I want to be emperor

Chapter 464 Cinder
Dangtu Industrial Zone, a year and a half ago, it was still barren, with only scattered villages and a few scattered iron-making workshops.

However, since the Chu army moved eastward and occupied Dangtu County and other surrounding areas last year, rapid changes have taken place here.

First, a group of prospectors came, and then a large number of workers, technicians, and equipment were gathered from Daye and other places, and then transferred to Dangtu County for large-scale mining of local iron ore.

The Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire established the Dangtu Mining Bureau based on the iron ore in the Ma'anshan area of ​​Dangtu County to organize the mining of local iron ore.

Immediately afterwards, the Dangtu Iron Works was established to refine steel from local iron ore.

With the establishment of the Dangtu ironworks, more people and equipments are continuously coming to Dangtu.

Soon the Ministry of Industry approved the establishment of more than ten enterprises including Dangtu Machinery Factory and Dangtu Armory Factory.

And set up Dangtu Industrial Zone.

In the past year, more than [-] people have poured in from all directions in the huge Dangtu Industrial Zone in a short period of time.

In fact, at the beginning, there were not so many people in the local area, and some were only workers transferred from other places by the Ministry of Industry or hired nearby.

Some of them are ordinary laborers who are responsible for land levelling, factory building and many other infrastructure construction in the industrial zone, as well as many management and skilled workers drawn by the Ministry of Industry from other places, and many ordinary workers recruited, um, many of them The workers used to be ordinary laborers who carried out infrastructure construction in the Dangtu Industrial Zone.

These people were actually not many at the beginning, from a few thousand to ten to twenty million, and finally to about 5 to [-].

These more than 5 people are the officials or employees of Dangtu enterprises under the Ministry of Industry.

But these 5 people indirectly led to the influx of more people.

In the beginning, it was ordinary businessmen who came smelling of money.

After all, there is a brand-new industrial city rising here, which needs almost a huge amount of various building materials, whether it is wood, stone, or even sand, bricks, etc., they all need it, although a considerable part of these building materials are industrial It is supplied by other companies under the Ministry, but they still purchase from outside, and many businessmen engaged in basic building materials business come here after hearing the news.

They not only transported building materials, but also set up factories in Dangtu Industrial Zone to process building materials.

At the same time, the service industry generated around the large population has also stimulated many businessmen to come to make money.

So many people want to eat, drink and sleep, every business here has huge business opportunities brewing.

And the various small factories and workshops that these businessmen set up locally also need employees, so tens of thousands of people have poured in in a short period of time.

Finally, the industrial population surrounding the above-mentioned numerous state-owned enterprises and private enterprises has stimulated more ordinary people and small businessmen to come to look for jobs and various opportunities to make a fortune.

In the end, by December of the fourth year of Chengshun, the Dangtu Industrial Zone had become a complex with many super-large factories, more than a dozen medium-sized factories, and hundreds of small factories, with more than 7 employees of various types. huge industrial area.

This is not all!

Surrounding more than 100 various factories in the industrial zone, there are many employees in the service industry, people's livelihood supply personnel and some family members.

This made the population of the entire industrial zone directly break through to [-].

Because of various industries and messy workshops, the rapid increase of shops, the rapid increase of foreign population, the scale of the industrial zone continued to expand, and the second industrial zone and the third industrial zone were successively established. Today, the former Dangtu County is also to include it.

However, the rapid increase in population and the rapid expansion of industrial areas did not bring much management difficulty to the local area.

Because these people did not rush in all at once, but in batches. Basically, after a batch of factories and dormitories were built, ordinary workers would move in.

At the same time, half of the local people are employees of enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of Industry. These employees are all based on the factory, and they eat, drink and live in the factory. However, the management of the factories of the Ministry of Industry is still very strict.

Even ordinary migrants are mostly employees of private factories and workshops, and the official management of these private factories, workshops and shops is also very strict.

In this way, the Dangtu Industrial Zone did not become chaotic due to the influx of a large number of people in a short period of time.

After all, this place is not a city, but a huge super factory.

So when Luo Zhixue's car arrived at the Dangtu Industrial Zone again, the scene he saw was relatively uniform, without messy tents, simple wooden houses, muddy and chaotic streets, and all kinds of chaotic crowds.

What Luo Zhixue saw was a wide road and factories on both sides of the road!

Especially the Yanjiang Road, which runs through the east and west ends of the entire industrial zone, is more than 20 meters wide. The two sides of the road are low, the middle is high, and there are drainage ditches on both sides of the road.

There are various horse-drawn carriages loaded with goods going between major factories and docks.

However, although the road is spacious, most of the road sections are still paved with dirt and gravel, and only a few sections of the road are paved with cinders.

It is conceivable that this seemingly spacious road will become extremely muddy by tomorrow's spring and summer.

No matter how strong the dirt road is, it can't bear countless heavy-duty carriages running around on it...

