Late Ming Dynasty: Oops, I am surrounded by the Donglin Party

"What the hell? What old thing?" Zhang Shikang frowned.

"Mr. President, I call you Boss." The Boss still answered honestly.

Zhang Shikang's expression was a little strange. He turned around and asked the examiner:

"Is there any surname called Lao among the Hundred Family Surnames?"

"Yes, my lord."

This is not surprising, but this is the first time I have seen someone with the surname Lao.

"You don't have a brother named Lao Er, do you?" Zhang Shikang teased with a smile.

"My Lord President, I have two brothers, one is called the Second Brother and the other is called the Third Brother. They also participated in this year's Spring Examination."

Wow, three brothers from the same family are taking the exam at the same time!

"Okay, see you tomorrow." Zhang Shikang was speechless, thinking that the father of these three brothers was really a genius at naming.

When Zhang Shikang was surfing the Internet in later generations, he had seen some strange ID card names such as Shi Zhenxiang, Fu Yanjie, and Li Maodan, but this was the first time he had actually encountered such a name.

No, the name of the deputy admiral of the navy, Ma Tong, is also quite strange. That’s also not right. There was no Ma Tong in the Ming Dynasty at that time.

Ma Tong Ma Tong, the name was given by his father, it should have the meaning of immediate unification or some other better meaning.

After leaving the examination hall of the Imperial College, Zhang Shikang returned home.

The family is now very lively, with nine wives and four daughters. If it weren't for his father and elder brother who often have meals together, Zhang Shikang always feels like he has returned to the Land of Women.

The next day, Zhang Shikang went to see the boss again.

His intuition told him that this guy was capable, especially his focused expression and rigorous work style when he was working, which matched his impression of technical jobs.

He is taciturn but not worldly-wise, focused and rigorous.

If this guy's method can really improve the quality of molten iron, Zhang Shikang would not hesitate to pay the one thousand taels of silver.

Not only that, such talents must not be given to the imperial court, but must be poached to the General Manufacturing Bureau. It would be a pity for them to become officials.

The next three days were rather boring. The eldest brother seemed to have transformed into a bricklayer, concentrating entirely on building the wall.

The third furnace he had to build was much more complicated than the other two. Ever since the boss knew that the president was also the chief of the Manufacturing Bureau, he answered almost every question he asked.

While covering the stove, he would tell Zhang Shikang why he did this, and Zhang Shikang would be very supportive and nod his head frequently.

On the morning of the fifth day before the second exam, the furnace that the boss used to refine iron ore was finally built.

Although it was only used for examinations, the furnace built by the boss was still more than two meters high.

This is a vertical cylindrical column. In addition to the brick and stone structure, it is sealed inside and out with high-temperature resistant clay, and there is a special cover on the top.

The lid has two openings on the top and side, one for feeding materials and the other for gas outlet.

There are two high and low openings on the furnace wall near the bottom. The low one is the molten iron outlet, and the high one is the slag outlet. There is also an air supply outlet above the slag outlet.

The entire furnace body is like a chimney with a small head and a big belly.

In the boss's words, all the preparations he made over four days were just to raise the furnace temperature.

Zhang Shikang certainly understood this principle. As for smelting, the reason why bronze ware was used in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period was because the temperature could not be reached, so only bronze could be smelted.

Although iron smelting has already begun, the smelting temperature is not ideal, so that the molten iron absorbs a large amount of carbon during the smelting process. The high carbon content makes the pig iron very brittle and can only be cast but not forged, and the impurities cannot be removed cleanly.

After cleaning up the waste in the furnace, the boss quickly started to operate.

He first crushed the iron ore with a hammer and mixed it with lime, then mixed it with charcoal and coke extracted from coal, and put the mixture into the blast furnace.

Then add a layer of coke and a layer of iron ore until the entire furnace is covered. The boss uses tinder to ignite the coke from the bottom, and soon, smoke begins to come out of the top of the furnace.

