…
Roland made himself a cup of tea and looked at Nightingale. "Do you want it?"
"Yes, thank you."
She leaned back on the recliner, holding a dried fish in one hand and a new script written by Mey in the other. She was reading it with relish.
Ever since Anna talked to her, Nightingale disappeared for two days. When she reappeared in front of Roland, she seemed to have been relieved of a heavy burden and returned to her previous carefree self. She always had a smile on her face, and she would occasionally sneak a few glances at him, her eyes full of energy.
Just like how she was now.
She put her feet on the coffee table without hesitation, and her robe was pulled to one side, revealing her slender legs wrapped in black stockings. She would only temporarily hide herself when someone came in. This seductive posture made Roland's eyes look to the side involuntarily. As a result, half the morning had passed, and he hadn't even finished a single drawing.
If he had known earlier, he wouldn't have asked Soroya to draw these thermal socks that were close to nylon material.
He brought a cup of tea that emitted a pleasant fragrance to Nightingale. "This is the tea you wanted."
She put down the script, took it with both hands, and sniffed hard. "Ah … it smells so good. Can you add a piece of sugar for me?"
In the future, Nightingale was undoubtedly in the middle between the salty and sweet factions, and she wouldn't get fat no matter how much she ate. During the period when Roland was unconscious, she lost a lot of weight, and she lost a lot of weight. However, after he woke up, she quickly returned to normal, and there seemed to be an upper limit to her weight. After reaching this standard, it would no longer increase.
In the past, Roland would nag her that eating too much would make her fat, but now he realized that she didn't need to worry about this at all.
After putting a piece of sugar into her teacup, he returned to the table and drew a few more strokes. Finally, he couldn't hold back his curiosity and said, "Nightingale …"
"Hmm?"
"Anna, she … what did she say to you?"
"Well …" She flashed and steadily appeared on the desk. "It's a secret."
"You can't even tell me?"
"It's Anna's request." Nightingale hesitated and shook her head. "If it's about me, I'll tell you whatever you want to know. But this … she asked me to keep it a secret for the time being."
"Oh, okay." Roland took a sip of tea and didn't ask any more questions. Although he could go straight to Anna, anyone with a normal EQ wouldn't repeatedly mention this matter at a time like this.
At least he could see that Anna wasn't angry about it.
Just as he picked up the quill again, Nightingale suddenly said, "Thank you."
"What?" Roland was stunned. He raised his head and met her eyes.
The autumn sun dyed her long golden hair and left bright spots on her face. Her moving face was as beautiful as a painting under the warm sunlight. Time seemed to stop because of it.
"Thank you for telling her my wish."
…
In the afternoon, good news came from the Ministry of Construction. According to the new steelmaking facility drawings drawn by Roland, the first converter steel mill was completed at the foot of the North Slope Mountain.
Of course, rather than calling it a factory, it looked more like a simple iron shed. Inside, there was a rather large piece of new equipment. Unlike the previous furnaces, the smelting equipment was made of steel from top to bottom. The angular grate and the huge converter had been coated with a heat-resistant coating. The dull gray surface gave off a majestic and heavy feeling under the sun.
When Roland arrived at the furnace area with the officials from City Hall, the new furnace was surrounded by the recruited veteran workers. Obviously, everyone was full of curiosity about it.
"Your Majesty, can this furnace really be used to smelt steel? It doesn't even have a place to burn the fire. " Although Losiya of the Ministry of Construction had doubted this before, he still followed the requirements of the drawings and completed the converter meticulously. Its parts were all made by Anna. With the help of Hummingbird, the time limit was shortened to one week.
"In nature, only fire can produce heat," Roland said with a smile. "Tell the workers to prepare for the furnace test."
The three main technologies for steelmaking were the open-hearth furnace, the converter, and the electric furnace. Roland thought for a long time and chose the third one after excluding the electric furnace.
Although the open-hearth furnace was the simplest in structure and was closer to the traditional furnace in operation, its shortcomings were also very obvious. First of all, it required a large amount of fuel, which was very disadvantageous to the available resources of Neverwinter. 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 very difficult to meet the needs of the blast furnace. Adding an open-hearth furnace to smelt steel would cause a shortage of fuel.
This was also the biggest advantage of the converter — it almost did not need to consume fuel. By oxidizing the impurities such as manganese, silicon, and carbon in the pig iron, it automatically released heat and kept the temperature of the molten iron at a high level, so that the smelting reaction could continue.
The second disadvantage of the open-hearth furnace was that it occupied a large area and took a long time to smelt. In order to strengthen the use of fuel, the open-hearth furnace needed to build a heat storage pool to preheat the air in advance, which took more than half a day to produce a furnace of molten iron. If it was a converter, the size of the furnace was the same as the size of the equipment, and the rail and molten iron transportation system could be used together. The smelting process only took dozens of minutes, and when the technology was mature, it could even be shortened to less than a quarter of an hour.
In view of these two advantages, Roland chose the converter as the main steelmaking equipment in 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 furnace.
"Anna, start the fire."
Anna nodded and went up the stairs to the top of the converter. She summoned the Blackfire to melt the iron ingots. After a while, the red hot molten iron in the furnace shone on her face.
When the production officially started, the molten iron in the steel mill would be supplied by the blast furnace, which was why he built the steel mill in the furnace area.
"Follow the steps I told you," Roland said to the person in charge of the steelmaking team, "Insert the blowpipe into the mouth of the furnace."
Although it was the first time for these selected veteran workers to work in the converter, they had operated similar subsystems before, so there was no essential difference between operating the blowpipe and controlling the trailer. The steam engine rumbled, and a steel pipe slowly fell from the top of the furnace into the furnace.
The other end of the steel pipe was connected to a coated flexible pipe, which led to the steam engine driving the air extraction equipment. As the oxygen-rich air was sucked into the converter, the furnace mouth suddenly burst into flames. Orange sparks splashed from the furnace like blooming fireworks. The dazzling white light was so dazzling that it was almost impossible to look at it directly.
This spectacular scene amazed the officials in City Hall.
Facing the scorching heatwave that was blowing against his face, Roland felt incomparably satisfied.
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