Only this can make Lao Guanjun admire him to the ground. Although it has not been put into practice yet, Lao Guanjun understands the idea of ​​converting a large furnace into a small furnace to continuously produce molten iron. To put it bluntly, it means one more feed port and slag outlet, and

A cooling water tank and four iron plates are required to ensure the strength of the furnace body.

Seeing Lao Guanguan's overjoyed look, Su You smiled and said: "Old man, don't think it's too easy. First of all, you have to prepare enough ingredients. Otherwise, if you can't keep up and turn off the flame, the stove will be considered useless."

Lao Guanguan said with a smile: "It can't be scrapped. You have to prepare enough materials. But if it's not enough, you can also help other iron shops to do the work and collect wages."

Su You couldn't help but laugh: "The old man is really a sensible person. With your brain, many officials in the government can't match it!"

…

The ragged roads open up the mountains and forests.

The next road really became difficult. After another day of climbing, we finally arrived at Shouyang County, which is Zhenhengyue Mountain and Luo Taihang Mountain, surrounded by mountains.

When you arrive here, you reach the other side of the Taihang Mountains watershed, and the next step is downhill.

It's easier to go up the mountain than it is to go down, and the road is even more difficult than when we came here. We have to leave the Mianmanshui River Valley, follow the old path of the Han Kai Puwu Canal, touch the cave and cross the water river valley, and walk another 40 miles to reach the southwest of Taiyuan Prefecture.

Yuci County.

Yuci County is the western starting point of Jingxing Road. When he reached here, the energy in Su You's heart relaxed and he could no longer walk.

So Shen Kuo arranged for the team to rest for another day in Yuci.

Yuci is only fifty miles away from Taiyuan. The land here is fertile and the climate is suitable for abundant water and grass. And because the arable land is vast and annexation is not prominent, the people live a good life. It is known as "the gateway to Taiyuan, the land of rice and noodles".

Su You slept until noon the next day, and after eating a bowl of braised noodles, he finally felt that he was okay again.

In the afternoon, I asked someone to kill two sheep as a reward for the guards who came all the way. However, when it was time for dinner, I found that I had no appetite at all, so I could only drink millet porridge.

Yuci millet porridge is quite good, I drank it and fell asleep.

When Su You woke up the next morning, he felt pain all over his body. He looked back at the majestic Taihang Mountains where he had walked for ten days: "I really don't want to walk this road a second time. I didn't feel this way when I walked overland to Kuizhou."

Tired..."

Song Yongchen gloated on the side: "When we first set out, didn't Situ say it would be nice to ride a horse on this road?"

Su You got angry when he thought about it: "You asked me to build a railway on this road? Fortunately, I didn't listen to you."

Shen Kuo smiled and said: "Hasn't it been decided to take the northern route now? This road will not be repaired."

"Repair! Why not repair it!" Su You said fiercely: "Wide it on the original basis. There are many places where trestles can be connected. Use prefabricated cement to convert them into trestles, and then dig into the mountain on the other side. It must be widened to at least four points.

Five meters, reduce the slope, and two vans can be paralleled!"

Shen Kuo was speechless: "That's another four to five million dollars."

Su You said: "It was really difficult for me to come up with so much money last year, but things will be different next year and the year after that. This is a big thing that will benefit the future."

"If the three of us don't do anything here, probably no one will do it in another hundred years."

"The resources in Yangquan, Shouyang, and Jingxing are so good. Once this road is connected, the rich coal and iron resources in the Taihang Mountains will be able to supply Zhending Prefecture, and the entire front line with the Liao Dynasty will not worry."

Song Yongchen gritted his teeth: "Then fix it!"

Shen Kuo actually had a headache: "Let's go and see the railway first."

Taiyuan, before the pre-Qin Dynasty, was Jizhou, the first of the nine states in ancient times.

Taihang on the left, Luliang on the right, Yunzhong, the two mountains of Tiezhou are hugged behind, and Hanxinling lies across the front.

The faint Fen River flows through it, creating a Jinzhong plain that is six hundred miles long from north to south and eighty miles wide from east to west.

To the south is Huoshan Pass, and there is a small plain in the past - Linfen Plain.

At the end of the Sui Dynasty, Li Yuan and Li Shimin were stationed in Jinyang. Because it was known as the Tang Kingdom in ancient times, after the capital was established in Chang'an, the country was named "Tang".

During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, during the Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Northern Han Dynasties, Jinyang either flourished or became the capital of the country. For a time, Taiyuan became famous and was known as "Dragon City".

