Chapter 228 Preparing for Ironmaking (Please vote and subscribe)
The fourth week of the first month of summer, the Han tribe spent it in the continuous explosions. The moat with a length of more than 1,200 meters on all sides has formed a preliminary outline. It only needs to let the slaves slightly expand and repair the river to divert water into the river.
After the first phase of the river blasting was completed, Luo Chong sent Dashu to Babaoshan again to mine limestone, as well as kaolin and anthill soil, to make refractory bricks in preparation for the expansion of the smelting furnace.
The carpentry team led by Mu Tong also used the wood cut from the east bank to make a simple wooden bridge on the east bank of the moat. This bridge is only temporary. After the city wall is built, a special suspension bridge will be made and placed at the city gate. Under the current circumstances, all kinds of building materials and personnel entering and leaving the city must pass through here.
The new metallurgical blast furnace will also be placed in the city as a fixed work address in the future. According to Luo Chong's plan, the metallurgical area and the woodworking area will be placed in the same city, because the metallurgical group currently only needs two or three new blast furnaces to produce the metals needed by the Han tribe, and at most a blacksmith's shed.
But if these facilities alone take up an entire city, it would be too wasteful, so the woodworking group should also be placed in this city.
At the same time, in the grassland area north of the Han tribe, You Fu discussed with his fellow tribesmen and selected the valley where Luo Chong led people to ambush the giant ape as the encirclement. The terrain there is very suitable. There is a narrow strip of land at the mouth of the valley. As long as it is blocked in advance and the horses are driven in, they can catch them all in one fell swoop as the leader said.
So You Fu began to lead people to build a fence there. They had to cut down some small trees from the surrounding area to make a simple and strong barrier to ensure that the huge herd of horses could be stopped.
This matter cannot be completed in one or two days. It requires a period of preparation. Therefore, the large number of livestock that Luo Chong expected could not be brought back so quickly.
However, although Youfu did not harvest anything, Dali and Xuetu had already sent people to send back the first ship of magnetite.
Moreover, according to the tribesmen who escorted the iron ore back, it only takes half a day to transport the iron ore from the iron ore to the Han tribe when it is fully loaded. And this is in the case of no power, just relying on drifting and a few small manual oars.
In this way, if the transportation is not stopped, it can basically send back two ships of iron ore in three days, and each ship can transport about 15 tons. According to the iron content of magnetite of 72%, one ship alone can produce 10 tons of pig iron. Now we just need to build a blast furnace quickly, and the metal shortage in the Han tribe will be alleviated immediately.
However, iron smelting is not an easy task. The ore cannot be smelted directly into the furnace. It must also be pre-treated.
The main component of magnetite is ferroferric oxide, that is, iron oxide. The process of turning iron oxide into iron is a reduction reaction. A lot of carbon needs to be added in this process. If there is coal, it is the best. If not, charcoal can only be used.
Carbon will not only burn and provide the temperature required for iron to melt, but also merge with the oxygen molecules of iron oxide during the reaction to form carbon dioxide and release it. In this way, after the oxygen molecules of iron oxide are taken away by carbon, they become pure iron.
In addition, a large amount of limestone must be added in this process to serve as a catalyst for the reduction reaction. It can also play a role in slag formation, accelerating the separation of iron and impurities so that they are no longer connected.
Except for carbon, which can be added separately, the other two things used to assist the reaction must be ground into powder or small slag first, mixed with iron ore powder into mud, and then made into small balls or small square bricks before they can be thrown into the furnace and smelted with charcoal.
Therefore, a new process was created, grinding the ore into slag. For this purpose, Luo Chong specially opened up a place in the hemp field north of the water diversion river to build the first hydraulic facility of the Han tribe, the hydraulic stone mill and hydraulic stone mortar.
Luo Chong specially sent Du'er to the Xishan Salt Mine to collect the stone for the millstone and mortar. When the salt mine cave was blasted, there were many collapsed large stones. Those stones could be brought back to make the millstone. The ready-made things could be regarded as waste utilization.
Du'er also took a team of people, pulling a cart and taking slaves to Xishan to collect stones, but it was another problem to get the stones back and chisel them into millstones. It was still the same old problem before, there was no iron chisel and hammer.
This would be troublesome. Without a millstone, there would be no way to grind ore and smelt iron, and without an iron chisel, there would be no way to carve the millstone. This seemed to be trapped in a dead circle.
But there are always more solutions than difficulties. As long as you are willing to use your brain, you will definitely be able to come up with a solution. Luo Chong thought for a long time, and then carefully sorted out the resources he had. He soon discovered that the Han tribe had iron powder that could be used to smelt iron, which was the dozens of kilograms of iron oxide crystals obtained when preparing sulfuric acid before.
That is not an ore, but it is the purest iron powder. What is iron oxide crystal? To put it bluntly, it is a pile of red powdered rust. This thing actually has other uses. It can be used as a dye. Whether it is porcelain or cloth, iron oxide can be used to color it. There is also glass. If iron oxide is added to the glass, it can burn out that kind of brown glass, such as the color of the bottle of oral liquid.
But Luo Chong is in urgent need of iron now, so forget about dyes. Anyway, it is not needed for the time being.
Because it is not a large-scale blast furnace ironmaking, only the most primitive and basic ironmaking method can be used to create the first ironware of the Han tribe, that is, the block refining method.
The block refining method does not require the use of coal, but can be operated with charcoal. However, because the temperature of charcoal is not enough to melt the iron, the iron is in a solid state during the entire ironmaking process. The iron that is finally smelted is a block like a sponge, so this method is called the block refining method.
Because the smelted iron block has not melted into liquid, it cannot be cast into utensils. It can only be discharged through continuous folding and forging to remove the impurities inside and finally make it into the shape you want.
Having made up his mind to smelt iron, Luo Chong quickly called Dazui over and began to prepare a special iron-smelting furnace.
The production of the new furnace is no different from the previous one. The material used is still ordinary clay. Some grass clippings are mixed in to prevent cracking, and then the furnace can be built.
Under the guidance of Luo Chong, Dazui began to make this new furnace, a cylindrical earthen furnace with an inner diameter of about half a meter. Dazui built it very carefully, while Luo Chong urged Dazui's progress.
"This furnace does not need to be built so well, just build it quickly." Luo Chong said to Dazui.
"Why, Chief, didn't you say that iron is more difficult to smelt? Then I have to make the furnace better?" Dazui asked puzzled.
"No, no, this furnace is a one-time one. If you use this kind of mud furnace to smelt iron, it will collapse after one use. There is no need to make it so carefully."
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
