94: From Technological Warfare to Space Empire

After Lin Yu finished speaking, he leaned back in his chair and fell into deep thought.

Seeing Xu Haoxiang glancing at him repeatedly, Lin Yu opened his mouth and asked:

Why are you looking at me like that?

Xu Haoxiang couldn't help but ask.

"Are you really going to pay my full salary in three months?"

"That's the salary for over 700 people for four months. Let me do the math, that's an average of 200 yuan per person per month..."

Xu Haoxiang struggled with the calculations, so Lin Yu took over the conversation immediately.

"560,000."

"This doesn't even include the cost of raw materials, equipment maintenance, and utilities."

"And that doesn't even include the salary for these three months..."

Xu Haoxiang's eyes widened, and he asked in return:

"Where did you get so much money? How dare you talk such nonsense?"

Lin Yu watched the pedestrians rushing past the car window.

"It's not an exaggeration."

"If I can't transform the factory into a place where I can pay wages on time within three months, how can I have the nerve to ask the higher-ups for a factory again?"

"This is a fact, and it is also a necessary sacrifice after acquiring the means of production."

Moreover, our proprietary learning AI is already ready. Once it's released and sold, it can easily provide enough to pay workers' wages for three months, let alone three years.

There was a moment of silence in the car.

Xu Haoxiang suddenly said.

"Do you need my help?"

"My family... although my grandfather is probably ready to beat me to death right now, if we really need money..."

"I can still scrape together fifty, sixty, seventy, or eighty thousand for you."

Seeing that Xu Haoxiang was still behaving the same way, Lin Yu smiled. If it weren't for Xu Haoxiang's usual generosity, he wouldn't have stopped Chief Hou from beating him up a couple of days ago.

Lin Yu had originally planned to ask Chief Hou for the necessary qualifications to apply for a bank loan in the afternoon, but since Xu Haoxiang had offered to help, he could save his afternoon to study.

"Regarding the funding issue, if your family can contribute, you can contribute a portion as an investment."

"If you can't get through to your family, go ask Chief Hou for 300,000 this afternoon. I'll use part of it to pay salaries and part to buy equipment tomorrow."

Lin Yu knew the value of the technology he had previously submitted. He could easily get a mere 30 yuan just by using facial recognition.

"Once the first wave of funding came in, I had a solution."

Xu Haoxiang then asked:

"What method?"

Lin Yu did not answer.

Instead, they focused their attention on the faintly visible chimneys on the distant horizon, which marked the Shougang factory area.

At that time, there were many steel companies in Beijing, and the competition was fierce.

Old factories like Hongxing lack both technology and capital; how can they survive?

He can only rely on his greatest asset: the knowledge from 2026.

Based on those mountains of steel slag, which others would consider waste.

It was dark when the car entered the city, and the streetlights came on.

Red lanterns were hung on the shops along the road, and the festive atmosphere of the New Year was getting stronger.

"Send me back to Beihang University."

"I'm going to the basement."

Xu Haoxiang nodded and drove the car over.

The basement lights at Beihang University stayed on all afternoon.

When it was time for dinner, Lin Yu leaned back in his chair and reviewed the information he had found.

Steel slag, a solid waste generated during the steelmaking process, mainly consists of calcium silicate, calcium ferrite, and free calcium oxide.

By 2026, the utilization rate had reached over 98%.

It can be used as a cement admixture, road construction material, and soil conditioner.

Lin Yu yawned widely.

He thought to himself that it was exactly as he had expected.

This thing is not waste at all; it's just a resource in the wrong place.

Steel slag can be ground into powder and used to make cement. By finding connections and cooperating with urban construction companies, this stuff can also be used for road construction.

After extraction using chemical methods, it can be processed into silicon-calcium fertilizer.

However, the profits from these are still not high enough, and the utilization rate of steel slag is still not thorough enough.

Compared to calcium and silica, the most valuable components of steel slag are the rare metals vanadium, titanium, and niobium found in the ores. These metals are discarded during the smelting process and end up in the steel slag.

The first two are good things that can be used to make new types of batteries.

