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On June 10, 2760 (1919), Panzhihua Iron and Steel Company.

Panzhihua was formerly known as the ferry, and belonged to Ningyuan Mansion (Xichang) in the Ming and Qing dynasties. This is a new city that has only been established for less than ten years, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was separated from Ningyuan Mansion and established as a new city-level unit. The name of the place was hand-picked by the general secretary of the imperial pen and named "Panzhihua".

Panzhihua is located in the mountains and valleys of the Hengduan Mountains at the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan, bordering the Sichuan Basin in the east, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the north, and the Jinsha River Valley in the south. Towering Hengduan Mountain, rolling golden sand. Nature's miraculous work has been unleashed in the place where Sichuan and Yunnan meet, splitting a large rift valley and supporting the mineral resources hidden deep in the stratum to the nearest place to the soles of the world's feet.

The story of Zhuge Liang's "crossing the Lu in May and going deep into the barren" happened here. It has been a land of barbarian miasma since ancient times, and until the beginning of the 20th century. But there are abundant mineral resources buried in this Hengduan Mountain Range.

According to the geological survey data of later generations, the vanadium titanomagnetite reserves in this area are 10 billion tons, the vanadium resource reserves are 16 million tons, and the titanium resource reserves are 8. 700 million tons. There are also 700 million tons of coal, in addition to 900,000 tons of cobalt, 700,000 tons of nickel, 250,000 tons of scandium, 180,000 tons of gallium and a large amount of copper, sulfur and other resources.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was built as a steel and non-ferrous metal production base, and it can be said that the city of Panzhihua was specially built for this industry. Although most of China's minerals are imported from abroad, its own minerals must also be properly developed, otherwise it will not be able to maintain technology and cultivate talents in minerals.

Moreover, there is also the consideration of developing the economy of the remote areas in the southwest and promoting the social progress of the hinterland. In addition, there are various factors such as the balanced consideration of the distribution of the country's productive forces.

However, Panzhihua is poor in mountains and rivers, poor in traffic, poor in information, especially the terrain is broken, the ground is divided into small pieces by countless trenches, it is difficult to find large pieces of flat land, and the largest piece of hillside is only 2. 5 square kilometers, in such a geographical and natural environment to build Pangang, the plant area is limited, and the construction is very difficult. At that time, the construction of the Datu Dynasty invested countless efforts here.

However, the conditions in China are much better than those of the Great Tu Dynasty, and the most important thing is that there are rich people and more high-tech. Needless to say, 83 million free labor force is used hard, and there are many large construction machinery that are not in the big picture, which is much more powerful than the pure labor at that time.

The terrain is broken, and it is not easy to build, is it? If the strong are strong, they will defy the sky! We have enough explosives, so we can just blow them up! Wherever we like, we will blow up the mountain, and then fill the trench with the stones that come out of the bombed mountain! We can have as much flat land as we want.

It can be said that the city of Panzhihua was blown up by explosives, and it took more than three years for the urban area, the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Plant area and the supporting infrastructure construction to use more than 300,000 tons of explosives.

Although more than 300,000 tons of explosives are a bit expensive, the effect is good. The Panzhihua and Pangang in the original plane are much better than the Datu Dynasty, and the whole land has been blown into plains, can it be bad?

Even the mine was blown up with explosives, and the PLA's combat engineering units used blasting operations to directly use explosives to lift the mountains pressed on the ore body, directly exposing the ore veins for open-pit mining.

In the first few years of the founding of the country, Panzhihua was full of rumbling explosions every day, and the smell of gunpowder was like a battlefield. The largest blasting operation, with a dosage of more than 10,000 tons, can be called an unprecedented scale of artillery combat.

In September 1913, Pangang, with a design output of 3 million tons, was officially put into operation. The task of Pangang is not mainly to produce ordinary steel, it is mainly to produce important products such as titanium and vanadium.

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At this time, it was lunch time, and the employees of the company were eating in the cafeteria, and they chatted while eating.

"Today's braised beef is really authentic and tastes good......"

The beef with fascia is cut into small pieces of one inch square, under the action of various seasonings, the meat pieces become golden red in color, fragrant, salty and mellow in the mouth, take a bite, the fragrant gravy immediately fills the mouth, the thick and elastic meat fiber is very chewy in the mouth, highlighting the unique flavor of beef, which makes people want to stop.

"This beef is so delicious!" the diners were full of praise.

