My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 173 High-end technological improvements often only require simple methods
Zhuge Jin's attitude during this visit was very modest, and he spoke in a professional manner. Pu Sheng and Pu Yuan knew that he was an expert and would not give blind orders, so they quickly dispelled their inner tension.

"It is said that Brother Zhuge knows everything and can do everything. It seems that what they say is true. I didn't expect that the princes are so insightful even in iron smelting and steel forging."

The young Pu Yuan was originally very confident about his own private plot of land. After hearing Zhuge Jin's words, he could not help but secretly admire him.

The two sides worked together and exchanged ideas for about a quarter of an hour, and Zhuge Jin gradually figured out the other party's current needs and pain points in blacksmithing.

Zhuge Jin originally thought that today's work would unfold in the same way as in many time-travel novels about climbing the technological ladder and farming. Right from the start, he would have the opportunity to instruct the uncle and nephew of the Pu family: the higher the blast furnace, the larger the furnace chamber, and the more refractory the furnace material, the higher the iron-making efficiency would be!
Before coming, he had even thought of ideas such as "bricks made from aluminate soil are more fire-resistant", and was also prepared to come up with several formulas in the field of materials science that would amaze the ancients and make them bow down in worship.

But after the conversation, he realized that things were far from that point.

Although Pu Yuan is young, he has been a blacksmith for five or six years, and has been an apprentice for nearly ten years, while Pu Sheng has been a blacksmith for more than thirty years. From the beginning to the end, these two people have never had the need to increase the height and size of the furnace or improve its fire resistance.

Finally, Zhuge Jin took the initiative to tentatively propose: "If I give you a material that can withstand higher furnace temperatures to build a furnace, can you increase the speed and output of iron smelting?"

Pu Yuan was just stunned. He didn't even need to whisper to his uncle, he answered directly:
"This material... is totally useless. The current furnace temperature cannot even heat this kind of red clay paste to a red hot state and soften it. Ordinary red clay is already fire-resistant enough."

This answer really made Zhuge Jin, who was not mentally prepared, feel like he had punched cotton.

Wow, it turns out that the furnaces of the late Han Dynasty could only reach 1100 degrees at most. Wasn't it because of the heat resistance limit of the furnace? But the flame temperature itself was too low? Is this the shortest shortcoming?

This is quite different from Zhuge Jin's original prediction.

He also knew that in the modern industrial era, the Germans developed a hot air furnace to preheat the air entering the furnace, eventually reaching a furnace temperature of 1600 degrees, which could melt even pure iron. However, the energy consumption of that thing was very high, and the heat wasted in heating the air was also extremely high.

However, even without a hot air furnace, it is still possible to raise the furnace temperature to 1400 degrees by sucking cold air into the furnace. There is still room for improvement of at least degrees compared to the current technological level!

Isn't the main bottleneck for this improvement of more than 300 degrees the heat resistance limit of the furnace itself?
Zhuge Jin had to put aside his prejudices and discuss each point with Pu Yuan and Pu Sheng more humbly without having any preconceived opinions.

Then, Pu Yuancai mentioned a restrictive factor during his investigation: "General, as far as I know, the key to further raising the furnace temperature is that the air is not blowing fast enough. The faster the air is blown, the more air is taken in, the faster the charcoal burns, and the easier it is to get hot.

The blower we use now is still a tuo. This workshop is near a river and has a water pump connected to the tuo. Blowing air can be faster than manual pressure, so the furnace temperature can be higher than those workshops without water pumps. If we can let the air in faster, we can melt pig iron with less impurities and melt faster. "

As we all know, the melting point of an alloy is lower than the melting point of the main metal element in the alloy. The more impurities and the more impure it is, the lower the melting point.

Therefore, the melting point of pure iron is more than 1,500 degrees, and the more impurities pig iron has, the easier it is to melt. 1,100 degrees can melt the inferior pig iron in the furnace, and if it is raised to 1,200 degrees, it can further remove impurities and melt purer iron, and the purer it is, the harder it is to melt.

