Twenty miles north from Nanyang Prefecture to Xiangcheng County along the Dongzhao River is Longtan Ridge. Accompanied by Han Gui and others, Xu Huai stood on the Laoya Cliff of Longtan Ridge and looked eastward. The Dongzhao River looked like a light green line.
The ribbon is dragged between the winding mountains.
The ancient post road built along the valley on the west bank of the Dongzhao River is part of the Wanluo Ancient Road. After some repairs in recent years, it has become full of vitality. An endless stream of cars and horses pass by here heading south to Wancheng, enjoying the rippling blue waves of the road.
The densely packed flat-bottomed raft boats on the river form a beautiful contrast.
The Wanluo Ancient Road is divided into two lines. The east line is also the most well-known to the world. The Fangcheng Pass along the Tang River to the north is relatively wider. It is also the main road connecting Jinghu Lake to Heluo and Hehuai in the north.
In addition to the Fangcheng Pass, the Wanluo Ancient Road also has a western route located in the Funiu Mountains, also known as the Sanya Road.
The west line of Sanya Road goes south from Luoyang, passes through Guangcheng and Ruyang, crosses the pass at the foot of Jiufeng Mountain in the southeast of Ruyang, enters Lushan County, and then crosses the upper reaches of the Shah River and crosses the watershed between Lushan County and Xiangcheng County.
The pass enters Lushan County, goes south along the Dongzhao River to Xiangcheng County, and connects to the post road from Xiangcheng to Wancheng.
The Western Route is the closest route from Wancheng, the former economic, cultural, and political center of the Nanyang Basin, to Luoyang.
However, with the decline of Wancheng's status, and since the establishment of the Dai Viet Dynasty, local state and county officials have neglected the construction and maintenance of roads, water conservancy and other large-scale projects. The vast majority of business travelers will choose the smoother and more convenient Fangcheng Road.
In fact, it's not even a hundred or two hundred miles away.
Bandits also breed in Funiu Mountain, and Sanya Road has gradually become a mountain trail leading from the villages in Funiu Mountain to the outside world; the ancient post road at the junction of Lushan Mountain and Xiangcheng County was destroyed by flash floods decades ago.
No one thought about repairing it, so it fell into complete disuse.
Now, in addition to mining iron ore and smelting iron materials on the west bank of the Dongzhao River, and large-scale widening of the old road of more than 20 miles from Longtan Ridge to Xiangcheng, the township system has also been implemented in Funiu Mountain for two or three years.
Time has passed, and one of the most important tasks of each township is to actively repair roads, open up connections between mountainous areas and the outside world, and ensure that tea, medicine, tung oil and other products produced in the mountains can be continuously transported out of the mountains.
Although Sanya Road at this time is still far worse than before, it is now smooth again.
Further repair of Sanya Road has been put on the agenda, but Xu Huai came to Longtanling this time not to inspect the construction of Sanya Road and Yunyangguan (Inspection Department) in the north of Xiangcheng County, but to visit the Longtanling Iron Station.
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Standing on Laoya Cliff, Xu Huai and the others could have a panoramic view of the iron yard on the south slope of Longtan Ridge.
Compared with the linear distribution of the iron-making furnaces in the Shibalipu Ironyard along natural streams and waterways, the Longtanling Ironyard also built a large pond to store water in the upper reaches of the Laoya River. However, below the stone dam, it is roughly parallel to the terrain.
Four artificial water canals were dug.
In addition to the width and slope of the water channel being designed according to needs, the water potential can also be controlled and adjusted through the sluice to distribute more water turbines, fans, and water mills for crushing ore and other equipment to rotate stably.
It is also the layout of the iron yard that enabled the Longtanling Iron Yard to successfully complete a total output of 10 million kilograms of iron last year with less than 2,000 craftsmen and eight iron-making furnaces more than two feet high.
Of course, just that, it wasn't worth Xu Huai's busy schedule to make a special trip.
The real goal of Xu Huai's trip is to build a new iron-making furnace in Longtanling Factory. It has been put into trial operation for a month. The final technical summary is currently being carried out and it will be fully operational soon.
Except for the fact that the furnace is larger in scale and more than three feet high, the furnace structure of this iron-making furnace is not much different from the past.
The biggest difference is the use of the latest water machine bellows, which can be said to be Chushan's mastery in the field of hydraulic equipment manufacturing over the years.
The traditional water drainage blast was created by Du Shi, the governor of Nanyang in the Han Dynasty, and was also used for iron smelting. The iron smelting industry in Nanyang was already quite developed in the Han Dynasty.
The water blast uses a large vertical wheel placed in the turbulent flow, the water flow drives the vertical wheel, and then the curved rod connected to the vertical wheel drives the leather bag sewn from cooked cowhide to open and close to blow the iron-making furnace.
However, since the Han Dynasty, small human-powered blowing equipment has already developed from the original leather bag to the bellows with a reciprocating piston structure.
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the scale of iron smelting and the level of technological development, as well as the instability of the large bellows structure, the bellows with the reciprocating piston structure has not been used since the end of the previous dynasty.
For more than 150 years since its invention, it has not been combined with water wheels and used in large-scale steel smelting.
After Shen Yue invented continuous ironmaking at the Shibaliwu Iron Yard, Xu Huai proposed to combine the reciprocating piston bellows with a water wheel, and built a new twin-horizontal hydraulic fan that year.