Pointing to the road outside, Luo Zhixue said: "We still need to pay attention to this road, but don't wait until the rainy season comes next year to affect the transportation of goods."

After hearing this, Mei Zizhen, the head of the Dangtu Industrial Zone, bowed his head slightly and said, "Your Majesty, our industrial zone has drawn up a rectification plan for the two main roads, Yanjiang Road and Jinjiang Road. Major freight roads are paved with cinders across the board."

After hearing this, Luo Zhixue nodded slightly: "That's very good!"

Then, he turned his head slightly, and said to the secretary of the Imperial Academy beside him: "Remember, using cinders to pave roads is a waste utilization, and it can be promoted appropriately in various places where conditions permit."

The Great Chu Empire used a lot of coal!
The history of using coal in the Huaxia region has been a long time ago. Not to mention the past, let’s talk about the present day. Many of the ordinary ironmaking workshops in the present day also use coal, and the proportion is even very high. Basically, it has reached the point where coal has seven wood and three carbons. .

At the same time, coal is also widely used in the porcelain industry.

At the same time, coal is widely used for heating and cooking among the people.

The use of coal is not obvious in other places, but it is used in several industrial areas under the Great Chu Empire. A large amount of coal from Jiangxi and other places is transported to Daye Industrial Area or Dangtu Industrial Area, and then To smelt iron.

Although the quality of the iron produced directly from coal is not good and the sulfur content is relatively high, the technicians of the Ministry of Industry have extensively absorbed some small skills and experience in some private iron-making workshops, especially the iron used in some private workshops. coke.

They found that the quality of iron smelted from coke is better, and it is easier to make coke, and it is almost enough to burn coal at high temperature directly in a sealed container.

At the same time, they also found that some folk workshops will wash the coal with water before using it, so that a higher temperature can be obtained!

Then, the iron-making personnel at the Ministry of Industry combined many local methods and the industrial processes they created, and finally finalized a complete set of coal-ironmaking processes.

Wash the coal first, that is, wash the coal.

Then the washed clean coal is coked to obtain coke, which is then used to make iron.

In this way, a higher furnace temperature can be obtained and more excellent iron can be produced.

However, limited by the technical level, such as refractory materials and blast volume, etc., the iron and steel factories under the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire are still unable to directly burn pure iron into molten iron...

In order to directly produce pure molten iron, the temperature of the furnace must reach more than 500 degrees, which is almost difficult to surpass in a short period of time for the current technical level of the Great Chu Empire.

So although the ironworks of the Great Chu Empire can produce molten iron, they are all pig iron containing many impurities, which is not the same concept as pure molten iron.

After iron is mixed with elements such as carbon and sulfur, especially carbon, its melting point can be reduced to about [-] degrees, and the molten iron produced in this way is called molten pig iron.

Well, the quality of the pig iron produced in this way is actually very poor, and secondary processing is required, such as traditional steel frying or direct forging, to obtain better steel, that is, low-carbon steel.

Now, it is impossible for the Great Chu Empire to directly produce steel on a large scale.

The many iron and steel factories under the Great Chu Empire were limited by coal supply at the beginning, and they used charcoal to make more iron. However, with the expansion of the territory, some large and small coal mines were controlled and mined, especially in Jiangxi. After the high-quality coal in Pingxiang was discovered and exploited on a large scale, several major iron and steel factories in the Great Chu Empire mainly used coal for ironmaking.

Well, coke making iron is not a technological advancement worthy of praise. Many workshops in the folk, especially those making porcelain, have long used coke as fuel, and the ironmaking industry has also used it more.

It's just that the cost is relatively high, and coal is not available everywhere, so it is only used in some workshops.

The Iron and Steel Department under the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire mainly designed a complete set of industrialized production processes for industrial coal washing, coking, and smelting, and pulled a lot of equipment from the Machinery Department.

To put it simply and accurately, the Iron and Steel Division and the Machinery Division have joined forces to transform the coking coal ironmaking model from a small-scale, high-cost workshop into mass production for low-cost industries...

This is also the reason why the iron production capacity of the Great Chu Empire has soared sharply in recent months, and the cost has further dropped.

If you want to talk about breakthroughs in technological foundations, the half-baked engineers under the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire would probably be enough.

But you let them integrate resources, make them bigger and stronger on the basis of existing technology, and mobilize massive manpower and material resources to build an industrial production line. This has always been the strength of the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire!
This is an empire that increased the production capacity of flintlock guns to more than 2000 pieces per year even if the most primitive rolling tube method was used to make barrels; the production of long-barreled artillery soared to more than [-] pieces per year using the mud film casting method!

So it's hard to say compared to technology, but compared to production capacity, the current Great Chu Empire can blow up any country on the earth!
Why do you say that the production capacity can soar so much?

The reason is also very simple, that is, the money is not bad and there are many people...

(End of this chapter)