1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 184 Visiting the Industrial Zone

The land road leading from the No. [-] base to the inland Tiandu Industrial Zone was also damaged to some extent in this storm.Although the Ministry of Construction has dug out drainage ditches across the road at certain distances in accordance with the standards of rural roads during construction, and covered them with bluestone slabs, due to the heavy rain a few days ago, the drainage ditches in many places It was still washed away by the rainwater flowing down from the mountain, and some of the relatively low-lying places had pond-like rainwater deposits.

Schneider arranged a special means of transportation for Li Nai - an ox cart. Although the speed is relatively slow, it also saves the trouble of stepping on the mud.Li Nai noticed that the places along the road that were washed away by the rain had already been repaired by laborers under the command of the Haihan people. Even in some areas where construction could not be done due to too much water, springboards were set up in the puddles. In order to facilitate the passage of ox carts for goods.In addition to marveling at the speed of the Haihan people's post-disaster response, Li Nai also noticed that the Haihan people attached great importance to maintaining smooth traffic.

Because of the delay on the road, it took nearly four hours to get there after a journey of more than ten miles, but after getting off the bus, Li Nai didn't feel tired, but seemed extremely excited.The first building he saw after getting out of the car was a fort similar to the No. [-] base, but the wall of the fort seemed not as strong and tall as the No. [-] base.However, judging from the width of the wall extending left and right on both sides of the gate, its footprint should not be smaller than that of Base No. [-].

This is naturally the No. 300 base of the central hub of the Tiandu Industrial Zone. Although it was not designed to be a military fortress from the beginning, it still possesses certain defensive capabilities during continuous improvement and construction.Except for the barracks that can accommodate [-] people, the rest of the base are almost all kinds of warehouses, which are used to store various equipment, raw materials and produced commodities required by the industry.

Although the defensive ability is not as good as that of the No. [-] base, most of the buildings here are relatively solid because of their functions. There is a perfect drainage system outside each warehouse, so the No. There was no major damage in the heavy rain of the day.After eating a little something, Schneider took Li Nai out of the base and began to visit the industrial area.

The first visit Schneider arranged for Li Nai was the experimental workshop of the Ministry of Industry, where the existing technology is mainly used to develop various new products, and to prepare some industrial and chemical raw materials that cannot be mass-produced temporarily, such as artillery fire tubes Potassium chlorate etc. used.Glass stationery, soap, matches and other products were first developed in this place, and the subsequent in-depth product development will continue here.

Under Schneider's instruction, the technicians showed Li Nai several exaggerated chemical reactions such as glass etching, which made Li Nai amazed again and again.Although I don't quite understand what Schneider's "chemistry" means, but in Li Nai's opinion, this kind of thing should be quite close to the legendary magic, and the Haihan people who have mastered the "chemistry" technology are simply unbelievable. Measurement.

The second unit to visit is the building materials production base. In addition to several small cement kilns for firing cement, there is also a row of brick kilns.Although the combined brick-making machine that I brought was working well and the brick-making speed was fast, it still couldn't meet the needs of infrastructure projects that were blooming everywhere, so the Ministry of Construction issued a report and built several brick kilns here.But Li Nai obviously lacked interest in this thing, and there was a lot of dust here, Li Nai covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve and turned around to signal Schneider to leave.

The third visitor was not able to enter at all. Outside the production workshop of the chemical port, there was a big sign saying "no one should enter the production center", and there were soldiers from the militia standing guard, so the two were closed outside the factory.The military and police department undoubtedly trained these sentries very well, they only recognize the pass but not the person, even in the face of Schneider, the "Head of Haihan", they will not back down.

After hearing the news, Qiao Zhiya came out of the factory and explained to them why it was now closed to the outside world: "The large-scale trial production of sulfuric acid is being carried out these days, and the factory is more dangerous, so no one else can be allowed to enter."

Qiao Zhiya felt that this remark was a bit outrageous, and smiled apologetically: "Of course I am not referring to you, but the timing is indeed not suitable. Besides, there is nothing to see in our factory building. There are all large and small iron pots and pipes inside, nothing to worry about. Visual impact! Why don't you go and see the iron smelting, I heard that they restarted the furnace yesterday."

After bidding farewell to Qiao Zhiya, Li Nai's curiosity was violated again: "Mr. Shi, what is this sulfuric acid?"

If someone else might not know how to answer Li Nai's question, Schneider was quite knowledgeable, so he immediately replied, "Sulfuric acid is green vitriol."

