Siheyuan: I eat melons while doing scientific research

Chapter 1424 Before the Chinese New Year (4k, Happy Mid-Autumn Festival)

Gao Zhendong was also a bit speechless. I thought to myself, I didn't say I wanted this thing...

Ministry of Foreign Trade: No need to explain, anyone who isn't a seasoned foodie would never have noticed this.

Along with the package of pig-stalk mushrooms came a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Trade.

The content was quite simple. Essentially, this was the first batch of samples collected and sent from the two southwestern provinces at top speed. These two provinces highly value the export of their local specialties and sent samples as quickly as possible for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to negotiate. This was because the January temperatures were low, slightly exceeding the lower limit of the optimal growing range for black truffles, and some samples even came from geothermal hot spring areas…

Considering that Comrade Zhendong has a certain appreciation for this type of food, a portion was specially sent over for him to taste, so as to avoid being inexplicably overcharged by foreigners...

Very well, that's a good reason. Gao Zhendong was speechless. I don't eat this stuff much either, so how could I possibly appreciate it?

To be honest, of the three high-end Western ingredients that were later rumored to have been dethroned by Chinese manufacturers—caviar, foie gras, and black truffle—this was the only one that Gao Zhendong couldn't get used to.

Moreover, this ration was snatched from the mouths of the two provinces' "second-generation swinemen," Gao Zhendong thought to himself with some doubt.

Fortunately, I guess the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is just looking for an excuse and probably won't ask me for any tasting reports or anything like that. Whether I eat it or not doesn't really matter.

Gao Zhendong waved his hand and said, "Shazhu, feed this to the chickens." Chickens are omnivorous, almost like pigs, they eat everything and are very clean, so this thing is probably no exception. Moreover, as small poultry, there are many people raising chickens even in the city, including Shazhu's family.

"Wow, that's great! At least it's a mushroom." Sha Zhu was quite happy; at least it was edible, and this bag would at least produce a few eggs. That's about all it was good for. It wasn't even suitable for the long table banquet in the courtyard; nobody liked to eat it.

If there were no other choice, someone would definitely eat it, but although we are not so well-off now, we are definitely not at the point where we have no other choice.

As a Sichuan cuisine chef, Sha Zhu had no idea that the package he was carrying would make foreigners in the West stare wide-eyed.

Watching Sha Zhu walk away happily with a bag of pig mushrooms, Gao Zhendong shook his head. "Well, I feel a little bad for those comrades who were still snatching food from the pig's mouth in the hot spring area during the winter."

Thinking of this, Gao Zhendong felt as if something flickered in his head, but it quickly disappeared without a trace, impossible to grasp.

Gao Zhendong shook his head. Strange, these bizarre ideas all seemed to belong to the rat, appearing only briefly before disappearing completely.

If he couldn't remember, he stopped thinking about it. He had many more important things to do, so he turned and walked towards his home.
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Although the Spring Festival is approaching, for major factories and mines across the country, the New Year must be celebrated, but production must also continue, and there is not much difference from usual. The only difference is that those who stay at their posts during the Spring Festival need to receive extra subsidies, as it is a big holiday.

This is especially true for industries like thermal power, metallurgy, and glass. Once these industries start their furnaces and production lines, stopping them would result in huge losses. For these industries, it's not that they don't want holidays; it's that they simply can't. They can only compensate their employees to some extent through economic and administrative means.

In a special workshop at the Beijing Steel Plant, the atmosphere is bustling with activity. The workers seem to have completely forgotten about the New Year, with all their attention focused on the somewhat unusual converter steelmaking equipment in front of them.

The converter has not been in operation for very long; it is still in the trial operation period, but the trial operation period of this converter is somewhat special.

"It's been running for so many days now, how's it going? The New Year is almost here, if things go well, it'll be a New Year's gift after all," one comrade said with a smile.

Who says they can't remember the Lunar New Year? They remember it now. It's just that for them, the Lunar New Year has a special meaning; it's a good day to give gifts to the entire industry and even the people of the whole country.

"The situation is very good. Factory director, chief engineer, department head, look at this. The trial production over this period of time has shown that the top-and-bottom combined blowing system has further improved the original problems of uneven chemical composition and temperature, difficulty in slag formation, long smelting cycle, excessive smoke and dust, and high oxygen consumption in the original top-blown converter..."

