for Hooke to start the machine, because the flywheel and crankshaft did not seem to be precise enough, and if the original inertia of the one-way rotation at the beginning was not large enough, it was easy to turn the circular motion of the crankshaft flywheel into a swing-like reciprocating motion.

So much so that Hook was busy for a long time before he started the machine in circles.

The moment he saw the machine start, Zhu Shuren already had an idea of improvement in his heart:

Can't they just get something like the tractor crank like the diesel tractor starter in later generations, and let the flywheel crankshaft have an initial rotational inertia before starting the steam engine?

This shouldn't be difficult to change, it's just a flash of inspiration and breaking a layer of window paper, so Zhu Shuren thought about it and said it immediately.

Robert on the other side. Hook listened to the word regent's divine words, but he was like an initiation, and he was stunned for a long time before he recovered from his ecstasy and reverence.

"Oh, Your Highness! You are truly omniscient! I just glanced at how difficult it was to start, and I instantly thought of an improvement suggestion! I'll definitely change it in the next version! Plus a device that manually rotates in advance to give the flywheel an initial velocity of inertia! ”

Leeuwenhoek and the other researchers next to him didn't react as quickly as Hook at first. But listening to Hook's words so heartfelt that they didn't seem to be flattering, they finally reacted, and admired the well-informed prince.

Such a ruler is really knowledgeable! No wonder the prince was able to guide Newton and put forward the three laws. Newton was only the one who provided mathematical proofs, and the first conjecture came from the keen foresight of the prince!

Maybe the prince is not good at doing research in person, but his keen vision is really unmatched in the sky and the world! The kind of sharp insight that sees through the essence of things and the root of contradictions at a glance is simply terrifying.

In the amazement of everyone, the steam engine finally started. And with the normal operation of the machine, Zhu Shuren finally calmed down, realizing that the progress of this thing in front of him was actually not that great.

He was a little frightened by the history books at first, and as soon as he heard about the steam engine, he subconsciously thought it was Watt's steam engine.

But after calming down, he had already remembered that Watt had only improved the steam engine, to be exact, a "huge improvement", but it was also an improvement in the final analysis, indicating that a steam engine had been created long before Watt.

Let's not talk about the steam injection copper balls that opened the temple door in ancient Egypt, just talk about the modern steam engine, in fact, in the original history, the Englishman Newcomen invented the modern steam engine in 1705. By the time Watt's improvements were complete, it was already 1787, a full 82 years in between.

In fact, the cycle of an industrial song is about 80 years.

Watt's improved steam engine, for example, was completed in 1787.

Eighty-one years later, in 1868, Faraday invented the dynamo, which ushered in the second industrial song.

In 1946, another 78 years later, the University of Pennsylvania invented the first computer, "Eniake", and started the third industrial song.

In 2023, 77 years later, Microsoft invented GPT, and I don't know if it will be regarded as the start of the fourth industrial song. But even if it doesn't count, give it three more years to make up 80 years, and by around 2026, artificial intelligence technology will most likely progress to a qualitative inflection point at the level of industrial songs.

Which civilization can seize the turning point of the qualitative change of industrial song can determine which civilization will be the head of the earth in the next 80 years of mankind.

So from this point of view, there was a gap of 82 years between the invention of the Newcomen steam engine and Watt's improvement of the steam engine in history.

And Zhu Shuren also saw some ways after careful observation at this moment, and he found that Robert. The thing that Hooker had built at his request a few years earlier, although it could not be said to be a Newcomen steam engine, had several very important things in common. Anyway, it definitely can't be counted as a watt-type steam engine.

In this way, the historical Newcomen steam engine was born in 1705, and the current Hooke steam engine was advanced to 1677, which is actually 28 years ahead of schedule, which is not much at all.

Considering that Daming's industrial base has made so much progress in materials science, and has done so much foundation work in design standardization, and has given Hook sufficient resources, he has been developed for four or five years with the national system, which is very reasonable for 28 years in advance.

