Chapter 657: The Secrets of the Two
……
Roland made himself a cup of tea, then looked at Nightingale, "Want some?"
"Yes, please."
She leaned back on the reclining chair, one hand holding dried fish, the other holding a script newly written by Maisie, reading with relish.
Since Anna had talked to her, Nightingale first disappeared for two days. When she reappeared in front of Roland, she seemed to have unloaded a heavy burden and returned to her former carefree self. Her face was always filled with an undisguised smile, and she would occasionally glance at him secretly, her eyes full of vitality.
Just like she is now.
Without any hesitation, she rested her feet on the coffee table, her robe pulled to the side, revealing her slender legs wrapped in black stockings, only briefly concealing herself when someone entered. This alluring pose often caused Roland's eyes to involuntarily turn to the side, resulting in him not even being able to draw a single blueprint for half the morning.
He should have known better than to ask Soroya to make such warm socks that resembled nylon.
He brought another cup of tea with a pleasant fragrance to Nightingale, "Your tea."
She put down the script, took it with both hands, and sniffed it vigorously, "Ah... so fragrant, can you add another lump of sugar for me?"
In later generations, Nightingale would undoubtedly be a centrist between the savory and sweet parties and never gain weight no matter how much she ate. During the time that Roland was unconscious, she lost a lot of weight, becoming thin all over, but she quickly returned to normal after he woke up, and her weight seemed to have an upper limit, never increasing after reaching that standard.
Roland used to nag her about eating too much and getting fat, but now he realized that she didn't need to worry about that at all.
After putting a lump of sugar into her teacup, he returned to the table and drew a few more strokes, finally unable to resist his curiosity, he opened his mouth and said, "Nightingale..."
"Hmm?"
"Anna... what exactly did she say to you?"
"Well..." With a flash, she steadily appeared on the table, "It's a secret."
"Can't you even tell me?"
"Anna asked me not to," Nightingale hesitated, finally shaking her head, "If it's about me, I'll tell you anything you want to know, but this... she asked me to keep it secret for now."
"Well, okay," Roland took a sip of tea, not continuing to press the matter. Although he could directly ask Anna, anyone with a normal EQ wouldn't repeatedly mention this kind of thing at this time.
At least he could tell that Anna wasn't angry about it.
Just as he picked up his quill again, Nightingale suddenly said, "Thank you."
"What?" Roland was stunned, raising his head to meet her eyes.
The autumn sun brightened her golden hair and left bright spots of light on her face. Her moving face was as beautiful as a painting in the warm sunlight, and time seemed to stand still because of it.
"Thank you for telling her my wish."
……
In the afternoon, the Ministry of Construction delivered good news. According to the steelmaking facility blueprints newly drawn by Roland, the first converter steel plant was completed at the foot of the North Slope Mountain.
Of course, although it was called a factory, it looked more like a simple iron shed, with a rather large new piece of equipment placed alone inside. Unlike all the furnaces before, this smelting equipment was made entirely of steel, and the angular furnace frame and huge converter had been coated with a heat-resistant coating. The matte, gray-black surface gave a sense of majesty and heaviness in the sunlight.
When Roland arrived at the furnace area with officials from the City Hall, the new furnace was surrounded by newly recruited old workers, obviously full of curiosity.
"Your Majesty, can this furnace really make steel? It doesn't even have a place to burn fire." Although Losia of the Ministry of Construction had questioned this issue before, he still completed the construction of the converter meticulously according to the requirements on the drawings. All of its parts were made by Anna herself, plus Hummingbird's weight reduction
assembly, which shortened the construction period to within a week.
"Nature doesn't just produce heat with flames," Roland smiled, "Let the workers prepare to start the furnace trial."
The three main steelmaking technologies are open-hearth furnace, converter, and electric furnace. Since electric furnaces were not yet feasible, he eliminated them first. After a long consideration of the remaining two, he chose the latter.
Although the open-hearth furnace was the simplest in structure and more similar in operation to traditional furnaces, its disadvantages were also very obvious. First of all, it required a large amount of fuel, which was very unfavorable for Neverwinter's available resources. After all, the coal mine was far away at the source of the Redwater River, and the coking plant had just started. It was already difficult enough to meet the needs of blast furnace ironmaking, and adding an open-hearth steelmaking would cause a shortage of fuel.
And this was the biggest advantage of the converter – it hardly consumed any fuel. It used the oxidation of impurities such as manganese, silicon, and carbon in the pig iron to release heat, keeping the temperature of the molten iron at a high point, so that the smelting reaction continued.
The second disadvantage of the open-hearth furnace was its large footprint and long smelting time. In order to strengthen the utilization of fuel, the open-hearth furnace needed to build regenerative chambers to preheat the air, and it took most of the day to smelt a furnace of molten steel. With a converter, the size of the furnace was the volume of the equipment, and the track and molten steel transport system could be shared. Smelting took only a few tens of minutes, and after the technology matured, it could even be shortened to within a quarter of an hour, making the efficiency significantly different.
It was based on these two points that Roland chose the converter as the main steelmaking equipment for Neverwinter in the future.
With the help of the steam engine, the workers quickly poured a large pile of pig iron ingots into the pear-shaped hearth.
"Anna, start the fire."
Anna nodded, climbed the stairs to the top of the converter, and summoned black fire to melt the iron ingots. In a short while, the red-hot molten iron in the furnace illuminated her face.
When formal production began, the molten iron for the steel plant would be supplied by the blast furnace, which was why he built the steel plant in the furnace area.
"Next, do as I say," Roland instructed the head of the steelmaking team, "Insert the blowpipe into the furnace opening."
Although these selected old workers were formally using converter steelmaking for the first time, they had operated similar subsystems before, and there was no essential difference between operating the pipeline and controlling the trailer. The steam engine made a rumbling sound, and a steel pipe slowly fell into the bore from the top of the furnace.
The other end of the steel pipe was connected to a coated hose, which led to a steam engine-driven pumping device. As oxygen-enriched air was sucked into the converter, a towering flame burst out of the furnace opening, and orange-red sparks splashed out of the furnace like fireworks. The dazzling light showed an unusual incandescence, almost blinding.
This spectacular scene amazed the City Hall officials.
Roland felt immense satisfaction as he faced the oncoming hot air.
These sparks were the symbol of mankind's march towards a new era.