…
Roland made himself a cup of tea, then looked at Nightingale, "You or?"
"Yes, thank you."
She was leaning on the reclining chair, holding the dried fish in one hand and holding a new script written by May in the other, watching it with relish.
Since Anna talked to her, Nightingale first disappeared for two days, and when she reappeared in front of Roland, she seemed to have unloaded her burden and returned to her previous free appearance. There was always a smile that could not be concealed on his face, and occasionally he would sneak a few glances at him, his eyes full of energy.
Just like she is now.
Without hesitation, he placed his feet on the coffee table, and his robe was lifted to the side, revealing his slender legs wrapped in black stockings. He only briefly concealed his figure when someone came in. This seductive posture made Roland's eyes often turn to one side involuntarily, so that half the morning passed without even a single drawing.
If I had known, I would not have asked Soraya to draw this kind of thermal socks that are close to nylon.
He brought another cup of tea with a pleasant fragrance to Nightingale, "The tea you want."
She put down the script, took it with both hands, and sniffed hard, "Ah... it smells so good, can you add more sugar for me?"
In future generations, Nightingale is undoubtedly a centrist from the salty and sweet parties, and she never gets fat no matter what. During the period when Roland was in a coma, she lost a lot of weight and lost weight all over her body, but after he woke up, it quickly returned to normal, and there seemed to be an upper limit to her weight. After the standard, it will never grow again.
In the past, Roland would nag two words about eating too much to get fat, but now he realized that the other party doesn't need to worry about this at all.
Putting a piece of sugar into her teacup, he returned to the table and drew a few more strokes. In the end, he couldn't help but be curious and said, "Nightingale..."
"Um?"
"Anna... what did she say to you?"
"Well..." She dodged and appeared steadily on the desk, "It's a secret."
"Can't I even tell?"
"Anna asked," Nightingale hesitated, and finally shook her head, "If it's about me, I'll say anything you want to know, but this... She asked me to keep it a secret for now."
"Well, okay," Roland took a sip of tea and didn't ask any further. Although he could go directly to Anna, no one with normal emotional intelligence would repeatedly mention this at such a time.
At least he could see that Anna wasn't annoyed by it.
Just when he mentioned the quill again, Nightingale suddenly said, "Thank you."
"What?" Roland was stunned, then raised his head, just in line with her eyes.
Qiuyang dyed her long golden hair and left bright spots on her face. The moving face was as beautiful as a picture scroll in the warm sunlight, and time seemed to stop because of this.
"Thank you for telling her my wish."
…
In the afternoon, good news came from the Ministry of Construction. According to Roland's new drawings of steelmaking facilities, the first converter steelmaking plant was completed at the foot of the North Slope Mountain.
Of course, if it is a factory, it looks more like a simple iron shed. There is a large-scale new equipment in it. The difference from all previous kilns is that the whole body of this smelting equipment is made of Cast in steel, the angular grate and huge converter have been coated with a heat-resistant coating, and the matte gray-black surface gives a majestic and heavy feel in the sun.
When Roland brought the city hall officials to the furnace area, the old workers who had recruited the new furnace were surrounded by water, obviously everyone was full of curiosity about it.
"Your Majesty, can this furnace really make steel? It doesn't even have a place to burn fire." Although Losja from the Ministry of Construction had questioned this question before, he still followed the requirements on the map and completed the converter construction meticulously. All of its components were made by Anna, and with Hummingbird's weight-saving assembly, the construction period was shortened to within a week.
"In nature, fire is not the only source of heat," Roland laughed. "Let the workers prepare for the furnace trial."
The three main technologies of steelmaking are open hearth, converter and electric furnace. Electric furnaces that are not yet qualified are excluded first, and he chose the latter after considering the remaining two for a long time.
Although the open hearth is the simplest in structure and more similar to traditional furnaces in operation, its disadvantages are also very obvious. First of all, it requires a lot of fuel, which is very disadvantageous for the resources available in Neverwinter. After all, the coal mine is far away from the source of the Chishui River, and the coking plant has just started. It is already very difficult to meet the needs of blast furnace iron smelting. If adding an open hearth furnace to make steel, it will lead to a shortage of fuel.
And this is also the biggest advantage of the converter, almost no fuel consumption. It emits heat through the oxidation of impurities such as manganese, silicon and carbon in the pig iron, so that the temperature of the molten iron is always maintained at a high point, so that the smelting reaction continues.
The second disadvantage of the open hearth is that it occupies a large area and takes a long time to smelt. In order to enhance the utilization of fuel, the open hearth needs to build a regenerator, preheat the air in advance, and it takes more than half a day to smelt a furnace of molten steel. If it is replaced by a converter, the size of the furnace is the volume of the equipment, and the rail and the molten steel transportation system can be shared. It only takes tens of minutes for one smelting, and it can even be shortened within a quarter of an hour after the technology is mature, and the efficiency varies greatly.
It is in view of these two points that Roland chose to use the converter as the main steel-making equipment in Neverwinter in the future.
With the help of a steam engine, workers quickly dumped a large pile of pig iron ingots into the pear-shaped hearth.
"Anna, make a fire."
Anna nodded, climbed the stairs to the top of the converter, and summoned black fire to melt the iron ingots. After a while, the red hot molten iron in the furnace illuminated her face.
By the time of official production, the molten iron for the steelmaking plant will be supplied by the blast furnace, which is why he built the steel plant in the furnace area.
"Next, follow the steps I said," Roland instructed the person in charge of the steelmaking group, "insert the blowpipe into the furnace mouth."
Although these selected old workers are the first to formally contact converter steelmaking, they have operated similar subsystems before, and there is no essential difference between manipulating pipelines and controlling trailers. The steam engine roared, and a steel pipe slowly fell from the top of the furnace into the chamber.
The other end of the steel pipe is connected to the coated hose, which leads all the way to the extraction equipment driven by the steam engine. As the oxygen-enriched air is sucked into the converter, a soaring flame erupts from the furnace mouth, and orange-red sparks splash out from the furnace, as if blooming. of fireworks. The dazzling light is so incandescent that it is almost impossible to look directly at it.
This spectacular scene amazed city hall officials.
Facing the scorching heat wave, Roland felt extremely satisfied.
These sparks are the symbol of mankind entering a new era.