Although Pu Yuan did not have an accurate concept of "temperature", he could judge based on his experience that the current furnace fire resistance was more than sufficient. As long as the blowing efficiency was improved and the fuel burned faster, it would not be a problem to increase the furnace temperature by a hundred degrees.

When Zhuge Jin heard him mention "water row", his eyes lit up and he asked Pu Yuan to take him to see the real thing immediately.

After walking out of the yard, they saw a big hole behind the wall. There was something similar to a waterwheel, extending into a ditch leading from the river. The water in the ditch washed the wheel, driving a wooden-handled leather bag connected to the crankshaft to push and pull continuously, blowing the air in the bag into the furnace.

The shape of the water wheel is still very different from the water wheels of later generations, but it is not the overturned wheel invented by Ye Ting Ling Bi Lan a few years ago.

This is a hydraulic blower device invented by Du Shi, the prefect of Nanyang more than a hundred years ago. However, due to geographical limitations, it has not been widely promoted as many places do not have rivers with suitable flow rates for installation.

According to Pu Yuan's introduction, if there were no water-pumped bellows, and the small blacksmith shops had to rely on manual labor to pull the bellows to blow air, then the furnace temperature would probably be just over 1,000 degrees at most, and would not even reach 1,100.

Zhuge Jin only took a glance and found that there were at least two points that could be improved:
First of all, it’s the shape of the waterwheel. He had seen so many waterwheels in his later life that he could completely optimize it according to his memory.

The second thing is the air-blowing equipment. We already have water wheels, but we still need to make a leather airbag to do the piston movement to push and pull. The efficiency is too low.

Wouldn’t it be better to just get an electric fan instead of a “water fan” or a “hydraulic ventilator”?

What kind of work method and breathing efficiency is the highest is common knowledge known to modern primary school students.

Otherwise, electric fans and ventilation fans in later generations would not look like that. That is the result of thousands of years of accumulated experience in physics and fluid dynamics.

Although Zhuge Jin couldn't handle electricity, couldn't he just replace the power source with water?

Of course, he also knew a little about fluid dynamics in physics and knew that the shape of an electric fan would still have a very low blowing efficiency at low speeds.

But this is not a problem. Add a wooden gear or a belt-driven sprocket to the power output end of the water wheel and create a speed change mechanism. Then one rotation of the big wheel will be equivalent to dozens of rotations of the small fan wheel, and the speed will be enough.

Although I can't make a fan that rotates thousands of times per minute, it is easy to make one that rotates a few hundred times per minute. Even if I use wood chips to make the fan blades, they are strong enough. If that doesn't work, I can let these blacksmiths make iron fan blades!
As for the slope of the fan blades, it may take repeated experiments to see what slope and what speed will produce the highest efficiency. This requires practice to test.

Zhuge Jin only vaguely relied on his little knowledge of physics and remembered that "the faster the speed of the turbine/fan blades, the higher the blade slope should be, and the slower the speed, the lower the slope."

Therefore, the propellers of ships in later generations rotate slowly and have a small slope. The propellers of airplanes rotate quickly and have a much larger slope. The blade slope of steam turbines or turbines is even greater.

After thinking about this, Zhuge Jin took Pu Yuan and the others to investigate somewhere else first, and then gave a few instructions to the attendants around him, asking them to find Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying to come quickly.

……

About an hour later, Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying arrived. Zhuge Jin was not polite and directly ordered his brothers and sisters-in-law: "Aliang, when you have time, help figure out whether you can make a belt pulley for this waterwheel to speed up and slow down.

The big wheel rotates once and the small wheel rotates a dozen times or even more. Then the shaft of the small wheel drags a few wooden blades or iron sheets to blow air into the air duct of the furnace to see how much stronger the fire can be than the bellows. "

Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying had not expected this to be the task, but luckily Zhuge Liang was not busy that day. They also thought this was novel and were quite interested, so they immediately helped out.

