Chapter 139: Electric Furnace

Biting the bullet and forcing through the Electric Furnace project — the Transmigrators had no other choice.

The reason was simple: no coal.

Without coal, there was no coke, and without coke, equipment like open-hearth furnaces and converters were useless.

Taipei had coal, but that land saw rain 200 days a year. Clearing wilderness to dig coal in the 17th-century Taipei Jungle... how many lives were they prepared to lose just to open a path and fill the pits? Not to mention they would first have to drive out the Spanish, build a transport fleet, and establish a branch base...

The Taipei coal mines were not even worth considering. Getting coal from Guangdong or Vietnam was far more reliable than from Taipei, which only looked close. But at the moment, a certain faction simply had no spare resources to push south: Zheng Zhilong in Xiamen and the surrounding pirates, the Portuguese in Macau and the surrounding pirates — these hostile forces, numerous as hairs on an ox, had the Transmigrators' southern passage completely blocked.

Coal, that cheap bulk commodity, could now only be obtained in tiny quantities. The Transmigrators simply had no spare transport capacity to haul the stuff.

And so the Electric Furnace Steel Project became their only option.

The Kiln District's electricity resource held great potential, especially after importing a batch of lithium battery chainsaws later on — wood-cutting efficiency soared. Every day, the offcuts produced by the Timber Yard alone were more than they could use. The reason this 3-ton Electric Furnace project got the green light in the first place was precisely because the current electricity resource was abundant.

But leveraging that resource advantage was not so easy.

The Kiln Area Base had started with only one generator, a 6000 kW Type 28 Siemens steam turbine. This power generation unit was enough to cover all existing electricity-consuming projects, including the Timber Yard, the Brick Kiln, agricultural machinery, and lighting.

Once the Electric Furnace arrived, however, that was no longer the case.

A single 3-ton Electric Furnace, once started, would consume at least one-third of the total power output. And that was not even the main issue. Because the Electric Furnace's principle was essentially generating high temperature through a short circuit between positive and negative electrodes, the voltage during smelting would experience all kinds of fluctuations and flickers.

The moment the Electric Furnace was switched on, this harsh environment of instantaneous, massive electric current changes would probably make the flimsy Kiln District power grid keel over on the spot. So building a dedicated circuit system for the Steel Plant became a prerequisite. This was also why a single 3-ton Electric Furnace could use up five crates of import quota: the equipment beyond the furnace itself took up too much space, especially the power equipment. They had to consider future development, so it had to be done right the first time — the transformers and such were all oversized, with ample headroom left.

The round Electric Furnace was a product specially ordered from the Swedish General Electric Company, with a diameter of exactly 2.8 meters. The furnace itself didn't look large, but it came with a great deal of ancillary equipment: smoke hood and smoke pipe, water-cooled cables, furnace cover lifting device, trolley, slag bucket, hydraulic cylinder, hydraulic control system...

The above was just the Electric Furnace part. There was also a brand-new steam turbine system for power generation, a matching high-voltage power supply system, rectifiers, transformers, and a low-voltage control console, various control boxes, and an endless supply of cables — you could never have too many...

Testing equipment: direct-reading spectrometer, fluorescence spectrometer, sulfur-carbon analyzer, sample grinding machine... and so on and so forth.

All this equipment filled a full five crates. And after that, consumables like high-power graphite electrodes added yet another crate...

The earliest brick kiln in the Kiln District had already been dismantled. That kiln was an emergency product, an old-style trapezoidal kiln that could only fire one batch of bricks at a time. Later, once the Power Plant started up and the brick making machine began churning out a steady stream of green bricks, that old kiln quickly fell behind the rhythm.

The Transmigrators thus chose a new site downstream in the Kiln District and built another rotary kiln with a very large footprint. The main body of the rotary kiln was built from basalt and red brick, and the refractory bricks were self-produced magnesia bricks.