Vanadium redox flow batteries and perovskite batteries are both favorites in the stock market.

Niobium metal is even more remarkable, as it is a constituent element of lithium niobate thin film, a core material for optical modules.

With this in mind, Lin Yu decided to use a combined electrostatic and magnetic separation process for the first phase of upgrades to the steel plant. Rare metals are far more valuable than steel slag for making cement.

This process relies on the differences in the electromagnetic fields of different minerals in steel slag to achieve physical separation.

Because no chemical agents are used, costs can be further reduced.

The equipment is relatively simple, and similar technologies already exist, but no one has thought of using it on steel slag; it is entirely feasible.

"That's it!"

Lin Yu brought up the CAD interface (drawing software) and began drawing a sketch of the equipment.

At that time, CAD was still the ancient version CAD12, which was only installed by research institutions in universities and large state-owned and foreign companies.

Electrostatic separators, magnetic separators, crushers, ball mills, etc.... These kinds of equipment can all be found in this era, and some can even be modified by oneself.

Halfway through drawing the design, Lin Yu suddenly realized something was wrong.

These days, the upstream and downstream supply chains are incomplete. How much money can you make just by selling metals?

Rare metals are rare, but nobody uses them. It's a pure seller's market, so it's still a loss for most people.

Selling precious metals cheaply as raw materials is not his style.

If you're going to sell, sell products with high added value.

Sergei, who was officially discussing the elasticity of steel, was actually there to exchange actinide photovoltaic cell technology with high-value-added metals.

Actin(a) series metals are a series of intermediate products in the decay of uranium into lead, and are considered the main sources of radioactive poison in nuclear waste.

If Lin Yu remembered correctly, the most important light-emitting element in actinide photovoltaic cells is metallic terbium (Tb(te)). Without it, nuclear radiation would be difficult to convert into light waves to shine on the photovoltaic element and generate electricity.

This stuff is a rare earth element, and in steel slag...

Iron ore is very likely to be associated with rare earth minerals.

Rare earth minerals are among the impurities discharged during steelmaking.

Although the content is not high, if it can be enriched...

Tranium can be used to trick Sergei and his group into exploding with gold coins, and rare earth elements such as yttrium and europium in steel slag also have their own uses.

High-end alloys may not have a market for the time being, but phosphors used in LEDs are just right, and LEDs can also be used to make screens.

Right now, with the Hong Kong style in full swing and favorable policies, color TV production is expanding and the demand for screens is booming, so these rare earth elements have no worries about sales.

Just do it.

The lights stayed on until 4 a.m.

When Lin Yu finally shut down his computer, a complete technical solution had already taken shape in his mind:

Purchase steel slag → extract rare metals and rare earth elements → grind the remainder into powder to make cement → exchange for money to buy equipment → restart the Great Leap Forward steelmaking.

Lin Yu rubbed his sore eyes and secretly calculated using the system.

What is the success rate of methods for extracting rare metal elements from steel slag?

[100% feasible]

"What about extracting rare earth elements from steel slag?"

[The goal of enriching rare earth metals to 84% has been achieved, but some elements in the scheme are toxic and do not meet the host requirements.]

[The plan already meets the minimum requirements for completion. Should it be supplemented with information on non-toxic chemical treatment?]

Seeing the feedback from the system, Lin Yu's tired face broke into a smile.

"Complete it!"

A wealth of knowledge flooded into Lin Yu's mind, and soon a brand-new technical solution based on chemical extraction was compiled.

Seeing that he had the plan in hand, Lin Yu finally breathed a sigh of relief.

In this era, the biggest advantage of this plan is that the initial investment is not too large, and the subsequent profit returns are enormous.

After all, steel slag is practically free these days. If you go to our door to process and recycle it, the manufacturers will even pay you a fee to thank us.

That's the greatest charm of science and engineering.

If you are strong enough, you will have an information gap that others cannot break.

After finishing all this, Lin Yu slumped onto the table and fell into a deep sleep.

Before going to bed, I just feel like there's never enough time; there's always so much to do every day.

The sale of AI also needs to be put on the agenda.