my magic industry

Chapter 134 Electrodes
The first is crushing, which is quite simple. Through a simple ball mill, the graphite ore is crushed into powder, and after being mixed with water, it becomes a viscous slurry.

Then Xia Lin asked people to build a long canal made of bricks and stones in the vacant place in the machining factory, and put a purification rune disk in it.

After activating the rune disk, under the action of the power of the rune disk, the black-gray pulp began to slowly stratify.

After exchanging four rounds of rune disks, it took about 10 minutes for the stratification of the slurry to become extremely obvious. Xia Lin asked people to scoop out various types of slurry from each layer, dry them to form powder, and then pass the flammability test. Experiment to test which part is graphite powder.

Through this simple and quick method, Xia Lin soon obtained a large amount of extremely pure graphite powder.

With these high-purity graphite powders, it is relatively simple to make graphite electrodes. You only need to mix these graphite powders with a small amount of resin as a binder through a mixer.

Then use the friction press and the processed high-carbon steel mold to extrude the mixture into dense graphite rods, and finally process the thread for connection at one end through the equipment of the machining factory. A finished graphite electrode was obtained.

Theoretically speaking, with extremely high-purity graphite powder purified by purification techniques, the conductivity of these graphite electrodes will be quite good. Although it may not be as good as fine gold electrodes, it is still sufficient for use.

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

Therefore, after getting the graphite electrode, Xia Lin immediately came to the steelmaking plant and found Master Edgar Austrian Copper, who is currently on duty as the furnace chief of the steelmaking plant, and told him to wait for this furnace of steel to be smelted. Do not continue to smelt.

Master Edgar was full of doubts about this, but he still obeyed Xia Lin's order and explained the matter.

The employees of the steelmaking plant were quite happy when they heard that the furnace was going to be shut down. Unlike the brick kiln who only needed to check the furnace every few minutes, these furnace workers had to be on standby at their posts all the time.

Although it is produced in shifts, even in winter, it is not a good thing to stay next to the hot electric arc furnace. If it is not for the salary of the steel factory is 30% higher than that of other factories, furnace workers and the like Difficult positions list high salaries separately, and they will not repeat such hard work without complaint.

Therefore, after the smelting was completed, the workers immediately worked hard to prepare for the shutdown.

The current electric arc furnace has undergone some improvements. It is no longer the crude painting style that requires workers to install and remove the magic stone with pliers. Through a spring mechanism, the workers only need to use a stick to lightly touch the switch plate inlaid with the magic stone. One press, the electric arc furnace can be started and shut down.

After the molten steel from this furnace was poured out and cast into steel shapes of various colors, and the furnace body was cooled, Xia Lin had someone remove the fine gold electrodes from the furnace cover and install graphite electrodes on them instead.

Since he was prepared for the appearance of graphite electrodes at the beginning, Xia Lin used a threaded fixing device where the furnace cover embeds the electrodes, which is convenient to replace now.

After spending several hours, the electric arc furnace that completed the replacement of the electrodes began to add raw materials for production. After completing another round of production and successfully producing qualified molten steel, Xia Lin finally felt relieved.

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

However, judging by the data on the smelting records, he also found that the efficiency of the electric arc furnace has indeed dropped a lot. It used to take only one or two hours to complete the entire smelting process of the electric arc furnace. After replacing the graphite electrodes, the process was prolonged. It took nearly half an hour.

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

But this is enough. A graphite electrode produced in a simple graphite electrode factory, if the excavation and transportation costs of Captain Nick are taken into account, the cost is only fourteen silver Maars, and one ton of graphite raw ore is enough to produce 25 such graphite electrodes were produced.

Even if the cost of excavation and transportation is included, the cost will not exceed [-] silver Maars. Compared with the fine gold electrodes worth [-] or [-] gold lunds, it can be said to be of high quality and cheap.

However, there is still a big problem that Xia Lin needs to solve in the future, that is, graphite electrodes are not like fine gold electrodes, and will not consume themselves in smelting, because graphite itself is an allotrope of carbon, although it can Resistant to extremely high temperatures, but not resistant to oxidative combustion.

During the smelting process of the electric arc furnace, the graphite electrode itself will be continuously oxidized and burned by the action of high temperature and oxygen to generate losses, so it needs to be replaced at regular intervals.

As for the coatings used to prevent the oxidation of graphite electrodes in the previous life, Xia Lin remembered one, but he didn’t have borax on hand, and he couldn’t make boric acid, the simplest anti-oxidation coating, so for the time being, he could only use quantity to maintain it. Production.

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

The sales of soaps and scented soaps recently produced by the soap factory are really good. The prices of many oil products on the market have increased. At present, the caustic soda produced by the caustic soda factory has also become the biggest obstacle to the increase in the production of the soap factory.

In order to further increase the production of soap and soap, it is necessary to overcome the difficulty of caustic soda.

For this reason, he first came to the potter's guild in the imperial capital, visited several large pottery workshops recommended by them, and found what he wanted, which was stoneware.

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

Xia Lin was looking for this kind of vessel to make a set of reactors for electrolysis plants.Although pottery is also resistant to acid, its performance is far inferior to that of porcelain and stoneware due to the absence of this layer of enamel on the surface.

After the workshop owner of the pottery workshop explained the shapes and specifications of the various stoneware vats, pots and pipes he needed, Xia Lin paid a deposit of five Jinlunds and returned to the industrial park.

Then he ordered the construction team to build five square cement tanks in the caustic soda plant with thick wooden square wrapping as the insulating base and a steel skeleton. Each is 3m long, 1.4m wide, and 0.7m high. bricks to prevent corrosion.

When the concentration of caustic soda produced by the electrolytic cell is only about 5% to 10%, this kind of fine stoneware can still play a certain role in preventing corrosion.

On the wooden cover above the electrolytic tank, raw lacquer and water glass produced by the reaction of soda ash and diatomaceous earth are applied to insulate and prevent corrosion. Electric current is directed to the graphite electrodes in the electrolytic cell.

Things that involve electricity are often dangerous, especially when Xia Lin doesn't even have the most basic insulating protective equipment like rubber.

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

(End of this chapter)