Today's steam engine has opened Zhao Fuxiang's eyes. Bricks can be used as steam chambers, and car brake pistons can be used as high-pressure cold riveting machines. Now that he heard that high-pressure pipes must be made of wood, Zhao Fuxiang was surprised: "Dad, can wood be used?"

Is that okay? Just think about it and you know it’s not okay!

Zhao Zhikuan sighed and said: "What should I do if it doesn't work? High-pressure pipes are best made of cast iron, but do you have an iron caster now? Do you know how to make sand and model? Do you have a furnace for smelting pig iron? If you don't have these, just use wood instead.

!”

The high-pressure steam channels in later generations of thermal power plants are not simple. In addition to having a certain strength, they also need to have a certain degree of extensibility. The temperature of high-pressure steam can reach four hundred degrees. Ordinary materials can easily leak under high temperature and high pressure, so thermal power plants

The high-pressure steam pipelines are made of high-strength alloy steel with polymer corrugated expansion joints.

Zhao Zhikuan did not have any of these things in his hands, but fortunately the steam engine he built did not require high pressure, so the pipes did not use those materials. Zhao Zhikuan selected the materials to have a certain degree of pressure resistance and a certain degree of extensibility.

This kind of material can only be wood. In fact, before the emergence of synthetic materials, wood was the best building material. As long as a house made of wood is maintained properly, it will last for hundreds of years, while a house made of reinforced concrete will not last for decades.

Already.

There are no large trees on Hainan Island, but there are quite a few coconut trees on the island. Some time ago, Zhao Zhikuan was engaged in civil engineering construction and felled thousands of coconut trees. Except for some of them, most of them were turned into charcoal.

Timber is ready to build a house.

Coconut wood has straight texture, thick and uniform structure, high strength, and shrinkage, making it very suitable for use as wood. However, coconut wood is too hard and requires a lot of sawing. Therefore, except for some poor people near the seaside, no one in Hainan uses coconut wood to make furniture.

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Zhao Zhikuan hired a carpenter to break open a whole coconut wood, hollow out the core of the tree, and leave five centimeters thick around it as the pipe wall, and then fixed them together with the unique Chinese mortise and tenon joint, so that a hollow coconut wood pipe was made.

alright.

In order to prevent air leakage in the gaps, Zhao Zhikuan used the technique used by fishermen to mend ships, mixing flax with tung oil, adding white ash to fill the gaps, and then fixing the joints with iron nails to ensure that the pipes would not burst when passing high-pressure steam.

After the wooden pipe was completed, Zhao Zhikuan deliberately filled it with water and tested it. After observing it for two days, he found that it did not leak, but he did not know how it would be in actual use.

When Zhao Fuxiang arrived, the pipes were almost finished. The pipes adjacent to the steam room were made into rectangular shapes, which could increase the speed of the steam passing through and allow more steam to blow the impeller at the same time.

Zhao Zhikuan has taught more than a dozen apprentices in this month, but these apprentices are only limited to work, and the pressure and temperature are basically different from what they say. So today Zhao Fuxiang came and let the old man open up his chat box and talk endlessly.

Zhao Fuxiang originally wanted to go to Haikou Port to meet Li Zhengdao, but seeing that his father was in such a good mood today, he had to pretend to be teachable and listen to the old man's words.

After Zhao Zhikuan introduced the benefits of wooden pipes, he then said: "Boy, do you want to see the impeller?"

In order to make the old man happy, Zhao Fuxiang quickly pretended to be interested and said, "Okay!"

Zhao Zhikuan led Zhao Fuxiang aside. An impeller five meters long and as tall as a person was placed here. The impeller was similar to a pipe. Except for the iron shaft in the middle, the rest was made of wood.

The impeller is the most important part of the impulse steam turbine. High-pressure steam blows on the impeller, driving the iron shaft to rotate, thereby converting thermal energy into mechanical energy. Because the steam turbine has fewer mechanical parts, the boiler can reach higher air pressure, so the thermal efficiency of later generations of steam turbines

At the highest level, steam turbines in some thermal power plants can reach a thermal efficiency of 70%, which is far higher than that of internal combustion engines.

As for the original steam turbine built by Zhao Zhikuan, it will not work. Zhao Zhikuan calculated through formulas that the thermal efficiency of the thing he built can only reach more than 30%. This is under perfect working conditions, that is, high-pressure steam is blown to the last place.

The blades have just reached normal temperature. Because there is no steam heating the pipes, it is basically impossible to achieve this perfect working condition. Zhao Zhikuan estimates that this set of steam turbines can achieve a thermal efficiency of 20%.

Although 20% may seem inconspicuous, in Europe at the same time, the steam engine improved by Watt could only achieve a thermal efficiency of 3%. By 1840, the best steam engine in Europe could achieve a thermal efficiency of 8%.

Thermal efficiency. The thermal efficiency of the internal combustion engine of cars during World War II was only 30%, so this simple steam turbine was already an artifact in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhao Fuxiang stepped forward and pretended to look at the impeller. This set of impellers is divided into two groups of six fans. Each group has two moving wheels that rotate with the wheel axis, and a set of fixed wheels fixed on the casing. The function of the fixed wheels is to allow the flow to flow.

The hot steam accelerates and impacts the moving wheel at the back. All wheel blades are made of wood, and the roots of the wheel blades are fixed on iron bearings with tenon joints.

Zhao Fuxiang lowered his head and looked at the bearing. It was filled with lard, but he didn't know if all the lard would melt when the temperature came up, so that it would no longer have a lubricating effect. Zhao Fuxiang didn't know that this was not ordinary lard.

