Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1352 Industry-University-Research System ([-])

Wang Huadu stood in front of a medium-sized retort with a solemn face.

This is a vertical cast iron tank, 1.5 meters deep and about 0.9 meters in diameter. The workmanship is rough and not beautiful, but it is stronger.There are a total of six such cast iron tanks, and now they are arranged closely in groups of three in a heating furnace made of refractory bricks. There is a small steam crane above the tank, and a metal basket is installed under the hook. The basket can hold up to about 750 Kilograms of coal are used to feed each retort.

That's right, this is actually a simple version of the coal coking system, which is essentially the same as the large retort kiln in the Ping'an Township Coking Plant, except that it is smaller and cheaper.After all, if it is only to obtain the gas produced by dry distillation of coal, it is far from necessary to design such high-end equipment and invest such a huge amount of equipment, it is not worth it.

The current design of the heating furnace + multi-group reactors has actually clearly stated that they are for obtaining gas, not anything else.In addition, this kind of equipment uses low-quality coal produced by the Ping An Mining Bureau, and the problem is even more obvious. Now coking will not use this kind of coal. Except for the earliest practice in Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, there have been many Pingan coal has not been used as coking coal for years.

Well, I have to mention here, in fact, it is nonsense to say that the East Coast Republic of China is short of coal!Not to mention far away, the total coal reserves of the Duck Lake Basin and northern Uruguay under current control alone are more than 100 billion tons, which is extremely astonishing—you know, the total coal reserves of South Africa are only 487 billion tons—but if you want to What is crying without tears is that the defects of these coals are also obvious, that is, most of them are low-quality coals with low calorific value, high sulfur, high ash, and many impurities, so they can only make do with the fire and do nothing. Feeling helpless, I can only lament that the South American continent is too young and formed too late, resulting in these coals not being fully developed. Who is to blame, but the earth!

However, these coal resources are concentrated and buried extremely shallow. Many of them are basically open-pit mines, and the cost of mining them is extremely low.Therefore, if these cheap and plentiful coals are used to dry distillation to make gas, they are still competent. For example, what Wang Huadu and others are doing at this time-they are all from the newly established East Coast Gas Company People, this time I came to Ping'an Weaving Factory mainly to try to install gas lamps for them.

As we all know, textile factories have always been one of the enterprises with the highest frequency of fires. There are almost a lot of shitty things like candles and oil lamps catching fire. Therefore, they have an urgent desire to find a relatively safe and at the same time Also very economical lighting fixtures to replace the increasingly obsolete and relatively expensive candles or oil lamps, gas lamps are now an option for them.

East Coast Gas Company is a state-owned holding company, the Ministry of Energy holds 51% of the shares, and the remaining shares are sold to the market to raise funds. For example, Wang Huadu, the second generation of the company, is not only the management of the company, but also one of the shareholders.This time they spent a lot of money to obtain the patent authorization of gas lamps from the Engineering Technology Research Institute, and then quickly invested in trial production. Nei spent his 25th birthday. The small retort placed in the fireplace supplied gas through the chimney pipe, and lit up several gas lamps in the restaurant. The white brightness is far beyond that of whale oil candles. Let me see My son fell in love with this novel business, and determined to fight to promote it, but I think Bai Siwen would definitely not like me doing this, and their family's Guangming Candle Factory may encounter some troubles."

Bright Candle Factory is really going to be in trouble now!As one of the largest domestic enterprises on the east coast, Ping An Weaving Factory has always been one of their important customers, purchasing large quantities of whale oil candles or ordinary candles almost every month. It is conceivable how much their losses will be; and once the novelty of gas lamps is spread across the country, then Bright Candle Factory may consider transformation, because their business will definitely plummet.

The gas produced by the dry distillation in the six reactors is manually operated and sent to the dry main pipe through the water seal, and then reaches a cylindrical vertical air condenser, and then the coal tar flows into a small pit, and the gas is passed to the It is stored in a row of three-meter-long cube cast iron jars on the side.

It can be seen that this is almost a replica of coal dry distillation in a coking plant, except that the gas produced by dry distillation in this plant is transported to the kitchen, water room, and boiler room through large pipelines, and the high temperature of the gas itself is used to heat the water body, and then or Discharged into the atmosphere, or burned, or transported to the adjacent Pingan Iron and Steel Plant for ironmaking.In the system designed by the East Coast Gas Company for the Pingan Weaving Factory, all the gas is collected—of course, it has not been washed or purified, and it is relatively rough and primitive—and then transported through pipelines of different thicknesses. Burned in individual gas lamps to the terminals to provide illumination.

Wang Huadu went around in front of several retorts in the workshop, then got off the heating furnace, and took people to carefully check the gas or air pipelines. He was busy until the afternoon, and he was satisfied. Nodded——and since the head of the technical department, Wang Da, announced that the inspection was correct, what are the people waiting for? Hurry up and heat the reactor to dry the coal!

At around seven o'clock in the evening, the weaving factory workers and their family members who heard that there was going to be a "big news" in the factory flocked to the place where the gas lamp was installed. Some of these people were knocking pine nuts, some were drinking beer, some Chewing the dried whale meat, the children crawled around in the crowd, playing with each other, having a good time, and the scene was once no different from a country fair.

Seeing this scene, Wang Huadu suddenly had black lines on his face. Being treated like a monkey, he could only secretly slander in his heart: Let you be stunned now, and you will know the "horror" of things like gas lamps in a few days. "Hey, hey, I'm so free now, everyone will get used to working overtime and night shifts and enjoy the gaslight slowly.

