Material Empire

In fact, the pretentiousness of the old janitor is just a routine. The iron and steel plant has been closed formally, but it still exists in name, because no leader in the county is willing to take the responsibility of closing down an enterprise. Under such circumstances, the iron and steel plant had to be guarded. As a result, several old workers, including Old Man Wang, were left behind as a symbol of the still existing steel plant. For this symbol, the county must guarantee to pay them wages every month, and the payment lasts for more than ten years.

With their salaries, these old guards naturally had to do something. For young people like Ning Mo and the others who came in and wandered around, they had to step forward and interrogate them to show their seriousness and responsibility. In fact, the walls around the iron and steel factory have collapsed in several places, and thieves really come into the factory to steal things, and there is no need to enter and exit through the gate.

After dismissing the old janitor, Qin Hai and his party walked into the steel factory and began to visit this industrial site.

This is a factory covering an area of ​​more than 1,000 mu. When the factory was built, due to the emphasis on "production first, life later", no family area was established. In addition to the workshop, the entire factory area has only a single two-story office building. All the doors and windows of the office building have been removed, leaving only dark holes. According to Ning Mo and the others, all the furniture in the various offices of this office building has also been removed, and now its only function is to serve as a habitat for wild cats and dogs, and greedy people run away every now and then. Let's see if we can catch a wild dog and go back to eat meat.

Qin Hai was not interested in wild dogs, so he walked straight through the office building with Ning Mo and the others, and walked towards the production area behind.

The core of the production area is an iron-making blast furnace, with chimneys, hot blast stoves, and feeding belt cars next to it, forming an open-air blast furnace workshop. Due to years of exposure to the sun and rain, all the exposed ironware was covered with a thick layer of rust, and the bricks were pitted and pitted by the rain.

Qin Hai walked to the front of the blast furnace, looked up, tapped the hot air pipe next to the blast furnace with his hand, sighed, and said, "Oh, what a pity, such a blast furnace has just been scrapped."

"Is it better to scrap it?" Ning Mo said heartlessly, "I heard from my dad that when the steel plant was still in production, the whole county was full of coal ash, not to mention that the county forced all units to Use products from steel factories. The steel they produce cannot be forged at all, and it will crack when hit by a forging machine, which is no different from pig iron."

"This is a technical problem." Qin Hai said, "Actually, if the process is improved, at least it won't be like this. Of course, it is a good thing to shut down such a low-efficiency small steel factory. Air pollution."

"It turns out that there are steel factories in almost every county in our city, but now they are all closed. Only the steel factories in Beixi City are left. The steel used in our factory is mainly produced by them. By the way, Qin Hai, Didn't you say yesterday that the quality of their steel is not good?" Miao Lei said.

"Yes, there must be problems with their production process, so the quality of the steel is not up to standard. If we use such steel to produce agricultural tools, the quality will definitely be affected." Qin Hai said.

A few people walked while talking, and came to the steelmaking workshop again. The situation in the steelmaking workshop is better than that of the blast furnace workshop, perhaps because there are still some valuable equipment in the workshop. Iron railings are welded on the outside of all the doors and windows in the entire workshop, and only the main door can be opened, but the door is also covered with a child's arm. The same thick iron chain was locked, and the lock on it was as big as a palm, so it couldn't be broken easily.

"Is there a steelmaking furnace in this workshop?" Qin Hai asked Ning Mo and the others. These people all grew up in this factory area, and they know something about the surrounding factories. At the very least, Ning Mo even knows that the janitor's surname is Wang.

Ning Mo said: "I have never been in this workshop. When I was in elementary school, this factory was closed. Since then, this workshop has been locked like this. However, I heard people say that there seems to be some For some equipment, someone once wanted to pick the lock and go inside to steal wires and other things for sale."

"..." Qin Hai was speechless.

In the future, there will be a machine repair workshop and the like. Since there are machine tools in the workshop, General Tie will guard the door. Qin Hai and others can only lie on the window and look inside. The equipment was thickly coated with butter, so it wasn't rusted much, but the dust that had fallen over the years had covered the true color of the equipment.

