Dangtu Industrial Zone was a deserted area a year and a half ago, with only scattered villages and a few scattered iron-making workshops.
But since the Chu army marched eastward and occupied Dangtu County and other surrounding areas last year, things have changed rapidly here.
First, a group of prospectors came, and then a large number of workers, technicians, and equipment were gradually gathered from Daye and other places, and then transferred to Dangtu County for large-scale mining of local iron ore.
The Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire established the Dangtu Mining Bureau based on the iron mines in the Ma'anshan area of Dangtu County to organize the mining of local iron ore.
Immediately afterwards, the Dangtu Iron Works was established to use local iron ore to refine steel on site.
With the establishment of Dangtu Iron Works, more people and equipment continued to gather towards Dangtu.
Soon the Ministry of Industry approved the establishment of more than ten enterprises such as Dangtu Machinery Factory and Dangtu Arsenal.
And established Dangtu Industrial Zone.
In the past year, more than 80,000 people have poured into the huge Dangtu Industrial Zone from all directions in a short period of time.
In fact, at the beginning, there were not so many people in the local area. Some were just workers transferred from other places or hired nearby by the Ministry of Industry.
Some of them are ordinary workers responsible for land leveling, factory construction and other infrastructure construction in the industrial zone. There are also many managers and skilled workers transferred from other places by the Ministry of Industry. There are also many ordinary workers recruited. Well, many of them The workers used to be ordinary laborers carrying out infrastructure construction in Dangtu Industrial Zone.
In fact, these people were not many in the beginning, ranging from a few thousand to one or two million, and finally to about forty or fifty thousand.
These more than 50,000 people are officials or employees in various enterprises under the Ministry of Industry.
But these more than 50,000 people indirectly led to the influx of more people.
In the beginning, it was ordinary businessmen who came smelling money.
After all, a brand new industrial city is rising here, which requires the use of almost a huge amount of various building materials, whether it is wood, stone, even sand, bricks, etc., they all need it, although a lot of these building materials are industrial It is supplied by other companies under the ministry, but it still purchases from outside. Many businessmen engaged in the basic building materials business came here after hearing the news.
They not only transport building materials, but also set up factories in Dangtu Industrial Zone to process building materials.
At the same time, the service industry created around the large population also stimulates many businessmen to come and make money.
With so many people eating, drinking and sleeping, every industry here is brewing huge business opportunities.
The various small factories and workshops set up by these businessmen in the local area also needed employees, so tens of thousands of people came in in a short period of time.
Finally, the industrial population surrounding the numerous state-owned and private enterprises mentioned above has stimulated more ordinary people and small businessmen to come here to look for jobs and various opportunities to make a fortune.
Finally, by December of the fourth year of Chengshun, Dangtu Industrial Zone had turned into a complex with multiple very large factories, more than a dozen medium-sized factories and hundreds of small factories, with more than 70,000 employees of various types. huge industrial area.
That's not all!
Surrounding the more than 100 various factories in the industrial zone, there are many employees in the service industry, people supplying people's livelihood, and some family members.
As a result, the population of the entire industrial zone directly exceeded 100,000.
Due to the rapid increase in various industries and messy workshops and shops, as well as the rapid increase in the immigrant population, the scale of the industrial zone continues to expand. The second industrial zone and the third industrial zone have been successively established. Now the former Dangtu County is also Included.
However, the rapid increase in population and the rapid expansion of industrial zones have not brought much management difficulties to the local area.
Because these people did not all come in at once, but in batches. Basically, after a batch of factories and dormitories were built, ordinary workers would move in.
At the same time, half of the local people are employees of enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of Industry. These employees are based in factories, and they eat, drink and live in the factory. The management of the factories of the Ministry of Industry is still very strict.
Even the ordinary migrant population is mostly employees of various private factories and workshops. The official management of these private factories, workshops and shops is also very strict.
In this way, Dangtu Industrial Zone did not become chaotic due to the influx of a large number of people in a short period of time.
After all, this place is not a city, but a huge super factory.
So when Luo Zhixue's car arrived at Dangtu Industrial Zone again, the scene he saw was relatively uniform. There were no messy tents, simple wooden houses, muddy and chaotic streets, and various chaotic crowds.
What Luo Zhixue saw was a wide road and factories on both sides of the road!
In particular, the road along the river that runs through the east and west ends of the entire industrial zone is more than 20 meters wide. The road is low on both sides and high in the middle. There are drainage channels on both sides of the road.
There are various carriages loaded with goods traveling between major factories and docks.
However, although the road is spacious, most of the road is paved with dirt, gravel, and only a few sections are paved with cinder.
It is conceivable that by tomorrow's spring and summer, this seemingly spacious road will become extremely muddy.
No matter how solid the dirt road is, it cannot withstand countless heavily loaded carriages running up and down...
