I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 992 French Industrial Development Plan III
Compared with crucible steelmaking technology, converter steelmaking can not only improve the quality of steel, but more importantly, it can significantly increase output.

Each "pot" of crucible steelmaking can only produce 30 to 50 kilograms of steel. Even the top steel mills in the UK currently produce only more than 20 tons a month.

The "converter" used in converter steelmaking can hold 1 ton of molten iron at a time, and this is still a small furnace. After the technology matures, there will even be converters with a capacity of hundreds of tons.

At the same time, the speed of steelmaking in the converter is extremely fast, and a batch of steel can be produced in 30 minutes.

Any small steel plant can easily produce 500 tons per month with a single furnace.

If this technology were available, the price of steel would be cut in half immediately, and all existing crucible steel mills in the UK would have to go bankrupt.

In fact, in the so-called steel industry, iron has no profit at all, only steel can be sold at a high price.

Currently, all high-tech machinery is basically made of steel rather than iron.

For example, the cylinder of a steam engine is made of cast iron, but its weight, pressure resistance and durability are all surpassed by steel.

High-pressure steam engines must basically be made of steel.

Even the most common farm tools, those made of steel can be used for more than ten years, while those made of iron need to be polished almost every day before they can be used.

Railway tracks are an even bigger consumer of steel.

Yes, although the name of railroad tracks is "iron", they are actually made of steel.

Historically, in the early days of the invention of trains, countries did use cast iron to build rails, but they soon discovered that this material was prone to changeability, wore out quickly, and even broke, and had to be replaced after a short period of use.

The construction costs of replacing the rails and the losses caused by delayed train traffic are far greater than the cost of using steel to make the rails.

Steel then became the standard material for rails.

If we want to meet the huge demand for laying railway tracks, only converter steelmaking can be used.

Joseph thought of this and immediately told Mirabeau: "Please select a group of skilled steelmaking technicians or scholars in this field as soon as possible. I need to carry out an important technical reform.

"Oh, let them go directly to the industrial development zone in Lorraine. This technology requires a lot of coal and iron for experiments. I will join them there."

"Yes, Your Highness."

After talking about the coal and iron industries, Joseph continued, "Regarding the chemical industry, we need to continue to expand the production of sulfuric acid and soda ash, and strive to reduce the price to a level that makes it impossible for the British to start production before they achieve a technological breakthrough."

Britain's chemical technology is also very strong. If Joseph had not intervened, British soda ash would have swept across Europe in a few years.

Now with France's demonstration, their technological breakthroughs will surely be further accelerated.

But by then, France will have already formed an industrial scale, and everyone will just compete on cost to see who will win.

Mirabeau nodded and took note, and then asked the same old question: "Your Highness, the current liquidity of the Industrial Development Fund is not much. You know, the coal and iron factories have occupied a lot of investment, and you have also expanded the medical equipment company before..."

Joseph breathed a sigh of relief. The problem that could never be avoided in developing industry was capital, so the industrial age must be coordinated with the capitalist system.

He thought for a moment and said, "Then let's build an aniline dye factory first, and rely on the profits from the dye factory to support the chemical plant. Or we can use the shares of the dye factory as collateral for a mortgage."

Ever since France opened up the technology tree for coal tar refining, various organic chemical products derived from the decomposition of coal tar have continued to appear.

The first was phenol, which soon became a popular disinfectant in many countries. The next was a dye called aniline black.

This thing is very simple to prepare. It is made from aniline, one of the by-products of oxidizing coal tar, and its cost is almost negligible.

Currently, all textile dyes in the world are natural extracts, so the prices are naturally not low.

Therefore, the profit of this kind of aniline black is extremely high.

This is still limited to the relatively small usage of black, but it is expected to generate a profit of more than 2 million francs per year.

Joseph remembered that coal tar-related products seemed to be able to make many kinds of dyes, but the specific production process would have to be slowly experimented with by chemists.

If we can produce colorful dyes, such as red, blue, etc., the profit can easily exceed tens of millions.

After Mirabeau quickly wrote it down, Joseph instructed, “Speaking of medical devices, this is also an industry that the Ministry of Industry needs to focus on recently.

"This field requires little investment, but the profits are huge. We must complete production as soon as possible and increase publicity efforts."

According to the budget submitted by the Industrial Development Fund, the medical device factory only needs to invest more than 50 francs to reach a monthly production capacity of 2500 syringes and 1000 stethoscopes.

These devices are sold at 90 francs and 25 francs respectively, and exported at 300 and 40 francs. After mass production and improved technology, the cost of the syringe has been reduced to 50 francs per syringe, so the selling price has been reduced accordingly.

Therefore, based on the current output alone, the medical device factory's annual net profit is as high as 320 million francs. And the syringes are definitely in short supply, and it is estimated that the output will have to increase tenfold to barely be enough.

In other words, the future profit of this factory will be at least 20 to 30 million yuan per year!
If we develop some other products, such as hemostatic forceps, scalpels, suture needles, bone saws, etc., we should be able to achieve a net profit of 4 million francs.

It is definitely another pillar industry in France.

Joseph then moved on to medicines from medical devices: “Paris Pharmaceuticals is currently focusing on the production of BDP, so it needs to build another plant to specialize in the production of glucose.

"The pharmaceutical factory can provide the funds, but the Ministry of Industry can provide some help in building factories and recruiting workers."

BDP is the abbreviation for "Blessing of the Crown Prince".

Glucose is currently a rising star in the European medical community.

Perna's paper was published the second month after she treated Camelia, and it immediately sparked heated discussions in the medical community about this "life energy".

Especially for patients suffering from gastrointestinal diseases or who are too weak to eat, intravenous injection of glucose using a syringe can have a miraculous effect of bringing them back to life.

What followed was the huge sales of glucose.

The price of a 200 ml bottle of glucose in France has now soared to 10 francs, while the price abroad has doubled or tripled.

This is because the British also have the technology to extract glucose - Graf's paper on extracting glucose was published publicly - although it was only on a laboratory scale, it still lowered the price of French products.

The pharmaceutical industry has always been so profitable.

At the Paris pharmaceutical factory, research and development of BDP2 is also in full swing.

The so-called BDP2 is the next generation product of "Crown Prince's Blessing", sodium salicylate.

(End of this chapter)