Chapter 560: Retort
“Uh…” Sylvie scrutinized the shell for quite a while, then compared it with Roland's design sketch for a long time before pointing to the leiguan part and saying, “It seems that this copper tube is not aligned with the nail at the top.”
“What about the spring?” Anna asked. “Is it still stuck on both sides of the iron plate?”
“One is crooked.”
“To the left or to the right?”
Anna inquired about the details and then recorded the questions one by one in her notebook.
After collecting the reasons for the failure, the next round of shooting began—four shots could use all of A Xia's replay ability, so the efficiency of improvement naturally became unprecedentedly high.
Unfortunately, the next two test firings also failed. Roland had to announce that he would continue the experiment tomorrow.
For A Xia and Sylvie, their work today was all over. After that, they could go back to the castle to enjoy a delicious afternoon tea or go to the convenience market to see if there were any new products. However, for Anna and Agatha, the grenade test was only a small part of their busy work. Especially Anna, in addition to improving the fuse according to the reasons for the failure, she had to continue to complete the development and assembly of the steam turbine.
Roland originally planned to follow her to the backyard of the North Slope to see the progress of the steam turbine model, but the guard Sean brought news from the City Hall.
“Your Majesty, Deputy Minister of Construction Losya hopes that you can go to the kiln area. He said that the first retort has been set up.”
……
As an essential facility for the coking plant, the planned ten retorts are all located next to the kiln group at the foot of the North Slope mining area.
Due to the large-scale felling of trees for brick burning and iron smelting, the kiln group has changed from a small open space of less than one thousand square meters at the beginning to a vast open area extending along the mountain. If Roland hadn't strictly forbidden workers from taking trees near the town, it is estimated that not a single tree would be left on the north side of Border Town.
Now that there is coal, convenient and readily available charcoal is still the main force in iron smelting. As the location for collecting trees gets farther and farther away from the kiln group, the workers set their sights on the North Slope—hundreds of logs are cut off every day, and then thrown from the top of the mountain. From a distance, a small "bald spot" has appeared on the green mountain peak.
Roland would naturally not ask them to protect the environment in this matter. As long as the rising dust does not affect the town, he would not care even if the North Slope was cut down. After all, compared to the Impassable Mountain Range, this protruding small mountain range is only an insignificant corner. With leaves maintaining basic vegetation, there is basically no need to worry about soil erosion.
The flat land reclaimed at the foot of the mountain has naturally become the most suitable location for the coking plant.
Roland led Nightingale and the guards through the noisy kiln area and came to the first retort. Losya immediately greeted him and bowed to him, “Your Majesty, I have built this double-layer kiln with refractory bricks according to your request. According to the drawings, the upper furnace should be closed with an iron door, and there is an interlayer in the middle with iron plates that can move freely, but I don't know who to find to make these two things. Also, the copper tube and chimney of the small furnace next to it, apart from these metal components, the rest has been completed.”
Roland crawled into the furnace and inspected it—it must be said that as a former member of the Stonemasonry Guild and an old friend of Karl van Bert, Losya is indeed quite experienced in masonry. The inner wall of the nearly two-story-high retort is uniform in change, the gaps between each brick are basically the same, and the brick joints are also staggered layer by layer, without even a straight joint, which shows that he is not only excellent in layout ability, but also very serious in construction attitude. It should be known that even with the same drawing, the finished products built by different people may be very different.
“Well done,” he praised after checking, “I will arrange for someone to cast the iron door and iron plate, and then you only need to cover the fire-facing surface with refractory bricks.”
“Your Majesty,” Losya hesitated and said, “Can you tell me how this furnace works?”
“What, do you also want to become a coking worker?” Roland joked.
“Of course not,” the other party shook his head quickly. “I have never built such a strange kiln before, so I can only guess the places where the drawings are not described in detail. If I can know its specific usage and function, I can not only complete the second one faster, but also make some improvements in some uncertain places.”
So that’s how it is, Roland said with a smile, “This type of kiln is mainly used for dry distillation of coal. You should have seen how charcoal is burned, right? This is also similar, but the scale is larger. The lower layer burns, and the upper layer bakes, and the filling is all coal.”
“Baking coal with coal?” Losya asked in surprise.
“That’s right. After dry distillation, coal can be converted into coke, which burns at a higher temperature and is a good fuel for steelmaking. In addition, several by-products will be produced during the dry distillation process. The pipes on the tower wall are used to collect them, not chimneys for exhaust.”
“Then… why is a small furnace also built next to the furnace?”
“There must be no air left in the upper layer during dry distillation, otherwise the coal will burn directly,” Roland pointed to the holes reserved between the two furnaces, “The limestone calcined in the small furnace will produce a large amount of carbon dioxide—you can understand it as a non-combustible gas…”
“Your Majesty, I know this,” Losya interjected, “This part is taught in the evening class.”
“That’s simple,” Roland felt relieved. It seems that the popularization of education is expanding little by little under Juan's efforts. “Carbon dioxide will enter the upper layer of the kiln through the pipeline and squeeze all the air out, so that the coal can achieve the effect of dry distillation. As for limestone, it is the gray-white stone used to burn cement, which is everywhere on the North Slope.”
……
After inspecting Retort No. 1, he stopped for a moment next to the kiln area when he returned along the original route.
Looking at the busy scene in front of him, Roland couldn't help but feel a little excited. All kinds of brick furnaces stand side by side, looking like a neat red forest at first glance. Dozens of smoke columns rise above the forest, gray, white, and black intertwined, forming a very epoch-making picture together with the simply dressed workers and backward equipment. More than a dozen steam engines are making a rumbling hum, pulling conveyor belts to send raw materials and charcoal into the blast furnace; the track system has also been laid from the mine to here, and small mine cars are running between the two places, and the speed of iron ore transfer is already different from what it used to be.
Once the steel mill and the forge are completed, this place will inevitably become another core location in Neverwinter—from ore mining to smelting into steel, and then from steel into various raw materials sent to processing plants, the flower of industry will be conceived and born here, thus giving mankind extraordinary power and allowing them to have the courage to overcome everything.
Ermu says
Please take a leave of absence for tomorrow (February 5th) for a single update—update at 11pm, I have to eat with a group of old classmates who haven't seen each other for many years ^^