Magnesia bricks were a byproduct of salt boiling. Yes, salt boiling. At first, the Transmigrators bought their salt from Hangzhou. After the Kiln District Power Plant began operating, they switched to using the plant's waste heat, building a few pools for sea salt boiling... a bit low-rent, but the product was good, and even the Natives found it palatable.

After the Lime Kiln was completed, the Transmigrators used concentrated seawater plus lime milk to extract magnesium hydroxide, then heated it to extract magnesium oxide. Magnesia bricks were manufactured this way.

With the new brick kiln in place, the original old kiln and its attached Brick Factory became the site for the new Steel Plant. Now, the old kiln had long since vanished without a trace. In its place stood a large workshop of brick-concrete structure, with a crane overhead, slide rails underfoot, and a model height of 5 meters.

A set of silver-white, gleaming Electric Furnace system now stood right in the center of the workshop. Above the round furnace body was a metal cross arm — the system responsible for clamping the graphite electrodes. Behind it were the power equipment connected by cables: the rectifiers, the transformers.

The Electric Furnace system, with its strong post-industrial style, indeed had a touch of sci-fi flavor: all sorts of silver-white metal boxes and the furnace itself, connected by silver-white water-cooled cables, like the tentacles of some kind of metal octopus monster — a bit eerie.

To the eyes of the Ming People Workers in the workshop, this iron contraption the masters had spent half a month assembling didn't look like an ironmaking furnace; it looked like a monster.

Yet in the eyes of the Industry Enthusiasts inside the workshop, this Electric Furnace system was an absolute treasure, a sensual sister radiating industrial beauty from every inch.

Naturally, not just anyone was qualified to operate this sister.

Chen Jingtai, 33 years old, lean and capable, former Factory Manager of Yonghengli Metal Processing Company. His company specialized in producing all kinds of ground bar steel, taking on various orders and section steel processing. Him standing here today was a perfect professional match.

But Chen Jingtai was very clear: if he dared use this Swedish Electric Furnace to smelt a batch of ground bar steel for everyone today... he would definitely be tossed into the furnace chamber while it was still hot. There were no police in this godforsaken place!

The Yonghengli Company that Factory Manager Chen had once run was, to put it bluntly, a private processing plant, specializing in supplying the market with inferior ground bar steel. The quality of Yonghengli-brand ground bar steel was actually not bad. Other companies' steel ingots would shatter if dropped from one meter high; Yonghengli's only shattered from three meters. So its deceptive nature was stronger, and it often slipped through quality checks.

Whenever the heat came down from above, Chen Jingtai would shut down and close shop; once the heat passed, he'd reopen. He lived a pretty comfortable life back in those days — until the Regulation Storm hit, and Factory Manager Chen had his tools of the trade smashed by the Joint Investigation Team.

Now stranded in the 17th century, Comrade Chen Jingtai had actually encountered, in such a savage land, a complete set of Swedish-made Electric Furnace system. Looking again at the Furnace Front Laboratory in the corner of the workshop, packed with equipment — even someone as thick-skinned as him couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed at this moment.

One must know, back in the day, aside from two medium-frequency furnaces, the rest of his factory consisted of dirt trenches and scrap steel. Forget any testing equipment — even his medium-frequency furnaces were mobile, the kind you could load onto a truck and flee with before a major inspection.

Ah, recalling those extraordinary years past... Chen Jingtai sighed softly, then snapped back to attention. He checked his watch, then stepped forward, shooing all the Transmigrators who had come to visit the workshop to safe positions and ordering everyone to put on protective goggles. After that, he personally re-inspected the long-prepared furnace charge and every electrical link. Then he called over a few Steel Plant Transmigrators and Ming People Workers, had them check their full-body protective equipment, and told them to take their positions — they were about to start the furnace.

Chen Jingtai had to be a little careful. The full name of the Electric Furnace before him was "3-Ton DC Electric Arc Furnace." It was not the gentle medium-frequency furnace from his old factory. An electric arc furnace operated with considerable ferocity, involved many steps, and a single moment of carelessness could cost lives. So he had to be careful.