The Great Industrial Ming Dynasty Started from Beiping

Chapter 129 The hotbed of technology
Wang Ren came to report on the affairs of the business hall, and Zhu Gaochi sent his chief follower Zhang Quan.

When the briquette business house wants to do business abroad, it will encounter local officials. Zhang Quan is Zhu Gaochi's close friend.

It is appropriate for him to come forward to deal with the authorities, telling people where the business house is going, and avoiding anyone's ideas and obstruction.

The rest is business matters. The eight families happened to show their magical powers across the sea, so Zhu Gaochi couldn't care about it.

They have skilled workers, mature technology, and abundant capital. If they cannot gain a firm foothold in the market and are defeated by rising stars, then the shops will absorb the rising stars.

And it's also impossible. Business is all about these things. If someone wants to use insidious tricks to fight for the background, then the business hall will run sideways in Beiping.

Zhu Gaochi came to the coke refinery.

Both gypsum and alum were common in ancient times.

For example, green alum ore was used in traditional Chinese medicine in the Tang Dynasty. It was heated and melted, poured into rice vinegar, mixed thoroughly and dried, then taken out and cooled for use as medicine.

The bucket contained green, crystal-clear and irregular translucent ore, which was the alum prepared by Xiao Jiu and the others.

"What is the green powder for?" Xiao Jiu was very nervous, not afraid of Zhu Gaochi, and asked curiously.

People are used to Xiao Jiu's style, and no one dares to imitate him.

"Wait and you'll find out."

Next to the blast furnace, some workers kept poking a long iron chisel into it to test the temperature inside.

"I splashed it with big water the day before yesterday." Wang Ben introduced to the young prince from the side.

"After pouring the big fire, it took half a day to find a small fire. You can't miss one place, otherwise, if you miss one place, the anxiety of the coal mine in that place will be low, and even coking will fail."

"After cooling down for a day, it can be focused today."

"Focus."

……

As soon as Wang Ben's voice fell, the team leader in the distance checked everything, confirmed that there was no problem, and then shouted.

The workers pushed the two-wheeled carts forward, and there were empty baskets on the two-wheeled carts, which would be used to store coke later.

They stopped upwind of the coke kiln.

The team leader and two workers opened the air duct and opened the kiln door.

Xiao Jiu ran over curiously, he wanted to see the stagnant water inside and whether the soil was more fertile than the ground beside it as the little prince said.

What the little prince said the day before yesterday made him miss it for three whole days.

"come out faster."

Li Er immediately shouted loudly, which startled Zhu Gaochi.

Xiao Jiu subconsciously stopped, and looked at Li Er for no reason.

"I'm not going to step on a coke."

Xiao Jiu thought that Li Er was worried that he had stepped on the coking coal, and said with a smile on his face, "If there is residual heat in some coking coal, wouldn't it burn me?"

"Who let you in, do you know the rules? Didn't your master teach you?" Li Er scolded unceremoniously.

Xiao Jiu blushed.

"I'm sorry, I forgot, the master said that you can't just enter other people's workshops."

"It's poisonous inside."

Li Er has this character, he is strict with apprentices, and beats and scolds when he moves.

So in the factory, Wang Ben is not only better than him in technology, but also more popular than him in people's hearts.

Although Wang Ben also curses, he doesn't beat people easily.

Zhu Gaochi glanced at Xiao Jiu, then at Li Er, the corners of his mouth twitched, and finally held back, what's wrong with his temper.

Who made Xiao Jiu make a mistake on someone else's territory?

Zhu Gaochi just remembered.

Ammonia gas is poisonous.

But the coke oven has just finished making coke, even if there is no poisonous gas, the air inside is also unpleasant, and no one has anything to go in and smell it.

Only Xiao Jiu is very curious, and an ordinary person would not go in there.

However, ammonia volatilizes quickly, and after the coke oven is ventilated, it is quickly dissipated in the air, and the rest is dust.

After half an hour.

The team leader went in to take a look, and then waved. The workers tied a piece of cloth around their noses, pushed the two-wheeled cart forward, and went in to use the baskets to start burning.

Although there are many people, it is not messy.

People have chisels in their hands to test the coke, confirm that there is no danger, and put the chisels neatly.

lest the chisel fall down and break up the large pieces of coke.

The order of focusing is not from outside to inside, but from top to bottom to ensure the safety of the focusing process.

"A basket tied with white cloth, containing large coke."

"A basket tied with blue cloth, containing medium-sized coke."

"There are no cloth-tied baskets to hold the remaining coking failure coal."

In front of the nobleman, Wang Ben's tone was slight, as if he had changed just now.

Xiao Jiu looked at Li Er, Li Er nodded, and Xiao Jiu went into the coke oven again, as if he had forgotten that Li Er had scolded him just now.

"Can we go in and have a look?"

Zhu Gaochi asked.

Wang Ben hesitated, and finally agreed to the little prince's request.

Wang Ben and Li Er walked to the front, and after Zhu Gaochi went in, he saw Xiao Jiu, who was using a wooden ladle to shake out the stagnant water in the coke oven and put it into a wooden barrel.

The coke oven is hot and humid, and there is a lot of water on the ground.

This is because water is added from time to time during the refining process.

The technology of later generations before the millennium was sprayed with water in the early days, and later, in order to reduce costs, it was sprayed with coking wastewater.

