I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 46: Concept of “Alchemy Furnace”
In the first month of the seventh year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang personally decided the names of the palaces where Wang Guozhong lived. The front hall was called Chengyun, the middle hall was called Yuandian, the back hall was called Cunxin, and the four city gates were called Duanli in the south, Guangzhi in the north, Tiren in the east, and Zunyi in the west.

Dingcheng is twenty-nine feet high.

Therefore, the Prince of Jing’s Mansion is an inner city, a small city, and not like the mansions of other lower-ranking clan members and nobles, whose outer walls are just relatively high courtyard walls.

The fief of Jing Fan was actually originally in Jianchang, Jiangxi. However, the King of Jing, Zhu Zhanji, thought Jiangxi was too poor, and it took him more than ten years of effort to get Emperor Xuanzong to agree to move the fief from Jianchang, Jiangxi to the prosperous Qizhou, Huguang.

If it was at the beginning of the country, the prince's palace would naturally be built in the center of the city. However, when the Jing vassal kings were established, their power had declined drastically compared to the beginning of the country. Naturally, it was impossible for them to occupy the most central place in Qizhou City as the prince's palace.

The current Jingwang Mansion was actually built on the basis of the original garrison of Qizhou Wei. It is not located in the center of Qizhou City, but in the northwest of Qizhou City. The Yangtze River is just a hundred meters outside the western city wall.

Moreover, no residential buildings are allowed within a hundred meters of the Prince of Jing's Palace, so there will be no fire prevention problem if the open furnace is placed on the west wall facing outward.

The Jingwang Mansion covers an area of ​​more than 300,000 square meters, which is half the size of the Forbidden City. However, its building density is not as high as that of the Forbidden City. Moreover, the descendants of the Jing prince are not as numerous as those in the Zhouwang Mansion, so there has never been a need to expand.

The location that Zhu Houxuan pointed out was a barracks where the guards of the palace lived. There were four similar barracks in the palace. These four barracks were originally designed to house 200 guards each. They were all built along the corners of the city wall, some distance away from the main building complex of the Prince of Jing's Palace. As long as one was careful, fire prevention inside would not be a big problem.

As for why this barracks was abandoned, it all started with the third King of Jing, Zhu Jianyun. He was sentenced to death for imprisoning his mother and killing his brother, but the court did punish the King of Jing's Mansion. Instead, it directly cut 400 guards from the palace and gave them to the Wuchang Guard.

In this way, there were only 400 guards left in the Prince of Jing's Mansion. Fortunately, Qizhou Prefecture was located in the heartland of the Ming Dynasty and had been peaceful for a hundred years. These guards were enough. In fact, in Zhu Houxun's view, these guards had no combat effectiveness. They were just shiny on the surface and usually served as ceremonial guards and to scare civilians.

Later, this barracks in the northwest corner was struck by lightning and caught fire. Although the fire was quickly extinguished, some buildings suffered some damage, and the government was too lazy to repair them. Anyway, the remaining three barracks were more than enough to accommodate 400 people, so this barracks was abandoned.

"Look, after we demolish this house, we will build the furnace in the corner of the city wall, so that there will be city walls on both sides. Then we can stand on the city wall to check the steelmaking and alchemy progress. Moreover, the top of the city wall is very wide, so we can make many large water tanks with wood and put them on top, filling them with water. If the situation is not right for us, we can pour the water in the water tank directly on the furnace to put out the fire." Zhu Houxuan became more and more excited as he spoke.

Luo Dajiang and Hou Sen were even more confused after hearing this, but they also understood that the young prince did not make this decision on a whim, but made it after careful consideration.

After listening to Zhu Houxuan's words, Luo Dajiang felt mixed emotions for a moment, but he quickly made a decision.

"Your Highness, you'd better not practice refining the alchemy furnace in the mansion. I will go back to the mine to fix the furnace. Your Highness treats us craftsmen so well, we will risk our lives to make steel!" Master Craftsman Luo knelt down silently and looked at Zhu Houxuan with his head held high.

Zhu Houxuan looked at the excited Master Luo and gently helped him up. "Master Luo, I know you are loyal, but there will be no breakthrough just by killing people now."

After listening to Zhu Houxuan's words, Luo Dajiang became even more excited. "Is the prince disappointed in us? We have spent 8000 taels of silver on this furnace, but there is still no result. I feel sorry for the prince. The approach the prince gave is obviously right, but we are too stupid." After saying this, Luo Dajiang burst into tears again.

"Master Luo!" Zhu Houxuan shouted sternly.

This scolding made Master Luo stop crying, and he stared at Zhu Houxuan blankly. "I have seen everything you have done in the past two months, and I remember it in my heart. You improved the coke kiln, making the coke yield rate reach 60%; you improved the blower and refractory bricks; and you also made a gasifier. You have made great contributions to all these things."

Luo Dajiang's expression softened as Zhu Houxuan spoke. "These are all the drawings and suggestions provided by the prince. I just followed the prince's words."

"Don't underestimate yourself." Zhu Houxuan interrupted Luo Dajiang directly, "Many people can't do this."

"But the open-hearth steelmaking method is much more complicated than the previous ones. Even if you put all your lives into it, it may not succeed. So I will push this matter forward personally, and Master Luo, you will be my deputy."

Master Luo was mostly convinced, but he was still a little hesitant. Making steel in the palace was really too outrageous and beyond his comprehension.

"And I urgently need this steelmaking method, so I have to do this," Zhu Houxuan continued.

Now Master Luo no longer objected.

Hou Sen did not say anything. He knew the young prince's temper too well and knew that he could not stop him.

In fact, Zhu Houxuan did not lie. He was in urgent need of open-hearth steelmaking technology because his plan to build Damascus was thwarted again. This time the problem was materials.

He found that even if the steel ingots were stacked and forged from different origins, the contrast in patterns after acid leaching was still not particularly obvious. Even if a Damascus sword could be made, the final effect would be greatly reduced.

After some thought, Zhu Houxuan figured out what was going on.

The difference between steel from different origins is only the carbon content and the content of various impurities in the steel, which will not have much impact on the results of pickling.

He suddenly thought of the modern steels 5160 steel and 1095 steel that are often used by contestants in the "Sword Forging Competition".

There are certain rules for naming modern steel grades.

Zhu Houxuan knew that the "1095" in 10 steel represents that it is an ordinary carbon steel, and "95" represents the carbon content. Taken together, it means that this is a high-carbon steel with a carbon content of about 0.95%.

5160钢中的“5”代表这是一种铬钢，“1”则代表着铬含量为1%，60则代表着含碳量，综合起来则代表着这是一种含碳量在0.6%左右、含铬量为1%的中碳铁铬合金钢。

Zhu Houxuan finally set his sights on the metal chromium. He found relevant information about chromium from his memory. The chromium in iron-chromium alloy can greatly improve the corrosion resistance of steel. If the chromium content in the alloy is increased to more than 10.5%, it will be the stainless steel we are familiar with.

(End of this chapter)