The senior technical staff of Jinggang Steel Plant are now basically all focused on this matter; the plant's key leaders and the head of the technical department are all here.

Upon hearing the engineer's report, both men were delighted. In fact, the top-blown converter was already quite excellent, but to be able to go even further on top of that meant that the technical specifications of this system had reached an unimaginably high level.

"Oxygen consumption decreased by approximately 9%, while the yield increased by 1.8%..."

This data brought smiles to the faces of everyone present; this inflow and outflow was a truly remarkable event.

Simply put, based on the top-blown converter, top and bottom combined blowing reduces oxygen consumption by about 10%, which is where the money comes in.

The steel yield increased by an average of 1.8 percentage points on the basis of top-blown converter. 1.8% may seem insignificant, but steel is a bulk commodity with a huge output. Even a 0.1 percentage point improvement, let alone close to 2 percentage points, is something to be happy about.

Even if each batch of steel is 30 tons, and the converter produces one batch of steel every 40 minutes on average, that's 1080 tons of steel per day. This improvement in yield means that a 30-ton converter can produce almost 20 more tons of steel per day, which is no small number.

Therefore, this 1.8% increase is a figure worth making a big deal out of in the eyes of our comrades. Putting everything else aside, just this point alone makes this top-bottom reversal a success.

"At the same time, subsequent steel sample testing showed that the steel quality of the top and bottom blowing process is more stable, and it has no impact on the furnace life. The furnace life of the top and bottom blowing process has reached 2050 heats and has not yet exhausted its service life."

The comrades were all very happy. With obvious advantages, the furnace life did not decrease, which was a good thing.

Since the chief engineer of the No. 1983 rolling mill guided us to increase the service life of the top-blown converter to 1983 heats, as our colleagues became more familiar with and further applied these technologies, the service life has steadily increased from that figure to over 2300 heats.

Although the more complex structure of top and bottom blowing may affect the furnace life, the current test results show that the 2050 furnace still has a lifespan, and the furnace life has not been significantly negatively affected.

"At the same time, statistical indicators show that, without starting the negative energy steelmaking system, the top-bottom combined blowing system saves 6.8 kgce/ton of steel and shortens the smelting cycle by more than 2 minutes compared to the top-blown converter."

In other words, even without recovering converter gas and steam, this system still saves 6.8 kg of standard coal per ton of steel compared to the top-blown process, and the smelting cycle is shortened by more than two minutes.

For a converter that produces one heat every 40 minutes, saving more than two minutes per heat of steel can result in a saving of 90 minutes per day, which is equivalent to producing two more heats of steel! This is equivalent to increasing production by 5%, which is a very significant amount.

Saving energy, saving time... could there be anything better? But now that we've gotten to the negative energy steelmaking system, the comrades are really getting excited.

"What are the current indicators for negative energy steelmaking?" Compared to top-bottom re-blowing, negative energy steelmaking is even more important.

If it weren't for the fact that two new processes were being tested simultaneously in one experimental converter, the top and bottom blowing process would have yielded results long ago. After all, top and bottom blowing is simpler than negative energy steelmaking. Of course, this "simplicity" is based on the premise that the sister plant provided a lot of help. For example, the bottom blowing components were quite difficult for Beijing Steel Plant to produce without the finishing capabilities provided by the Third Rolling Mill and the Third Branch Plant.

Negative energy steelmaking involves more than just converters and complete sets of steelmaking-related equipment such as oxygen supply and inert gas supply. It even includes a whole support system, including integrated steelmaking control systems, gas collection, transportation, storage, and use. It's not just about the scale of "equipment." To some extent, it means building a large part of a gas plant and a half part of a steam power workshop in a steel plant, and these plants are not small in scale.

The most difficult part is undoubtedly the collection device, especially the gas collection. Fortunately, with the support of technologies such as the Venturi tube provided by Chief Engineer Gao, there are not many technical problems.

In short, it took a lot of time to build this equipment, which also affected the time of the top and bottom re-blowing research and experiment.

However, it seems that the time spent on the top-bottom reversal was worthwhile. Now we just need to see if the same applies to the negative energy steelmaking system.

