Originally, I wanted to refine oil by soil method, but I inadvertently picked up the golden lump, and the people of the Great Song Dynasty may not understand Su Jin's mood at this time, because the people of this era still like to use charcoal fired from wood for heating, and use firewood and straw bellflower as fuel.

Moreover, it is also quite difficult to dig deep caves in the ground, in the rock crevices, narrow hollows in the frame of the back is not easy, there is no advanced technology as the support, the price is also quite expensive; An expensive and wasted thing will naturally be regarded as chicken ribs, so although the imperial court mines minerals and the people occasionally buy them for use, they do not actually regard it as an extremely important energy source in the future.

The difficulty of mining this open-pit carboniferous layer found by Su Jin is extremely simple, and more importantly, the raw coal is of high quality, with few impurities, and the smell of smoke and dust is very slight when burned, which is the origin of a high-quality raw coal, which is quite rare.

Su Jin suppressed his excitement and carefully considered what to do next, this is located in a deserted place, the first task is to be able to mine and transport these coals, the first task is to open up a road into and out of the mountains, otherwise these treasures will be difficult to use, and these require a lot of manpower and material resources to complete.

However, the manpower aspect is precisely the most lacking in Su Jin, whether it is Yanyan Huanqing or Jingyuan Qinfeng, after the war, there are a large number of people who have nothing to do, and the establishment of a coal mining field and a thermal oil refining field can just solve the livelihood problem of the people, in the words of later generations, these two enterprises will solve a large number of employment problems.

In terms of funds, Su Jin is not worried, although the money has been spent like water recently, and half of the three million guan money embezzled by Yinzhuang has been pressed on the construction of horse grain and horse farms, but this year, manpower is low, and the remaining more than one million guan should be more than enough.

The only thing that gave Su Jin a headache was that he was a complete amateur in mining coal, and once the surface coal seam was exhausted and needed to be excavated underground, he didn't know anything about the construction, ventilation, and safety of the mine, and once a large-scale death or injury occurred, he would never tolerate it.

That night, Su Jin discussed these issues with Wang Dynasty Ma Han and others, and Wang Chao gave a good suggestion: "Son, we won't, someone will, we can go to Shanxi, Henan and other mine-intensive places to ask people to help us, we pay a higher price, are you afraid that people won't come?" ”

Su Jin was woken up by a word, it is indeed a good way to dig people and change jobs, but he didn't expect this, go to other mines to dig up a few skilled talents, and under his command, won't it be easy to solve?

At that moment, Su Jin immediately made a division of labor, and ordered Wang Ma Han to go to Shanxi, Henan and other places the next day, and he must hire technicians with high salaries, while he rushed back to Jingyuan and Qinfeng Road, and immediately signaled that the people came to build a shed and open the road.

Half a month later, a large number of idle people on the Northwest Fourth Road rushed to this barren mountain named Baoshan by Su Jin, built rows of sheds in the mountain pass, and began to build roads; Tens of thousands of people hold axes and iron pickaxes to open the mountain and open the road, the scene is extremely spectacular, quite a foolish man to move the mountain.

Su Jin asked the road to be three zhang wide, at least to ensure that two large carriages can go in the opposite direction, in other words, this is a two-way two-lane avenue, in this way, the difficulty of construction is greatly increased, although many places are according to the winding of the mountain and because of the situation, but there are still many dangerous places can not be crossed. Not only did you have to avoid steep and landslide-prone slopes, but you also had to fill the valley with a lot of rocks and earth, and the amount of work was staggering.

In early July, more than 10 mining technicians from the two major mines of Tongji in Shanxi Province and Hebi in Henan Province arrived in Baoshan, after seeing the ore belt of the Baoshan open-pit coal mine, these old fritters who have been mixed in the coal mine for a long time can not help but smack their tongues and marvel, the coal here is superior in terms of quality and reserves, and the name of this mountain named Baoshan is indeed worthy of the name.

At the same time, the construction of the road is very anxious, the progress is quite slow, although tens of thousands of people work hard and sweat like rain, but in the past month, the more than ten miles of the road to the coal mine can only advance at a speed of dozens of meters every day, seriously slowing down the time of mining, the road is not passable, the required timber and masonry can not be transported at all, and it is impossible to start mining.

Su Jin was anxious, looking at the tired gray faces of the people every day, he also understood that everyone did their best, and it was the hottest time in July, nesting between the windless valleys every day, and shooting under the sun for five or six hours, this kind of taste can be imagined; And Su Jin can only be in a hurry in addition to giving them some wages and giving them some good meals.

One evening, Su Jin went to the construction site to inspect, and when he reached the end of the road in front, hundreds of people were worried about a rock more than ten zhang high in front of him, it would take at least ten days to chisel this huge rock, and a passage must be carved out of the middle, and it was useless to have many people; The people sighed and cursed.