Huang Yueying, in particular, had been thinking about improving Liu Ye's trebuchet in the past few days. She had already gotten the general idea of "making a counterweight trebuchet" from Zhuge Jin, and was thinking about how to lift the heavy counterweight with a labor-saving lever or pulley when the trebuchet was accumulating power.

Therefore, Huang Yueying also felt that the variable transmission mechanism that required the water truck to "increase speed and reduce torque" had something in common with each other. After a little thought, she felt that a small problem that had troubled her mind for two or three days had suddenly become clear.

There were already many craftsmen in the workshop, including some who knew carpentry. A large group of craftsmen started working according to their instructions. Zhuge Jin also occasionally communicated and exchanged ideas with his younger brother and sister, making fine adjustments and optimizations. Before sunset, they actually made the first sample of the "wooden-axis hydraulic ventilation fan".

Everyone was busy for most of the day and was exhausted. But seeing this new thing connected to the air inlet of the furnace, blowing air in continuously without the pauses and intermittences of a bellows, Pu Yuan and Pu Sheng's eyes lit up.

"Is this possible? Are there things in the world that can blow wind directly by rotating wheels? Hey, isn't this a windmill? But ordinary windmills rotate slower than the wind, and this one rotates much faster. It rotates dozens of times in an instant. If the windmill blades were made of iron sheets, it would probably rotate faster and more steadily!"

"Yes, why didn't we think of that before? Isn't it the other way around? Some other force pushes the blades quickly, and then blows out wind. This wind is not small, much stronger than a drum bellows!"

"Look! The light in the furnace is getting brighter! It must be because the wind is blowing faster and the charcoal is burning faster. Add more charcoal! Keep adding charcoal! Double the number of people to pour in the charcoal!"

Pu Yuan and others were so excited that they jumped for joy and quickly directed the cool charcoal burners to pour more charcoal into the top of the furnace.

As the whistling wind blew into the furnace, the furnace temperature was estimated to be dozens of degrees higher than when the leather bag was used for blowing. Everyone soon discovered that the speed at which the molten iron flowed out had become visibly faster.

Moreover, the color of the molten iron was not as dark as before, but more blazing white, and it was obvious that the impurities had decreased. With this result, all the efforts just now were worth it.

"The Zhuge clan is truly full of geniuses! They were able to heat up the furnace, which had been unable to heat up for hundreds of years, so much in just one day that the furnace chamber is now red hot!"

"General, if you have any other magical method, please tell us and we will help you to make it with all our heart!" Pu Yuan was obsessed with iron. When he saw this effect, he immediately kowtowed to Zhuge Jin several times and begged him to continue his guidance.

Zhuge Jin was caught off guard and quickly helped the man up: "No need to do this, no need to do this. I'm not a blacksmith, and I'm not in the same line of work as you guys, so why would I hold back?

You guys should work hard on iron and steel forging, which is also for the general, so we are naturally happy to see it succeed. Today's hydraulic blower is just a prototype, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in the shape of the blades and whether the tilt angle should be larger or smaller.

You need to create and experiment repeatedly, and you will probably have to try dozens of control groups. You need to select the blade shape and angle that has the best blowing effect. Yueying, you will be responsible for reverse-engineering the blade shape with the best experimental effect into a blueprint, so that it will be easier to promote and replicate in the future."

Zhuge Jin was not proud at all and spoke very humbly. He pointed out in one sentence that he had not done enough. This only solved the problem of "whether or not", and made the prototype of the idea run smoothly, which was still far from being efficient.

Even if the furnace temperature is only a few dozen degrees higher than that of the traditional water-cooling system, it is far from enough to satisfy him.

Huang Yueying agreed quietly and took on the job of reverse surveying and drawing the summary.

Among the three intellectuals present, although the Zhuge brothers were proficient in mathematics and physics, they were grown men after all and were not good at painting. They had never practiced drawing and their level was not good.

