Speaking of which, copper, a metal with a long history, is also very common to use on the east coast, such as thin copper plates covering the bottom of the ship by the main naval warships, such as bronze or brass cannons cast by military factories (but they are still mainly made of steel cannons), such as copper pipes, valves, propellers, bolts (for shipbuilding), gears, gaskets, connectors, watch parts, printing copper plates, distillation pots, heat sinks, etc. In addition, copper is also needed for power research on the shore of the Snow Peak Lake in the South Cone.

Some of the above applications use pure copper, while others use copper alloys, such as bronze, brass, and manganese bronze under research. But there is no doubt that copper is now being used more and more widely in the East Coast, because whether it is industry, agriculture, commerce (coin minting), military or daily consumption of the people (copper consumption), they have created extremely strong market demand for copper, the second-ranked metal in the East Coast hardware manufacturing.

Because the East Coast does not produce copper locally - the Ministry of Geology has spent many years, sent out many teams, and found many places where there are copper in Indian legends, but has not found copper mines in the local area - Therefore, the East Coast Republic of China has always been a major copper importer, and in recent years, imports have increased day by day, and it costs huge amounts of money every year. Moreover, this is also a small number of metal mines in the old continent that can be exported in large quantities to the East Coast.

There are generally several sources of copper imported from the east coast. One is copper blocks under the bilge of the Dutch East India Company. As early as the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, the huge consumer demand brought by the war caused the price of copper produced in Sweden, Hungary, Germany, England and other places soaring. At its peak, the price even soared by five or six times, making it possible for the Dutch East India Company to transport Japanese copper from the Far East to Europe for sale. In that era, the East India Company placed a large amount of copper blocks purchased from Japan at a low price, and the copper sheets were placed as ballasts on the bottom of the ship and then transported them back to Amsterdam, which once made huge profits.

Later, the copper prices in Europe gradually returned to normal due to the end of the war, but the demand of the East Coast people began to increase day by day, and they were very short of copper and were willing to spend a higher price to purchase copper blocks. Therefore, the East India Company continued to transport Japanese copper blocks to the East Coast as a ballast for sale. At present, this business has become a fixed model and is an indispensable part of the Dutch East India Company's foreign trade.

The second way of import is copper ore from the Old Continent, which is mainly completed by trading stations distributed in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, and the number is quite large, not much less than that of Japanese copper. However, the prices of these copper ore fluctuate greatly, and the output is often high and low, and there are competition from other buyers, which has troubled the East Coast people in charge of the acquisition. Otherwise, in order to balance the trade of the Old Continent, they will increase the purchase of copper ore from here.

All the purchased copper ore will basically be transported to the Dongfanggang Commercial Terminal and then transported to Tieling Special Steel Factory by train for smelting and processing. Of course, Tieling Factory produces mostly refined copper ingots, copper plates or copper alloy plates of different sizes. To finally process them into various finished products, it is necessary to rely on the efforts of many small workshops, small enterprises and even individual handicraftsmen who survived by these large state-owned factories. This group of people is undoubtedly huge, according to incomplete statistics.

Currently, there are more than 100 small workshops that rely on Tieling Special Steel, Western Steel Rolling, Tieling Boiler, First Heavy Machinery and other factories to make supporting facilities, with thousands of employees. They produce a large number of hardware products every day. In addition to meeting the needs of the domestic market, they can also export large amounts of foreign countries to make profits. This shows the potential of the East Coast hardware industry, and this is just a production area. There are many such processing enterprises in other places, but they are relatively scattered and not so large in scale.

"Copper exists in the form of sulfides in nature. For example, we have just recently imported a batch of copper ore from England (original origin is Ireland, Cornwall, etc.), mainly chalcopyr ore. This ore is relatively common and easy to smel. This is true for us and copper manufacturers in the Old World." The director of Tieling Special Steel Factory introduced: "But the biggest difference between us and our colleagues in the Old World is actually the difference in smelting methods. This began more than ten years ago, and it was the era of explosive growth in my country's copper demand."

