Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Steel Complex

The third phase of the steel system’s construction was on a grand scale. Compared to the emergency nature of the first and second phases, with their melting furnaces, small converters, and simple rolling equipment, the third phase was the construction of an unprecedented steel complex in this era. It included all aspects of steel production, from ore dressing, ironmaking, and steelmaking to rolling. It would not only significantly increase steel production but also be able to produce common steel products of the old world, such as steel plates, strips, wires, and various types of section steel.

With a stable supply of quality steel, the production of special steel and alloy steel could be put on the agenda. With an ample supply of steel, the bottlenecks that constrained the scale of various industries such as cement, transportation, construction, chemicals, and machinery could be broken, making it possible to promote industrialization in Lin’gao and even the entire Hainan.

The sea breeze messed up Ji Wusheng’s hair. His wicker safety helmet was on the table. Several of the main “generals” of the General Construction Corporation stood with him, pointing at the construction site. Next to them was a folding table, piled with many drawings and leather drawing tubes, held down by battens. A group of busy naturalized citizen clerks, apprentices, and interns were bustling around the table and surveying instruments, whispering and discussing something from time to to time.

A few soldiers carrying Minie rifles stood guard not far from the Senators. The young soldiers looked at the Senators and the nearby steel plant construction site with a mixture of surprise and admiration.

“The environment of Hongpai Port is very complex. It will take some work to use it as a port,” said Meng De, who was pointing out the features of the landscape. His face was pale, and he was wearing a civilian-issue M65 field jacket with the shoulder boards of a Fubo Army naval lieutenant commander, making him look more bloated than the others. Meng De had been recuperating since he was honorably wounded in the rescue of the five-masted ship. He had not even participated in the military training for Senators during the mobilization for the second anti-encirclement campaign. He had only officially returned to duty recently. Considering his physical condition, Chen Haiyang had suggested to the General Office that he be given a leisurely job that did not require frequent trips to sea. So Meng De became the navigation instructor for the Fangcaodi Naval NCO class and the director of the Bopu Port Authority, replacing the original Li Di, who had been transferred to the Naval Command as chief of staff.

Besides instructing the naturalized citizen sailors on operating motorboats, Meng De also applied his knowledge to port management and construction.

“…Hongpai Island is a basalt sea erosion platform. The water depth in the sea area in front of it is relatively good, mostly over 5 meters deep. However, the inside of Hongpai Port has been silted up by coastal drift sand, and the water depth is only 2-4 meters,” Meng De pointed to various locations in Hongpai Port. “Without dredging, the utilization rate of this port is very limited.”

“We don’t have a dredger… we can temporarily assemble one,” someone’s eyes fell on the excavator that was digging. “Get a floating barge and fix the excavator on it, that should work.”

Meng De nodded. “I have indeed seen people do this in inland river ports—there’s no technical difficulty, as long as it’s fixed firmly. But the excavation depth here is large, and I don’t know if the bucket arm is long enough. And if it’s used too much, there’s no place to replenish the hydraulic parts…”

“We don’t need a dedicated excavator,” Jiang Ye, the mechanical department’s on-site representative, spoke up. “How many years has it been since the hydraulic excavator appeared? In the past, the power drive for construction equipment was a winch with a steel wire rope. In the 1970s, there were still many such excavators on large construction sites.”

With the manufacturing capabilities of the industrial sector, building a dedicated dredger was not a problem. They had steam engines and could also manufacture centrifugal pumps. To be able to put it into use immediately, Jiang Ye proposed a simple bucket dredging boat plan, using the iron barrel floating barges stored by the port authority for assembling temporary floating docks, and installing a steam-engine-driven bucket on it.

“Use two floating barges, with a support frame installed across them. The clamshell bucket is installed in the middle. The bucket’s lifting, lowering, and opening and closing are controlled by a steel wire rope and a winch,” Jiang Ye explained his idea. “The biggest technical difficulty is in the closing mechanism of the bucket, but the Venetians could build similar things in the 16th century—and they used human-powered treadwheels. There’s no reason why we can’t build a better one.”

Meng De asked, “How long will it take to be ready?”

“Three to five days, I think,” Jiang Ye said. “We don’t need to build a ship, just use the existing equipment. The main thing is that the machinery plant has to manufacture a digging bucket and an opening and closing control device. The mechanical department has steam engines, steel wire ropes, and winches in stock. As for the small barges for transporting the mud, we can use the small barges built for the Nandu River—just add a small motorboat to tow them.”

Meng De nodded and looked at Ji Wusheng. Ji Wusheng said, “If you think it’s no problem, then I have no problem—you’re the expert.”

“I’m a brick expert,” Meng De joked, then coughed a few times. A female servant in work clothes quickly draped a thin woolen coat over him.