"There is nothing ahead, only these two hills." Ning Mo pointed to the two big mounds in front, and said to Qin Hai.

"How come there are two hills here?" Qin Hai asked strangely. The two mounds were quite large and could indeed be described as hills. The mound was covered with weeds and a few small trees.

Miao Lei explained: "These two mounds are left over from the production of the steel factory. The pile here is iron ore, which was pulled from the mountains in the past. The pile over there is slag, which has been left for more than ten years. It fell down. Because the pile has been piled for a long time, it will be covered with grass."

"Oh?" Qin Hai thought, "Let's go and have a look."

Qin Hai said he wanted to go and have a look, and his friends naturally had no objections. In fact, they are also idle after get off work every day, wandering around. Of course, if Qin Hai wasn't here, they wouldn't be interested in seeing that pile of slag. It was the place where they played hide-and-seek when they were young. Now that they are so grown up, who would come to this kind of place to play.

Qin Hai walked quickly to the pile of slag, picked up a piece from the ground, and looked at it carefully.

The slag left by blast furnace ironmaking is a kind of porous lump, which is a bit hairy when held in the hand, and may even scratch the palm of the hand if you are not careful. Qin Hai looked carefully at it from the corner of the setting sun, nodded thoughtfully, and asked Ning Mo and the others, "Have these slags been piled here for many years?"

"No, it has been piled up since there was a steel factory. When the steel factory is closed, the slag will stay here." Ning Mo replied.

Qin Hai asked again: "After all these years, no one has thought about cleaning up these slags?"

Miao Lei said: "Who is willing to pay for cleaning them? I remember that one year, a unit said that they wanted to pull these slags to pave the road. Later, they found that these slags were too hard to smash, so they didn't want them. Anyway, now steel The factory was also closed, and the slag was just thrown away."

Ning Mo could see something from Qin Hai's expression, he tentatively asked, "Why, Qin Hai, do you think this slag is useful?"

Qin Hai smiled and said: "I'm not sure yet, but in terms of the distribution of mineral resources in Beixi City, iron ore is not our main resource, but the rare metals associated with iron ore are more important. Valuable. Pingyuan Iron and Steel Works only smelts iron and does not extract rare metals, so those associated ores should be left in these slags.”

"You mean, these slags can extract the rare metals you mentioned?" Ning Mo asked, and Qin Hai's word "valuable" attracted him.

Qin Haidao: "Like I said, I'm not sure yet. If my judgment is correct, the value of these slags is a hundred times more valuable than the steel produced by the steel factory. You must not tell this matter. In addition, you Be careful, if anyone wants to dispose of these slags, you must tell me, we will find a way to keep them."

The three friends exchanged glances with each other, and they all felt an inexplicable excitement. Ning Mo asked: "Qin Hai, you mean, you have a way to extract the valuable things in this slag and turn them into money?"

Qin Haidao: "It's still not possible. To extract these rare metals, you need a blast furnace and a high-power electric furnace. These are almost the equipment requirements of a medium-sized smelting enterprise. With the four of us, we can't do it now."

"What's the use of that?" Ning Mo was a little discouraged. He thought that Qin Hai could smelt rare metals out of a small coal stove just like quenching. What does the individual matter?

Qin Hai patted Ning Mo on the shoulder and said, "Fatty, a blacksmith who doesn't want to be a factory manager is not a good fat person. Haven't you thought about opening a factory after earning money and becoming the factory manager yourself?"

"I don't think there is any hope." Ning Mo said self-destructively, "However, Qin Hai, I think you may become the boss. You are so capable and have business acumen. By the way, if you become the boss , shall we all go to your factory as middle-level cadres?"

"Yes, it's enough for us to be the workshop director." Miao Lei and Yu Haitao also said jokingly.

"Trust me, everything is possible." Qin Hai said, seeing that the sky was getting dark, and it would be meaningless to go on in this deserted factory, he said, "Let's go, let's go back. After we go back, We still have some things to do."