Women are better at drawing and they draw more carefully, which is why everyone should specialize in their field.

……

Considering that it was getting late, the modification of this crudely made hydraulic blower was barely completed, and there was no time to arrange more technical improvements that day.

So Zhuge Jin only had time to ask a few more questions before Pu Yuan and the others had to go back and rest. They were really tired.

Zhuge Jin took advantage of the situation and asked, "Now that we have this hydraulic windmill, and with time and improvement, the furnace temperature will definitely be able to burn even hotter than it is today. So, do we need to put the 'refractory furnace' I just mentioned on the agenda for improvement? The combustion is getting faster and faster, and the current red clay furnace should not be able to withstand it, right?"

Pu Yuan was just immersed in the excitement and joy of the new improvement, but he did not lose his professional ethics and calm judgment. He stared at the fire carefully for a long time and shook his head:

"Lord, if this blower fan can be improved and the furnace temperature can be raised even higher, the red clay should still be able to withstand it. At most, it will become red hot and soft, and the furnace may collapse within a month.

But at present, our furnaces can only burn for more than ten days at shortest, or one or two months at most, and eventually they have to be scrapped and dismantled and rebuilt with red mud. Will the refractory material you mentioned be time-consuming? Is the material rare? If it is rare, I am afraid it is meaningless, because the furnace is a consumable. "

After hearing this, Zhuge Jin felt like he was poured some cold water on himself again, and he felt really unwilling to accept it.

However, he wanted to promote the "refractory brick blast furnace" right from the start based on the knowledge learned in the chemistry textbook. He did not expect that after he helped Pu Yuan solve a pre-obstacle for air blowing, more pre-obstacles would emerge.

It is not advisable to talk about it on paper. The reason why the ancients could not use refractory furnaces was not only because of the backwardness of material science, but also because most of the wooden boards of the whole barrel were short boards!
It seems that I have to make up for my shortcomings one by one before the shortcoming I am promoting becomes the shortest one.

Fortunately, he was a little prepared this time, so he asked patiently, "Why are these furnaces consumables that need to be scrapped after burning for a few days?"

Pu Yuan: "Because when smelting, it is not always possible to ensure that the iron ore melts and flows out of the furnace just as it becomes pig iron. Because the materials are piled up layer by layer inside the furnace, sometimes the pig iron just melts and is still in the middle of slowly seeping out, it is refined too quickly, and the impurities are further reduced, and it becomes wrought iron.

The melting point of wrought iron is higher than that of pig iron. Once it becomes wrought iron, this temperature is not enough to melt it, and it solidifies into a lump. The fewer impurities there are, the less it melts, and finally it solidifies into a lump together with the slag.

Our furnace can produce dozens to hundreds of kilograms of pig iron every day. Generally, after half a month, the cumulative output is several thousand kilograms of pig iron. Hundreds of kilograms of wrought iron and even hundreds of kilograms of other slags that are bonded to the wrought iron will accumulate in the furnace.

We have tried to add as much lime as possible and melt some of the slag, but the accumulated wrought iron cannot be melted away. If the lime formula to help melt the slag is good enough and accurate enough, after two or three months at most, thousands of kilograms of high-purity wrought iron will accumulate in the furnace, completely blocking the furnace, and we will have to dismantle it and dig out the entire pile of wrought iron.

However, these high-quality wrought irons are also important raw materials for mixing with pig iron to make steel. Generally, 1,000 kilograms of wrought iron mixed with 500 kilograms of pig iron can produce 1,500 kilograms of steel. "

Zhuge Jin listened very carefully and was once again amazed by what he said.

Was the iron smelting blast furnace/furnace of the late Han Dynasty actually a consumable? Because the wrought iron did not flow out fast enough, it became too wrought iron to melt, and accumulated over time to block the bottom of the furnace, and finally the furnace had to be dismantled to take it out.