An old man with white hair sat on the rock and shook his head: "It is too difficult to chisel through this stone wall, if only there were immortals coming, it would be good to break it with the immortal method of opening the mountain and splitting the stones, hey, Lord Su is in a hurry, we are not immortals, how can this be good." ”

Su Jin just walked to their side, hearing this, he was immediately enlightened, secretly scolding himself for being stupid and at the same time feeling happy, the old man's words reminded Su Jin that the fastest shortcut to open up a mountain road is to use explosives to blow up the rocks, the gunpowder power in these years is not strong, but it is always stronger than manpower.

Su Jin immediately personally took people to Yanzhou and Yinzhou, and purchased hundreds of barrels of gunpowder for firecrackers and fireworks from the government warehouse, and after the explosives were opened, the progress was naturally greatly accelerated, and at the end of July, with the efforts of everyone, a wide winding mountain avenue that ran through the carboniferous mine in the oil valley and directly to the outside of the mountain was finally opened.

The rest of the workers were divided into two parts, one responsible for transporting supplies from outside the mountain, and the other part began to dig and level the site in two places, the oil valley and the carboniferous mine, and used the excavated square boulders and the materials brought in to build various facilities such as houses, sheds, derricks, etc.

After nearly two months of preparation, the Baoshan mine has begun to take shape, the roads are clear, the sites of the two mines are leveled, and the construction of the buildings has been completed.

On the 10th day of September, the Baoshan coal field took the lead in starting construction, and ten coal mining faces started at the same time, and nearly 1,000 coal diggers began to dig the road in full swing; At the same time, three oil refining furnaces, scaled up according to the simple distillation unit, were also transported to the oil valley and stood on the bluestone platform on the west side of the oil valley.

On September 18, ten carts of newly dug coal were transported to the oil valley, and Su Jin gave an order, and the petroleum still was ignited for production, and two barrels of fire oil were produced on the same day, which can be described as a good start.

With the mining of coal is getting faster and faster, the coal required for oil refining has far exceeded, a large amount of coal was made into honeycomb coal cake by Su Jin, and designed a special stove for burning this kind of coal cake, transported to major cities for sale, the first to accept is several state capitals in the northwest, winter is approaching, no longer need to hoard a large amount of charcoal wood for heating, but only need to purchase a car of coal cake produced in Baoshan and place it under the eaves, and it is safe to heat up in winter.

The use of briquettes, so that the people of the Great Song Dynasty experienced fast and convenient, a piece of briquettes can be burned for half a day, the price is also much cheaper, a spread of ten, ten, hundred, the reputation of Baoshan briquettes is quickly known to the northern state capitals.

A group of smart and clever wives and concubines of the Su family actually added spices to the briquettes to make a kind of fragrant and warm incense cakes that burn and emit a fragrant fragrance, with a small copper hand stove and a small charcoal stove for incense, which made Su Jin marvel and ashamed.

In order to expand his influence, Su Jin deliberately returned to the capital thousands of miles away, and gave a few carts of fragrant cakes and hundreds of specially made stoves to the important officials of the imperial court to bring back to experience, which caused a sensation in the capital for a while; Ouyang Xiu admired this kind of fragrant cake when he was chatting with his friends, and he wrote a passage between himself and Cai Xiang Cai Junmo, one of the four officials, in his diary "Returning to the Field": "Someone gave me a box of fragrant cakes, and Jun Mo heard it and sighed: The fragrant cake is late, so that I have no such good thing in moistening my pen." He who burns cakes, charcoal, burns incense, and the fire of a cake is not extinguished all day long. ”

Because Su Jin did not echo Fan Zhongyan's change of law, although Ouyang Xiu accepted Su Jin's gift, he was bitter after all, so he did not mention in his diary that it was given by Su Jin, so that later generations of researchers did not know that the fragrant cake was made by Su Jiabaoshan, and it has to be said that it is a historical regret.

High-quality coal has relieved the panic of the winter cold in the capital that has suffered from fuel shortages, and most of the winter heating of millions of people in the capital in the past is firewood, because the raw coal smoke produced in Shanxi, Henan and other places is too large, choking the mouth and nose, and the imperial court has repeatedly issued an edict since the beginning of the Taizong Dynasty to ban the felling of mulberry dates as a salary, and the charcoal has also been considered as a substitute for cooking and heating, but no one dares to use the inferior coal in the capital during the Zhenzong period, which caused dozens of households to be poisoned and wiped out, and can only be used as fuel for ironmaking and kilns.

It was not until the high-quality coal mined by Su Jin was tried in the capital that the Great Song Dynasty faintly felt that the era of burning firewood would be gone forever, and in the future, fuels like Su Ji Baoshan Coal Cake would gradually replace firewood and become an indispensable fuel.