Half an hour later, a section chief surnamed Li from Ping'an Weaving Factory also went through the crowd and rushed to the gas production workshop, intending to see how the novelty of gas lamps worked - he didn't wait too long, at nine o'clock in the evening After many minutes, following the order of Wang Huadu, the technicians of the East Coast Gas Company manually opened the valve of the main pipeline leading to the gas lamp, and a large amount of flammable gases (carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane, etc.) passed through. The pipe ran quickly to the numerous gas lamps installed outside.

"Wow!" Although separated by a thick wall, although the noise in the workshop is quite loud, Wang Huadu still clearly heard bursts of exclamation coming from outside, which made him very satisfied - what he wanted was This feeling, what I want is the feeling of being amazed, respected, and admired by others. Wang Huadu even feels that he has never had such a strong sense of accomplishment or satisfaction in the past 20 years!

Attracted by the continuous exclamation, the crowd also began to move towards various locations where gas lamps were installed. They saw staff from the East Coast Gas Company taking off the lampshades one by one and lighting up each gas lamp with an open flame.And as they moved, each wick—a nozzle-like burner, single-holed or multi-holed—began to burn with a bright flame, while the resulting gas was passed through the tube. lost to the atmosphere.

"It's as bright as day!" Section Chief Li of Ping'an Weaving Factory looked at the bright and clean gas lamps illuminating the workshop, and muttered the above exclamation in his mouth. The pride in my heart.

At ten o'clock in the evening, a total of 904 gas lamps in the factory area covered by this system have been successfully lit, and none of them failed, which is very exciting to see.Soon, Section Chief Li of Ping An Weaving Factory applauded first to express his respect to the East Coast Gas Company, and led by him, the applause soon spread to the entire crowd of onlookers—this was a lot of people For the first time in their life, they saw such a bright and eternal flame, and how this flame illuminated the entire factory area and roads. A small part of them could not even believe what they saw, thinking that this must be something magic……

The gas lamps stayed on for a long time, and the East Coast Gas system proved to be reliable—at least so far—for the gas lamps in the factory area continued to work all night without any diminution. , What was consumed for this was nothing more than some extremely cheap and low-quality coal.Not to mention, part of the crusty residue (only a small part is coke) produced in the retort can also be used for other purposes. At least this is a very good fuel, whether it is for boilers or Cooking is fine, but it saves money on fuel.

Section Chief Li of Ping'an Weaving Factory left with a smile on his face when the sun rose. He was really satisfied with the new gas lamp, and decided to write more good words about it in the report. , Let the factory leaders buy an additional set of such equipment in the future technical transformation, and completely eliminate all kinds of candles, oil lamps and other lighting that are prone to fire The fee can also be much less.

Not to mention, apart from the large investment at the beginning, the gas lamp system actually doesn’t cost much later. In terms of long-term cost, it is far cheaper than buying candles, which means that it is a cheap, safe and effective Great way to light, so why not use it?Why not promote it?

Of course, although it is not impossible to say that promotion is now, there is still some suspicion that it is too early.Without him, Gein East Coast Gas Company is currently launching only the first generation of products, and there are still many design flaws.For example, the first-generation gas lamp lighting devices used by Ping’an Weaving Factory lack the most basic washing and purification procedures. Therefore, after inspecting the equipment of the East Coast Gas Company, the Ping’an County Government and the District Administration finally gave up, which made Wang Hua The governor personally felt that it was a pity, so this also prompted their technical department to take action. Together with the people from the Engineering Technology Research Institute, they planned to develop the second-generation equipment (of course the patent was shared) to correct the various defects of the first-generation gas lamps. Defects, lay a solid foundation for future marketing.

At present, the Engineering Technology Research Institute has dispatched a technical team to the East Coast Gas Company, specializing in the research and development of the second-generation gas lamp complete set of technology, and has made some progress.For example, Wang Huadu proposed whether it is possible to wash the gas with lime water to remove impurities such as carbon dioxide in it, so as to improve the quality of the gas.This suggestion was quickly responded by the technical department. They changed the design again, and passed the gas from the retort to a container filled with wet lime (the container needs to be manually stirred from time to time) for purification, and then passed through the coil Condensate in the water below the air storage tank, and finally be washed by water in the form of bubbling, and enter the air storage tank for storage.

This method effectively removes impurities such as sulfur and carbon dioxide in the gas, and effectively improves the quality of the gas, which once excited the East Coast Gas Company.However, it was later discovered that treating the gas in this way would produce a foul-smelling and poisonous waste liquid, which almost caused angry villagers to block the gate when the East Coast Gas Company discharged the waste liquid into the river. , because the fish and shrimp in the river are poisoned to death by this waste liquid.In desperation, the East Coast Gas Company could only evaporate and concentrate the waste liquid under the retort, and then transport the remaining waste residue out at night, which calmed down the situation a little.

In addition, because the gas contains a certain amount of ammonia, it will greatly corrode the brass fittings in the pipeline, and make the gas have a disgusting smell.For this reason, they are discussing whether an air extractor should be installed on the retort to remove some carbon deposits inside and reduce the pressure of the retort.As for other works, such as the use of cheap wooden pipes and the invention of new measuring instruments, the work is now advancing steadily, and generally speaking, the progress is still satisfactory.And when these works are basically completed, it is conceivable that this second-generation gas lamp system will shine brightly, thus making great contributions to the East Coast Gas Company's rapid grabbing of a larger market share.

For this point, Wang Huadu himself is still very confident. The lighting and heating in the future will be dominated by the East Coast Gas Company!Wang Huadu firmly believes that the impact of gas on society and economy in the future cannot be overstated. In addition to providing low-cost and high-efficiency lighting for people working overtime, it also brings a new kind of lighting to the East Coast society. Civilization and way of life - from now on, the popularity of night schools will become wider and wider, so that people can gather in brightly lit places for study or other activities after work, which will undoubtedly profoundly change the East Coast social way of life.

(End of this chapter)