In the fourth year of the Taiping and Xingguo reign, Zhao Guangyi destroyed the Northern Han Dynasty. Out of hatred for the stubborn resistance of Taiyuan soldiers and civilians and fear of the Dragon City's feng shui, he ordered the city of Jinyang to be burned down and diverted water from Fen and Jin, leaving Jinyang City in ruins.

It was not until three years later that the city was rebuilt in Tangming Town, more than 40 miles north of Yangcheng, Kuching. In the fourth year of Jiayou, Taiyuan Prefecture was established.

The Jinzhong Plain is irrigated by several rivers, and because it was developed earlier, agriculture is developed.

Just twenty-two miles southeast of the city, by the Fen River, was the Song Dynasty's Daye Institute and Yongli Prison.

There is a kind of salt produced there, called alkali salt, which is made by boiling alkaline soil. The salt households who boil the salt are called "Dang households" and boil more than 125,000 stones a year. Although the salt obtained is "too bitter to eat",

But it was once a necessity for the people on Hedong Road.

It's sad to say that the so-called alkali salt is actually salt mixed with a large amount of Glauber's salt. The alkaline soil in the entire Hedong Road has a high sodium sulfate content. In the eyes of foodies like Su You, it should not be used as edible salt at all.

This secret was actually cracked in Shu more than thirty years ago. Through a series of methods, Glauber's salt and table salt could be separated.

However, the situation in Sichuan was based on brine based on sodium chloride, but in Taiyuan, another set of methods was used.

This is not only an effort to provide the people of Hedong Road with "sweet and salty food", but also an economic war.

In the process of studying salt brine, Zhang Tianshi discovered that the solubility of Glauber's salt at low temperatures is much lower than that of table salt.

The winter in Taiyuan is extremely cold, but fuel is very abundant.

Therefore, you can boil salt in winter and then freeze it outdoors. A large amount of Glauber's salt will precipitate out, and then add alkaline earth solution. Repeat this several times to produce a large amount of Glauber's salt and finally obtain a sufficient concentration of brine.

Then through the method of making salt in Sichuan, you can get "sweet salt".

With the help of sweet salt, the smuggling of summer salt and Liao salt in Linfu and Wutai Mountains on Hedong Road was effectively curbed. The Song Dynasty used Glauber's Salt to make high-quality printed and dyed fur products, as well as colored glaze, glass, porcelain, paper, and soap, and began to counterattack the Liao Kingdom and Xixia

, not only enough to offset the cost of making salt, but also obtain greater benefits.

This war without gunpowder is still going on to this day. However, after the summer salt from Linfu was changed from private salt to public salt, the function of Yongli Supervision to produce table salt was reduced to a secondary position, and the geographical and climatic advantages were used to vigorously produce Glauber's Salt.

, rose to the main position.

…

Nowadays, the Song Dynasty has a synthetic ammonia process. Through the ammonia oxidation method, the efficiency of producing nitric acid is far greater than that of the acid tower method.

So now Hebei No. 3 Road, because of Yanshan Chemical Industry, already has three acids and two alkali.

However, Shen Kuo was also a capable person. He used the pyrite produced in Hedong to produce a large amount of sulfuric acid through the acid tower method, and then mixed the sulfuric acid with livestock urine to boil nitrate to make explosives.

Then explosives were used to mine the mines and wet copper was smelted, so that the copper production capacity of Hedong Road was continuously doubled.

Some time has passed by now, and the copper stock on Hedong Road has reached 4 million copper. Shen Kuo had just dared to write a letter saying that he was ready to build a steel plant.

Just three days after the memorial was issued, Shen Kuo received a notice from the Zhengzhou Machinery Factory asking him to drive a bicycle to pull equipment. A series of supporting equipment such as coke ovens, steelmaking furnaces, ball mills, machine tools, etc. for the first phase. It turned out that

As early as half a year ago, Jiangsu Oil had already calculated Shen Kuo's copper production capacity through reports, and then it made some effort, provided loans through Hebei Development Bank, and settled with Zhengzhou.

Only then did Shen Kuo realize that he had been tricked by Situ again. In fact, Situ had already agreed to his plan, but he was afraid that he would not be able to do it, so he set a goal and asked himself to work hard to achieve it.

As a result, Hedong Road's political performance exploded.

This has only advantages and no disadvantages for Shen Kuo himself. Apart from wiping bitter tears thinking about how hard he had been like a dog in the past year, Shen Kuo was very excited about the award from the imperial court and the praise from the elders of Hedong.

Situ has not given up on me! Situ is still nursing me!

Of course Su You couldn't give up, Taiyuan had a lot of copper.

With copper, there is a bullet casing.

With the railway, Taiyuan and Zhending can become ammunition bases.

The two places are only three to four hundred miles away from the border front line, so the new army will have a steady supply of ammunition at its disposal.
Chapter completed!