Although the modern fishing boats owned by the traversers have absolute advantages in detection capabilities, protection, speed and maneuverability, their firepower is very weak. If instead of three pirate ships, there are thirty pirate ships coming this time, it may be difficult for Yu No. 1 to have a good harvest alone. However, each of the several pirate bosses in the Fujian and Guangdong seas has at least three to four hundred pirate ships. The strength of the ship. As for the entire Bobu Port, the scope of activities and various facilities of the traversers have been far beyond the confines of the Bobu camp. More than 200 traversers and members are scattered in an extremely wide space, almost completely undefended.
To sum it up: not only must the navy's equipment be upgraded, but also the port fortification work of Bobu Port must be put on the agenda as a precaution. The suggestions of the staff include: building forts; mass-manufacturing artillery no less than the level of 1800; producing and storing ammunition; establishing a coastal guard fleet-this fleet will mainly be composed of motor-driven sailing ships to save the overhaul life of fishing boats. There is no ability to overhaul this kind of ship within 5 to 10 years. Even simple maintenance like applying a coat of bottom paint is not possible. It’s not that there’s no material, it’s that it can’t achieve the anti-rust and toxicity effects of modern boat bottom paint.
The task of building cannons was assigned to the mechanical team of the industrial department. This is a stimulant for mechanical geeks. I spent a lot of days making small hardware parts. Even the mechanical crossbow was made of wood. Now we can finally use the cannons, and they are all full of energy. In the workshop of the machinery factory, there is a constant stream of artillery enthusiasts from all walks of life, and they come up with various plans. The basic styles are basically concentrated on three types of artillery: the 12-pound mountain howitzer; the 92 infantry gun that is light and flexible, small and versatile; The mortar that conquers the world. Everyone has added different functions and improvements to these cannons according to their own preferences.
A large amount of steel is needed to make the cannon. Deng Yingzhou has shipped two batches of pig iron ingots and a small amount of wrought iron from Guangzhou, totaling 50 tons, as well as 20 tons of urgently needed coal. It can roughly meet the initial large-scale steelmaking needs.
The converter steelmaking method used by time travellers. In the 21st century, small converter steelmaking is a backward industry that has been explicitly eliminated by the state, but here it is a truly advanced industry. This industry is located in Bobu Port Area.
We chose Bopu because the steel complex in Lingao is an enterprise that needs to import all raw materials, and large quantities of coal and iron ore brought by ships can be used nearby. The current steelmaking workshop is nothing more than a large brick-column shed, with four small converters and an iron furnace lined up on the hardened floor.
Ji Wusheng, the head of the metallurgical department, used to be a steelworker. Although he had never done steelmaking in a small converter, he still understood the principles. After D-Day, he has made several furnaces of steel, proving that steel can be made using charcoal and local pig iron products. The disadvantage is that it is difficult to control the proportion of materials, so the steel produced each time depends entirely on luck. In addition, the energy consumption of the metallurgical department is so large that when steel is being made, the two blowers have to stop all nearby power-consuming departments.
The metallurgical team uses a converter side-blowing method to make iron based on the pig iron composition tested. Using the converter side-blowing method, a certain proportion of wrought iron must be added. The proportion is about 76% pig iron and 24% wrought iron. In addition, a very small amount of sand is required. The function of the sand is to create acidic slag and absorb the phosphorus contained in the pig iron.
After the refractory materials are now produced, the metallurgical team has built an iron melting furnace. This round iron melting furnace is not large, but it is much more complicated than a converter. Because the converter requires that the molten iron coming out of the iron furnace must reach 138o degrees Celsius. This temperature is difficult for ordinary fuels to reach. Before there was a regenerator, the highest temperature that could be achieved artificially was 125°C.
To reach this temperature, the cold blast must be replaced by hot blast. This is the so-called "regenerator". The concept of hot blast was invented by the Englishman Nelson and was applied to the Glasgow Iron Works in 1829.
The technical level of the regenerator used by the metallurgical group is roughly the same as that of the British steel plant in 185o, using a cast iron tubular hot blast furnace. The cold blast flows from the upper branch of the blast pipe main pipe to each heating furnace, and passes through the arched cast iron pipe located above the fire into the pipe on the other side of the heat exchange chamber, and then enters the tuyere of the iron furnace. The entire device is sealed in a thick arched heating furnace built with bricks and refractory materials to preserve and reflect as much heat as possible. After the blast is directly heated, the temperature can rise to 3oo degrees Celsius, which is enough to melt lead. However, this temperature is still not satisfactory to the metallurgical team. Another measure adopted is exhaust gas heating. The exhaust gas of the iron-smelting furnace is led out from the top of the iron-smelting furnace through a ceramic pipe, enters the regenerative furnace from the upper part, and is discharged from the exhaust port at the lower part.
A large amount of gas is produced in an iron smelting furnace using coal or coke. For centuries, this gas has been basically discharged from the top of the furnace. The blazing flames when the gas is burning are very spectacular at night, but it is a serious waste of energy. and polluting the environment, so in 1832, an ironworks in Baden, Germany, first piped gas to a regenerative furnace for heating. Various techniques eventually raised the hot air to over 500 degrees Celsius.
It is possible to make iron or steel without a regenerative furnace, but the production efficiency is completely incomparable. According to British calculations, early regenerative furnaces increased the air supply to more than 300 degrees Celsius, and the production of the same amount of fuel iron increased three times compared with cold blast.
