Firearms in a Fantasy World

Chapter 189: Ambition of Steel 1

Translator: Cinder Translations

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Although the year was nearing its end, Paul Grayman had no intention of idling.

After numerous discussions with the Council of State, he finally decided to make a push into the "heavy industry" sector.

He must make a big profit before the kingdom's civil war situation becomes clear. In the spring of next year, the kingdom's army will head south to quell the rebellion. He must quickly secure this potential major client. May the Lord bless them with a prolonged conflict.

Papermaking, canned food, ceramics were just small means to address the lack of funds initially. It cannot be denied that inventions like papermaking have significant historical significance, but for a long time, the most important indicator of a country's hard power is its steel output.

Even in the era before the current era of information (from his previous life), steel output is an important reference for overall national strength.

Of course, the key is to first increase iron output. The foundation is needed to increase steel output.

Before embarking on the "Ambition of Steel" Paul had to investigate the world's smelting technology. After discussing with the iron master teacher Hermann, Paul gained a more intuitive understanding of the current smelting technology combined with some knowledge from his previous life.

Although Hermann and other blacksmiths were skilled in making iron tools, they were also very familiar with iron smelting.

The current iron smelting technology used by countries is generally a block iron smelting technology with the following specific process: First, build an iron smelting furnace and then stuff it with iron ore and charcoal. After lighting it, the iron ore (iron oxide) is heated in an oxygen-deficient environment, producing a large amount of hot carbon monoxide, removing oxygen from the iron ore, and leaving behind reduced solid sponge iron.

The difficulty lies in the fact that solid sponge iron cannot be taken out through the furnace, so the furnace must be dismantled after each iron smelting is completed.

Moreover, the extracted solid sponge iron is only a soft and loose sponge iron because it has not been melted, and contains all the impurities in the iron ore. Therefore, it must be refined through repeated forging to remove pores and impurities before it can become usable metal material - iron ingots.

This process is quite troublesome, Paul sighed, it seems that just by expanding the production scale is impossible to achieve the expected output, but his territory is relatively short of manpower, he must upgrade the current iron-making technology.

He planned to use the blast furnace to smelt iron, but after carefully combing through the relevant technological tree, he discovered that this thing is not something that can be easily produced.

First of all, the issue is fuel, the current iron-making fuel mainly wood charcoal, but once large-scale production began, the use of wood charcoal would be a bit wasteful and costly.

Cutting down trees for wood charcoal production is something that Paul does not want to see. Not to mention the problem of environmental protection - now is not the time to talk about this. Wood is also a critical production material for many other industries.

Someone once tried to use coal - this fuel is currently only used in a few places - as a substitute for wood charcoal, but the sulfur content in coal blocks would make the resulting pig iron brittle, making it impossible to forge and form. This iron is called sulfur iron, and it is weak, so it is not used.