Wang Huadu stood in front of a small drying kettle, with a solemn face.

This is a vertical cast iron can with a depth of 1.5 meters and a diameter of about 0.9 meters. It is rough and not beautiful, but it is stronger than sturdy. There are six such cast iron cans. Now three are closely arranged in a heating furnace made of refractory bricks. There is a small steam crane above the can. There is a metal basket under the hook. The basket can hold up to about 750 kilograms of coal to be used to feed into each dry still kettle.

That's right, this is actually a simple version of the coal coking system, which is essentially the same as the large distillation kiln in the Ping'an Township Coking Plant, except that it is smaller in size and cheaper in construction. After all, if it is just to obtain the gas generated by distillation coal, it is far from necessary to design high-end and huge equipment, it is not worth it.

The design of this heating furnace + multiple reactors has actually clearly shown that they are trying to obtain gas, not anything else. In addition, this equipment uses inferior coal produced by Ping An Mining Bureau, so the problem is even more obvious. Now this kind of coal is not used for coking. Ping An Iron and Steel Plant has not used Ping An coal as coking coal for many years except for doing this in the earliest days.

Well, I have to mention that when it comes to this, it is nonsense to say that the coal shortage of China's East Coast Republic is actually a nonsense! Not to mention it, the total coal reserves in the Yazi Lake Basin and northern Uruguay that are currently controlled are more than 10 billion tons. It is amazing to know that the total coal reserves in South Africa are only 48.7 billion tons, but what we are crying is that the defects of these coals are also very obvious, that is, the low-calorie value, high sulfur, high ash, and many impurities are all just bullish and burning the fire. It doesn't work. It makes people helplessly feel that the South American continent is too young and has formed too late, which has caused these coals to not develop completely. Who can blame? It can only blame the earth!

However, these coal resources are concentrated and are very shallow in burial. Many of them are basically open-pit minerals, and the cost of mining is extremely low. Therefore, if these cheap and sufficient coals are used to distillate gas, they are still competent. For example, what Wang Huadu and others are doing at this time is that they are all from the newly established East Coast Gas Company. This time they came to Ping'an Weaving Factory mainly to test gas lamps for them.

As we all know, textile factories have always been one of the most frequent fires. Various candle fires, oil lamps and other bullshit things are almost endless. Therefore, they have an urgent desire to find a relatively safe and economical lighting equipment to replace increasingly inappropriate and relatively expensive candles or oil lamps. Nowadays, gas lamps are one of their choices.

Dongban Gas Company is a state-owned company with a 51% stake in the Ministry of Energy. The remaining shares are sold to the market to raise funds. For example, Wang Huadu, the second generation, is both the company's management and one of the shareholders. This time they spent a lot of money to obtain the patent authorization of gas lamps from the Engineering and Technology Institute, and then quickly invested in trial production. The result was very gratifying. According to Wang Huadu's words, "I spent my 25th birthday in a brightly lit restaurant. The small drying kettle placed in the fireplace supplies gas through a chimney pipe and lit up several gas lamps in the restaurant. The white brightness is far from comparable to whale oil candles. I fell in love with this novelty and determined to continue to promote it. But I think Bai Siwen will definitely not like me doing this. The Guangming Candle Factory of their family may encounter some trouble."

Guangming Candle Factory is really in trouble now! As a large enterprise in the East Coast, Ping An Weaving Factory has always been one of their important customers. It has to purchase large quantities of whale oil candles or ordinary candles almost every month. However, once the gas lamp is fully launched in this textile company, you can imagine how much their losses will be; and once the gas lamp is a novelty such as gas lamps are spread nationwide, then Guangming Candle Factory may be able to consider transformation because their business will definitely plummet.

The gas produced by dry distillation in the six reactors is hand-operated and sent to the drying main pipe through water sealing to a cylindrical vertical air condenser. Then the coal tar flows into a small pit, and the gas is transported to a row of cube cast iron cans with a length of three meters on the side and stored.

It can be seen that this is almost a replica of the coal distillation of the coking plant, but the gas generated by the distillation of the plant is transported to the kitchen, water room, and boiler room through large pipelines. It uses the high temperature of the gas itself to heat the water body, and then is discharged into the atmosphere to disperse, burn, or transport it to the adjacent Ping'an Steel Plant for ironmaking. In this system designed by the East Coast Gas Company for Ping'an Weaving Factory, the gas is collected and of course neither washed nor purified. It is rougher and original and then transported to the various gas lamps at the terminal through pipes of varying thickness to provide lighting.

Wang Hua then turned around in front of several dry stills in the workshop, then got off the heating furnace, and took people to carefully inspect the pipelines that transport gas or air, and worked until the afternoon. He nodded with satisfaction. Since the Chief Wang Da of the Technical Department announced that the inspection was correct, what are the people below waiting for? Quickly ignite the reactor and disintegrate the coal!

At around 7 o'clock in the evening, the weaver factory employees and their families who heard that the factory was going to make a "big news" flocked to the location where gas lamps were installed. Some of them were pounding pine nuts, some were drinking beer, and some were chewing whale jerky. The children were hiking around among the crowds and fighting with each other. They were so happy that the scene was no different from the rural market at one time.

Seeing this scene, Wang Huadu looked dark and looked at him. He could only secretly complain in his heart: Let you show off now, and after a few days you will know the "terrible" of gas lamps. Hehe, now that you are so idle now, everyone will be used to working overtime and night shifts in the future to enjoy gas lamps slowly.

