Qin Chuan stayed in Heishan for three days. During the day, he was thinking about how to make cement with Yan Sanqi at the cement factory, and lived in the iron farm at night.

Yan Sanqi and all the craftsmen did not understand what the cement Qin Chuan was talking about. In their opinion, putting a pile of mud into the furnace for calcination can either be made of blue bricks or ceramics. No one has ever heard of it being able to burn mud for building a house.

Whether they don’t believe it or not, they still honestly and earnestly followed Qin Chuan’s requirements and made the furnace and stone mill.

Then a pile of limestone was harvested on the spot, and then the furnace ash, cinder, iron slag, etc. were transported from the minerals, and clay and gypsum were all ground into powder. Eight different proportions of mud were prepared, and the furnace could be opened after the furnace was dried.

There are many gypsum mines in the Luliang Mountains. People mine gypsum in Jingle and Lan County, but the scale is extremely small, because the gypsum of this era is only used for boiling tofu and medicinal purposes, and the demand is very small.

Jiaocheng, Fenyang and Lingshi in the southern part of Luliang Mountain both have barely large gypsum mines, especially Fenyang and Lingshi, which are larger in scale, and several large-scale enterprises specialize in plaster selling.

After Qin Chuan confiscated more than a dozen large households, he also confiscated more than a thousand kilograms of cooked gypsum. Almost every large household makes his own tofu, and he has some more or less prepared.

These mature gypsums are only enough for the early exploration stage. Qinchuan sent people to Jiaocheng, Fenyang and Lingshi to buy a few thousand kilograms first. At the same time, the gypsum mining companies in Jingle and Lan County will expand the mines and increase the output, and they will definitely be self-sufficient in the future.

In addition to the cement factory, Qin Chuan also spent a lot of time discussing the smelting technology of the iron field with Yan Sanqi.

Both large furnaces have a hot air furnace, which heats the air through a large bellows, and also has a hard iron pipe that sprays kerosene and coal powder to increase the furnace temperature.

A secondary refining furnace was also built next to it, which is the semi-enclosed crucible that I found when building a cannon. The molten iron will flow into the crucible of the refining furnace from the large furnace. The refining furnace also needs to use coke and hot air coal powder to maintain extremely high furnace temperatures, so that the molten iron remains liquid and put into limestone to make slag and remove impurities.

Among the two large furnaces, one is used to refine pig iron, and the other is used to refine iron directly, which is achieved by controlling the carbon content of the iron.

Because some iron tools need to be cast with pig iron with a lower melting point, while iron tools such as weapons and agricultural tools must be forged with cooked iron, so raw and cooked iron must be refined.

The raw and cooked iron produced through the secondary refining furnace has few impurities and greatly improved its quality. It has surpassed the Guangzhou Iron and Fujian Iron in the south, and is even very close to the high-carbon and low-carbon steels in later generations.

Nowadays, Heishan Mine can produce 3,000 kilograms of iron and 2,000 kilograms of cooked iron every day. More than 300,000 kilograms of raw and cooked iron have been piled in the warehouse. The Hongqian Mine also has more than 100,000 kilograms, and the total inventory is nearly 500,000 kilograms.

The price of pig iron produced in the north is about one cent and five cents per catty, while the price of cooked iron is less than three cents. The Guangzhou-Ticket and Fujian-Ticket in the south are about 30 to 40%. The iron in Qinchuan is even better than the iron in southern China. There should be no problem with pig iron and four cents of cooked iron.

There is so much iron, I will definitely not be able to use it myself, so I have to sell it. As early as more than ten days ago, Luo Wentian went to recruit scholars and find buyers.

Five hundred thousand kilograms of raw iron can be sold for about 15,000 taels of silver. It is not much for Qin Chuan, who is rich and powerful, but this is a long-term transaction and must be done, as long as it is not sold to Shanxi merchants.

After having enough blacksmiths, Qin Chuan wanted to make a large amount of ironware, and selling finished products made more money than selling raw materials.

For example, after opening up the West Tumot tribe and Yarkand Trading Trail in the west, you can sell iron pots to them, which can increase the profit several times.

Moreover, Qin Chuan also wanted to increase the output, and the large furnace must be increased, but he wanted to mechanize to improve efficiency, but he just couldn't get a steam engine, let alone electric power, so he could only start with large tools.

First of all, various pulley booms are fixed with triangle brackets, used to lift iron ore into furnaces, iron materials are released, etc., which can terminate the contract with a large amount of manpower.

When the first hanger was raised, Qin Chuan stood beside him. When he watched the miners push trucks of iron ore and coking coal into the stove with the chicken bus, he suddenly slapped his thigh and shouted: "Road!"

Yan Sanqi and others stood beside him, shocked and looked at him with confusion.

"Railways, we can build rails and transmission belts."

Qin Chuan ignored the doubts of others and patted Yan Sanqi on the shoulder hard, almost slapped the latter on the ground.

"Hurry, send a few people back to Mengjiazhuang and ask Chen Zhan and Li Xuejing to draw some blacksmiths out. The more the better. I will transfer it to Heishan immediately. By the way, there are carpenters, and another group of carpenters will be transferred here."

