Chongzhen thought for a long time before he made up his mind and said to Xu Xingsheng: "Do outsiders know about the fact that Mentougou iron ore reserves are not abundant?" ”

Xu Xingsheng thought about it carefully before replying: "The exploration of iron ore reserves was discovered by the Academy of Sciences when it took people to investigate the geological and mineral resources of Mentougou. According to their report, although there are still deposits of iron ore in the vicinity, the quality of the ore is so poor that it is far from being compared with the iron ore currently in use.

However, they found a rich pyrophyllite mine nearby, and even if the iron ore is finished, it can continue to be mined. The best of this stone can be used for carving, and the slightly worse can be used as a material for refractory bricks, which is no worse than the current refractory bricks, and it is also cheaper.

It has been less than 7 days since the report of the Academy of Sciences was delivered, and the minister thought that the news of the insufficient reserves of Mentougou iron ore should not have spread to the outside world. ”

The establishment of Mentougou Iron Mine, iron smelting plant and supporting coking plant cost nearly 120,000 yuan of investment from the Inner Government. These inputs are mainly in the experimental hydraulic crushing ore technology, mineral processing technology, hydraulic blast technology, and animal heat blast technology.

It can be said that the technology developed by Mentougou in the past year has finally brought the iron-smelting technology of Daming to the level of the early stage of the industrial revolution. Of course, with the exception of animal heat blasts and the construction of small blast furnaces, which did not belong to this era, other technologies have already appeared in this era.

What Chongzhen did was to order people to integrate all these technologies. In the past year, Mentougou has produced 1,500 or 600 tons of pig iron and 3 or 4 hundred tons of wrought iron, and the profit is only in the early 40,000s. If Mentougou iron ore reserves are abundant, then these investments can still be recovered, but now this situation is obviously a little difficult.

Even if the Beijing-West Railway is opened, the nearest iron ore mine is now far away in Qian'an, and it is obviously not cost-effective to transport iron ore from there. As a result, the Mentougou Iron Works, which has made contributions to the revolution in iron-smelting technology, is estimated to end up closing at a loss.

Because no one was willing to invest in the verification of these iron-smelting technologies, the Mentougou Iron Works was the only factory in which the palace invested in full investment. Zhu Youzhen was quite unhappy that this kind of loss fell on his head, he rolled his eyes and said to Xu Xingsheng: "In this way, isn't the year-end board of directors of Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company about to be held?"

You find someone to propose at the meeting and propose to increase capital to buy Mentougou Iron Works. If they agree to increase the capital together, we can sell the Mentougou Iron Works at a good price. Otherwise, the government will increase its stake in the Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company by way of targeted capital increase..."

When the Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company was founded, it had to reduce its shareholding to 35% due to insufficient capital in the palace. The reason why Zhu Youzhen was willing to do this at the beginning was because he felt that with the current iron-smelting technology and method, it would obviously take many detours to form such a huge coal-iron consortium.

Coupled with Choi Chengxiu's leading demonstration, he felt that he could squeeze out the property of those eunuchs in this way, and then recover the shares after the initial loss of the United Company, so as to save the money of the inner government.

But he didn't expect it at the time, because he embezzled the share capital of the United Company to build a water conservancy project in the Jizhou area, which caused the United Company to delay the construction of the iron plant. Therefore, the technology developed by Mentougou Iron Works and the lessons learned in the layout were all used in the construction of the iron works after the joint company.

In this way, when the two type 1 small blast furnaces are completed, basically the investment of the two blast furnaces is one and a half times that of the Mentougou small blast furnace, which greatly saves the construction cost of the joint company.

The continuous introduction of railway plans, coupled with the research and development of various metal products and machinery, has made the price of iron in the north have been steadily rising. The strong demand for steel in Beizhili has halved the import of pig iron from the south this year, and has not been able to suppress the price of iron in the capital.

However, this is also understandable, not to mention the amount of steel used by the railway construction and the ordnance supervision to upgrade weapons. Even for the hundreds of thousands of tools built for the construction of water conservancy, almost 1,000 tons of pig iron were used. In addition, windmills, ore crushers, grinding, shelling, textile and other machines, as well as all kinds of improved iron farm tools, plus a variety of iron machine tools and parts, so that this year, Beizhili has consumed at least 3 percent of the country's total pig iron output.

The pig iron produced by Beizhili this year is less than half of the amount of pig iron consumed. So where does this excess pig iron come from, half from the south and the other half from Shanxi.

In fact, when the Academy of Literature and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences jointly developed the all-iron plow, some businessmen in the south began to be interested in it. These all-iron ploughs cost as much as 9 yuan each, and are available only to some of the more affluent yeoman farmers in the north.

However, the performance of this all-iron plough is much better than that of the semi-iron plow, especially suitable for deep ploughing of the fertile clay soil in the south. The land in the south is fertile, and the yield per mu is much higher than that in the north, and even ordinary people can buy an all-iron plow.