Pointing to the road outside, Luo Zhixue said: "We still need to pay attention to this road. Don't wait until the rainy season next year to affect the transportation of goods."
After hearing this, Mei Zizhen, the district chief of Dangtu Industrial Zone on the side, lowered his head slightly and said: "Your Majesty, our industrial zone has drawn up a rectification plan for the two main roads, Yanjiang Road and Jinjiang Road, and is preparing to improve the two main roads. The main freight roads were cinder-paved all along.”
After hearing this, Luo Zhixue nodded slightly: "That's very good!"
Then, he turned his head slightly and said to the secretary of the Hanlin Academy on the side: "Remember, using cinders to pave roads is a waste utilization, and it can be promoted appropriately where conditions permit."
The Dachu Empire used a lot of coal!
The use of coal in China has a long history. Let’s not talk about the past, let’s talk about contemporary times. In ordinary iron-making workshops in modern times, many of them also use coal, and even the proportion is very high. Basically, it has reached the point where coal has seven wood and three carbon. .
At the same time, coal is also widely used in the porcelain industry.
At the same time, coal is also widely used among the people for heating and cooking.
The use of coal is not obvious in other places, but it is used in several industrial zones under the Dachu Empire. A large amount of coal from Jiangxi and other places is transported to Daye Industrial Zone or Dangtu Industrial Zone, and then Carry out iron smelting.
Although the quality of iron produced directly from coal is not very good and the sulfur content is relatively high, the technical staff of the Ministry of Industry have widely absorbed some tips and experiences from some private iron-making workshops, especially the iron used in some private workshops. coke.
They found that the quality of the iron produced by using coke was better, and it was easier to make coke. It was almost enough to directly burn coal at high temperature in a sealed container.
At the same time, they also discovered that some private workshops would flush the coal with water before using it, so that a higher temperature could be obtained!
Then, a group of iron-making staff from the Ministry of Industry combined many local methods with their own industrial processes and finally finalized a complete set of coal-based iron-making processes.
The coal is first flushed, that is, washed.
The washed clean coal is then coked, and after the coke is obtained, the coke is used to make iron.
In this way, you can get a higher furnace temperature and produce better iron.
However, due to technical limitations, such as refractory materials and air blast volume, etc., the steel plants affiliated to the Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire are still unable to directly burn pure iron into molten iron...
In order to directly produce pure molten iron, the furnace temperature must reach more than 1,500 degrees, which is almost difficult to overcome in a short time for the current technical level of the Da Chu Empire.
Therefore, although the iron smelting plants of the Dachu Empire can now produce molten iron, it is pig iron containing many magazines and is not the same concept as pure molten iron.
After iron is incorporated into carbon, sulfur and other elements, especially carbon, its melting point can be reduced to about 1,100 degrees, and the molten iron produced in this way is molten pig iron.
Well, the quality of the pig iron produced in this way is actually very poor, and it requires subsequent secondary processing, such as traditional steel frying or direct forging, to obtain more usable steel, that is, low carbon steel.
Now, it is impossible for the Chu Empire to directly cultivate steel on a large scale.
The many steel plants affiliated to the Da Chu Empire were initially limited by coal supply and mostly used charcoal to make iron. However, as the territory expanded, some large and small coal mines were controlled and exploited, especially in Jiangxi. After the high-quality coal in Pingxiang was discovered and mined on a large scale, several major steel plants in the Chu Empire mainly used coal for iron-making.
Well, coke ironmaking is not a technological advancement that deserves too much praise. Many private workshops, especially those that make porcelain, have long used coke as fuel, and the ironmaking industry also uses it quite a lot.
It's just that the cost is relatively high and coal is not available everywhere, so it is only used in some workshops.
The Steel Department under the Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire mainly designed a complete set of industrial production processes for coal washing, coking, and smelting, and also led the Machinery Department to build a lot of equipment.
To put it simply and accurately, the Steel Department and the Machinery Department joined forces to transform the coking coal-based ironmaking model from a small-scale, high-cost workshop model to a low-cost industrial mass production...
This is also the reason why the Dachu Empire's iron production capacity has surged significantly in recent months, and costs have further dropped.
If you want to make any breakthroughs in the technical foundation, the half-baked engineers under the Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire will probably be enough.
But you ask them to integrate resources, make them bigger and stronger based on existing technology, and mobilize massive manpower and material resources to build an industrial production line. This has always been the strength of the Industrial Department of the Dachu Empire!
This is an empire that even uses the most primitive rolling method to make gun barrels, increasing the production capacity of flintlock guns to more than 100,000 pieces per year; using the mud film casting method, the production capacity of long-barreled artillery has soared to more than 2,000 pieces per year. !
So it’s hard to say when comparing technology, but when comparing production capacity, the current Da Chu Empire can completely overwhelm any country on the planet!
Why do you think the production capacity can be increased so much?
The reason is also very simple, there is no shortage of money and there are many people...