"Wait, just call Chen Zhan too. He can't do without him if he wants to cast large iron parts."

"yes."

Although the red-clothed servant behind him was puzzled, he still took the order.

"Old Yan, just send some people to cut wood nearby, just ask for silver fir and thighs, and then concentrate all the asphalt in the iron yard, which will be of great use at that time."

&nbs-->>

p; "By the way, click on how many mule and horse carts are there in the iron and coal yards, and pick out the strongest carts, which will be of great use at that time."

"good."

Yan Sanqi was also full of doubts, but he still took the order.

Before he walked far, he couldn't help but stop and turned around and asked, "Sir, what exactly do we want to build?"

"Um……"

Qin Chuan squatted on the ground, found two branches to be placed in parallel, and gestured: "We need to lay two rails and install iron wheels on the mule and horse carriage that can be stuck into the rails. Because the rails and iron wheels are very smooth, it will be easy to pull mules and horses. Originally, mules that could pull 1,000 pounds will not be a problem after getting on this kind of rail."

"So much?" Yan Sanqi was shocked.

"Well, I don't know how much I can pull, I guess it, but it's definitely okay to have three or five thousand pounds."

Yan Sanqi looked at the two branches and frowned and thought.

After a long time, an excitement gradually appeared on his face. He slapped his thigh like Qin Chuan, and then ran to arrange things.

Qin Chuan went back to Song Zhiting's house, took Song Zhiting's rice paper that was played with painting and painting, and began to write and draw.

He wanted to build carriage tracks, lay them between the mine cave and the iron yard, the iron yard and the coal yard, and then connect the place where the iron materials were stacked with two furnaces, and use a track truck to transport coal, iron ore, etc. He also wanted to build a transmission belt to send coking coal into the furnace, which could greatly save manpower and improve efficiency.

Moreover, he also wanted to lay tracks in the mine.

Today's iron ore can be pushed out with a chicken bus if the slope of the mine is not large, but if there is a steep slope of the mine, it has to be carried out with manpower. Not only is it inefficient, it also consumes a lot of labor.

In later generations, a train could hold sixty or seventy tons per car, and the rail car he built could hold one thousand kilograms per car. The weight required for bearings and iron wheels was not very large. Li Xuejing's bearing technology was already very mature. The bearings of rail cars were not a problem, and with iron quality, iron wheels were not a problem.

If a mule can pull five carriages, it means that it can transport 5,000 kilograms at a time, which will increase the efficiency by five times, saving four mules and four coachmen.

The only difficulty is that the project volume is large, the construction volume of casting railway tracks that are several miles long is very large, and dozens of iron wheels, modified vehicles, etc. are required.

Qin Chuan estimated that this project would take at least two or three months.

Chen Zhan came that day. After Qin Chuan showed him the drawn drawings and told him the principle, Chen Zhan couldn't help but be amazed and extremely excited.

The next day he started working on molds and preparing to cast tracks.

Qin Chuan also continued to stay in Heishan and explored with him. Loufan's affairs were sent by Wang Jizong, Luo Daniu and others to report to him.

Three days later, a Guandi army rushed to Heishan to report something to him: Bobcao returned from Xing County and brought back more than 1,300 hungry people, but some of them had unknown what disease they had. Several of them died as soon as they arrived in Lan County, and their skin was dark when they died.

Wang Jizong felt that this matter was important [Dingdian Novel     www.xbooktxt.me], so he sent someone to notify Bobcat, asking him to find a place where no one was settled, count all the sick people, and temporarily separate them from others.

Because Wang Jizong suspected that those people had the plague that had occurred during the Wanli period and the Tianqi period.

Upon hearing this news, Qin Chuan frowned first, and suddenly his face changed drastically.

The deceased's skin is dark, isn't this the Black Death?

Isn’t the Black Death the Plague?

He clearly remembered that a tragic plague broke out in the late Ming Dynasty, which seemed to be the outbreak in the Xingxian area in the sixth year of Chongzhen.

Thinking of this, he immediately asked the Guandi Army to take a shortcut to find the Bobcat, and asked the Bobcat to keep an eye on the hungry people, not to get close to any village, nor to others to get close to these hungry people.

Moreover, all sick or ill people must be separated. No one is allowed to contact those sick, including delivering water and food, and can only be placed far away in one place.

Then, Qin Chuan hurriedly explained to Chen Zhan and Yan Sanqi, and immediately rushed back to Loufan to arrange prevention affairs.

The reason why the population of the Ming Dynasty dropped from more than 100 million to 14 million was that in addition to famine and war, it was also caused by a plague.

From the sixth year of Chongzhen to the demise of the Ming Dynasty, it has been raging for more than ten years.

From Shanxi, Shaanxi, and then to Shuntian Prefecture, there are corpses all over the world, and there are thousands of miles of purgatory.

In Beijing City in the 14th year of Chongzhen alone, there were more than 200,000 corpses registered by the government, and countless people were not registered.

When Li Hongji captured Beijing, he faced a dead city where people and ghosts were mixed and people dared not walk on the evening.
Chapter completed!