However, after understanding the problem, Zhuge Jin's knowledge of chemistry came in handy again.

He remembered that the chemistry textbook mentioned that if lime was not enough to help melt the slag, fluorite could be used as a flux, right?
Uh...it's just that Zhuge Jin seemed to be a bit of an armchair talker. He suddenly remembered that he had only glanced at this little bit of paper knowledge in the book, but he didn't even know what fluorite was called in ancient times or what it looked like.

How do you describe this to a craftsman? Ask them to find a certain stone to use as an additive to help with the flux?
As for the composition of fluorite, he knew it. It was just calcium fluoride.

The ancients used lime to help with melting. The principle was to react certain high-melting-point slag impurities into their calcium compounds, which then lowered the melting point to a level lower than that of molten iron, and it flowed out. Fluorite not only has calcium available like lime, but also can use its fluorine element to form low-melting-point fluorides of certain slags, which can then flow out.

Zhuge Jin knew that he couldn't do more today, so he just secretly made a note of a new task for himself: to find fluorite ore as a new flux, and then give it to Pu Yuan for testing.

As for the refractory bricks fired with aluminates, regardless of whether they can be used temporarily or not, let them start firing them by administrative order.

A furnace built with refractory bricks is definitely more expensive than one made of red mud, but it is not unacceptable to "smash the furnace and take out the slag."

In the future, if we can figure out a detachable furnace structure, when the slag and wrought iron accumulate, we can turn off the fire and let the furnace cool for a few days, then just make a big hole in the bottom, dig out a large lump of wrought iron slag weighing several thousand pounds, clean the furnace, and then the main structure of the furnace can be retained. The cost will be much lower.

Zhuge Jin also firmly believed that as long as the furnace temperature continued to rise, the ratio of slag and unmelted wrought iron would definitely become lower and lower, because as long as it reached 1,200 degrees, some of the previously unmelted wrought iron would melt. If it was raised to 1,300 degrees, perhaps only a very small amount of very pure iron would remain unmelted.

So this direction of effort is definitely worthwhile.

So, he roughly explained the attempts and efforts that Pu Yuan and his team should make in the next few months, but did not force any indicators, and then left in a hurry. Zhuge Jin also needed to go back and calm down, and then improve his plan.

Pu Yuan and Pu Sheng were quite surprised when they saw Zhuge Jin leaving.

"Uncle, I think Zhuhou seems to be obsessed with recommending his refractory brick furnace to us. Our furnace fire can't burn that strong and hot, so he tries every way to help us heat the furnace to a high enough temperature, so hot that we need to use his new furnace."

It's a bit like brewing a bottle of good vinegar, and then becoming obsessed with it, and having to make dumplings just for that little bit of vinegar.

Of course, there are no dumplings today.

On the other hand, on the way back to Zhuge Brothers, Zhuge Liang also felt that his elder brother was a little paranoid, and he bravely reminded him:
"Brother, I suddenly feel that you are a bit like the kind of person you described to me when you taught me two years ago: a person with a hammer in his hand who wants to hammer everything he sees.

Is it because you discovered that the bricks made from Guanyin clay are particularly fire-resistant, so you feel bad when you can’t use these fire-resistant bricks when building furnaces and porcelain kilns?”

Zhuge Jin was stunned when he heard this, and then he couldn't help laughing.

Logically speaking, Zhuge Liang was right, he was indeed paranoid.

This kind of paranoia comes from knowing the historical answer in advance, but it is difficult to give the answer directly, so one can only "fill in the gaps one by one until the one I think needs to be filled becomes the shortest one."

Therefore, Zhuge Jin did not blame his second brother. Zhuge Liang's way of thinking was good. Even if his answer was correct, the problem-solving process was not rigorous.

"Aliang, you are right. I am indeed paranoid this time, but don't ask me why. Just let me be paranoid for once.

At least the two improvements we recommended are correct. Improving the blast and using better slag flux can both produce more and better steel. "

(End of this chapter)