I want to be emperor

Chapter 673 The dawn of the high-pressure steam engine
In November of the 21st year of Chengshun, Jinling City.

At this time, Jinling City had also entered winter. Although it hadn't snowed yet, it was still very cold.

Luo Zhixue was wearing a long thick woolen coat and strolled on the grass square outside the front hall. There was no wind today, but the winter sun was shining on his body to make him feel warm.

In winter, Luo Zhixue likes the weather with the sun and no wind, otherwise the weather is too cold, he doesn't like it.

He has always disliked too cold winters. When he was still in Funiu Mountain, the place was in the mountains, and the location was farther north. In winter, the mountains were covered by heavy snow...

He almost froze to death in the first winter just after crossing over.

This was also the reason why Luo Zhixue had never visited the northern provinces in winter since the Great Chu Empire had been established for many years.

He hates cold weather!
Well... In fact, he hasn't been to most of the southern provinces in the past ten years!

Apart from personally leading the army to carry out the Northern Expedition during the Unification War, the number of times Luo Zhixue left Yingtian Mansion for inspections over the years is actually very small, and the occasional few times he went to the surrounding areas. To be precise, he only went to across three provinces.

There are quite a lot of people in Jiangnan Province. I have been to Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Songjiang, and Changzhou, and I have been to Zhenjiang several times.

I have only been to Zhejiang Province once, and that was to inspect Hangzhou Mansion.

I have also been to Anlu Province once, and I went to Fengyang, the capital of Anlu Province, for inspection.

Except for these three provinces, Luo Zhixue had actually never been to any other places!
In other words, although the Great Chu Empire is huge, in fact Luo Zhixue has never seen most of the territory under his rule...

It's not that Luo Zhixue doesn't want to, but reality doesn't allow it.

You have seen the emperor of the ancient feudal dynasty running around the world... There are too many troubles for the emperor to go on tour, and there are tens of thousands of people accompanying him at every turn. At the same time, the governments of various places also need to make various reception arrangements.

It's not a joke to waste people's money.

A tour will cost you a few million Chu Yuan, which is still the starting price...

If you go to some poor places... you can directly toss the local finances to bankruptcy!
In addition to the cost of money and food, it is also very much related to the inconvenient transportation these days. It is okay to walk nearby, but if you want to go to a province that is too far away, it will take a few months or even a year or so. , such a long time is prone to turmoil.

After all, it is impossible for an emperor to leave his ruling center for a long time. If he leaves for too long, unnecessary troubles will easily arise, such as conspiracy and turmoil.

A careerist is a creature, no matter what era or situation it is.

Moreover, human nature is the most untestable thing. Who dares to say that Luo Zhixue is the founding emperor, so no one wants to kill him and start a rebellion?
As a supreme ruler and an emperor, what Luo Zhixue has to do is not to test the humanity of his subjects, but to avoid such a situation that tests the humanity of his subjects.

The best way to avoid betrayal is not to let him have the opportunity to betray, don't even give him the idea.

Otherwise, you can mess around by yourself, teasing ambitious people every day and every day: come quickly, the slave's clothes are all stripped, come quickly... Don't blame others for being lewd and rush at you.

After all, no decent person can stand such a test!
Therefore, Luo Zhixue generally wouldn't run around unless it was necessary.

At most, he just wandered around in Yingtian Mansion. For example, he often went to the Dangtu Industrial Zone. In addition, he often went to many places in Jinling City, such as the Guards barracks on the outskirts of the city, the Royal Institute of Technology in the west of the city, and the army officers. He went to school a lot while waiting.

But now, Luo Zhixue, who was walking on the square, looked at the distant sky and had an idea in his heart. He wanted to visit his own empire, go and see the northern provinces, enjoy the scenery of the Monan prairie, and take a look. Watch the local herdsmen who are good at singing and dancing.

Go to the Western Regions in the west to see the yellow sand all over the sky, and then maybe you can also see the large cotton fields that have been developed and planted in the local area in recent years.