Even if it sells 100,000 pieces a year, it has already accounted for one-tenth of Daming's pig iron production capacity this year. In the Jiangnan area alone, there are no less than one million farmers. Obviously, the consumption of this all-iron plough will be another large iron consumer after the railway.

This is also why, Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company has expanded its share capital to 4.5 million yuan twice, and the shares held by the palace have only reached 417%. Because the shareholders who hold the joint company are optimistic about the future prospects of the company, they are unwilling to give up the opportunity to increase capital and transfer. Most of these shareholders are the gentry of Beizhili, and they will not encounter financial difficulties for a while, but because of the governance of the Haihe River, their land has begun to increase in value.

Therefore, although Miyauchi is still the largest shareholder of the United Company, it is a little weak to fully control the entire company. This is also the intention of Xu Xingsheng to divert the personnel of the Mentougou Iron Works to the United Company, and he wants to strengthen the control of the internal government over the United Company.

Hearing Chongzhen's suggestion, Xu Xingsheng naturally would not object. With the research and development of iron machines and parts, he sensitively realized that steel will definitely become the most important demand of Daming in the future. And the Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company, an unprecedentedly huge consortium, will inevitably make amazing profits.

If Chongzhen could hear Xu Xingsheng's heart, he would definitely greatly appreciate it, this eunuch in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Bureau, who has a keen sense. Tangshan Coal and Iron United Company was not originally prepared for the Ming Dynasty in an agricultural era, and the use of iron tools in the agricultural era could not use such a huge steel production base.

When the Zunhua Iron Works was at its most prosperous, wasn't it because the iron produced could not find a place to be used, so it was considered a waste of money by the imperial court, and it was closed down with an order.

It was only when the Ming Dynasty began to slowly enter the industrial age that these growing steels were actually transformed into material wealth, rather than a beautiful statistic on paper.

For a Ming dynasty that stays in an agricultural society, the annual output of 7-100,000 tons of pig iron has almost reached the upper limit that the whole society can absorb. If Chongzhen could not find a way out of these growing pig iron production, then the technological revolution in the iron smelting industry may have become a line of text in the books of later generations, which has little meaning for the course of history.

For example, in the Yuan Dynasty, China had already invented the water-powered loom, but without the large supply of cotton, the cotton ginning machine and spinning technology could not be changed, and the water-powered loom lost its meaning of existence, and eventually became an anachronistic invention.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen, who focused on the innovation of iron-smelting technology a year ago, is now more concerned about the research and development and use of various iron products. Because he has now finally realized that without market demand, there will be no production innovation.

After reporting to the emperor about the affairs of the coal and iron industry, Xu Xingsheng talked about one last official matter, "... The Chemistry Branch of the Royal Academy of Sciences, after His Majesty's last inspection, finally made a great breakthrough.

They found that by adding the * named after His Majesty to slaked lime, they obtained a white powder that was then dissolved in water to remove the color of the paper and flowers, and they named it bleaching*.

After re-testing, they decided that the powder could be used to bleach fibers and pulp, reducing the time it would take to bleach cotton yarn from months to hours, and eliminating the need for sunlight.

Therefore, if enough ore can be collected, they think that they can rely on the co-heating of selected ore powder, table salt and concentrated sulfuric acid*, and then produce this drift*.

According to the evaluation of the ministers, although the production cost of drifting * is not low, there is still a certain demand in the market. Therefore, the ministers thought that they could set up a workshop in Tianjin to produce drift*.

In addition, the amount of sulfuric acid and nitric acid is increasing day by day, and the pollution and danger of production in the capital are greater, so the ministers and others want to take this opportunity to move the acid factory of Wensi Institute to Tianjin and set up a larger acid factory. ”

Zhu Youzhen nodded and said: "It is naturally good to build a new factory in Tianjin, and now there are more and more uses of sulfuric acid, and just pickling iron ingots before processing is a large amount." Sulfuric acid treated with sulfuric acid plus hydrochloric acid, and then mixed with limestone, pulverized coal and calcined into the furnace to produce soda ash, the Academy of Sciences has also successfully verified.

The amount of sulfuric acid used in these two pieces alone is no longer enough for the output of the small workshop of the Wensi Academy. How much do you plan to invest in this workshop? How much sulfuric acid is produced in a year? ”

Xu Xingsheng replied quickly: "The Ministry of Industry intends to invest 200,000 yuan to produce about 2,000 tons of sulfuric acid with 50% content a year, which is 10 times the output of the current Wensi Institute workshop, so it is expected that the price of sulfuric acid in the market can fall to 7 cents per catty, that is, 140 yuan a ton." ”

Zhu Youzhen thought for a while and said: "This output is inevitably low, if the drift* can be produced in large quantities, no matter how much sulfuric acid is used, it will not be enough." I think it is good to increase the investment to 500,000 yuan and set the target at 5,000 tons.

Let the Academy of Sciences continue to study the ores to see if they can extract new metals or effective compounds that react with hydrochloric acid. In addition, send people to the production area to buy these ores, and find out if there are other places where the same minerals exist, both in the north and the south..."