The protagonist immediately asked the Ministry of Industry to transport this batch of coal to the iron-making blast furnace. However, this small amount of coal was not enough to make iron once, and some charcoal in stock was needed.
Two days later, the Minister of Industry, the magic worker ant "Xiao Shi", came to report that the quality of the iron produced from coal was very good. After experiments, it was found that it was no worse than that produced from charcoal, and there was no problem with the finished product caused by the small amount of sulfide in the coal that the protagonist was worried about. Crisp question. Moreover, the coal firepower is strong, and the time for tapping molten iron is shorter.
The protagonist is very satisfied. Coal is indeed more convenient to use than charcoal.
You must know that in order to burn the charcoal required for the blast furnace, [Xinyangcheng] and [Yueerlancheng], which have few trees and shrubs, have collected all the nearby branches, and even have to transport wood from other sub-nests long distances to burn charcoal.
The wood has to be dried or dried in the shade, then cut into small sections, fired in the kiln, and then turned off and waited for the temperature to drop before it can be released from the kiln. A set of charcoal burning process takes a week, which is slower than iron smelting and is very time-consuming.
If the trade volume of coal can support the consumption of blast furnaces, then the Angel King Legion does not have to destroy the local vegetation environment, and can greatly increase production without expanding new charcoal kilns and blast furnaces!
However, the trade volume of coal is also a big problem. A blast furnace is continuously fired and cleaned for 4 days, and the furnace is opened about 7 times a month. Calculated as 200 grams of coal is consumed each time, 1,400 grams of coal is consumed in a month, which is 1.4 kilograms. This weight is equivalent to the weight of 5,000 Big-headed ant workers.
The black fire ant family said that there is no problem with their mining volume, and the main bottleneck is transportation.
The Bullet Ant's locust caravan transported less than 100 grams of coal this time. Even if it were calculated as 100 grams, it would have to take 14 flights to meet the fuel needs of a blast furnace for a month. But in fact, considering the distance, weather and other factors, it would be considered good if a caravan of 12 migratory locusts could fly three or four times a month.
In other words, it takes four or five caravans of this size to ensure the normal operation of just one blast furnace, and the two refining bases of the Ant Alliance have far more than one blast furnace.
It would be great if the air transport capacity could be increased, but there are only two migratory caravans of Bullet Ants in total. The Ant Alliance currently does not have abundant air transport capacity, and most of them are beasts like Star Beetles that are not suitable for long-distance transportation. It can meet the needs of crossing the river to colonize the south bank, but it is also beyond the reach of trade with the black fire ant country.
The territory of the Black Fire Ant Kingdom is about a day's flight westward on the south bank of the Qinghe River, and it is impossible to dig a long canal across the Qinghe River.
The protagonist is thinking that maybe he can wait until he has established a foothold on the south bank of the Qinghe River, explore a transportation line along the south bank of the Qinghe River to the territory of the Black Fire Ant Country, and then use beetles with a load much larger than that of the locusts to form a transport team for transportation. coal.
Although the beetle transport team has to travel for more than a week one way, the flying caravan has to fly once a week anyway, and the transportation capacity of the ground transport team can still be several times that of air transport.
Think about it, in the human world, resources like coal can at most be transported by cheap transportation methods such as railways and sea transportation. How can we use planes to transport coal by air? The transportation volume is small and the freight is extremely expensive!
It is a pity that the Ant Alliance does not have advanced and developed water transportation capabilities, otherwise both sides would guard the Qinghe River. This is a natural "highway"!
It’s not like the protagonist has never thought about using a walnut boat as a means of transportation. There are many walnut trees in the Black Forest, so building a walnut boat is not a problem.
But the walnut boat can go east along the current, but it has no power at all when going west upstream. There are no bees pulling fiber now. Even if there is fiber pulling, it is impossible to overcome the resistance and walk for a week.
The water transportation plan is currently limited to the technological level and can only be shelved.
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Coal can only be used as a supplementary fuel for the blast furnace for the time being. The output of the blast furnace is barely enough to meet the current consumption of the United Nations, and increasing output is not a top priority.
The current priority development of the Ant Alliance is to formally implement the "Southern Advance" strategy in accordance with the resolution of the United Nations Conference.
Before the war with the Red Fire Ant Nation, the Ant Alliance Nation was preparing to colonize the south bank of the Qinghe River with ant personnel and supplies. However, the war disrupted the plan and diverted a lot of supplies.
This time, the Ant United States, which has no foreign aggression, can finally concentrate on implementing national policies and strategies.
The new commander of the 2nd Legion responsible for executing the "Southward Advance" strategy is "Rambotu II", which is the name given to him by the protagonist himself. They are the first batch of male ants hatched by the Ant Alliance in the New World. Among them, The outstanding ones were given the honorary name of So-and-So II.
The 2nd Army will be responsible for the first batch to land on the south bank, clear out local forces, and cover the subsequent migration of ant colonies.
The ant warriors climbed on the backs of longhorn beetles, giant dragonflies and migratory locusts. These flying insects were all equipped with saddles on their backs. They could transport about 8 small groups of warriors across the river at a time, and a legion needed to transport them back and forth 7 times.
Fortunately, at the target location on the other side of the river facing [Xinyang City], the original burrowing ant tribe has been eliminated. The leaf-cutter ant tribe that conquered here does not have strong control over this land, and the first batch of warriors who landed here also It is not easy to encounter any fierce resistance.
On July 18, the "Southward Advance" strategy officially began to be implemented!
The flying transport team was loaded with warriors of the God's Envoy King. In a matter of seconds, they had flown across the wide river and landed on the other side of the river.
The protagonist rides "Xiao Hei", and there is a small wave of flying knights Gong Wei beside him, closely watching the river crossing operation from the air.
I saw the warriors of the God Envoy King getting off the backs of the flying beasts one after another, quickly finding their commanders in a well-trained manner, regrouping into small teams, and then each team covered each other and set up a circular formation at the landing site.
The first arriving ant hunting team began to search nearby areas to expand the scope of their investigation.
The flying transport team returned immediately after unloading the soldiers, preparing to transport the second batch of troops.
There were only a few scattered leaf-cutter ants active nearby. After the flying knights discovered them, they guided the hunter ant scouts to rush over and eliminate them. Some leafcutter ant workers hiding in shrubs were also found by hunter ants, which are good at searching in trees.
The leafcutter ants here are not the same species as the leafcutter ants in the leafcutter ant country. They do not have the three pairs of eye-catching spikes on the chest and back, and are one size larger. But the commonality is that they cannot defeat tall ants armed to the teeth. Ant-hunting scythe warrior.
The hunter ants quickly took control of the vicinity of the landing site, and based on the movement direction of several leaf-cutting ants that wanted to escape, they determined that there was a nearby tree nest of a tribe of leaf-cutting ants that the flying knight had not discovered before.
After the entire 2nd Army Corps arrived on the south bank, half of its troops were assigned to sweep the tree nest, and the other troops deployed on the spot.
The flying transport team continued to transport the ant colonies here, and the newly arrived ones were a group of big-headed ant worker ants. They began to look for a suitable location and prepared to build a stronghold.
