Ambition of Steel 1

Translator: Cinder Translations

...

Although the year was nearing its end, Paul Grayman had no intention of idling.

After numerous discussions with the Council of State, he finally decided to make a push into the "heavy industry" sector.

He must make a big profit before the kingdom's civil war situation becomes clear. In the spring of next year, the kingdom's army will head south to quell the rebellion. He must quickly secure this potential major client. May the Lord bless them with a prolonged conflict.

Papermaking, canned food, ceramics were just small means to address the lack of funds initially. It cannot be denied that inventions like papermaking have significant historical significance, but for a long time, the most important indicator of a country's hard power is its steel output.

Even in the era before the current era of information (from his previous life), steel output is an important reference for overall national strength.

Of course, the key is to first increase iron output. The foundation is needed to increase steel output.

Before embarking on the "Ambition of Steel" Paul had to investigate the world's smelting technology. After discussing with the iron master teacher Hermann, Paul gained a more intuitive understanding of the current smelting technology combined with some knowledge from his previous life.

Although Hermann and other blacksmiths were skilled in making iron tools, they were also very familiar with iron smelting.

The current iron smelting technology used by countries is generally a block iron smelting technology with the following specific process: First, build an iron smelting furnace and then stuff it with iron ore and charcoal. After lighting it, the iron ore (iron oxide) is heated in an oxygen-deficient environment, producing a large amount of hot carbon monoxide, removing oxygen from the iron ore, and leaving behind reduced solid sponge iron.

The difficulty lies in the fact that solid sponge iron cannot be taken out through the furnace, so the furnace must be dismantled after each iron smelting is completed.

Moreover, the extracted solid sponge iron is only a soft and loose sponge iron because it has not been melted, and contains all the impurities in the iron ore. Therefore, it must be refined through repeated forging to remove pores and impurities before it can become usable metal material - iron ingots.

This process is quite troublesome, Paul sighed, it seems that just by expanding the production scale is impossible to achieve the expected output, but his territory is relatively short of manpower, he must upgrade the current iron-making technology.

He planned to use the blast furnace to smelt iron, but after carefully combing through the relevant technological tree, he discovered that this thing is not something that can be easily produced.

First of all, the issue is fuel, the current iron-making fuel mainly wood charcoal, but once large-scale production began, the use of wood charcoal would be a bit wasteful and costly.

Cutting down trees for wood charcoal production is something that Paul does not want to see. Not to mention the problem of environmental protection - now is not the time to talk about this. Wood is also a critical production material for many other industries.

Someone once tried to use coal - this fuel is currently only used in a few places - as a substitute for wood charcoal, but the sulfur content in coal blocks would make the resulting pig iron brittle, making it impossible to forge and form. This iron is called sulfur iron, and it is weak, so it is not used.

The only fuel that can replace wood charcoal and is cheap and abundant is coke - coal that has been desulfurized and contains a high carbon content, which is a type of pure carbon. While it still contains about 0.1% to 1% sulfur, it can be used for ironmaking.

This means he must first build facilities for producing coke, and to produce coke, he must increase coal mining, even though the item has not been widely adopted across the world. Fortunately, this is the time for the northwest bay to finally take the lead in the world, and the use of coal for fuel has become popular.

But even if the fuel problem is resolved, the problem of insufficient wind is also faced. Traditional wooden windmills and leather windmills can't provide the wind power required for burning coke, and because coke has smaller gaps, it is necessary to use higher wind speeds. Relying on the existing windmill and manpower and livestock, it is impossible to produce qualified and durable wind speeds

Therefore, it is necessary to create a piston bellows for the blast furnace, and at the current stage, the power can be driven by water wheels, so that coke iron smelting can be reluctantly used. Even so, it can only meet the needs of small-scale blast furnaces. For large blast furnaces, the wind generated by this method is still insufficient. To meet the wind power requirements of large blast furnaces, we can only wait until the invention of the steam engine, which is a distant matter.

For now, we can only use small blast furnaces for iron smelting, taking it step by step.

As for more efficient bellows and matching hydraulic transmission systems, that will be left to the group of mechanical engineers recruited from the capital. Starting with simpler methods, Paul already has a preliminary plan.

...

In a coal mine near Alden's territory, a coke oven was built within a few days.

Coal dug from the mine was directly transported here, waiting to be turned into coke.

This was an open-air coke oven. First, a pit more than one meter deep and about eight meters in diameter was dug manually on the ground. The surrounding area was built up with stones or soil to a height adding up to about 2.5 meters.

Dozens of workers busied themselves around this coke oven.

First, they constructed two layers of flues. The first layer of flue was built with lump coal in the center of the kiln, surrounded by coal. This coal was pulverized coal. When filled to a certain height, the coal was stamped flat and solid, and then the second layer of flue was built. This layer of flue was more complicated than the first layer, with a central core surrounded by irregular stones, forming 16 or 18 flat flues, each flue connected to the center.

TL Note: A flue is a duct, pipe, or opening in a chimney for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, furnace, water heater, boiler, or generator to the outdoors. Historically the term flue meant the chimney itself. ~Wikipedia

Then coal was added a second time, covering all the flues with pulverized coal, up to half a meter thick. Then they started the fire, igniting easily flammable wood chips and throwing them into the center flue down to the bottom flue. The coal blocks burned, and the pulverized coal burned. When the fire reached the center flue of the second layer, wood chips were added to aid combustion.

Next was the third addition of coal, still pulverized coal, with a thickness reaching 0.83 meters. During combustion, the central flue collapsed, flames spewed out from the small flue to the outside, burning more vigorously. The flames would emerge from the center to the outside.

When the fire reached this stage, the workers were busy, running around to surround the kiln with stones or broken bricks. When the flames emerged from the bricks, and blue smoke appeared, it indicated that the coke was ready. Then, they immediately plugged the opening, others were busy spreading sand and covering it with soil. After covering it with sand, everyone was busy spraying water.

After cooling, the coking process was complete.

Paul temporarily used a relatively primitive and simple method to produce coke. It wouldn't be too late to improve the process when he could use it to refine his iron.

According to actual tests, this current coke oven could produce two ovens a day, yielding one and a half tons of coke per day.

Of course, when formal iron smelting with blast furnaces begins in the future, more coke ovens will definitely need to be built, or directly use new production processes.

(End of the Chapter)