The next morning, Marin and Hoffman Sr. talked about buying coal from the family mine. In this regard, the old Hoffman naturally did not object. But on the price, the two sides have differences.
It's not that the old Hoffman thinks Marin's price is too low, but too high. Old Hoffman felt that since his son wanted it, he naturally would not think of making money. Therefore, he proposed that 1 shilling for 1 chartron coal would be enough for the operating cost. However, Marin was not short of money and wanted to help the family, so he proposed a market price of 2 shillings per Chartron.
The father and son fought back and forth, and in the end, Mrs. Mary made the decision—according to the compromise plan of the father and son, 1.5 shillings per Chartron. In this way, the family can earn some money, and Marin can save a lot of money.
"Marin, what do you want coal for?" Mrs. Mary asked curiously.
Right now, Europeans are more popular with burning firewood than coal. In particular, European fireplaces are popular for burning firewood. Those who burn coal, well, it is easy to poison people at home... Only special industries such as the metallurgical industry use coal in large quantities.
Thinking of gas poisoning, Marin immediately reminded his family:
"Dad, Mom, remember not to burn coal in a closed room!"
"Why?" Madam Mary asked curiously.
"My teacher said that when coal is burned in a closed room, it is easy to produce poisonous gas, which can cause people to suffocate to death..."
"What? Is it like this?" Everyone was frightened.
Speaking of which, Hoffman Manor is now cooking with coal instead. Even Mrs. Mary has a plan to use coal instead of wood as fuel for indoor fireplaces. Now, when Marin said it, Mrs. Mary was frightened.
"It's true, brothers and sisters are still young, so don't burn coal in the room where they stay to avoid accidents."
"Yeah——" Madam Mary nodded quickly. Nothing is more important than the safety of the child.
"By the way, Marin, can you find a way to solve the problem of coal powder?"
"Powdered coal?" Marin said he didn't understand.
"It's the powdered coal that was dug out!"
"Is there a problem with this?"
"Of course, people now burn lump coal when they burn coal. Powdered coal is not popular because it is always burned out, and it cannot be sold. People in the Wiggins Chamber of Commerce only want lump coal..."
Hearing old Hoffman's complaints, Marin wanted to laugh. In fact, powdered coal burns more completely than lump coal and has a larger contact surface with air.
But one key point lies in the way people in this era burn fire. For example, when coal is burned in later generations, coal powder will be blown into the furnace. Therefore, pulverized coal burns completely and has a high calorific value.
However, people in this era use a shovel to shovel coal into the coal. With a shovel down, the coal powder is thrown into the furnace, which easily covers the burning coal. If the pulverized coal covers the originally burning coal, it is easy to isolate the air and cause the burning coal to extinguish.
The coal block is different. There is a large gap between the coal block and the coal block. Therefore, when you shovel a shovel of coal into it, there is a large gap between the original burning coal and the newly added coal. So no worries about coal going out.
Therefore, ancient people preferred coal lumps to pulverized coal. Even in modern times, pulverized coal needs a professional blower to be blown into the furnace to make full use of pulverized coal.
In the folk, the common people are still accustomed to using coal. However, most of the coal extracted from coal mines is pulverized coal. So, everyone thought of a way - to process the coal powder into lumps.
Thus, briquettes were born. Coal balls are spherical coal lumps made by mixing pulverized coal with water and yellow mud. In this way, the pulverized coal becomes lump coal, which can be easily burned again.
Of course, there is a more advanced way - honeycomb...
The combustion of briquettes, because the contact surface is not enough, so the combustion utilization rate is low, and even the combustion is not complete. The appearance of honeycomb coal has greatly improved the efficiency of coal combustion.
There are more than a dozen holes on a piece of briquette. The walls of these holes are the contact surfaces of coal and air. Honeycomb coal greatly improves the combustion efficiency and also improves the degree of coal combustion. Because briquettes are often incompletely burned, resulting in waste of fuel.
Marin felt that briquettes were easy to use. However, there is no need to promote briquettes. This thing is for your own use. And selling briquettes can't be much more expensive than briquettes. Now that I am a rich man, there is no need to pursue combustion efficiency, and there is nothing wrong with wasting some.
Therefore, Marin directly asked the old Hoffman to use the ancient method of "shaking briquettes" he had seen in his previous life to process the coal powder into briquettes and sell them.
As for how to shake briquettes, it is easy, and Marin personally showed the workers the technique of "shaking briquettes". It is to mix coal powder, water and yellow mud together first, and stir them into a paste. Then, cut into pieces, shake them in a wooden sieve until they look like ping-pong balls, and then dry them in the sun. Then, the briquettes are ready.
The technique of making briquettes is simple, as long as enough manpower is dispatched, briquettes can be produced with energy. Although it is not as efficient as the machine suppression of later generations, it is still considered waste utilization. At least, pulverized coal, which accounts for less than half of the output of coal mines, has uses.
In fact, Hoffman Coal Mine is not particularly troubled by the problem of coal powder. Because the Wiggins Chamber of Commerce needs a limited amount of coal. This also led to the fact that Hoffman Coal Mine was not in a hurry to deal with those coal powders.
However, as more and more coal is mined in coal mines, more and more unwanted coal powder is piled up, almost becoming a hill. Therefore, out of the idea of disposing of these obstructive coal powders, the old Hoffman consulted Marin for a solution.
Unexpectedly, Marin really had a way. But in fact, Marin didn't disclose the better briquette technology. It's just that Marin finds it more troublesome to make briquettes.
Because, the 12 holes of briquettes must be consistent. Otherwise, the holes of the upper and lower briquettes cannot be aligned. In this way, the combustion is affected.
And the alignment of 12 holes is very difficult in this day and age. Unless, it came out of a mold. However, in this era, there is no machine to press honeycomb, and it can only be pressed piece by piece by manual use of molds.
However, in the newly manufactured mold, the holes may not be aligned with the holes of another mold, and the uniform standard cannot be achieved. Therefore, Marin, who finds it troublesome, simply releases the highly versatile briquette technology first, which can be regarded as helping the family solve a problem.
In fact, briquette technology is really not a technology. If Europeans have been using coal for a long time, it should be easy to imagine. However, Europeans did not use coal for a long time. Even now, the steel industry in Europe still uses a lot of charcoal. Coal is rarely used and the time is short, so not many people study how to use coal powder...
Moreover, after listening to the report of the prospector on the mine, Marin spent money again and bought a 2,000-acre hilly area next to the Hoffman Manor.
According to the prospector, the coal mine in Hoffman Manor is actually just a branch of the large coal mine in the nearby hilly area.
Marin is now a local tyrant, since he knows where the main coal mine is, can he let it go? Therefore, if the money is dropped, the hills will be obtained. It is not expensive, only 2,000 gold coins, and an average of 1 acre costs 1 gold coin. Because the hills can't be farmed, the grass doesn't grow well, and it's worthless at all. And the officials in Uncle Mark's country didn't know that there was a large coal mine buried under this hill... Besides, the Hoffman family also paid taxes for selling coal...