He also wanted to visit the southern provinces, especially the sea in Guangdong, and Thang Long Province, which was newly included in the empire, where there was also the largest anthracite coal mine in the empire.

He also wants to experience the winter in southern cities... Last year, it was snowing in Guangzhou. He was very curious about what a southern coastal city would look like when it snowed!
The snowy city of Guangzhou... This kind of situation will not be seen in later generations.

To make a digression, the Great Chu Empire is now experiencing the Little Ice Age, and the overall temperature is much lower than that of later generations. In the early years, even the Yangtze River had been frozen, and Jinling City was even younger. It snows all year round.

Even the city of Guangzhou occasionally snows heavily.

All kinds of extremely abnormal weather have been emerging in endlessly.

In terms of climate alone, it is actually similar to the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and it is a typical Little Ice Age.

This Little Ice Age will continue until the Xianfeng period of later generations, probably in the early nineteenth century...

However, although the Great Chu Empire is experiencing the Little Ice Age and various extreme climates often occur, it has not posed any actual threat to the Great Chu Empire. In the past 20 years, there have been no large-scale disasters under the Great Chu Empire. There was no famine in the past, and there was no large-scale refugee turmoil.

The common people dare not say that they live and work in peace and contentment, but at least they will not be starved to death on a large scale, and even the poor can barely eat.

Of course, it will be difficult to truly feed the whole people.

Luo Zhixue felt that if the empire continued to maintain the current momentum of development, it would probably be able to solve the problem of food and clothing in another ten or twenty years.

After more than ten or twenty years, the empire must have become a deeply industrialized country, expanding strongly on a global scale. Only in this way can it use its global resources, coupled with a large amount of chemical fertilizers, hybrid rice and other technologies. Progress to completely solve the problem of food and clothing in the empire.

Before that, it was difficult!

The problem of food and clothing for hundreds of millions of people is not so easy to solve!

It is not easy to solve it completely, but it is still possible to solve part of it first, for example, through the development of the Northeast Plain, and then vigorously develop animal husbandry in the north, increase the colonial expansion and immigration settlement in the Nanyang region, etc.

Doing some of these things well can solve the food ration problem for some people.

Luo Zhixue, who was thinking of these things, sighed in his heart.

Although he wanted to go outside to take a look and appreciate the great scenery of the empire, it was impossible under the current technical conditions.

The patrol speed is too slow and the cost is too high.

So Luo Zhixue is looking forward to getting out the train and building the railway network, so that he can really travel around the empire.

See his empire for yourself.

Before that, he could only imagine the empire he ruled through documents, data, and painted portraits.

----

When Luo Zhixue imagined that trains would be opened all over the country, and his passengers would patrol the vast territory of the empire, in the laboratory of Guangzhou Machinery Company, a group of young engineers were surrounding a steam engine.

This steam engine is different from the low-pressure steam engines that are usually seen, and its volume is much smaller.

In recent years, the steam engines produced by the major steam engine manufacturers in the Great Chu Empire are relatively large in size. The boiler plus the cylinder, plus the transmission structure, etc., even the steam engine with the largest number of [-] horsepower is very large. big.

But the steam engine in front of me is relatively small, and its parts are also very compact.

A group of young engineers, several of whom are giving the steam engine its final checks with gloved hands.

After a while, after the inspection, a middle-aged man in the lead said: "Everyone retreats to the observation room to prepare for the start-up test, everyone pay attention to safety!"

As a group of people retreated to the observation room in the distance, only a few operators wearing protective clothing and shielded were left on the scene.

At this time, the middle-aged man said loudly: "The first test of the NO.17 high-voltage prototype begins!"

As the order was issued, immediately the operators began to burn the coal in the boiler in the steam engine.

As the coal is ignited, the temperature of the water in the boiler gradually increases.

At this time, everyone continued to be busy, and one of them was staring at the spring pressure gauge closely, and continued to report.

