cosmic hegemony

Chapter 184, Moon Mining

"Oh!"

As far away as Tanegashima Space Center in the foot basin of the earth, Ichiro Yagyu had dropped several pieces of his beloved antique porcelain in a row, but at this moment, the anger in his heart became more and more intense.

He has already chosen Yunhai as the location of his lunar base, and Yunhai has long been regarded as his own possession, but now Li Fu's Fuyun Group has taken the lead, and the entire lunar plan has been completely destroyed. All subsequent related plans have to be adjusted, and another area must be selected to build its own moon base.

"Liusheng-kun, the atmosphere has no effect now. What we have to do now is to readjust the plan and build a moon base on the moon first. Otherwise, there will be fewer and fewer good places on the moon's surface. I heard that Sam Uncle is also planning to build another lunar sub-base in the near future."

The town guard Yuta on the side is very sensible. He knows that now is not the time for the atmosphere. With the powerful strength of the Fuyun Group in space, coupled with the help of the Chinese government, it is very simple and easy to build a base on the moon. There is no need for detailed planning like myself, and it takes a long time.

I didn’t receive any news beforehand. I didn’t expect Fuyun Group to build a lunar base on the moon on a sudden whim, and it just happened to choose Yunhai here, occupying the place that the foot pot chicken had taken a fancy to in advance. .

"call!"

"Xiang Shoujun is right. Now is not the time to be angry. Our lunar base plan must be implemented as soon as possible. If we don't hurry up, there will really be no place for us on the front of the moon."

"Xiang Shoujun, please, please modify the plan as soon as possible, and then implement it."

Yagyu Ichiro let out a heavy breath, then nodded slowly.

"Hey, the other problems are not too big. The key now is that for our aerospace plane, the astronauts of Fuyun Group say they have to take a day off every time they go to space. As far as I know, Fuyun Group's aerospace When the space shuttles are most frequent, they can perform hundreds of missions to and from space a day, and if we want to implement the moon base plan as soon as possible, we must get rid of them."

Goshou Yuta frowned, now the foot pot chicken is like a wind-up machine in all aspects, and everything is done in a hurry, but at the last link of going to space, the astronauts sent by the Fuyun Group Every time I procrastinate, I always find various reasons to procrastinate, and there is no way to do it in a hurry.

"Tell Nishimura Jiro that no matter what method you use, be it money or beauties, you have to deal with them. Once every two days is too little, not to mention hundreds of times a day. Now you are treating them like uncles, how many times a day they go to and from space Not too many times."

Speaking of this, Yagyu Ichiro was furious again. The aerospace plane he bought back at a huge price didn’t feel like he had much to do with him. Everything had to be approved by the astronauts and security personnel sent by the Fuyun Group. Only then can it be executed, and all kinds of things that delay time will appear.

"Hey!"

……

On the moon, which is more than 30 kilometers away, there are more than ten large "Hercules" aerospace planes transporting a large amount of materials to the lunar cloud base every day. The scale of the cloud base is getting bigger and bigger every day. Living areas, scientific research areas, factory areas, agricultural areas, airport areas, etc., are rapidly formed one by one.

At this time, here in the factory area of ​​Yunhai Base, Cao Haitao, the person in charge of Yunhai Base, is directing the staff of the base to carry out moon mining.

A very large lunar engineering vehicle. This lunar engineering vehicle is more than ten meters high. On the whole, it is an enlarged version of a large excavator with a huge digging claw, which is specially used to dig rocks and soil on the moon. wait.

Inside the lunar engineering vehicle, Cao Haitao, wearing a spacesuit, connected to the virtual machine to direct, and Han Dafei, a huge lunar mining worker, was driving the engineering vehicle out with concentration.

"Everyone keep up, this is the first time we mine on the moon, and strive to dig out the first pot of gold smoothly."

Following Cao Haitao's command, more than a dozen large lunar transport vehicles followed behind. More than a dozen vehicles drove on the desolate lunar surface. Their destination was a mining area only 5 kilometers away from the base.

The most valuable minerals on the moon are rare earth mines. Cao Haitao’s goal is the same. In fact, there are lunar basalts rich in rare earth mines everywhere on the moon. Cao Haitao’s target here is a large mountain range with a height of more than 200 meters. The entire mountain range is made of basalt, and the rare earth contained in it is amazing, and it is also a rare high-quality rare earth mine among rare earth mines, with extremely high value.

"Brother Tao, you are a great scientist, can you tell us what is going on with this rare earth? How is it mined from rocks and soil?"

While walking and chatting along the way, Han Dafei couldn't help asking Cao Haitao, Han Dafei is a college student who just graduated last year, but he studied a major that has nothing to do with mining.