“Ships below a thousand tons should be able to enter Hongpai Port now. We’ll first survey the channel and mark out a suitable channel and anchorage. Then we’ll build the ore loading and unloading wharf—at least get a temporary unloading wharf up and running first.”

With a wharf, many of the large, heavy, and oversized and overlong equipment to be installed later could be transported directly ashore by ship, instead of being transported by a 48-wheel heavy-duty flatbed cart pulled by a large number of oxen as it was now.

A proposal to lay a railway from Maniao to Bopu had also been made, but the calculation showed that it would consume too much wrought iron. The Planning Institute, after much calculation, could not come up with this extra plan—the Planning Institute’s steel reserves had already been mostly invested in the Maniao development, and the inventory was already at the bottom. The conclusion was that at most, only a factory railway could be laid within the industrial zone.

A crawler tractor equipped with a bulldozer blade and a bucket was roaring not far away—this was the “tractor armored corps” commanded by Bai Yu, digging earthwork. A deep trench had been dug in the red earth, and many special laborers wearing work clothes, with shaved heads and white triangular marks on their sleeves, were working at the bottom of the pit, paving stones. This was the large drainage channel for the entire development zone. Industrial wastewater would be discharged into this main channel through various branch channels and then sent to the wastewater treatment plant. Of course, Ji Wusheng knew that the so-called industrial wastewater treatment that Tian Jiujiu was doing was nothing more than some simple treatments like multi-stage sedimentation, aeration, and chemical acid-base neutralization—with Lin’gao’s industrial level, it was difficult to treat it any better.

The trench was both deep and wide. Small boats could be rowed in the drainage channel, and there were also sidewalks for maintenance personnel to walk on.

The water supply was transported through large-diameter reinforced concrete pipes—to reduce the degree of water pollution during transportation. The water supply pipes were buried in a large-scale culvert of the same scale, for convenient future maintenance, replacement, and installation of other pipelines and lines. This type of trench also had a certain military significance, such as being able to covertly transport infantry.

Due to the temporary lack of sufficient reinforced concrete in Lin’gao to make precast slabs to cover the top of the trench, these channels could only be left open as open channels for a considerable period of time.

Heavy industry consumed a lot of water. Besides using the water from the Maniao River nearby, water was also diverted from the Wenlan River through pipelines. Tian Jiujiu also planned to build a large-scale rainwater harvesting system in the development zone—of course, this all depended on the steel plant being put into production as soon as possible.

In the distance, scaffolding was erected everywhere. A temporarily installed steam crane was smoking as it lifted wrought iron trusses to assemble a high-bay workshop. That was the new open-hearth steelmaking workshop under construction, and the new converter workshop was located next to it. According to the plan, after the blast furnace and steelmaking workshop were all completed and put into production, the converter workshop and rolling mill at the small steel plant on the bank of the Wenlan River would be relocated here. At the same time, all the rolling equipment that had not yet been installed would be installed, and a rolling mill would be formally established.

The place with the tall bucket elevator and water tank was the ore dressing plant—most of the equipment for this ore dressing plant was brought from the old world: 2 ore dressing machines, 5 crushers, and 2 breakers. In the future, all iron ore that could not be dressed at the mining site due to objective conditions would be sent here for dressing. Of course, it could also undertake the task of selecting some other non-ferrous metal ores.

The core part of the Maniao Steel Company, the largest and most difficult project—the construction of the blast furnace—was nearing completion. A 10-meter-high blast furnace already stood tall. This place was close to the coast, and typhoon prevention was a very critical issue. Therefore, not only was the foundation of the blast furnace built at no expense, using the best cement produced in Lin’gao to mix the reinforced concrete, but a circle of reinforcing beams and columns and fixed anchor cables were also built around the furnace body for support.

The Maniao No. 1 blast furnace had a volume of 125 cubic meters, and its technical level was roughly that of the 1880-1900 standard in the old world. This was a very severe challenge for the industrial sector. Ji Wusheng, as the only Senator who had been inside a blast furnace and had worked as an operator in front of the furnace, became the undisputed main technical personnel for the construction of the blast furnace.

He was no longer the “director of the steel plant.” In a recent personnel appointment letter, his title had become the People’s Commissar for Metallurgical Industry under the Manufacturing Directorate, the general manager and chief engineer of the Lin’gao Steel Company. Having a series of prominent titles did not help him overcome the series of difficulties in the construction of the steel plant. After all, no Senator had ever really built a blast furnace or an open-hearth furnace, let alone systematically designed, supported, and built a complete steel company. Besides the materials in the Great Library, everything in actual operation had to be explored.

“If it weren’t for the existing steel plant design materials and drawings in the Great Library, this steel plant alone would have taken us ten years to build,” Mei Wan said with emotion.

Ji Wusheng said, “Without the materials, we wouldn’t even know where to start the project. At least now the first blast furnace is almost complete—as long as we can start making steel and iron, this project will be half done.”