After all, the Newcomens in parallel time and space don't have so many resources, and everyone spends their own money to research. Today's Hook spends the money of the Ming Internal Affairs Office, and the financial and material resources are not at all in the same order of magnitude, which can be said to be a world of difference.

The reason why Zhu Shuren judged that the Hooke steam engine was closer to Newcomen than Watt was because he found that Hooke's machine did not have an important feature of the Watt steam engine - it did not have a steam condensation recovery device.

And it was precisely this device that represented a decisive difference between Watt and the previous steam engine, making Watt's steam engine at least three or four times more thermally efficient than Newcomen.

This thing is in jargon, and the layman may not be able to understand it, but to take a popular example, it can be understood in one sentence -

Newcomen and earlier steam power units had a great waste, that is, they had to boil water from room temperature to 100 degrees Celsius, and then boil to form steam pressure, which was sprayed out to do work.

After the steam has only done work once, once the air pressure drops and loses power, it is directly discharged into the outside air. When the steam loses its pressure, it recondenses into water, and it still has a temperature of about 80 to 90 degrees, which is still very hot, even if it is not boiled.

And this water is directly discharged into the air and wasted, and then it starts to boil from the cold water at room temperature of more than 20 degrees, boils again, does work again, and drains it again...... The waste of calories is huge.

Because this is equivalent to the heat energy of the 70-degree temperature difference of boiling water from 20 degrees to 90 degrees, all of which are wasted. In the end, the energy of the temperature difference between 90 and 110 degrees is only done.

An important idea of Watt's steam engine is to "re-collect the condensate water that is slightly cooled after work and loses power and re-liquefied through condensed copper tubes, and is circulated back to the boiler for re-firing and boiling repeatedly."

When the water was recovered, it remained at a temperature of at least 80 to 90 degrees Celsius, after all, it was water that had just changed from steam back to liquid. And then boil the water at 90 degrees back to the furnace to continue to do work, the efficiency is much higher than boiling water from 20 degrees.

Every time the Newcomen steam engine does work, it has to boil the cold water from 20 degrees to more than 110 degrees Celsius, while the Watt steam engine only needs to start from 90 degrees of recovered hot water.

If the heat energy of the temperature difference of 70 degrees is saved all of a sudden, the thermal efficiency of the fuel work will be suddenly increased by three or five times?

The former is "stir-fried meat", and the latter is "back to the pot meat".

In fact, Zhu Shuren didn't know how to build a machine or how to achieve this goal. But he is familiar with history and knows the energy-saving logic and the direction of progress.

Therefore, he can directly play the role of only moving his mouth.

He watched for a long time, pondering the wording, and finally gave a new order to Hook:

"Your water, after boiling, becomes steam and sprays into the cylinder, pushes the piston once to do the work, the energy drops and cools down into water mist, and then sprays out directly from the exhaust port.

But even if these 'water mist' are below 100 degrees, at least there are more than 80 degrees, right? It's always much hotter than the 20-degree room temperature water to be boiled in your cold water boiler.

Can't you think of a way to make a collection device at the exhaust gas outlet to collect these 'water mist' at least 80 degrees Celsius back and pour it back into the boiler to continue burning? Wouldn't that save fuel than if you burned cold water from scratch? ”

Hook was stunned when he heard this, and then there was an uproar in his heart.

His Royal Highness the Regent, what kind of insight is this? I just taught him to get a cold-start rocker handle, which already made him feel like a genius. At this moment, you can still observe the exhaust gas emission of the boiler for a while, and realize that you should add a "water mist heat recovery device in the exhaust gas" to recycle the hot water for cooking?

After all, Hook had been studying this thing for years, so he immediately grasped the essence of it. He realized that if this was done, not only would the utilization rate of fuel heat be increased by several times, but the key would be that the water consumption of the steam engine would also be saved several times.

Because the water mist that cooled down after the work is collected back, the frequency of adding cold water to the boiler can also be reduced several times. This change may not be much different in areas with abundant water resources on land, but if it is inconvenient to replenish fresh water, it is definitely a qualitative change.