Half an hour later, a section chief named Li from Ping An Weaving Factory also passed through the crowd and rushed to the gas production workshop, intending to see how the novelty of gas lamps works. He did not wait too long. At around 9 o'clock in the evening, with the order of Wang Huadu, the technicians of the East Coast Gas Company opened the main pipeline valve leading to the gas lamp through manual operations, and a large number of combustible gases (carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane, etc.) rushed through the pipeline to the numerous gas lamps installed outside.

"Wow!" Although it was separated by a thick wall and the noise in the workshop was quite large, Duke Wang Hua still clearly heard the amazement from outside. What he wanted was this feeling, what he wanted was the feeling of being amazed, respected, and admired. Duke Wang Hua even felt that he had no sense of accomplishment or satisfaction for more than 20 years, as strong as this moment!

The people attracted by the continuous amazement also began to move towards various places where gas lamps were installed. One by one, the staff of the East Coast Gas Company were taking off the lampshades and lit each gas lamp with open flames. As they moved, each wick had a nozzle-like burner, both single-hole and porous ones, began to burn, and emitted a bright flame. At the same time, the gas generated by the combustion was also transported into the atmosphere through the pipeline.

"It's as bright as day!" Section Chief Li of Ping An Weaving Factory looked at the bright and clean gas lights that illuminated the workshop, and murmured the above sighs. After being heard by Wang Huadu, he added a sense of pride in his heart.

At about 10 o'clock in the evening, a total of 904 gas lamps in the factory covered by this system were successfully lit up, and none of them failed, which made people excited to see it. Soon, Chief Li of Ping An Weaving Factory took the lead in applauding to express his respect for the East Coast Gas Company. Under his guidance, the applause quickly spread to the entire crowd of onlookers. This was the first time in his life that many people saw such a bright and immortal flame, and how this flame illuminated the entire factory and roads. A small part of them could not even believe what they saw and thought it must be a magic trick...

The gas lamps kept on lit up for a long time, and the facts proved that the system of the East Coast Gas Company was reliable at least at present because the gas lamps in the factory were working all night and the brightness did not decrease at all. What was consumed for this was nothing more than some cheap and inferior coal. Not to mention, some of the hard shell-like residues produced in the drying kettle (only a small part of them are coke) can also be used for other purposes. At least this is a very good fuel, whether it is burning a boiler or cooking, it saves money on buying fuel.

Section Chief Li of Ping An Weaving Factory said goodbye with a smile on his face when the sun rose. He was really satisfied with the new thing like gas lamps and made up his mind to give it more words in the report, so that the factory leaders could purchase more such equipment in the future technical transformation, and completely eliminate all kinds of candles, oil lamps and other lighting items that are prone to fire. In this way, the fire insurance premiums paid to the East Coast Insurance Company and the Central Insurance Company in the factory would be much less per year.

Not to mention, in addition to the large investment in the beginning, the gas lamp system does not need to spend much money later. In terms of long-term cost, it is much cheaper than buying candles. In other words, it is a cheap, safe and excellent lighting method. So why not use it? Why not promote it?

Of course, although it is not impossible to promote now, it is still a bit too early. No, because the East Coast Gas Company is currently launching only the first-generation products, and there are still many design defects. For example, the first-generation gas lamp lighting device used by Ping An Weaving Factory lacks the most basic washing and purification procedures. Therefore, after inspecting the East Coast Gas Company's equipment, the Ping An County Government and the Regional Administration finally gave up after inspecting the East Coast Gas Company's equipment. This made Wang Huadu feel very sorry. Therefore, this also prompted their technical department to take action and work with the people from the Engineering and Technology Research Institute to develop the second-generation equipment (of course the patent is shared) to correct the various defects of the first-generation gas lamps and lay a solid foundation for future marketing promotion.

At present, the Engineering and Technology Research Institute has specially dispatched a technical team to the East Coast Gas Company to specialize in the research and development of the second-generation gas lamp complete set of technologies, and has made certain progress. For example, Wang Huadu proposed whether the gas can be washed with lime water to remove impurities such as carbon dioxide to improve the quality of the gas. This suggestion was quickly responded by the technical department. They changed the design and passed the gas out of the dry still kettle into a container filled with wet lime (the container needs to be manually stirred from time to time) for purification, and then condensed in the water under the gas tank through coils, and finally washed with water in a bubble form and entered the gas tank for storage.

This method effectively removes sulfur, carbon dioxide and other impurities in the gas, effectively improving the quality of the gas, and once made the East Coast Gas Company extremely excited. However, people later found that using this method to treat gas would produce a foul-smelling and toxic waste liquid. When the East Coast Gas Company discharged this waste liquid into the river, the angry villagers almost blocked the door because the fish and shrimp in the river were poisoned to death by this waste liquid. The East Coast Gas Company had no choice but to put the waste liquid under the dry still kettle and evaporate and concentrate it, and then transport the remaining waste residue out at night to pour it out, so that the situation was slightly calmed down.

In addition, since the gas contains a certain amount of ammonia, it will greatly corrode the brass accessories in the pipeline and make the gas feel disgusting. For this reason, they are discussing whether a gas extraction machine should be installed on the dry still kettle to remove some carbon deposits inside it and reduce the pressure of the dry still kettle. As for other work such as the use of cheap wooden pipes and the invention of new metrology instruments, it is also steadily moving forward. In general, the progress is still satisfactory. When these tasks are basically completed, it is conceivable that the second-generation gas lamp system will shine brightly, thus making great contributions to the East Coast Gas Company's rapid acquisition of larger market share.
Chapter completed!