It's special lard with paraffin added.

China had lubricants as early as the Zhou Dynasty, but at that time stone paint, which was natural asphalt, was used as wheel lubricant. Most of the oil producing areas in ancient China were in the northwest, and there was no stone paint here in Hainan, so coastal people

Use this paraffin wax to add a certain amount of lard to lubricate the ropes of the sail and reduce resistance. Although it is not as durable as stone paint, it is not much different.

Of course, this kind of natural lubricating oil is not as easy to use as the lubricating oil of later generations. When the temperature reaches about 140 degrees, this kind of lubricating oil becomes liquid and cannot lubricate well, but there is no way to replace it at this time. Zhao Zhikuan originally thought

He wanted to dismantle the car engine and use engine oil as lubricant. However, Zhao Zhikuan thought that if the engine was used for anything in the future, even if the engine oil was liquid, it would not lubricate the bearings well, so Zhao Zhikuan gave up the idea.

Since the material problem cannot be solved, we can only use stupid skills. Zhao Zhikuan made a large amount of this natural lubricating oil, and at the same time sent someone to lubricate it every short time to ensure that the lubricating oil in the bearings would not be affected by the temperature.

It turns into liquid and loses its lubricating effect, so that's probably the end of it.

Zhao Fuxiang saw that the specifications of each blade were similar, and they looked like they were machined in later generations. Zhao Fuxiang could see the industrial technology of the Ming Dynasty. Things made by the same blacksmith were not in common with each other. There was no way, there was no unified weights and measures, and the craftsmen were very confused when making them.

Part of it depends on your mood, and the things you make vary in size, so it's hard to have unified specifications.

But these leaves are not the same. The angles and sizes are similar. Zhao Fuxiang asked: "Dad, these precious apprentices of yours are very good at craftsmanship. You see, these leaves are all the same!"

Mentioning this was Zhao Zhikuan's pride. He smiled and said: "Qin Shihuang unified weights and measures as early as two thousand years ago, but now, these craftsmen still don't know the important role of weights and measures! I brought your mother's clothes measuring tape.

I used a measuring tape as a ruler and made a wooden ruler for each of these disciples. The accuracy can reach millimeters, which is enough for now!"

Zhao Fuxiang knew that a foot in the Ming Dynasty was shorter than a foot in later generations, so Zhao Fuxiang smiled and said: "Dad, didn't you name the ruler you invented Zhao Chi?"

Zhao Zhikuan smiled and scolded: "You kid is really whimsical. I invent so many things every day, why should I call them all Zhao? You've already read them all, go ahead and do whatever you're supposed to do!"

The old man drove him away, but Zhao Fuxiang didn't want to leave. He saw that the steam engine was almost ready and asked: "Dad, when will this thing be used?"

Zhao Zhikuan looked at the progress and said: "The pipeline will be completed tonight, and the test will begin tomorrow morning. If everything goes well, it will be put into production the day after tomorrow!"

After Zhao Zhikuan finished speaking, he pointed to the brick-making machine not far away and said: "The brick-making machine is ready, but it just needs power! As long as there is no problem with the steam engine, the brick-making machine can produce 20,000 red bricks every day.

There will be no shortage of our building materials in the short term!”

When Zhao Fuxiang mentioned the brick factory, he thought of the cement factory, which was the cement kiln improved from the old brick kiln. Zhao Fuxiang asked: "Dad, how did you do with that cement kiln?"

The formula is fine, but the only thing missing is the raw materials. We don’t have a ball mill, so we rely on workers to grind the raw materials with stones. I don’t know when we will be able to get enough raw materials for one kiln of cement.

Because the temperature was not suitable, the cement formula Zhao Zhikuan chose was slag Portland cement, which is the most commonly used Portland cement in later generations. The production process of this cement is simple. The raw materials used are 70% slag, 25% quicklime and half

To make gypsum, grind all the raw materials into powder, add 30% water to make a slurry, and then send it to the cement kiln for heating and calcination. When it comes out, it becomes cement.

However, this kind of cement, whether raw or clinker, must be in powder form. If there are uncrushed particles in it, it will greatly slow down the setting strength of the cement and even cause cracking of the concrete.

The solution to this problem in later generations is to use a ball mill. The mechanical principle of this kind is very simple. It is an iron jar filled with iron balls. The material to be crushed is put in and then rotated. The material is crushed by the gravity of the iron balls. The principle of the ball mill is very simple.

But iron balls are really difficult to make. If the iron balls cannot be rounded, the speed of crushing will be greatly slowed down. At the same time, a lot of iron balls are needed. With the current strength of the Zhao family, they do not have the funds to purchase pig iron on a large scale to produce iron balls.

So now the cement kiln is in a shutdown state. Only when the steam engine here is completed can Zhao Zhikuan take action to solve the problem of the ball mill.

Zhao Fuxiang listened to his father and asked, "Dad, how much pig iron do you need to produce a ball mill?"

Zhao Zhikuan totaled it up and said: "The outer shell alone requires five hundred kilograms of pig iron. You must know that this guy cannot be replaced by wood. There are also iron balls inside, which also require about one thousand kilograms of pig iron!"

Zhao Fuxiang was shocked when he heard this. One thousand five hundred kilograms of pig iron is hard to handle! Guangdong only produces more than two hundred thousand kilograms of pig iron a year, which supplies half of southern China. Now he needs fifteen hundred kilograms of pig iron.
Chapter completed!