"Our smelting method is simply to roast about several tons of ore to remove some of the impurities and crystallization water that can be decomposed at high temperatures. In the second step, we put the raw materials cooled after roasting (usually brown-black) into the smelting furnace - which is generally a reflector - and continuously removes waste slag in the process, and finally form a metal liquid with a copper content of more than 35%. When the copper-containing metal liquid in the smelting furnace is almost full, it will flow into the sink next to it and cool. During this process, the metal liquid will condense into large granular solids. In the smelting system of the old continent, these steps are actually similar to ours, but they lack the design of qualified reflectors, and the life of the refractory bricks is not very satisfactory. Therefore, some more complex smelting processes are needed to make up for it, and the effect may not be good."

"The granular intermediates condensed in water will be collected and placed in another heating furnace - the same reflector design, but tend to be calcined in high temperatures in a brick and tile kiln, for at least one day and one night. During the calcination process, a blower is essential because it can maximize the temperature of the furnace and facilitate the smelting of metals. At this point, the impurities in the particle copper are further reduced, and then they enter another smelting furnace for melting, forming a metal liquid containing about 75% of the copper."

"This 75% copper liquid will be introduced into the mold again to solidify, and then sent to the third smelting furnace for melting. At this time, the blower will be added to the maximum, so that the impurities in the copper liquid will continue to oxidize and form copper blocks containing about 95% of copper. These copper blocks are still not our final products, and we also need to refine them in the last step. In fact, to put it bluntly, it is to carry out a redox reaction in the fourth smelting furnace to make some impurities on the surface of the copper block turn into slag or exhaust gas through chemical reactions - the slag generated in this process is also very valuable and can be added to the previous steps for melting to improve utilization - and then the so-called refined copper is the so-called refined copper, with the copper content generally above 99%, and some particularly high-quality can achieve the copper content not less than 99.5%.

"In the subsequent smelting process, Europeans or Asians cannot reach our extremely high temperature, and they are not very clear about some chemical reactions in the copper liquid. In addition, the refining process has many flaws or simply omitted. This makes the so-called copper ingots or copper blocks not high in copper content, which is far inferior to our products, and their performance is naturally worse than that of our products. Now we are basically smelting the copper ore purchased from Europe with the Japanese copper blocks imported by the East India Company, and finally produce refined copper. Of course, Japanese copper blocks often give us some surprises, because they may contain gold. The Japanese did not recognize the huge benefits here, so they are considered as subsidizing our company in disguise, haha." The director of Tieling Special Steel Factory said finally.

"Most of the fine copper produced in our factory is used to produce various types of copper alloys (except for the thin copper plates assigned to the South Cone Xuefeng Lake Electrical Institute and the Navy's thin copper plates covering the bottom of the ship), and the largest production is undoubtedly brass, and it is also the largest market demand. Look, from soldiers' buttons, hat badges (brass five-pointed star), objects such as candlesticks, incense burners, gongs, coffee pots, etc., to brass cannons (the Navy has tried to produce some super-large diameter ratio giant heavy cannons placed in several important ports. This type of super-long tube cannon can only be made of copper for the time being), and the brass thin plate covering the bottom of the large-scale sailing ship (copper, zinc ratio is 3:2, and this type of brass thin plate corrosion is faster and must be replaced frequently)."

"It's really a huge industry, with an annual turnover of hundreds of thousands, right?" After listening for a long time, Qi Wangping nodded and said with a smile: "The hardware industry such as metallurgy, materials, and metal processing is the foundation of a country's industry and the foundation of the national economy. Although the companies that export machinery, equipment, weapons, ammunition, and metal utensils are so prosperous and prosperous, in fact, their existence is entirely because of your existence. Without you, they can't make so much money, the cost of our industry will be similar to that of the old continent, and our citizens will not enjoy such a high quality of life, so there is no need to be humble. You are the big brothers of the national economy. The production of traditional hardware, gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin, has given our East Coast Republic of China a strong bone. It's amazing, keep working hard."

