The princess and the concubine are about to be edicted to enter the palace again, and it is still the decree of the mother. This time Hong Tao has experience, and it is a pretense for a mother to miss her daughter, this is what Emperor Shenzong meant.

It's still that road, it's still the Chongzheng Palace, or the four pieces of material, the emperor, Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, and Pei Zhonggui. It's just that this time the matter has changed, and it is no longer a harmful ointment, but a hundred steels that benefit the country and the people.

On Emperor Shenzong's table was a straight knife with a ring head and several arrows of different lengths and thicknesses. Arrow Hongtao knew that the three-edged armor-piercing cone created by Wu Si was longer and thinner than similar products of this era.

Because of the different materials, the hardness of the steel is greater, and the same power and toughness can be achieved without being so strong. This advantage can be used to shoot light arrows from a distance, which can slightly improve flight stability and lethality.

But I really don't know that knife, and after a few days of hard work, it became full of jewels, and it was equipped with a scabbard inlaid with gold and silver, a real treasure knife.

"I haven't seen you for months, and I'm really ashamed. Hearing the prince's pure words, 100 steels are as easy to obtain as honeycomb charcoal, but the truth? ”

The chubby Sima Guang was the most anxious, and when he saw the horse entering the house, he immediately got up, grabbed the arrow cluster on the table and said and gestured, and almost clubbed Hong Tao in the face a few times.

"Lord Wang is exaggerating, 100 steels are not available in every furnace, and the ministers have not yet mastered its laws...... Hong Tao ignored him, but turned to the Shenzong Emperor who was doing contemplation behind the table.

There is nothing wrong with saying this, the pig iron with a more suitable carbon content can be trained in the first furnace does have a luck component, and it may not be able to catch up with one or two more than ten times.

But this is not very honest, the blast furnace alone will definitely not be able to produce steel, but to add the open hearth, low-carbon and medium-carbon steel will not be a problem. The amount of output depends on whether the raw materials are sufficient, whether the skilled workers are enough, and how many blast furnaces there are.

"It's not appropriate to get evenly, pig iron is also rare, I don't know how much the output is?" Emperor Shenzong was not discouraged because the hundred steels could not be mass-produced, on the contrary, he was quite happy.

"Pig iron...... Each furnace can produce 2,000 catties every eight hours, and it costs thousands of catties of coal...... "Hong Tao originally wanted to sell a pass, and then put forward some small requirements, but he didn't expect the emperor to be so easy to meet, and he couldn't open his mouth for a while."

"Only coal?" Wang Anshi is worthy of being an official who has been trained at the grassroots level, and he is relatively quick in settling accounts. If iron is made instead of charcoal and stone charcoal, the cost will inevitably drop a lot.

"The charcoal needs to be processed separately, but the total amount remains the same." Hong Tao is even more calculating, a thousand catties of charcoal can produce more than 600 catties of coke, and can smelt 3,000 catties of pig iron.

This is still in the case of not using coke gas, if the sealed refractory tube of Augly can be used normally, the coking gas can be led to the blast furnace, which can not only increase the furnace temperature, but also save a lot of fuel.

"That's true!!" Hearing this, the emperor began to be uncalm, and stood up with his hands on the table, leaning forward, his eyes wide.

“…… I don't know what His Majesty uses so much pig iron for, this thing is difficult to forge and form, and it is brittle and easy to break when it is directly used, so it cannot be used to mass-produce swords and blades, nor can it be used to make armor. ”

Hong Tao was not afraid of the emperor's glare, but he felt that this person was a little shallow-eyed. No matter how low the cost of pig iron is, it should not be produced in large quantities, and until the post-heat treatment and casting process is perfected, this thing is basically useless except for the casting furnace.

Don't say that pig iron can be forged to decarbonize and turn into steel, that thing is too labor-intensive to mass produce in large quantities. Most of the iron armor used in this era was wrought iron, which was smelted with charcoal, which had a very low carbon content, which was easy to forge but had low hardness, and blast furnace iron was not the same thing at all.

"You...... You really don't know how to learn! Can you know that I am short of copper, and the need for copper coin casting is becoming more and more scarce? ”

Faced with the horse's question, Emperor Shenzong gasped for several breaths before he couldn't hold back his scolding. looks like a very smart person, how can he understand for a while and be confused for a while.

