Chapter 251 Earth Blast Furnace

While the cement kiln was still busy, the problem of sea wolf's steelmaking was finally put on the agenda. Now they have stored a large amount of raw and cooked iron, which is taken by various factories, cast or made into clocks, artillery, *.

Other things are fine, but * is very problematic when using cooked iron as raw material for production.

It is well known that cooked iron is low in hardness and relatively soft. In the past, when they built smoothbore guns, they could make do with it, but now they have encountered serious problems after they began to produce wolf tooth rifles.

Because the cooked iron is too soft, even if it is repeatedly made, the hardness of the inner wall of the gun is still not enough. Although the rebarred line will be easier, the pulled wire is not wear-resistant.

This result seriously affects the quality of the wolf tooth rifle, especially the life of the barrel, which is much shorter than that of the smoothbore rifle.

The smoothbore guns produced by sea wolves can withstand at least 200 or 300, or even 500 or 600 bullets, but the barrel of the wolf tooth rifle is often only 100 or even dozens of them.

Because the Mine bullet is in the barrel, it will cling to the wall of the rifled and insert it into the rifled line, so that it can rotate when it comes out of the rifle and play a role of airtightness, so it wears a lot on the rifled wire in the barrel.

The barrel produced by using cooked iron as the raw material, the pulled worm line can't withstand too much firing, and the worm line will become shallower and shallower, so that after the new gun is fired dozens of bullets, the worm line is too worn out, which reduces the accuracy of the gun, and the range and power are also greatly reduced.

In this regard, Yu Xiaotian could only let the gunman produce a large number of barrels to replace the barrel with bald riflings. As a result, it greatly affected the production of the wolf tooth rifle. It often produces a wolf tooth rifle, which needs to be equipped with three spare barrels. Although the recovered barrel can be used by pulling the rifling again, it is only That's all. If it is bald for the second time, it can only be remade.

This is unimaginable for the degree of waste of human and material resources. There has even been a fierce battle. Most of the barrel of a company's wolf tooth rifle barrel has been ground and needs to be replaced as a whole.

This is completely unacceptable in the case of a large-scale high-intensity war. Of course, the side effect is that the overall speed of changing the rifle is greatly delayed, so that the sea wolf is still unable to replace all the original southern Japanese rifles with wolftooth rifles, which greatly limits the wolf tooth rifles. The number of equipment.

Yu Xiaotian can't stand this and can only find a way to solve this problem. If he wants to solve this problem, he must get steel. Even low-carbon steel is much stronger than using cooked iron at present, which can at least double the life of the barrel.

If you want to get steel, there are some ways in ancient times. For example, the first steel speculation method and steel filling method invented by the Chinese can also obtain steel. In addition, relying on manpower to refine, you can also get some steel of quite good texture, which can create a very delicate sword.

However, if these methods are used to produce a large number of barrels and guns, it is not realistic, because the steel obtained by these methods consumes too much manpower. Even if the sea wolf has now grown into a huge thing, it is impossible to rely on these methods to obtain a large amount of steel to produce barrels.

So if you want to solve this problem, Yu Xiaotian must find a way to produce steel in batches. If you want to obtain a large amount of steel, you must change the steelmaking method and adopt a more modern steelmaking method.

However, the modern steelmaking method is basically a converter steelmaking method, and some of them are relatively old flat furnace steelmaking methods. Yu Xiaotian did not come up with a way to build such a steelmaking furnace.

Because after all, he is not majoring in metal smelting, and he wants to build a flat furnace or converter for modern steelmaking based on some of the technologies related to steelmaking in his memory. With his ability, it is impossible at all.

So he can only retreat and choose the simplest and most practical method. For this reason, he has been thinking about this problem for the past two years.

After thinking for a long time, he finally chose the local method, that is, to use the simplest earth blast furnace for steelmaking.

There was an irrational period in modern history, when steel was made all over the country. In this special period, a large number of earth blast furnaces appeared everywhere, smashing pots and selling iron for steel.

The structure of the earth blast furnace is very simple. It is built from local materials. By recycling various raw iron products, it is smashed and put into the earth blast furnace for smelting, and finally made into steel.

But this is very wasteful, and it also seriously interferes with normal production and life, and even affects economic development, and the damage to the natural environment is even more heinous.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian did not want to use this method, because in addition to serious waste and environmental damage, the scrap rate of steel produced by soil blast furnaces is extremely high. In many places, soil blast furnaces can only produce some scrap iron slag, and they can't get anything in the end. Even if some ground steel is produced, it may not be of quality. It can meet the requirements, which contains many harmful elements, which makes the quality of steel low.