Someone said unsatisfied: "I have decided, I will go to the vegetable market to buy a few catties of beef after work today, let's make a big pot by ourselves and eat enough!"

"Hahahaha, you foodie......"

Shen Rui didn't say anything, eating fragrant beef, and listening to his colleagues brag and fart.

At this time, someone said: "I watched on TV and said that most of the beef in our country is now imported from Argentina and the United States. ”

"There are also Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand, millions of tons a year......

Colleague A asked him: "Shen Gong, don't we have beef in the Celestial Empire?" It is said on TV that Mongolia, Mobei, and Anxi's hometown are all good pastures. Isn't that enough?"

Shen Rui thought for a while and said, "Of course it's not enough, don't you look at how many people my country has, more than 600 million people." Now that life is good, everyone basically has meat to eat every day, even if each person eats a pound of beef every month, we have to have more than 300 4 million tons of beef every year. And every year we have to export so many beef products such as beef jerky, beef floss and canned beef, our own beef is really not enough...... Besides, our country has a balanced trade with other countries, and these beef are one of the commodities used to balance it......"

"Oh, it's true that we have the largest population, and we want more. A pound of beef is really not much, according to our company's food standards, it is 120 to 200 grams of meat per day, and a pound of beef is only 4 days at most, like two and a half days of heavy body lì post to eat up. Colleague A agrees that the food standards of various units and enterprises in China are now formulated by specialized nutritionists, and they vary according to labor intensity and gender.

In order to improve the health of the people, the Chinese government has now promoted the "Nutritious Meal Program" throughout the country to promote a scientific diet. Coupled with the huge export of meat products, the demand for meat and dairy products is increasing every year. The domestic production of its own meat is insufficient, and beef and dairy products are imported in large quantities every year.

Colleague B said: "We don't need to import grain in China now, and last year's grain output was more than 700 million tons, which is really scary." Tsk, the average person in the country has more than one ton of grain, how can we eat it, we have to be a rice bucket. ”

Colleague C said disapprovingly: "How can it be, there are poor days in this poor day, and there are rich days in rich days." Now that the breeding industry is so developed, and so many livestock and poultry are raised, don't they all have to ask for grain? People can't eat it as fodder. Oh, and winemaking, which also consumes grain. Besides, there are exports, such as small Japan, which has not enough food to eat, and has not imported millions of tons of grain from us in these years. ”

"That's right, in the past few years, foreign devils in Europe have been fighting, and tens of millions of tons of imported grain have been imported every year. Don't have too much food, don't panic when you have food in your hand. Shen Rui also said.

As soon as I heard the topic of war, a colleague said: "Oh, when it comes to the war, I don't know how long this war will last, it's been almost five years." ”

"The Military Review on TV said that it is now a war of attrition, and as long as one side loses the strength to fight, the war will be over. ”

"But when?"

Colleague B said indifferently: "Then who knows, foreign devils like to fight, just wait for them to fight." Anyway, it's the white-skinned guys who die, so it's better for these foreign devils to die more. ”

"But now that we in China are also in the war, we will be pitted for too long. ”

Shen Rui said: "Military experts on TV have said that the current war is the most advantageous for the defender, and whoever attacks is unlucky. Our army is basically defensive now, much less intensive, but we don't have to worry too much about casualties. ”

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Pangang No.7 Branch.

At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Shen Rui walked into his workplace. He is an engineer at the Seventh Branch, which is responsible for titanium products, including titanium smelting and titanium dioxide manufacturing.

The factory is busy, and the trolleys on the track are constantly bringing the raw materials provided by the next branch here. The ore here in Panzhihua is vanadium titanium magnetite, which cannot be directly used to make titanium, and the ore grade here is not high, which contains 30 iron. About 5%, titanium dioxide 10. About 5%, vanadium pentoxide 0. About 30%. It must first be crushed and beneficiated to make it contain more than 50% iron, more than 12% titanium dioxide, and 0% vanadium pentoxide. 5% or more concentrate.

Then after another beneficiation, the vanadium-containing iron concentrate is selected as the raw material for blast furnace ironmaking, well, the smelting process of this vanadium-containing iron ore has a high technical content, and only China has mastered it in the world.

