Chapter 243 Star-shaped blast furnace (please vote and subscribe)

In the following time, the Han tribe successively purchased some golden vines from the Thorn Tribe. This vine is very thin, with a diameter of about five millimeters, but it is extremely tough. The Thorn Tribe brought bundles of dry goods. If you want to make things yourself, you can soak them in water before using them.

There are also brown sugar from the Pearl Tribe, animal tendons from the Bullet Tribe, anesthetic mushrooms from the Mushroom Tribe, and fish skin from the Fork Tribe.

This is not an ordinary fish skin, but a fish skin similar to pearl fish. The front is gray-black and the back is silver-white. After nitrate treatment, it is very soft and has considerable elasticity, but the surface is very rough, with a layer of very small bumps, and the friction is very large, not smooth at all.

The Fork Tribe generally uses this fish skin to polish things and use it as sandpaper, such as to polish the wooden handle of the harpoon, but Luo Chong saw another value of this fish skin, which is to wrap the handle of the weapon, which is non-slip and not easy to slip out of the hand.

Luo Chong bought them all immediately, and kept them for use as materials for mass production of weapons in the future, and listed this fish skin as one of the items that can be traded with the Han tribe for a long time.

In addition, Luo Chong also bought two people from the Wen tribe. These two people are also very skilled. They are the kind of people in the Wen tribe who are good at tattoos. It is said that their status is higher than that of ordinary tribesmen and they are in the middle of the tribe. This is mainly because these two guys are good at painting.

Luo Chong did not intend to trade people at this market, but these two guys were fascinated by the printed ceramics of the Han tribe. They refused to leave and wanted to study these ceramics more

. Luo Chong became interested in these two people, so he asked them to use charcoal to paint on the stone, painting some natural elements such as flowers, birds, fish and insects. Unexpectedly, these two people painted well and looked vivid.

So Luo Chong proposed to buy these two people, and these two people were also willing. After a white salt transaction, these two people naturally became new members of the Han tribe. Luo Chong gave them the name "Wen Hui and Wen Yan". They first followed the pottery production department and were responsible for painting.

In one day, many tribes completed the transaction and left. However, some tribes did not need things from the Han tribe, so they set up stalls and displayed those things to sell to other tribes, or exchanged them for things they needed, or exchanged them for animal skins from tribes with more animal skins, and then traded animal skins with the Han tribe.

This activity lasted for two days. Some tribes left, and some tribes just arrived. The Han tribe closed the stalls every day and put them out again the next day. On the third day, some savages who were running alone came.

They also took a few animal skins, maybe a few, maybe a dozen, and exchanged them for one or two pottery pots, a few porcelain bowls, and the indispensable white salt.

Luo Chong was very surprised. How did they know that the Han tribe sold things here? Later, he asked a savage and found out that they met those big tribes on the way back and forth, and learned about the Han tribe’s market from them, so they thought of exchanging some daily necessities.

This made Luo Chong very happy. It seemed that every time these tribes came to the market, they could influence a large number of people. This was a good thing. The more lively the Han tribe's market was, the better. This would improve the Han tribe's influence.

On the fourth day of the market, this month's market was over. It was originally planned to last for seven days, but they came three days late, so it indirectly reduced the time.

But on the fifth day, the Han tribe did not set up stalls again, but some tribes still came to the door. When they saw that there were no stalls outside, they tried to ask people inside the Han tribe's residence if they could still exchange things.

The news was relayed to Luo Chong, who immediately agreed. He did not expect that the market would become more and more popular in the surrounding areas. Even if they wanted to close the business, people would come to him on their own initiative.

This continued until the middle of the month. Those who came later, as well as many small tribes with less than 100 people within a few days' distance, mostly heard about the Han tribe planting rice and came here specifically to learn and ask for seeds.

Luo Chong also agreed one by one. Now there are still four and a half months before the winter comes. If the land can be reclaimed and the seeds can be planted within a month, another crop of rice can be harvested this autumn, which can be regarded as an important reserve for the winter.

Besides, Luo Chong is using them to reclaim farmland everywhere. Of course, the more land is reclaimed, the better. The Han tribe can still afford this seed. Compared with the short-term investment, the long-term benefits will be greater.

After half a month, the Han tribe has made a lot of refractory bricks, and Luo Chong has also begun to design and build a new metallurgical blast furnace.

As the saying goes, blast furnaces make iron and open-hearth furnaces make steel, but steelmaking requires coke. The Han tribe has not yet discovered coal mines, and no other tribe has traded coal mines, so there is no way to use coke to make steel directly. If you want to make steel, you can only use the ancient method of frying steel or pouring steel, which is an indirect method of obtaining steel.

And because there is no coal, the Han tribe can only use charcoal for metallurgy, but even if the wood is burned into charcoal, the temperature that can be generated is still not enough to melt iron into molten iron, so you can only work on the furnace.

First of all, the shape of the blast furnace must be very high, and the opening on it cannot be too large, so as to preserve heat and increase the temperature in the furnace.

Then there is the blast equipment. When the furnace is larger, more air is naturally needed. If there is not enough air blown into the furnace, it will not only affect the burning of the flame, but also limit the speed of the reduction reaction of the iron element.

In order to take into account both the requirements of blasting and increasing the temperature in the furnace, Luo Chong designed a star-shaped blast furnace that meets the current production conditions of the Han tribe based on the current steelmaking technology.

What is a star-shaped blast furnace? In fact, it is a comprehensive smelting equipment composed of five separate furnaces. It is quite simple and crude. Since the temperature of charcoal is not enough, we can make up for it with quantity. The temperature of one furnace is not enough, right? That's simple. I will use five directly to ensure that the iron is burned into molten iron.

The star-shaped blast furnace sounds simple, but in fact, the layout is quite complicated. Its overall structure is like this. In the middle is a main furnace standing on a high platform. It is very high and large. Then four small auxiliary furnaces are built around the main furnace.

The auxiliary furnace is very low in height and is directly underground. First, a pit is dug in the ground, and then a furnace is built in the pit. The furnace mouth is exposed on the surface, and then it is connected to a heat storage chamber built on the surface. This heat storage chamber is also a large blower. Finally, the other end of the heat storage chamber is connected to the main furnace.

When working, the five furnaces are fired at the same time. Since the auxiliary furnace is at a very low level, the high-temperature air generated by the four auxiliary furnaces will naturally enter the four heat storage chambers on the ground surface by using the principle of hot air rising. Then, through the blast blades of the heat storage chambers, the high-temperature air is blown into the main furnace, achieving the purpose of heating and increasing air at the same time.

(End of this chapter)