"The pressure has reached [-] MPa!"

"[-] MPa!"

"[-] MPa!"

"[-] MPa, pay attention, it is almost reaching the design critical point!"

……

After the middle-aged man heard the data, he said, "Steady at [-] MPa, open the valve and conduct an operation test!"

Following the order of the middle-aged man, after everyone operated together, the high-pressure steam, which was three times higher than the steam pressure in the ordinary low-pressure steam engine, began to pass through the valve, then entered the steam pipe, and then entered the most important structure in the steam engine, that is, the cylinder. Inside.

The high-pressure steam drives the piston to reciprocate, which in turn drives the flywheel next to it to start rotating.

"Pay attention to recording power!" The middle-aged man reminded the assistant in time.

The assistant next to him began to continuously record the power output data: "It is currently stable at 35 horsepower!"

After hearing this, the middle-aged man continued: "The expected power has been reached, keep the steam pressure at [-] MPa and continue to operate!"

"Now, let's see how long it lasts!"

The middle-aged man didn't look very happy when he heard the expected power of 35 horsepower... This is not the first time they have tested a high-pressure steam engine.

You know, this prototype is already No. 17... And among the sixteen high-pressure steam engine prototypes before this, the one with the highest output power even reached more than 200 horsepower.

However, there are no eggs...they are all soft-legged shrimps, and various problems will appear after a short period of operation. Bursts and air leaks at the steam pipe connections are the most common, and boilers and cylinders also often have problems!
The most serious one was when the No. [-] prototype was undergoing limit testing. At that time, the high-pressure steam as high as [-] MPa directly caused the steam pipe to burst, and a large amount of high-temperature and high-pressure steam permeated the entire laboratory in an instant.

This test accident resulted in the death of three technicians and the injury of more than ten people.

This is the most serious research and development accident in the history of Guangzhou Machinery Company, causing extremely heavy losses.

However, it is precisely these test accidents again and again that make Guangzhou Machinery Co., Ltd. continue to adopt more stringent safety measures in the research of high-pressure steam engines... and even cooperate with friends to develop rubber materials. Protective clothing was worn to prevent the personnel from being scalded by the high-temperature and high-pressure steam in the event of a steam leak...At least it gave the experimenters a buffer to escape.

At the same time, in order to measure the steam pressure more accurately and avoid inaccurate pressure tests, which would lead to calculation errors and eventually lead to accidents, they also cooperated with Jinling Precision Instrument Company to develop a new spring-type pressure gauge to replace the previous liquid. pressure gauge.

At the same time, the most frequently problematic connection part is also improved by continuously adjusting materials and processes.

Of course, the most important thing is the cylinder!

The most difficult part of a steam engine is the cylinder, especially the cylinder of a high-pressure steam engine.

This ghost thing must be able to withstand high temperature and pressure, well, high temperature is nothing, after all, it is made of steel... The main thing is to withstand high pressure.

At the same time, there is a piston reciprocating in the cylinder, which means that there is movement between the piston and the cylinder... It is necessary to keep the two moving without allowing too much gap between the two to cause air leakage.

This requires a very high machining accuracy of the cylinder.

This huge difficulty is also the main reason why the high-pressure steam engine continues to be difficult to produce.

In order to solve this main technical problem, their Guangzhou Machinery Company even specially improved those processing equipment to process cylinders and pistons with higher precision, and then improved the piston rings for sealing.

In order to overcome a series of technical problems of high-pressure steam engines, Guangzhou Machinery Company has a technical team of more than 100 people working, not only them, in fact, Guangzhou Machinery Company is just a steam engine assembly factory to some extent. .

However, many technical problems of high-pressure steam engines basically involve materials and processing... because Guangzhou Machinery Co., Ltd. still cooperates with various friends and the Steam Engine Research Institute of Royal Institute of Technology.

