December 1868 was summer in the southern hemisphere, the harvest season and the hottest season of the year.
Even in the middle of summer, the temperature here is only about 31 or 2 degrees Celsius. This weather is considered extremely comfortable.
However, summer is often the most difficult time in front of the blast furnaces and open hearths of steel plants. Furnace workers wearing protective clothing stuffed steel pestles into the furnaces, and hot air waves hit their faces, scorching the workers.
In the busy workshop, workers were busy, and the sound of blowers and the roar of machines overwhelmed any sound in the workshop. Only the harsh whistle could cover it all.
After several years of development, Dahua Steel Company, located on the banks of the Rio Grande (River Negro), has already become the world's largest steel plant in the southern hemisphere. It not only has as many as six iron-making blast furnaces, but also has three state-of-the-art smelting plants.
The open-hearth steel furnace produces more than 600,000 tons of steel, which is enough to make Dahua Steel proud of the world - there is no larger "steel complex" in this era.
After all, most of the steel companies in this era are "small factories" with an annual output of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of tons, and Dahua Steel has been aiming for the goal of a large steel complex from the beginning.
From the iron-making blast furnace in the first phase to the open-hearth steel-making, the early iron plant construction had a certain emergency nature. In addition to the hugely profitable open-hearth steel-making, there were only simple steel rolling equipment. Starting from the second phase of the project, it was a
An unprecedented steel complex in this time and space.
From the mining and beneficiation of iron ore and coal mines more than 100 kilometers away in the south, to iron-making, steel-making and steel-rolling, the newly built blast furnaces and larger open-hearth furnaces will not only significantly increase steel production, but also produce steel plantations.
From a few types of steel such as rails, it has evolved into various types of steel such as steel plates, steel beams and wire rods.
"...In the past, we only had shipyards in South China. To produce shipbuilding steel plates, we introduced a two-roller plate rolling mill to roll steel plates with a thickness of less than 2 inches. Three years ago, the United States built a three-roller rolling mill.
Medium-thick plate rolling mill, this rolling mill can roll thick plates with a thickness of less than 10 inches. After receiving information from international students in the United States, we immediately introduced this rolling mill..."
International students provide information, which is a characteristic of Nanhua. Those international students are not only responsible for studying abroad, but also collecting technical information in related fields. This information is public, but it is scattered in various fields, and they only rely on the company itself to collect it.
, is not only slow but also has mediocre results, but now the company has thousands of international students studying in foreign universities and interning in factories. They are equivalent to intelligence personnel in related fields, responsible for collecting the latest information and intelligence, and then the company will have targeted
Introduce relevant technologies to improve your own technical level.
To a certain extent, those international students are Nanhua's intelligence officers stationed in various places, but they are specially used to collect technical intelligence.
This is also one of the reasons why Nanhua has been able to develop rapidly in the past few years. International students can collect a variety of the most advanced technologies in the fields they are best at, thus promoting the technological development of Nanhua.
With the roar of the machine, a 5-inch-thick steel plate rushed out from under the roller. The fiery red steel plate was washed by the cooling water. The steel plate cooled rapidly in the rising steam. When the steel plate was sent to the rear, Zhu Xianhai stood there, He looked at the steel ingot without saying a word.
"Every piece of steel hides the secret of a country's rise and fall."
Who said this?
He no longer has any impression, but what is certain is that this sentence naturally makes sense, especially in this era, what is steel?
It's the country!
It is a symbol of the country’s strength!
Only with steel can we make a large number of weapons, and with steel can we build warships. Steel plates of 5 inches or even 10 inches like this are necessary for building battleships.
"Lord, with this rolling mill, we can continuously produce 10-inch-thick steel plates. Without it, we can only forge it with a large steam hammer. The speed is not only slow but also the production cost is high. Production with a rolling mill , not only the cost can be reduced a lot, but the speed can be increased more than ten times, if..."
Before Li Jiebai, a naturalized French engineer, could finish speaking, Zhu Xianhai said,
"If it is used to build warships, especially battleships, it can continuously produce thick plates. However, we do not need to build so many warships right now, but we can build merchant ships first. Iron-hulled merchant ships will definitely replace them in the future. Wooden-hulled merchant ships and iron-hulled ships are also the future development direction, and most of the ships of our shipping company are old ships purchased a few years ago. With this rolling mill, we can provide cheaper steel plates to produce low-priced steel. Hulls replace older ships…”
In fact, it's not that Nanhua doesn't build combat ships, nor does it have demand in this area. The most important reason is... lack of technology.
Although Nanhua Shipyard has built more than 27 iron-hulled ships in the past few years, both warships and merchant ships, the largest tonnage is only 4,000 tons. It seems that the progress is rapid, but there is still more than enough capacity to build large warships. Not enough!
However, it is possible to accumulate technology by building large commercial ships. And Nanhua does have a need in this regard!
For example, coal needs to be imported from the Cape Colony - with the industrial development of South China, the demand for coal is increasing. The steel plant alone requires millions of tons of coal every year. In the case of insufficient local production, Importing from abroad became the only option.
This also means that Nanhua needs to build large ore transport ships, at least tens of thousands of tons. Not only that, from the perspective of immigrant transportation, the efficiency of large fast immigration ships is much higher than that of small ships.
It's a pity that Nanhua's shipbuilding industry's technical strength is still too weak, and it also lacks experience!
"It looks like we have to come up with a plan to stimulate the development of the shipbuilding industry!"
On the way back to Nanhua, Zhu Xianhai said to himself while sitting in the carriage.
What is the plan?
It must be a "key project", which means concentrating manpower, material resources, and financial resources to carry out "scientific research" on "key projects" to improve the overall industrial technology level.
Such as the many "key research" carried out by China in later generations, it is obvious that the level of related industries has been improved.
"shipbuilding……"
Zhu Xianhai said to himself.
"You can give it a try. After all, there are no technical problems in Nanhua."
Soon, an idea was roughly formed in Zhu Xianhai's mind.
This chapter has been completed!