As a result, toxic and harmful substances such as phenol, cyanide and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in coking wastewater are released into the air, causing serious air pollution.

The current coking oven does not have a waste water recovery system, and it naturally uses clean water, so the environmental pollution and poisonous gas are relatively small.

However, pouring with clear water is an advanced coking technology in today's era, but the process of wet coke quenching is also accompanied by a large loss of heat, and the quality of the coke obtained is not high.

Therefore, the output anxiety of the coke refinery is only [-]%.

However, after the millennium, with the development of technology, later generations have more advanced technology and adopt CDQ.

It is a widely used and mature coke quenching technology in coke ovens of iron and steel enterprises in later generations, which uses cold inert gas to cool red hot coke.

However, Zhu Gaochi knew that he knew that this set of techniques could not be done by himself.

The coke just out of the oven has a lot of moisture.

There is a drying process in later generations. Today, there is no large-scale drying technology, and sunlight is needed. Only this process can save a few days of time and a lot of labor costs in later generations.

[-] catties of coal, about [-] catties of coke, plus the remaining residue, coal, about [-] baskets.

And because the process of focusing must be from top to bottom, there is no nearby convenience, and various precautions, it cannot be completed in a day or two.

Workers follow their own jobs and are too busy to take care of others.

Seeing this, Zhu Gaochi stopped bothering and took the stewards away from the coke oven, mainly because the dust inside was not small.

Although there is a cloth covering the nose to cover the mouth and nose, breathing becomes dull after a long time.

When he got to the open space, took off the cloth cover and breathed in the fresh air, Zhu Gaochi felt refreshed, and sighed: "The environment of the workshop still needs to be improved."

"It has been improved."

Li Er stepped forward and said with a smile: "The coke kilns used to be small, and pits were dug on the ground. During the refining process, although there will be water accumulation, but there is not much water accumulation."

"Nowadays, the coke kiln is so big that there is a lot of accumulated water. Master Wang came up with the idea of ​​laying a basement underground to let the accumulated water flow into the basement."

Zhu Gaochi glanced at Li Er in surprise, feeling a little enlightened in his heart.

Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes.

Li Er took the initiative to ask for credit for Wang Ben.

Although the two had conflicts in the past, technology was the king, and those who mastered it first, it seemed that Li Er was convinced, and he was subduing Wang Ben in a disguised form.

"Master Wang has merit."

"It's just a trivial matter, and it's not worth mentioning. There are similar ideas among the craftsmen, so it can't be all blamed on me." Wang Ben said modestly.

Zhu Gaochi agreed with this sentence.

From small workshops to large factories, various problems are bound to occur in production.

For example, the problem of stagnant water.

The idea of ​​building a basement from Wang Ben was not whimsical at all, and it was a technology that was thought of by the factory sooner or later.

Satisfies the needs required by the advancement of technology.

Where there is demand, there is progress.

Just as British scholars lamented, whenever factories encounter various difficulties in production, smart craftsmen will come up with solutions.

From small workshops to large factories, the problem of stagnant water has been put on the table and attracted people's attention, and people will think of building basements.

Countless such small breakthroughs, that is, technological revolutions, also belong to the industrial revolution.

but.

Some technological leaps are too large, and they can be explored in more than a few years or more than ten years.

Zhu Gaochi watched Xiao Jiu load a wooden barrel into a carriage. The colorless and transparent water contained in the barrel was no different from normal water.

This water is no longer ordinary water.

It is the gas obtained by spraying clean water into the coke oven to cool down and burning the coke oven during the coking process, that is, ammonia gas.

Ammonia gas is easily soluble in water, combines with clean water, deposits and flows into the basement, forming ammonia water.

Wang Ben didn't understand ammonia, so he thought the young prince was just curious, so he explained: "Using clean water to lower the temperature of the coke oven can speed up the formation of coking coal and prevent the coke oven from cracking."

Zhu Gaochi nodded.

The ancients did not know the specific chemical composition, but accumulated experience, and with the advancement of knowledge, people analyzed these phenomena.

The cracking of the coke oven is the cause of ammonia gas.

Ammonia gas is neither flammable nor explosive.

But in the state of liquid ammonia, in a high-pressure environment, if the required conditions are met, an explosion will occur.

Ammonia itself will not explode, but the gas produced in the coke oven will explode the coke oven.

The coke oven is an earthen kiln. Under extreme conditions, it will be cracked by ammonia gas, causing damage to the coke oven and failure of coking.

So the ancients discovered this phenomenon.

The ratio of ammonia gas to air is six to one, and it is easy to ignite when exposed to an open flame, and it will explode in a sealed environment.

But this is a coke oven. During the coking process, the air content in the coke oven cannot meet this condition.

Moreover, during the production process, I don't know which ancestors thought of adding clean water to cool down, which not only optimized the coking technology, but also accidentally diluted the ammonia gas.

And a tuyere is opened on the wall of the coke kiln. Because of the density, the smoke will come out from the chimney directly above the coke kiln, and the ammonia gas will be discharged from the side tuyere.

Later generations followed the experience of these ancestors and solved the problem of production.

It's the same as discovering ammonia fertilization.

Ammonia has a fertilizer effect and can be directly fertilized.

People poured this waste water into the fields, found that the land was fertile for a long time, and then began to try to use ammonia water to fertilize the farmland.

As the concentration of ammonia water changes, you will find that you need to dilute it for use, and start to explore how much water to add for the best effect.

(End of this chapter)