High-temperature hot air will cause damage to the air supply vent of the iron melting furnace and must be protected. The technical level of time travellers is enough to overcome this problem. They easily copied the Scottish air outlet of Condimin from the Scottish Iron Works. This air outlet has a wrought iron coil embedded in a cast iron tapered tube, with two ends protruding from the bottom of the tapered sleeve, one on each side. Water flows in from one end of the extended tube and flows all the way to the narrow end of the air outlet. The water travels around the coil and finally flows out through a tube extending from the opposite side.
With this iron melting furnace, the metallurgical team was able to successfully produce steel in several small-scale steelmaking operations. The next step is to burn coke.
The early traversers used charcoal, but coke is still the most ideal fuel. The significance of coal coking is not only to provide high-quality fuel for the steel industry, but also the various by-products obtained during the coking process are important raw materials in the chemical industry. For this purpose, a complete set of coal coking equipment was shipped. Not only can it make coke, but it can also use its by-products to produce more than 2o important chemical products. Including gasoline, diesel, asphalt, phenol, toluene, crude benzene, sulfuric acid, various solvent oils, lubricants and paraffin. It can be said that once the coal coking complex is put into operation, Chuanzhong's chemical industry level will make a qualitative leap.
However, like all complete equipment, installation is difficult. Although please ask the manufacturer for training in advance and prepare a large number of drawings, installation manuals and special equipment. In the hands of a group of installers who had become monks on the road, progress was still slow. Moreover, this system is a continuous operation type and cannot be started or stopped. One feeding requires hundreds of tons of coal. The current total coal reserves of the Traveler are only 20 tons. Therefore, the metallurgical team could only use simple local methods to make coke.
There are many methods of local coking. The simplest is the open-air method of stacking. 2 to 4 tons of coal are piled on the ground in a semicircular pile with a diameter of 3 to 4 meters at the bottom. The top is covered with straw to start a fire. It can be done in 4 to 5 days. It has become coke, and the coke formation rate is only 5o%. This method was also used in the era of large-scale steelmaking. The waste of resources and environmental pollution caused were extremely serious. Travelers can ignore environmental issues, but coal tar is an important raw material in the chemical industry. Don't waste it casually.
Luo Duo once again found an improved plan from the computer's technological resource library, using the Kailuan round furnace for coking production. Kailuan furnaces are available in three different specifications, with each feeding quantity ranging from 55 tons to 26o tons. The 55-ton furnace has the best cost performance, which is also in line with the current situation of limited coal in the early stages of traversers.
The building materials are also very simple. Except for a few parts that require iron sheets, the basic materials are bricks and refractory bricks. The entire coking process takes about 12 days, and the coking rate is 75%. This furnace can use the gas generated by coking to heat the coking oven, and at the same time, it can recover part of the coal tar. The tar, which is cooled with water and recovered, is collected in clay pots and prepared to be used as chemical raw materials in the future.
Finally, the coke and pig iron were ready. Ji Wusheng summoned the steel-making workers. These travelers who had recently changed their route put on asbestos protective clothing and gloves, as well as special hats and color-changing goggles. He reiterated several key points to people at various operating positions: First, the air volume must be adjusted evenly and cannot be too large or too small. Secondly, when the molten iron is poured into the furnace, it cannot be higher than the tuyere, otherwise the tuyere will be blocked. The last thing is the amount of molten iron poured, which should not pass through one-sixth of the converter cavity each time.
The two blowers began to operate at the same time. One blew the iron furnace, gradually raising the temperature to over 1300 degrees. The pig iron ingots had been completely melted. At this time, Ji Wusheng directed the workers to put in 0.4% baking soda for desulfurization. At the same time, the converter is being preheated. According to requirements, the entire converter must be preheated to 1,000 degrees Celsius to reduce the temperature loss after the molten iron enters.
When the optical thermometer shows that the temperature of the molten iron in the iron furnace has reached 138°C, the molten iron is poured into the converter to start blowing. At this time, the wind pressure of the blower is maintained at o.o.7~o.12 atmospheres, and the molten iron is at The temperature continues to rise driven by high-temperature hot air. Ji Wusheng stared closely at the flames in the furnace. Iron flowers were popping up one after another. The flames were red and yellow, then yellow-white-white, and finally completely white. This shows that the furnace temperature is constantly rising.
The blowing lasted for almost ten minutes. The density of star-shaped carbon flowers continued to increase, and the bright white flame tongues changed from short to long. At this time, the burning of carbon reached its peak.
When Ji Wusheng saw that the flame tongues began to shorten and the carbon flowers became sparse, he knew that the remaining carbon content in the molten iron was beginning to approach the content of steel. He raised and lowered the rocker rod once or twice to see if there were more carbon flowers exploding. When he saw that there was no sudden increase in carbon flowers, he ordered the wind to be turned off.
Then, the workers removed the furnace cover and air duct, started breaking and removing slag, and finally poured it. The molding sand is made of 9o% yellow sand, 5% clay and 5% white mud. After casting, it becomes a steel ingot. As for whether the steel ingot is high carbon, medium carbon or low carbon, Ji Wusheng cannot control it for the time being. Every time a steel ingot is produced, a test must be done to determine what kind of steel it is.
