The first is crushing, which is simple, with a simple ball mill, the graphite ore is crushed into a powder, which is mixed with water to become a viscous slurry.

Then Xia Lin had people build a long brick and stone canal in the vacant place in the machine factory, and put the purification rune disk in it.

After activating the rune disk, under the power of the rune disk, these black-gray slurries began to slowly appear layered.

After exchanging four rounds of rune disks, it took about twenty minutes for the stratification of the slurry to become extremely obvious, and Xia Lin asked people to scoop out various types of slurry from each layer, dry it to form powder, and then test which part is graphite powder through the flammability experiment.

In this simple and quick way, Xia Lin soon got a large amount of graphite powder of extremely high purity.

With these high-purity graphite powders, the next step is to make graphite electrodes relatively simple, by mixing them with a small amount of resin as a binder through a blender.

Then, with a friction press and a processed high-carbon steel mold, the mixture is extruded into a dense graphite rod, and finally the connection thread is processed at one end by the equipment of the machining factory to obtain the finished graphite electrode.

Theoretically, the conductivity of these graphite electrodes will be quite good, although it may not be as good as the pure gold electrode, but it is enough to use.

However, what the specific effect is, Xia Lin still has to try it in practice to know.

Therefore, after obtaining the graphite electrode, Xia Lin immediately came to the steelmaking plant, found Master Edgar Orbon, who was currently on duty as the furnace director of the steelmaking plant, and told him not to continue smelting for the time being after this furnace of steel was smelted.

Master Edgar was puzzled by this, but he still obeyed Xia Lin's order and explained the matter.

The employees of the steel mill were very happy to hear that the furnace was going to be shut down, and unlike the brick kiln, which only had to check the fire every few tens of minutes, they had to be on call at their posts at all times.

Even though it is a shift production, it is not a good thing to stay near the electric arc furnace in the winter, and if it were not for the fact that the wages in the steel mills are 30% higher than those in other factories, and the hard jobs such as agitators are listed separately and the high salaries, they would not repeat such hard work without complaining.

Therefore, as soon as the smelting was completed, the workers began to prepare for the shutdown of the furnace.

Now the electric arc furnace has undergone some improvements, no longer the previous workers with pliers to install and remove the magic stone of the simple painting style, through a yellow mechanism, workers only need to use a stick on the inlaid magic stone switch board to press lightly, can complete the start and shutdown of the electric arc furnace.

After the molten steel in this furnace was poured out and cast into various colored steels, and the furnace body was cooled, Xia Lin had the pure gold electrode on the furnace lid removed and the graphite electrode installed instead.

Since the graphite electrode was prepared for the appearance of the graphite electrode, Xia Lin adopted a threaded fixing device at the place where the electrode was embedded in the furnace cover, which is now easy to replace.

It took a few hours for the electric arc furnace that had completed the electrode replacement to re-add raw materials for production, and then after completing a round of production and successfully producing qualified molten steel, Xia Lin finally put his mind at ease.

It seems that the graphite electrode made by the local method can still take effect.

However, judging from the data on the smelting records, he also found that the efficiency of the electric arc furnace has indeed decreased a lot, and the electric arc furnace, which only needs one or two hours to complete the whole smelting process, has been extended by nearly half an hour after replacing the graphite electrode.

Obviously, even the conductivity of high-purity graphite electrodes is still not as good as that of adamantite gold.

But this is enough, a graphite electrode produced in a simple graphite electrode factory, if you remove the cost of Captain Nick's excavation and transportation, costs only fourteen silver mars, and one ton of graphite ore is enough to produce twenty-five such graphite electrodes.

Even if you count the cost of excavation and transportation, this is done

It will not exceed twenty silver mar, which is cheap compared to the pure gold electrode worth fifty or sixty gold lunt.

However, there is still a big problem that needs to be solved by Xia Lin in the future, that is, the graphite electrode is not like the pure gold electrode, and it will not consume itself in smelting, because graphite itself is an allotrope of carbon element, although it can withstand extremely high temperatures, but it is not resistant to oxidation and combustion.

In the electric arc furnace smelting process, the graphite electrode itself is constantly oxidized and burned by high temperature and oxygen, so it needs to be replaced at regular intervals.

As for the coatings used to prevent graphite electrode oxidation in his previous life, Xia Lin remembered one, but he didn't have borax on hand, and there was no way to make boric acid, the simplest antioxidant coating, so for the time being, he could only use quantity to maintain production.

After confirming that the graphite electrode he produced could be effective, Xia Lin immediately prepared to set up an electrolysis plant.

The sales of soap and soap produced by the soap factory are so good that many oil products on the market have risen in price, and the caustic soda produced by the caustic soda plant has also become the biggest obstacle to the increase in the output of the soap factory.

If we want to further increase the production of soap and soap, we must overcome the difficulty of caustic soda.

To this end, he first went to the potters' guild in the imperial capital, visited several large pottery workshops recommended by them, and found what he was looking for, that is, stoneware.

The so-called stoneware is a firing vessel between pottery and porcelain. Compared to pottery, it is denser and often has a layer of enamel on the surface, so it can have a similar acid-proof effect as porcelain.

Xia Lin was looking for this vessel to make a set of reactors for use in electrolysis plants. Although pottery is also acid-resistant, it is still far inferior to porcelain and stoneware because it does not have this layer of enamel on the surface.

After explaining the shapes and specifications of the various stoneware vats, jars and pipes he needed, Xia Lin paid a deposit of five gold lunds and returned to the industrial park.

He then ordered the construction team to build five square cement troughs with thick wood wrapping as an insulating base and a reinforced skeleton in the caustic soda plant, each with 3, 1.4, 0.7 bricks, and laying fine stoneware bricks to prevent corrosion.

When the caustic soda concentration produced by the electrolyzer is only about 5% to 10%, this fine stonewood brick can still play a certain role in preventing corrosion.

On the wooden lid above the electrolytic cell, lacquer and water glass produced by the reaction of soda ash and diatomaceous earth are used to insulate and prevent corrosion, and a shallow groove is installed on the wooden lid to place the arc rune disk, and a graphite electrode that directs electric current into the electrolytic cell.

Things involving electricity are often dangerous, especially when Xia Lin doesn't even have the most basic insulation protection equipment such as rubber on hand.

After many inspections and tests, Xia Lin found that there was no electricity leakage or water leakage in this device, so he was a little relieved.