Li Nai suddenly said: "So that's the case. But isn't this green vitriol oil a kind of elixir used by Taoist priests to make alchemy?"

"Alchemy?" Schneider was taken aback for a moment, and then he laughed loudly: "No, we have no plans to make alchemy. For us, sulfuric acid is much more effective than alchemy."

"Mr. Shi, can you elaborate a little bit?" Li Nai asked persistently.

Now Schneider is stumped. Although he is knowledgeable, the knowledge of chemical engineering is not his specialty after all. It is good to be able to distinguish between three acids and two alkalis, but how many specific applications can he say?Schneider had an idea: "There are too many specific effects, and I can't elaborate on some of them, but the glass etching you have seen just now, the solution used to etch glass is made of sulfuric acid."

In fact, not only inorganic acids such as hydrofluoric acid for etching glass need to be processed with sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid plays an irreplaceable role in many aspects such as coking, electroplating, tanning, pigments, rubber, papermaking, paint, and military technology. .The three-acid and two-alkali project has always been the focus of the executive committee, and brought a large number of complete sets of equipment during the time travel, but due to the actual conditions of this time and space, the production line has not been built.

Li Nai didn't understand chemistry at all, so naturally he couldn't guess the twists and turns in Schneider's mind, so he just nodded with a half-understandable understanding, which was regarded as approval of Schneider's answer.

There are many production units involved in the military industry that have the principle of confidentiality, and the executive committee cannot let Li Nai see it.Schneider thought about it, and it seemed that only the smelting workshop recommended by Qiao Zhiya could be visited.Now that smelting and cannon casting have been separated into two different workshops, there is no need to worry about leaking secrets.

Li Nai also went to Foshan to see a lot of iron smelting workshops in his early years, and he thought he had some knowledge about this aspect, but he was still greatly shocked when he saw the huge ironmaking blast furnace in the factory building.Although it was far away, but based on the comparison of the figures of the operators in front of the furnace, it could still be judged that the size of this blast furnace was at least several times larger than those ironmaking furnaces he had seen before.

Liu Xingli, the person in charge of the smelting workshop, enthusiastically introduced the current production situation to them: "Currently, our blast furnace mainly uses coke for ironmaking. It takes about [-] catties of coke to smelt a thousand catties of pig iron, and the production efficiency is still relatively low. , but after we solve the supply of coke, we will soon be able to increase production, and before the end of this year, our goal is to produce more than [-] tons of iron per day."

Li Nai has dealt with the Haihan people every day during this period, and gradually became familiar with the weights and measures they use. Fifteen Haihan tons are roughly equivalent to [-] catties. This kind of output in Foshan is enough to scare a lot of old blacksmiths. .But maybe it was because there were too many incredible miracles seen on the land of the Haihan people during this period, and Li Nai was not particularly surprised by this number.He was just thinking that the raw materials of the iron boats by the sea, the iron farm tools used by the laborers, the birdcracks and red cannons equipped by the Haihan militia that he saw here these days probably all came from the iron smelting here. Blast it.

The temperature in the smelting plant was too high, and the two felt profusely sweating after staying here for too long. At Liu Xingli's suggestion, they visited the beneficiation plant next to it.Here Li Nai finally saw the legendary mechanism with the power of a thousand people—three steam-powered ore crushers.

The reason why there are three sets is to carry out the crushing operation according to the different sizes of the ore.The largest ore will be sent to the jaw crusher first and crushed to the size that the next machine can handle. After the continuous operation of the three crushers, the original large ore has become a size that can be directly sent into the jaw crusher. The size of the ironmaking blast furnace.

The boiler emitting white smoke, the huge flywheel rotating slowly and firmly, the crank connecting rod moving back and forth, and the cracking sound of the ore in the machine being continuously crushed, let Li Nai intuitively appreciate the power of steam machinery. Great power.When the huge ore turned into slag and poured out from the discharge port, Li Nai took a deep breath—these ore crushing work that would have required a lot of manpower to complete, the Haihan people relied on these weird The automaton did it in just a few moments!
Li Nai's knowledge is much better than that of Shuizhai General Luo Sheng Dongguang. Although he doesn't understand how this machine works, he can already think of more uses for this thing-it can be used to forge iron when connected to a hanging hammer , It can be used to grind rice and noodles even with a grinding disc, but any work that requires a lot of manpower to complete can be replaced by this mechanism!If there are enough organs of this kind, it may not be a problem to use them to move mountains and fill seas.With such a technology in their hands, it is no wonder that the Haihan people were able to make such a big deal in Victory Port with only a few hundred people.

(End of this chapter)