It's important to understand that negative energy steelmaking is more significant than top-bottom re-blowing.

Top and bottom blowing can be considered an optimization and improvement of converter steelmaking technology, while negative energy steelmaking can even be considered a subversion of the concept of steelmaking process system.

"Things are going very well!" The engineer, who had been working tirelessly on the front lines of trial production for a long time, couldn't suppress his smile as he spoke.

"After this period of trial operation, statistics show that coal consumption per ton of steel has been reduced by... Sorry, I misspoke..."

Did I say something wrong? What do you mean?
"To correct you, the energy consumption per ton of steel for this experimental converter is currently -2.28 kgce/ton of steel..."

Several leaders and the head of the technical department at Beijing Steel Plant were taken aback, then burst into laughter.

No wonder he said he was wrong earlier. The energy consumption per ton of steel has turned negative. Saying "saving" is indeed not appropriate. No matter how much you save, it still consumes energy, right? But now, from the perspective of comprehensive energy consumption, each ton of steel is still more than 2 kilograms of standard coal.

This is difficult to describe or calculate using the word "saving". No matter what, nothing is as surprising as a negative number.

Don't be fooled by the fact that each ton of steel contains only a little over 2 kilograms of standard coal, which may seem like a small amount. In reality, this number is quite high. Although it can't compare to the -30 kgce/ton of steel or more in the 21st century, it is a negative number, which is a qualitative difference.

This means that in the steelmaking process, not only is no energy consumed, but excess energy can be obtained by utilizing the carbon monoxide produced from oxygen and carbon in steel, as well as the water vapor generated during steelmaking, for use in other processes.

Taking a 30-ton converter as an example, an energy consumption index of -2.28 kgce/ton of steel means that this converter can produce the equivalent of more than 2 tons of standard coal in 24 hours.

Two tons of standard coal is no small amount these days.

Moreover, the actual cost is far more than just two tons of coal. Before this, the energy consumption of converter steelmaking was as high as 15-20 kgce/ton of steel. All things considered, this is equivalent to a 30-ton converter saving about 20 tons of standard coal's worth of energy per day.

All other indicators can be ignored. In fact, there are no other important indicators for negative energy steelmaking; this is the most important one.

"It seems this system is a success!" The factory's chief engineer had a bit of sand in his eyes, but he could proudly say that the overall performance of this process was world-leading, and by a significant margin!
"Yes, after spending so much time, manpower, and resources, we finally didn't let our superiors down or tarnish the technology provided by Chief Engineer Gao..." The factory manager was also very excited, and that's what he said...

"Factory manager, that's too much, too much. We've invested a lot in manpower and resources, but not much time," the chief engineer laughed.

The factory manager was taken aback. It seemed to make sense... Compared to the difficulty and effectiveness of this process, this time was nothing at all!

Even if it takes more than twice as long, it's still not too much.

I guess I've been eating too much good food.

The comrades all laughed. Not to mention the factory director, they all felt like they had been spoiled.

When the laughter subsided, the factory director stood on a slightly elevated spot and loudly announced: "Comrades, I now announce that the 'Top and Bottom Combination Blowing and Negative Energy Steelmaking Process Research' jointly conducted by our factory and the Third Rolling Mill has been initially successful!!!"

Although this topic has only one name, it includes many sub-topics.

Although some of the most important colleagues from the Third Rolling Mill are not here, this does not diminish their contributions and importance to this project.

Since these comrades were not present, he did not directly say "complete success," because "complete success" can only be said when everyone is present.

The comrades cheered, clearly pleased with the excellence of this process.

Seeing his comrades excitedly venting their emotions, the factory director walked down from his vantage point and said to the chief engineer, "Let's report this to the ministry!"

"Is there still a little bit of finishing work that hasn't been done?" the chief engineer asked.

After all, the converter's service life hasn't been fully utilized yet, so it seems a little imperfect.

The factory manager shook his head: "It's not a big problem. The furnace lifespan was resolved a long time ago, so we don't need to include it in this. The most important indicators have all been achieved very well, which is enough. We need to focus on the main issues. The important thing is that the New Year is just around the corner."

Let's make everyone happy before the Lunar New Year.

(End of this chapter)