The main structure of a twin-horizontal hydraulic fan is two giant horizontal wheels connected with a long axis made of fine iron. The lower wheel is inserted into the turbulent flow to drive the upper wheel to rotate. Then a crank rod is used to connect the draw rod of the bellows to achieve front and rear rotation.
Reciprocating motion.
Although the original horizontal hydraulic bellows was successfully used for iron smelting, it had great limitations.
If the water wheel is made smaller, extremely strong water flow is needed to drive the bellows; if the water wheel is made larger, the transfer cycle is too long, so the bellows structure needs to be large enough to pump enough water into the furnace at one time.
Air volume.
Last year, due to the death of King Chihu Khan, the enemy forces in the west of Beijing and Heluo greatly reduced their defense lines. Xu Huai had a short period of free time and took Shen Yue, Yu Chengzhen, Zhuang Yong, Zhuang Shouxin and others together to discuss smelting and forging.
The current bottleneck of the equal method.
At that time, Xu Huai proposed adding a variable speed gear structure to the turbine fan.
In this way, only a relatively gentle and stable water flow is needed to drive a large water wheel, and the speed change gear and the curved rod can be used to realize the rapid reciprocating motion of the wind box - the wind box structure does not need to be large, and even multiple sets of wind boxes can be used to blow the furnace body.
In fact, during the Qin and Han dynasties, craftsmen from the Central Plains had already initially mastered the manufacturing and use methods of gears, including compass wheels, drum carts and various astronomical instruments. They not only used a large number of gears for transmission, but also achieved deceleration and acceleration.
As early as the Jin Dynasty, the famous minister Du Yu invented the water-rotating continuous mill, and even applied gear transmission to hydraulic equipment (water mill), and even realized the complex structure of a single water wheel driving multiple stone mills at the same time.
However, there are serious flaws in the contemporary craftsmanship in inheriting the past and linking the future, integrating inheritance, dissemination, further derivation, and research. However, fields such as metallurgy that are suitable for large-scale use of hydraulic equipment have not really developed.
However, the basics are there, and many things can be explained at once.
What's more, Yu Chengzhen is a master-level figure in the fields of astronomy, instruments and other fields. He has led a group of disciples to Jingxiang (Chushan) for many years. Jingxiang has accumulated a lot of experience in the manufacture and use of various instruments over the years.
After Xu Huai pointed out the key points, there was no obstacle that could not be overcome in preparing a brand new water wheel bellows.
The Craftsman School first trial-produced a small water wheel bellows at the Shibaliwu Iron Yard to be used in conjunction with the iron-making furnace. After more than a year of exploration, the newly-built iron-making furnace at the Longtanling Iron Yard can be said to be the first of its kind in Beijing.
The most successful one in Xiang (Chushan) uses a total of four sets of water wheel bellows at the bottom to supply air.
Of course, it is mainly because the casting technology accumulated by Jingxiang (Chushan) over the years is far superior to that of the world. The water wheel bellows components forged have excellent performance in all aspects and are quite precise, so that a large enough water wheel can be manufactured.
, by driving the precision variable speed transmission components, the air box is driven to blow air into the furnace body quickly and powerfully.
The new furnace has been in trial operation for nearly a month. It produced 160,000 kilograms of iron in that month, which is twice the previous output record of a single furnace. When it is officially put into operation, the Coal and Railway Supervision Bureau predicts that the annual output of this iron-making furnace will be
Up to four million kilograms.
Last year, the annual output of iron materials in Beijing and Xiangzhou was as high as 25 million jins, which is incredible; now an iron-making furnace can produce 4 million jins of iron materials a year. Before that, who would have dared to imagine
of?
Due to the use of the new water wheel bellows, not only can the iron-making capacity of a single furnace be greatly increased, but also due to more complete combustion, iron ore can be smelted more quickly, and the usage of unit cooked charcoal has been significantly reduced to more than half of the previous one.
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Next, the bottleneck that restricts the iron material production capacity in Beijing and Xiangzhou is completely transmitted to the mining and crushing of iron ore.
In fact, Chushan has long used hardwood tracks in mining areas to facilitate large-scale transportation of ore.
This is a technology that existed during the Qin and Han Dynasties, but sleepers and sleepers were all made of hardwood, and then ox-horses were used to pull special rail cars to greatly improve transportation efficiency.
A twelve-mile long hardwood track has been laid between the Longtanling iron yard and the mining area, and a hardwood track has also been laid between the iron yard and the Dongzhao River dock seven or eight miles away.
At present, the output of iron materials in Beijing and Xiangzhou has exceeded the limit. The follow-up plan is to use cast iron to replace the previous hardwood tracks. It is believed that the scale of mining and transportation of iron ore can be further improved - and the crushing of iron ore is basically carried out using large hydraulic mills.
The water hammer is also a pounding hydraulic instrument that has been invented as early as the Han Dynasty. It was originally used to pound grains to break their shells and pound wood. In the previous dynasty, it gradually developed into spices, bamboo strips, paper pulp, ores and other fields.
A water hammer is used for pounding operations.
The new ore crusher using a new hydraulic transmission structure has much higher crushing strength and operating efficiency.
The use of new hydraulic transmission structures has also brought innovative changes to the preparation of soldiers and armors in Jingxiang (Chushan), that is, the emergence of hydraulic forging hammers...