The remaining tailings are then selected, and the selected titanium concentrate is the raw material for making titanium. However, after many times of beneficiation, the titanium concentrate also contains a large amount of iron, at this time there are three methods to extract the titanium inside, the first is the electric furnace reduction method, because the affinity of titanium and iron to oxygen is not connected, so it is necessary to go through selective reduction smelting, so that pig iron and titanium slag (titanium dioxide) can be obtained. The second is the sulfuric acid leaching method, which obtains ferrous sulfate and titanium slag. The third is hydrochloric acid leaching, which results in artificial rutile.

At present, these three processes are being used, mainly as technical reserves. Then the titanium slag can go through a systematic process such as washing, salt treatment, calcination and so on to obtain titanium dioxide. If you want to continue to get titanium, the titanium slag will also be boiled and chlorinated to turn it into titanium tetrachloride. Then, titanium tetrachloride is reduced to titanium metal with magnesium metal under the protection of inert gas by magnesium thermal reduction method.

The magnesium thermal reduction method in the original space-time history was successfully studied by the Luxembourg scientist Clauer in 1940, also known as the Clauer method. In 1948, DuPont began to use this method to produce commercial titanium sponge. However, the traditional magnesium thermal reduction method is still not efficient enough, and it is necessary to assemble the distillation equipment for vacuum separation after the reduction product is cooled at the end of the reduction operation. At present, the process used by Pangang is the joint method invented in Japan in the 80s. This reduction-distillation process is much more efficient than the primary magnesium thermal reduction method, and the purity can also be increased to 99. 7%。

Shen Rui picked up a sponge-shaped piece of metal from the pile of semi-finished products, which was the sponge-like metal titanium created by the magnesium thermal reduction method. Of course, this is only a half-finished product. These sponge irons also need to be smelted and purified in a vacuum electric arc furnace to obtain dense silver sparkling titanium ingots, which is the final product.

In recent years, only one-third of the output of titanium ingots has been made, mainly as a technical reserve, and most of them are directly shipped in the form of sponge iron. Every few days, a special freight train comes to transport these titanium sponges and titanium ingots away.

At this time, several workers drove a rail trolley over, and the forklift next to it began to move, scooping up the sea titanium and loading it into the car, ready to send it to the electric arc furnace for smelting.

During the loading of the truck, one of the workers greeted him and asked casually: "Shen Gong, what do you say is the use of all this titanium? We have been refining at least 100,000 tons in the past few years, but we have not seen any use." It's not as good as the steelmaking in the branch next door. ”

"Yes, these things are so troublesome, and the cost is at least ten times higher than steel. It's not as good as steel...... "Another worker said. "It's good that the titanium dioxide from our factory is good, I've seen the paint made of our titanium dioxide, it's really white, it's dazzling. I see, it's better to use it all for titanium dioxide......"

Shen Rui smiled: "Although the use of this thing is not as much as steel, it is also very important, it is used in aviation and national defense, as well as chemical equipment, medical equipment, and marine engineering equipment." Of course, this is still a new material, so it is not yet widely available. ”

At present, titanium is only used in China, and other countries have never even heard of it. Because they can only make titanium metal in the real yàn room, and they have not yet mastered the technology of industrial production, the price is very cheap. Now the price per ton in the international market is nearly 20,000 US dollars, and at this time the steel is only 37 US dollars per ton, and the price of silver is only more than 30,000 US dollars per ton, and its price is equivalent to 60% of silver.

Of course, its output cannot be used in large quantities, so what can it do with that little output? At present, except for China, the world's output of titanium metal is less than 1,000 tons, all of which are real products. It is now used for two main purposes, the first is that it is bought by scientists for various research, and the second is that it is used by jewelry dealers to make various cheap jewelry and accessories. The amount they use is very small, and it is too much to buy dozens of kilograms at a time.

Those workers are right, China does not use too much titanium now, mainly medical equipment and chemical equipment are used a little more, and aerospace is not used much now. Pangang and several other factories produce more than 50,000 tons of titanium ingots and titanium sponges per year, and these projects are inexhaustible. But all of their products were bought by the state and sent to the warehouse for storage. There are few places to use it now, but with the development of aerospace technology, this is not enough. Anyway, titanium ingots can't be broken.

Not only titanium, but also various other rare metals are also treated in the same way, whether they are used now or not, they are bought back and refined into ingots and stored. A few years ago, Wen Desi ordered the construction of many huge material warehouses in several large deserts in the northwest region, which were specially used to store these rare metals as a national strategic reserve.