After all, you can’t develop a high-precision boring machine like Guangzhou Machinery Company, a company that produces steam engines and various daily-use iron products by the way...that’s the business scope of Hantian Machinery Company.

Large high-end machine tools have always been the specialty of Hantian Machinery Company.

As for various materials, it has nothing to do with their Guangzhou Machinery Company, which is the business field of Yitong smelting enterprises.

Therefore, the research and development of high-pressure steam engines by Guangzhou Machinery Company is actually based on the various basic equipment and materials developed by friends, and they are not required to develop materials and processing equipment.

Really let them do it all by themselves... That is basically equivalent to asking them to rebuild an industrial system.

However, even if you stand on the shoulders of a friend to carry out design and development, the research and development of the high-pressure steam engine is not easy... because the technology of the friend is not good.

In this way, under limited technical conditions, it is necessary to make a high-pressure steam engine that is stable and efficient, and the cost is not too high, which is what Guangzhou Machinery Company needs to consider.

-

As the coal continued to burn, bursts of white steam were continuously ejected from the steam engine, and the flywheel continued to rotate.

Soon, two quarters of an hour passed, and everyone was slightly relieved at this time. The middle-aged man said: "We have reached the goal of the first stage, keep going, and hope to reach the goal of the second stage!"

The goal of the second stage is six hours, twelve hours!

This is the second stage goal of their high-pressure steam engine research and development project team, which is to make the high-pressure steam engine run stably for more than twelve hours without failure.

Because the steam engine, whether it is for industrial use or intended to be used on ships, has very high requirements on stability, not to mention continuous operation for ten days and a half months, but it must be able to persist for a day or two at least.

Otherwise, it will lie down after running for a few hours, how can other factories start work?How does the ship sail!
This is why they chose to lower the steam pressure to [-] MPa for testing after trying higher steam pressure before.

When they conducted various extreme tests before, they could even achieve the ultimate steam pressure of [-] MPa, but the problem is that it will not last...

A steam engine that explodes in a few minutes is useless!
Therefore, to reduce the steam pressure, it is necessary to choose a suitable steam pressure range as the standard pressure. After many tests before, they set the predetermined steam pressure of the high-pressure steam engine to [-] MPa.

If it is too high, the material cannot bear it, if it is too low, the pressure is not enough, and the power output is insufficient.

However, among the sixteen prototypes before, none of them could keep running for a long time under the steam pressure of [-] MPa. The longest one lasted for more than an hour, and The test prototype also adopted an unconventional manufacturing method. It was a purely laboratory product, and the cost was too high to continue.

After all, Guangzhou Machinery Company is a steam engine manufacturer. They develop high-pressure steam engines to bring them to the market. It is useless to produce pure laboratory products. What they want is high-pressure steam engines that can be mass-produced and then marketed.

And this NO.17 prototype carries their new hope!
A new cylinder processing method is adopted to further improve the precision of the cylinder and piston, and the strength of the cylinder is also higher. The piston ring made of new materials is also used, and the related design is improved, which makes the sealing better and at the same time , the frictional resistance between the piston and the cylinder is lower.

Even boilers and pipelines have been designed after long-term improvements.

At the same time, it also learned from the previous lessons of serious accidents caused by the burst of steam pipes when the steam pressure exceeded the limit value, and also set up a new safety valve, so that the steam pressure can be actively released after the steam pressure is too high to avoid bad accidents such as explosions.

This series of improvements is based on the previous sixteen test prototypes and more various design schemes that have not even entered the ignition test process.

It is also based on the continuous and rapid development of the basic industries of the Great Chu Empire over the years.

This NO.17 prototype is a child standing on the shoulders of giants!

And this child is running steadily at this time, one hour, two hours, six hours...

At this time, the NO.17 prototype, which has successfully operated for more than six hours, has attracted the attention of the entire project team, which is an achievement they have never achieved.

The most important thing is that the NO.17 prototype is still running stably!

The dawn of the high-pressure steam engine appeared!
(End of this chapter)