"But pig iron is a far cry from copper...... Your Majesty should not take the idea of iron money lightly, it is to drink water to quench your thirst, and it will not help! ”

Hong Tao felt a little wronged, he was still the minister of the humerus just now, and in the blink of an eye, he became a person who didn't learn and didn't know how to do it. Iron and copper have a hairy relationship, could it be said that the eldest brother plans to follow the land of Sichuan and Shu to cast iron money, this is not a lack of heart!

"Your Majesty, don't worry, the horse is a sick person, and it is helpless to be a little confused, and let the ministers solve his doubts."

Seeing that the emperor was really anxious, Sima Guang hurriedly came up to convince him. If what he said was true, it would be a great joy for the court and for both the old and new parties.

Sima Guang looks harmless to a person, his personality is also gentler than that of the emperor and Wang Anshi, and his eloquence is even more outstanding. The emperor said that he was not wronged if he did not learn and did not know, and it turned out that more than half of the copper production in the Song Dynasty depended on pig iron!

Yes, copper comes from iron, which sounds a bit ridiculous, but it's true. It's not a miracle, it's a simple chemical reaction called a metal replacement.

I learned this thing when I was in school, but unfortunately I forgot it faster than I learned it, and I don't think the ancients would have understood it a long time ago. They have not studied it systematically, let alone understand the principles, and they rely entirely on practice, which can be regarded as the wisdom of labor.

Metal elements have an order of activity, which is sorted according to the degree of activity of metal atoms, the higher the front, the more active, the later the sluggish.

The first place is the metal lithium, and the last place is the metal gold, which is why gold is not easy to oxidize and rust, because its atoms are too stupid and sluggish, and the degree of reduction is too weak.

According to this principle, the top metal elements can replace the bottom metal elements from the acidic or alkaline solution.

Iron is placed in front of copper, and as long as iron is placed in a solution containing copper, the elemental copper will be replaced from the solution, and the iron will enter the solution to replace the original copper.

The actual operation is to crush the pig iron into the bile alum water, and after a layer of green monomer copper is precipitated at the bottom of the solution, it is collected and smelted, which is copper. Later generations also gave this smelting method a relatively high-tech name, called hydrometallurgy.

Cholelum water is a copper sulfate solution, and ancient China lacked copper ore, but there was no shortage of this natural solution rich in copper elements. The ancients had long recognized the presence of copper in this solution and found a way to obtain it.

This method has become the main way to obtain copper in the Song Dynasty, according to the figures understood by Sima Guang, last year the national production of bile copper iron reached more than 4.2 million catties, and the copper production reached 1.87 million catties.

Since copper is a currency and a necessity, this number is far from enough, and the only last resort is to reduce the content of copper coins, or even replace them with iron coins, which will cause permanent damage to monetary credit and the economic environment.

If the cost of pig iron can be reduced and the output can rise, not to mention whether it can improve the combat effectiveness of the army, it will be of great help to the economy of the Northern Song Dynasty, which is why Emperor Shenzong was emotional.

Why is he and Wang Anshi tossing and turning with a red face and a white face? It's not like it's trying to fill the treasury and open up sources and reduce expenditure. Why do you want so much money? To go to war, of course.

Who doesn't want to be a generation of emperors who expand their territory, and who doesn't want to be the minister of Zhongxing country. And the iron-making method invented by the colt can make them one step closer to their goal, so it's no wonder if they aren't excited.

"If that's the case...... The minister felt that only with a blast furnace by the Jinming Pond, it was okay to earn 600,000 catties a year, but the source of iron ore could not be guaranteed. ”

After listening to Sima Guang's narration of Hong Taole, isn't it just smelting pig iron, that thing is really not difficult, anyway, it doesn't need to be too high-quality, if you only pursue quantity and cost, your own soil blast furnace must be synonymous with advanced productivity, that is, fast and cheap!

“…… In this way, I only need 50 horse stoves! As soon as these words came out, all four people present changed color.

Last year's national iron output was only 27 million catties, which was made by more than 300 mines, mine supervisors, and mining affairs day and night, and iron-making furnaces were several times that number. As a result, the efficiency difference is nearly ten times compared to that of the iron furnace of the colt. Is there really such a god? Even Pei Zhonggui, who has never asked about political affairs, is suspicious.

"If the raw materials can be guaranteed, the minister can also produce a little more than 100 steel, and it will not be less than one percent......" Hong Tao can't listen to others questioning his cowhide, this is not a living slap in the face.