Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 228 Mineral Resources Exploitation and Electricity
ps: Thanks to classmate Xiaobaicaidunmogu for 500 Qidian coins, classmate I'm watching the gully, classmate Yunhaishuyoushitongzhou, and classmate Pangdian for 100 Qidian coins for their support!
The industrial age is inseparable from coal and raw materials such as iron, copper, aluminum, and zinc. The distribution of mineral resources in South America is uneven. The La Plata region lacks coal and iron ore resources. The iron ore resources, coal and other resources that are easier to mine are either located in the interior of Brazil or in Chile, Venezuela, Colombia and other countries. The local mineral resource reserves of the Han country are limited. In the early stage, it is not a big problem to support the industrial development of a population of several million. Once the population reaches tens of millions, the local mineral resources will be difficult to maintain the country's industrial development.

The raw materials for Han's current steel industry come partly from the Corrales mines in Santa Catarina State and northern Uruguay, and partly from the mines on the northern shore of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.

Before the discovery of the Corrales mine in northern Uruguay, the iron and coal mines in Santa Catarina State had always been the main supplier of industrial raw materials in the country. After occupying 60,000 square kilometers of land in northern Uruguay, the exploration team discovered several medium-sized iron, manganese and coal mines near Corrales. Although the quality of coal in the Corrales mining area is not as good as the smokeless coal in Quang Ninh Province, Annan, the coal mine in Corrales is still better than the coal quality in Santa Catarina.

Quang Ninh Province, occupied by the National Defense Force's Nanyang Corps, is a famous coal producing area in Annam. The smokeless coal produced in Quang Ninh Hongji was not only supplied to Annam's domestic industrial construction in later generations, but also exported to mainland China, Japan and other countries.

The Hongji Coal Mine production area is more than 100 kilometers long and 15-20 kilometers wide, with coal reserves of 22.5 billion tons. The coal seams are thick and the topsoil is thin, making it suitable for outcrop mining.

In 1872, when Li Mingyuan began to form a professional mineral exploration force, Hongji Coal Mine had already been discovered by the local garrison and then reported to the National Defense Force Headquarters by telegram.

When Li Mingyuan received the intelligence reported by the troops, he was happy but also very distressed. The coal output of Hongji Coal Mine was far higher than that of the local Han country, but such a high-quality coal field could not support local industrial construction.

Annan is too far away from South America. The freight alone for transporting coal to South America by ocean-going ships will significantly increase the cost of coal. Although coal is an indispensable raw material for industry, its value is not as high as that of metal raw materials such as iron, copper and aluminum. Therefore, after reading the intelligence conveyed by the Nanyang troops, Li Mingyuan simply reminded them to develop some production areas into mines, and leave the unmined coal producing areas for later processing.

Since the Hongji coal mine could not be transported to South America, the Corales coal mine of slightly inferior quality took on the main function of supplying domestic industrial development. Around the Corrales mining area, relying on the advantage of being close to the resource production area, cement plants, brick kiln plants and honeycomb coal manufacturing plants that used inferior quality coal as fuel quickly developed, providing a lot of construction materials for the domestic infrastructure construction of the Han Kingdom. At the same time, as the exploration troops expanded the scope of exploration in the local area, a large manganese mine was discovered in 1876. Due to the development of electrical engineering, metals such as manganese, aluminum, and zinc can be separated from metal oxides. Among them, the production technology introduced by the Han Kingdom using aluminum nitride and sodium as raw materials to prepare aluminum has entered the production stage.

The method of preparing aluminum from aluminum nitride and sodium invented by St. Clair in 1854 greatly reduced the cost of aluminum. However, because aluminum was mainly used to make luxury goods and decorations at that time, this method was not widely popularized.

Li Mingyuan attended college for two years before becoming a mercenary. When he was in junior high school, he learned how to prepare various metals using electrolysis. Therefore, after realizing that electrolysis was the mainstream method for preparing various metals, Li Mingyuan selected more than 200 Chinese students who had returned from studying abroad and invited unknown physicists from Europe, such as Jedlik and Estrom, to jointly engage in electricity research and development experiments.

In response to the actual situation in Han State, Li Mingyuan set three major research directions for researchers: improving arc lamps, developing rotating magnetic field AC generators, and perfecting the process of preparing metals by electrolysis.

The industrial preparation of metal elements such as aluminum, zinc, and copper by electrolysis requires a lot of electricity support. Therefore, the large manganese mine in Corales cannot be effectively developed before the generator research and development project in Han is completed. However, Li Mingyuan is not worried about delaying the mining of manganese ore, because after he used the chemical and physical knowledge of later generations to guide the researchers several times, the generator project has made great progress. According to the calculations of the researchers, the final time for the project to succeed will not exceed half a year. Faced with the confident assurance of the researchers, Li Mingyuan did not doubt that in the original time and space, Bayer proposed a simple purification method a few years later, which greatly improved the efficiency of refining metals, and this process has been used until later generations. Now Li Mingyuan not only told the researchers the principle of the later generator, but also proposed the method of Bayer process. If they do this, they will not be able to develop the rotating magnetic field AC generator four or five years in advance. Li Mingyuan can only sigh helplessly.

The third industrial revolution was the change brought about by electricity.

In terms of power development, Han State has sent students abroad to study power technology that has not yet been valued by the West, and the gap in development level between Han and Western countries is not very large. In addition, Li Mingyuan attaches great importance to the research and development of power. Therefore, Han State is most likely to catch up with the development level of Western countries in terms of power.

In July 1877, soldiers of the National Defense Force stationed near Corrales accidentally discovered a large amount of gold sand in a river in the valley during a field exercise. The exploration team that received the news then conducted exploration along the river bank and finally found a rare giant gold mine seven or eight kilometers away from the discovery site.

The gold mine accidentally discovered by the Wehrmacht soldiers is part of the Corrales mine resources. According to the production technology of the 20th century, the gold mine is enough for Uruguay to develop for 60 years. However, in the second half of the 19th century, the Han government was unable to use relatively mature mining equipment to mine all the stored gold like the Uruguayan government in later generations.

Mining gold mines buried in rocks requires high-strength synthetic steel. In the steel industry, Han State recruited Mannister, and in 1877, eight years ahead of schedule, he invented the Mannister pipe making process, which was later widely used in the steel rolling industry. However, when it comes to special steel synthesis, Li Mingyuan did not know much and did not give key advice to the highly paid European experts. As a result, Han State's special steel synthesis technology did not make significant progress, and the entire synthetic metal technology is still in the exploratory stage.

More than 95% of the Corrales gold mine's mineral deposits are buried deep in the rock and cannot be mined. The small amount of mineral deposits contained in the underlying rock are dispersed, and the output is limited according to existing mining technology. Therefore, when carrying out the gold standard currency reform, Li Mingyuan did not choose to use the gold produced by the Corrales gold mine as a reserve for issuing paper money, but instead decided to send people to risk entering India.

The mining of the shallow deposits in the Corrales gold mine has little profit, and as the deadline for the National Defense Force to annex Argentina and Uruguay is approaching, the Corrales gold mine, like the mining areas in the Congo region, is in a sealed state and can only be mined after the end of the unification war.

The author wrote this novel mainly for interest. I am very happy when book friends sometimes give a few dollars to support me. However, it is really unnecessary to give too much. After all, many book friends are students and their living expenses are not much.
If you feel it suits your needs, please don't blame me for updating slowly.

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(End of this chapter)