To take the simplest example, a steam engine would never have been able to be used for the navigation power of a seagoing vessel without a water mist recovery device after work. Because you can't let the boiler burn seawater, and the sea can't replenish freshwater at all.

If the waste mist is discharged after boiling it once like this, even if the future steam engine ship uses all its capacity to transport water and coal, I am afraid that it will not be able to drive a hundred miles to burn up the water and coal.

Only a steam engine that circulates boiling water is possible to use it for the power of sea vessels.

"Oh my God, revered highness, your insight is as perfect and sharp as a god, and you can spot a qualitative level technical flaw so quickly! My admiration for you is beyond words!

I'll arrange for improvements! Do everything you can to collect the discarded hot water mist that you have done your work! It can be a bit of a hassle, though, and it will take at least a few years. I haven't thought of how to separate the air component from the water mist component in the exhaust gas and recycle the water mist separately......

After all, water mist is only a tiny fraction of the exhaust gases that are eventually ejected. There had to be a relatively safe way to separate the water mist from the rest of the exhaust gas components, which had to be studied from scratch, and I never thought of it......"

Zhu Shuren waved his hand: "Time is not a problem, it's better to take your time." In fact, if you want to separate the water mist from other exhaust gases, it is not impossible to consider cooling and condensing the water mist a little first, and waste more heat.

All you have to do is to weigh the cost of the condensing unit against the degree of heat waste, and find the most economical and reliable balance. I don't know the specifics, so I don't limit your thinking. ”

Of course, Zhu Shuren is a little eyebrow in his heart, after all, who has never washed the air conditioner or thawed the refrigerator at home, so he has never eaten pork and seen a pig run, and he has seen the compressor condensing copper tube structure behind the air conditioner and refrigerator.

However, Zhu Shuren also didn't know whether the condensate collection pipe of this era could cause the same as that on air conditioners and refrigerator compressors in later generations, so he could only describe the principles and not specifically restrict the other party's pragmatic experiments.

Practice is the only criterion for testing and sorting, and Daming is not unable to afford these experiments.

Robert. Hook kept in mind the principles and ideas of Zhu Shuren, and soon put into a new research and development journey.

At the same time, Zhu Shuren also kept an extra eye, saying that this one should not be wasted now. If you can't think of a large-scale improvement method in a short period of time, then first change the small problems a little and run them in, build a few more and take them to Ma'anshan and Huzhou Changxing coal mines for pumping.

Only when a product is put into engineering and practical can more problems be quickly discovered. And Zhu Shuren believes that there will be many such problems, and what he can avoid pitfalls is only a big problem clearly recorded in the history books after all. And countless small problems that are not worthy of being written in history books, only Hook slowly discovered in practice.

In addition, even if the water mist sprayed by the current steam engine cannot be recycled, it can at least be concentrated into a cold water pot, so that the cold water and waste mist can be mixed to form warm water, so that there is no waste of energy, and a hot bath can be opened for coal miners, and the workers can be bathed with high-temperature waste mist mixed with cold water.

——

PS: Actually, the new book "Brother Zhuge Liang" has been opened, and the first chapter was uploaded just half an hour ago. There is only one shift on both days on weekends, and the contract is signed on Monday.

Because the number of words in the new book is still too small, only 3,500 words, so I don't dare to publicize it, so I will secretly say it here.

After that, before 8 a.m. every day, make sure that at least one update of new books and old books are released. (If there are two more days, then the second one will be moved to the afternoon, and there will be more clicks and follow-up rates.) Now the new book all depends on the chase rate, and there is no recommendation if there is no chase rate, alas.

I don't dare to ask for anything else in the new book, I just ask not to fatten, don't fatten, don't fatten. So I didn't dare to publicize it early, for fear that if I publicized it early, I would think that there would be less words to fatten. It's okay if you don't like it yet, just treat me as a fart first. I'll let you know a few more times in a few days. ）

(End of chapter)