"Our turnover of selling fine copper and various copper alloys every year has indeed exceeded 300,000 yuan. Last year's sales figure was 320,000 yuan, which is also because of frequent wars and sharp rise in copper prices. Seven or eight years ago, I couldn't make so much money. Of course, the demand for copper is getting bigger and bigger now. Even if the war is over, this number should not shrink, and it should rise slowly. I am very confident in this. Another point is that the profit margins of copper and copper alloys are relatively large, and although the price has been suppressed a lot (when talking about this, the factory manager still couldn't help but complain about the downstream manufacturers because they bought fine copper or copper alloys very low), but it still made us feel considerable. We plan to continue to develop more copper alloys and make our own contribution to the country's materials science." The director of Tieling Factory said again.

"I heard that in addition to manganese and copper, your production of lead, tin, zinc and nickel is also quite large. Good guy, the products are very diverse. I think it's time to set up a company specializing in the production of non-ferrous metals, so as not to be difficult to manage." Qi Wangping said with a smile, but his words made the director of the Tieling Factory opposite skip a beat, and he secretly wondered whether the establishment of this non-ferrous metal company was Chairman Qi's casual statement or the central government had a plan. If it was the latter, it would definitely be bad news for the Tieling Factory, which has invested a lot of money to develop the above metals!

In fact, the director of Tieling Factory was right. Before Qi Wangping set out for Tieling County, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce had submitted a report to the Government Council, intending to set up a metal smelting company in the convenient transportation shopping port, namely the East Coast Nonferrous Metals Company. In the future, this company will use copper, lead, tin, zinc, and nickel ore imported from abroad for smelting, and then produce various alloy materials, laying a solid foundation for the industrial development of the East Coast Republic of China.

Among these metals, copper, lead and zinc are almost all imported from the Old Continent, mainly Sweden, England, Turkey, Poland (purchase agent) and northern Germany; more than 90% of the tin comes from the Chalkas Prosecutorial Court District next door, and are transported to the east coast by land and the Parana River. Nickel is a special metal. After accidentally importing part of the old Continent from the Old Continent and studying its chemical properties, the expedition team discovered many mines on a large island in the South Pacific (i.e., New Caledonia in later generations). Currently, people are planning to send people to the island to build colonies and docks, prepare to test the island's nickel ore on a small scale, and then transport it back to the east coast for smelting and processing.

"This, Chairman Qi, I think this is good now. In fact, our popular products are brass, bronze, tin plated sheets (tinplate), etc., and nickel-copper alloys have only tried to produce a batch of coins (cent coins). It is not time to set up a special agency to manage and operate them." The director of the Tieling Factory said with a sneer: "And we are now investing huge amounts of money in researching the ratio of various alloys, researching the refining process of gold and silver, and optimizing the production process of various metals. It can be said that most of the profits of the factory have been poured into it. You can't just let others pick ready-made peaches, otherwise the people in the factory will scold me to death."

"What do you mean when others pick peaches? It's so ugly. They are all state industries. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce is your major shareholder (East Coast Company holds another 20% of the shares). Do you still need to approve what the major shareholder wants to do?" Qi Wangping gently tapped the factory manager, and then perhaps felt that the words were a bit too heavy, so he eased his tone a little, and said, "Of course, it's still a bit far away to say that the matter is now, and the central government has not decided when to establish a non-ferrous metals company. Even if it is established one day in the future, don't worry, you will give your factory some compensation and will not let you do it in vain."

"There is another point. How is the ferrochrome alloy that you asked you to search for and study before? I heard that you have found some finished products, which were obtained from South Africa, right?" Qi Wangping suddenly asked again.

"I got some, but the amount was not too much. It was mainly found by the expedition team jointly sent by the Ministry of Army and the Ministry of Geology in the inland area of ​​eastern South Africa, which took a long time and a lot of money. However, the area is still under the hands of the natives, and we cannot send people to establish a stable mining base in depth, so the progress is not very large. Moreover, there is not much demand for this kind of thing at present. This metal does not seem to be needed for mechanical processing. The existing manganese steel cutter heads are completely sufficient, and our machinery does not seem to have such high requirements for processing accuracy." said the factory director.

"We must follow up on this and lay the foundation for our future machinery processing industry and metal materials industry. We cannot be careless." Chairman Qi said with a rare serious expression: "As for the mining obstacles facing South Africa, I will find a way to coordinate with the Army Department, chromite-we must do it."
Chapter completed!