"Then we just have to wait."

After finishing all this, the boss was a little out of breath, but his face was full of a sense of accomplishment, and he seemed to be very confident in this experiment.

"Boss, how long will it take?" Zhang Shikang interrupted.

He insisted on changing the boss's name, thinking that calling him "big brother" was more appropriate than "boss", and of course the boss didn't dare to object.

"It won't take too long. After a while, molten iron will flow out."

After saying that, the boss continued to work without stopping.

The manufacturer provides a bellows, which is usually used to blow air into the furnace, but the boss's furnace is tall enough and made of solid materials, so there is no need for a bellows at all.

But he also brought out the bellows and connected it to the charcoal stove.

After the charcoal-burning furnace produced the raw materials, it was not abandoned. Instead, the boss made some slight modifications to it and used it to collect the flowing molten iron.

If the normal smelting process is followed, the molten iron can be shaped using a mold after it flows out, but the boss's iron smelting process obviously has more than one step.

When the boss estimated that the iron ore was about to turn into molten iron and flow out, he placed the crucible in the furnace, then put enough coke in the furnace and lit it.

A quarter of an hour later, molten iron began to flow out of the blast furnace and quickly flowed into the crucible in the furnace next to it.

The boss immediately asked the guards assigned to him by Zhang Shikang to pull the bellows frantically, while he himself took out a metal rod to stir the molten iron in the crucible.

The coke at the bottom of the furnace was burning, and the crucible had already been burned red. Coupled with the temperature of the molten iron, although it was only a short time since the beginning of spring, it didn't take long for the boss to be soaked in sweat.

But he did not stop and continued to stir the molten iron in the crucible.

The air blown out by the bellows is not used to supply air to the coke in the furnace, but is continuously blown into the molten iron that is being stirred at a high speed.

Zhang Shikang was stunned during the whole process.

The boss was so focused on his work that he had no time to talk for a while.

This process lasted for nearly half an hour before the boss poured the molten iron into the mold.

When the molten iron in the mold cooled down, what suddenly caught Zhang Shikang's eyes was a piece of exquisite metal that was different from the pig iron provided by the Ministry of Industry.

The luster of the metal is much more beautiful than that of ordinary pig iron.

"Done?" Zhang Shikang wanted to take the piece of metal, but was stopped by the boss. Although it had cooled down, the residual heat of the metal was still very high.

"Thanks to the help of the president, the smelting was quite successful this time." The boss wiped his sweat and bowed to Zhang Shikang.

At this moment, a smile finally appeared on his face.

"Boss, why did you add that extra step just now?" Zhang Shikang quickly asked the question in his mind.

"This... I actually don't really understand it. It was only a few years ago that I suddenly discovered that doing this can make the smelted iron less brittle." The boss said a little embarrassedly.

Since the entire technical class of the Ming Dynasty had no systematic theory, even skilled craftsmen often knew what to do but not why.

For example, when the boss was smelting iron, he only knew that doing this could improve the quality of the iron, but he didn't know why.

Zhang Shikang then began to think and recall what had just happened.

The reason why firewood is not used, but firewood is processed into charcoal and coal is processed into coke, and charcoal and coke are used to improve combustion efficiency is naturally to increase the furnace temperature to the maximum extent, so as to separate more impurities in the iron ore.

The molten iron is constantly stirred and wind is also supplied. Wind is air, and the only function that air can provide to metal is oxygen.

Oxygen... oxygen...

The carbon content in the molten iron is too high, making the iron too brittle...

Oxygen reacts with carbon to produce carbon dioxide???

High-speed stirring and introduction of oxygen are intended to make the reaction more thorough.

Thereby reducing the carbon content in the molten iron???

"I understand!" Zhang Shikang's mind lit up and he slapped his thigh.

……

PS: The above is a low-profile version of blast furnace steelmaking. Something happened recently, resulting in poor update status. I am really sorry.