He had previously considered using crucible steel to produce high-carbon steel, but he also encountered a big problem that he could not effectively solve for the time being.

The smelting crucible steel requires a crucible. This kind of crucible cannot be an ordinary crucible. It must use a graphite crucible. However, graphite has not been found in the market at present, let alone a large number of graphite crucibles. Without graphite crucibles, he can only make iron and melt iron into iron. The role of carbonizing iron into steel.

So even if he uses the simplest crucible steelmaking method, he can't use it at present. He can only use this method after finding graphite.

And when steelmaking at the crucible, only pots of steel can be produced. The output is very low, and small-scale production is not easy to meet the needs.

Finally, after thinking about it, Yu Xiaotian really couldn't think of a better way. He scolded in his heart that he had chosen to major in metal smelting today. At least now he can build a small steelmaking furnace, but there is no regret medicine in the world. Since he can't get a steelmaking flat furnace for the time being, he can only pick Steel was made with the most primitive earth blast furnace.

Even if the earth blast furnace is a waste and pollution, he can only do so at present. The quality of the steel produced is not good enough, and he has no better way.

So after some preparation, in March of the seventh year of Apocalypse, several earth blast furnaces of different shapes were built at the same time as the reservoir and not far from the reservoir.

The output of these earth blast furnaces can only produce two or three tons of steel a day at most, even worse than that of earth blast furnaces in a certain era, but after all, they are still starting.

There is no bottom in Yu Xiaotian's heart whether the earth blast furnace can be used now. The reason why he has built so many earth blast furnaces of different styles is not that he is full, but that he intends to use these earth blast furnaces to carry out steelmaking tests.

The construction of an earth blast furnace is not very troublesome. Basically, it does not need to use much steel. The whole blast furnace is made of clay, and the lining is also some refractory bricks made of clay. This thing is definitely not durable, but at present, for Xiaotian, whether it is durable is not a question for him to consider.

The key is that he must first find a furnace type that can produce steel. Through these experimental soil blast furnaces, he can test which kind of earth blast furnace can be used carelessly.

As for whether the steel produced can be used to make guns, he has not considered this problem for the time being. As long as the steel is refined first, it is a successful first step.

The development of industry involves a lot of things. In the past, he can't support a systematic industry by opening his golden fingers, casting guns, producing soap and firing glass.

But what he is doing now is gradually improving his industrial structure and gradually establishing a more systematic industry.

The principle of steelmaking is actually very simple, that is, by using blast furnaces, decarbonize the raw iron, remove the excess carbon elements in the carbon, and finally make it steel.

In terms of raw materials, it is not very complicated. The main raw materials of steelmaking in later generations are mostly scrap steel, but at present, Yu Xiaotian can only use ready-made raw iron and cooked iron.

As for other raw materials, they are mainly coke and some limestone, which are not lacking in Xiaotian at present. Some of them can be solved on the spot. Even if they cannot be solved on the spot, they can be transported in from the outside.

At present, he does not intend to smelt raw iron by himself, because there are many iron fields and iron mines in Guangdong and Fujian, which are not far from Tamsui City, which can produce raw iron.

Now after Yu Xiaotian fought this battle, the restrictions of the previous government on him have been completely broken by him. He can easily buy enough raw and cooked iron from the land. Although the cost is slightly higher, for the current Sea Wolf Group, such costs are still affordable.

So at present, if iron ore is purchased from land and transported to fresh water for ironmaking, in addition to occupying a large amount of transportation capacity, a lot of coal or charcoal needs to be transported, which is very stressful and not very cost-effective for the capacity of sea wolves.

If charcoal is also used for ironmaking, the natural environment around fresh water will also be greatly damaged, and a large number of forests need to be cut down for charcoal burning.

Although coal can also be used to make iron, the coal in most coal mines in China basically has a relatively high sulfur content, and the sulfur content of the raw iron is also very high. Therefore, in southern China, charcoal is still used to make iron, so the quality of raw iron refined in this way is much better than that of iron made by coal in the north.

So Daming has always had a saying that iron in the south is better than the north in casting guns and producing weapons, because they don't know that the iron made from coal in the north contains too much sulfur.

Based on these factors, Yu Xiaotian did not consider the matter of making iron by himself, but directly used the raw iron available at hand for steelmaking.

(These chapters are technical articles. I dare not write more, and I don't write them in detail. Please forgive me! Another shout, who has a monthly ticket! The monthly ticket list has fallen! I fainted, it's been in severe pain these days!)