Shi Yiwen didn't know whether others could make such bricks, but a refractory brick that was not very conspicuous made him realize that industry was never that simple.

Industry starts from scratch and often requires overcoming many difficulties.

After the problem of refractory bricks was solved, the iron plant finally started production. The selected iron ore of the vehicle was pushed to the top of the furnace through the ramp of transporting materials, and then poured into the furnace, iron ore, coke and lime were poured into the furnace.

When the blast furnace blew out scorching smoke, Zhao Shizhen looked at some lime scattered on the ramp and asked in confusion.

"Zhiyuan, why do you need lime to use this iron smelting?"

"When iron smelting, the reduced iron becomes liquid at high temperature, and the impurities of particles with high melting points of silica are mixed in the refined molten iron. In order to remove this impurity, limestone is used as the flux, and limestone decomposes into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide at high temperature. Calcium oxide reacts with silica at high temperature to form calcium silicate with a melting point lower than the temperature of molten iron. The liquid calcium silicate has a density of smaller than molten iron and is not miscible with molten iron, so it floats on the molten iron. Open the slag outlet on the blast furnace, and the liquid calcium silicate flows out first and solidifies into blast furnace slag."

When answering this question casually, Shi Yiwen saw Zhao Shizhen's confused appearance, then he realized that silica, calcium oxide, and carbon dioxide were like heavenly books for him, so he quickly changed the topic and said.

"I have other uses for those slags."

The blast furnace slag can be crushed and made into cement. These cements are very important for Shi Yiwen, especially the musket factory under construction by the Lugou River near Lugou Bridge, which requires cement. While he was devoted to studying refractory bricks in the iron factory, the iron factory producing muskets in the capital did not stop. In order to use hydraulic power, Shi Yiwen built the factory by the Lugou (Yongding River) River, where the construction there required some cement.

Driven by the hydraulic bellows, the flames of the blast furnace gushed, and it took a day and a night to refine an iron furnace. The next day when the iron was released, as the craftsmen in the factory shouted "Imported out". After the slag was removed, liquid pig iron flowed out of the iron outlet. When the red pig iron flowed into the molten iron, Shi Yiwen shouted.

"Hurry up, send it to the furnace..."

The smelting furnace is just one meter away next to the blast furnace. The so-called molten iron is actually a large bell with several layers of refractory bricks inside, which can hold 1 ton of molten iron. In order to transport molten iron, Shi Yiwen specially dismantled more than ten meters of steel rails from the factory in the space and laid them between the smelting furnace and blast furnace. After the workers pushed the molten iron to the smelting furnace and poured the molten iron into the smelting furnace, the workers began to stir the molten iron with iron rods under Shi Yiwen's guidance.

This is another time and space. In 1783, the British Henry Curt invented the stirring method mainly stirs the molten pig iron on the furnace bed of the reflector. The stirring is made by stirring the carbon in the pig iron and remove it, so that the carbon content reaches the component requirements of the cooked iron. Stirring in the furnace is its characteristic.

Therefore, it is called the stirring method. Since molten pig iron does not have direct contact with coal, the sulfur component in the coal does not belong to the material of the finished product.

The disadvantage of the agitating method is that sand and gravel must be used at the bottom of the agitating furnace. The combination of silica and iron oxide in the sand and gravel is easy to form slag with too strong acidity, so that it cannot absorb the phosphorus contained in pig iron refined with ordinary phosphorus-containing iron ore. Since the sand layer corroded by acidic slag needs to be repaired, the iron furnace will reduce its production, resulting in considerable losses. Now Shi Yiwen uses refractory bricks to replace the sand layer, which fundamentally solves this problem.

Because there is no rolling mill, the iron blocks refined cannot be taken out like the British in another time and space, and rolled into round materials, plates, profiles and formed in a red hot state. However, they can be cast into iron slabs. Although further forging is required to become available slats, even so, when hundreds of iron slabs cooled down and looking at the floor slabs, Zhao Shizhen was already stunned.

"This, can I make a crafted iron like this?"

"Yes, the output of a furnace is a bit small, less than 4,000 kilograms of cooked iron a day, but for now, it's almost enough."

4,000 kilograms of cooked iron can make at least 500 flintlock rifles.

“It seems to be a little more.”

Just when this idea came to Shi Yiwen's mind, Zhao Shizhen stopped there.

"Now, 1,000 kilograms of iron is needed to refine 1,500 kilograms of coke in the factory. Including labor, the iron price of our factory is..."

Suddenly, Zhao Shizhi opened his eyes wide, looked at Shi Yiwen, and then at the iron factory around him, thinking about their confusion about the construction of a new blast furnace here in the past two months, and even sarcastic. He couldn't help but say.

"I'm afraid that within half a year, the only one in Zunhua Iron Factory will be left with Zhiyuan. Your iron price is too cheap. If someone wants to sell ten taels of pounds, at most it is only a profit of two taels. If you are the capital, this furnace will produce nearly 20,000 pounds of iron, and the iron quality is far beyond what other factories can compare to. Since then..."

Shaking his head and sighed, Zhao Shizhen looked at the surrounding iron factory again.

"Zunhua Iron Factory can only have the surname Shi!"

Uh... Shi Yiwen really didn't expect that he just wanted to refine some iron. Now that he was reminded by Zhao Shizhen, he realized that there was indeed such a possibility.

Compared with the traditional iron smelting method, the new blast furnace has higher output, lower cost and better quality. Even if you don’t fight price wars, you can put other iron plants in Zunhua into a desperate situation just by relying on quality.

"This...Shiji, this is also an accident."

Accident.

Of course this is not an accident. The emergence of any new technology will cause a fatal blow to the party using the old technology. All this has never been avoidable, and Shi Yiwen is powerless to do anything about this.

"Zhiyuan, what are you going to do next?"

Faced with Zhao Shizhen's problem, Shi Yiwen was silent for a moment, and then said.

"Of course, another blast furnace is built, and the daily output of this furnace is less than 40,000 kilograms. If you build another one, 70,000 kilograms of iron will almost be the output of Zunhua. Since it is a backward output..."

After a pause, Shi Yiwen smiled and looked at Zhao Shizhen who was dumbfounded.

"Then we have to be eliminated. After all, the ore and fuel are limited. Instead of letting them waste it, it is better to leave it to us to produce better output!"
Chapter completed!