"Rare earth is the general term for seventeen metal elements including lanthanides, scandium and yttrium in the chemical periodic table. There are currently 250 kinds of rare earth ores in nature. The Finnish chemist Gadolin first discovered rare earths. The first rare earth 'element' - yttrium - was isolated from the heavy ore shaped like asphalt, because few rare earth minerals were discovered in the 1794th century, and only a small amount of water-insoluble oxides could be prepared by chemical methods at that time. Call this oxide 'earth', hence the name rare earth."

"Rare earth mining methods can be generally divided into three categories, namely acid method, alkali method and chlorination decomposition method. Acid method decomposition is divided into hydrochloric acid decomposition, sulfuric acid decomposition and hydrofluoric acid decomposition methods, etc.; Divided into sodium hydroxide decomposition or sodium hydroxide melting or soda roasting method, etc..."

"In fact, the value of rare earth itself is already quite high, and the value of a single high-purity rare earth element is thousands of times, or even tens of thousands of times higher. Although China exported a lot of rare earths in the past, they were only primary products, and the price was very high. Instead, they have to buy high-purity rare earths from countries such as Europe and the United States, and the shearing of sheep does not know how miserable it is.”

"Brother Tao, can't we extract high-purity single rare earth elements ourselves?"

"It is relatively complicated and difficult to separate and extract a single pure rare earth element from the mixed rare earth compound obtained after the decomposition of rare earth concentrate. There are two main reasons for this. One is the physical interaction between lanthanide elements. The properties and chemical properties are very similar. The radius of most rare earth ions is between two adjacent elements, very similar, and they are all stable trivalent states in aqueous solution. Rare earth ions have a high affinity with water, and because they are protected by hydrates, their chemical The properties are very similar, and it is extremely difficult to separate and purify."

"Second, the mixed rare earth compounds obtained after the decomposition of rare earth concentrates contain more impurity elements (such as uranium, thorium, niobium, tantalum, titanium, zirconium, iron, calcium, silicon, fluorine, phosphorus, etc.). Therefore, in In the process of separating rare earth elements, not only the separation between these dozens of rare earth elements with extremely similar chemical properties must be considered, but also the separation between rare earth elements and accompanying impurity elements must be considered.”

"Then does our company have the purification technology now? Brother Tao, we can't keep letting Europeans and Americans cut our wool with scissors."

"I must have mastered it. Now it's their turn to shear their wool. Didn't you see that we all sell one of the aerospace planes for trillions?"

Cao Haitao also readily agreed to come down. Anyway, the road is boring, and chatting with each other can quickly pass the time. Along the way, everyone started to popularize rare earth mines. Chatting, chatting, and soon came to the mine area here.

"Brothers, work has started!"

Han Dafei let out a roar through the intercom, and drove the machine to dig over the hills of the moon with its huge claws. The basalts on the moon were shattered one after another. He grabbed a large handful of basalts, and then turned around and packed the basalts, soil, etc. On top of the engineering vehicle following behind.

It took less than 30 minutes for more than a dozen construction vehicles to be fully loaded, but the hill in front of me didn't seem to have changed at all, and the loss of quality was nothing to it.

Ten minutes later, everyone drove the lunar engineering vehicle back to the lunar base, and the lunar vehicles dumped all the basalt and soil on it into the smelting line.

With the rotation of the rotating belt, the mined basalt first enters the crushing workshop, where pieces of basalt are crushed into powder, and then enters the smelting furnace to start the separation of rare earth elements.

The rare earth ores Cao Haitao chose here are dysprosium and terbium rare earth ores with relatively high value among rare earths. The value of these two rare earth ores has always been relatively high, especially the rare earth ores with high purity and high fineness.

A few hours later, Cao Haitao, Han Dafei and the others all looked at the separation furnace eagerly. There were dozens of tons, hundreds of tons of rocks, soil, etc. in front of them, but there were few rare earth ores smelted in the end. The poor, only less than a few kilograms.

"Brother Tao? Is this silver-white rare earth?"

"Well, this is rare earth."

"Why is there only a little bit? We got hundreds of tons of basalt in, and only a little bit of it came out. Our boss will lose money and go to grandma's house."

"Why did it come out? Do you know how much this is worth? It's worth hundreds of millions. I didn't expect the rare earth mines on the moon to be so rich. How can so many rare earths be extracted from basalt rocks?" come out."

Cao Haitao looked at the final product, touched his chin, and was shocked by the abundance of rare earth minerals on the moon. You must know that the final products are high-purity rare earth elements, which are very valuable.

PS: Ask for tickets, all kinds of requests!

　I wonder if you have seen rare earths?I grew up playing with rare earths when I was a child. The mountains near my hometown contain rare earths. All kinds of random exploitation and mining, the local people did not make any money, but the green mountains and green waters were completely destroyed. Alas!With a long sigh, this is something Lao Niu has seen with his own eyes since he was a child.People in the village sold their mountains to outsiders for mining, but they themselves went out to work. It is really heartbreaking to guard the gold and silver mountains and become poor all their lives!There are too many such cases in our China.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)