In August, the autumn air was crisp and clear. Fu Wei, who had been resting for several days, was already in good health. In the bright autumn light, Wan Lei took his whole family out of the city to hunt. It was so relaxing. Originally, Wan Lei only wanted to go out with a dozen or so family members.

, but the city defense army insisted on sending people to accompany him for protection. In the end, he had to bring the newly selected members of the Quasi-Elite Guard with him. There were more than thirty people in the group, which can be said to be a mighty one.

In fact, hunting has become a fashion in Beiping City. Not only Wan Lei and his party, but also dozens of hunting teams left the city early. Their main direction was the foothills of Yanshan Mountain in the northeast, which is close to the Liaodong Forest Sea.

When they go south to look for food, they naturally become the targets of extra meals for soldiers and civilians.

Wan Lei and his party went in the opposite direction, heading straight to the southwest. There were some foothills at the junction with Baoding Prefecture, but there were not too many wild beasts. In addition to hunting, Wan Lei also went to inspect the copper mines.

See if there is any mining value. If the ore is abundant and easy to mine, organize manpower and troops to dig it and transport it back to Beiping City to smelt copper.

Wan Lei was out, so the affairs of Beiping City were naturally left to Tie Xuan to handle. Now the most important project in Beiping City is to repair the city wall. It is precisely because of the serious damage to the city wall in many places that Zen Master Mu Dao and others can easily sneak into Beiping City.

Autumn has arrived, and the Mongolian troops and horses on the Mongolian plateau have grown strong, and they may head south to fight the autumn wind at any time. This makes it even more important to repair the city wall as soon as possible.

The group of people sometimes chatted and laughed and pointed out the country, sometimes ran wildly and raced horses. Before noon, they arrived at the front of a mountain called Wutou Mountain. Since the people of Shuntian Prefecture had all entered the city, the place was naturally deserted and there were few human traces. In the past, there were some

People from Linfu came and went, but the Peking Army patrolled the border constantly, so they did not dare to come again.

The barren mountains have naturally become a paradise for wild beasts. Although someone came to sweep them a few days ago, it was only a small-scale hunt and most of the wild beasts are still there. The happiest thing in the world is that cats eat fish and dogs and eat meat. Oh,

Wan Lei is very interested in hunting small monsters.

Wan Lei naturally also wanted to experience the happiness of a real-life version of Ultraman fighting little monsters, but his archery skills were really bad. He could not hit a wild boar with ten arrows from twenty meters away, which annoyed everyone around him.

Everyone snickered, and finally Zhao Xueer couldn't stand it anymore, so she pulled him aside and gave him a serious archery literacy lesson.

In fact, archery is neither difficult nor easy. It depends on long-term practice. Practice makes perfect and cannot be achieved quickly. Of course, archery also has some basic essentials. Once you master these essentials and tips, practice will be easier.

The effect will be better.

Wan Lei followed Zhao Xueer's instructions and chased a deer for several hundred meters on horseback. He shot more than a dozen arrows and finally hit the belly of the deer with the fifteenth arrow. Although it was still far from the requirement of directly hitting the heart.

There is a long way to go, but for a beginner, this is already a small achievement, and everyone onlookers came over to congratulate him.

Wan Lei had gained something by shooting a deer. Coupled with the wild boar, grass rabbit, and deer that others had shot, he had gained a lot. Seeing that the sun was getting higher, he suggested having a picnic by a creek.

Eat barbecue.

In terms of survival ability in the wild, Wan Lei is considered a scumbag. He can't even make a fire. As for skinning and cramping wild beasts, he doesn't even know how to do it. Naturally, he is too lazy to show off his shame and let people who know more do it. He asked Zhao

The brothers led the way to the place where they discovered copper ore a few days ago to take samples so that they could be taken back for analysis.

In fact, copper is a metal widely found in the earth's crust and oceans. The content of copper in the earth's crust is about 0.01%. In individual copper deposits, the copper content can reach 3% to 5%. Copper in nature,

Most of them exist as compounds, namely copper minerals. Copper minerals aggregate with other minerals to form copper ore, and the mined copper ore is beneficiated to become copper concentrate with higher copper grade.

In addition, copper is the earliest metal used by humans. As early as prehistoric times, people began to mine open-pit copper mines and use the obtained copper to make weapons, style tools and other utensils. The use of copper had a profound impact on the progress of early human civilization. However, due to

The copper content in mines is generally low, mining is difficult, and the output has never been increased, so it is used to make copper coins.

In nature, copper-containing minerals are relatively common, and most of them have bright and eye-catching colors, such as: golden yellow chalcopyrite cufes2, bright green malachite cuco3·cu(oh)2 or cu2(oh)2co3,

Dark blue azurite 2cuco3cu(oh)2, etc., these ores are roasted in the air to form copper oxide cuo, and then reduced with carbon to obtain metallic copper.

Because utensils made of pure copper are too soft and easy to bend, the ancients discovered that by mixing tin into copper, a copper-tin alloy - bronze can be made. In addition, the alloy of copper and gold can be made into various ornaments and utensils.

There is also brass made by adding zinc, which has a wide range of applications.

In later generations, copper has been widely used in electrical, light industry, machinery manufacturing, construction industry, defense industry and other fields. It is second only to aluminum in the consumption of non-ferrous metal materials. Copper is the most widely used in the electrical and electronic industries.

The largest, accounting for more than half of total consumption.

In addition, it is widely used in the chemical industry to make vacuums, distillers, brewing pots, etc. In the defense industry, it is used to make bullets, artillery shells, gun parts, etc. For every 3 million rounds of bullets produced, 13-14 tons of copper are needed

.In the construction industry, it is used as various pipes, pipe fittings, decorative devices, etc. In short, copper is a very important metal.

Copper is so important. Copper in nature is divided into natural copper, copper oxide ore and copper sulfide ore. The reserves of natural copper and copper oxide are small. More than 80% of the copper in later generations is refined from copper sulfide ore. This ore contains copper.

The amount is extremely low, generally around 2-3%. With existing technology, it is very costly to mine this copper sulfide.

The current method of copper smelting is mainly wet method, that is, using sulfuric acid to convert the copper in the copper ore into soluble copper sulfate, and then putting the iron into the copper sulfate solution to replace the copper. As early as the Han Dynasty, the Chinese used

This method has been used to make copper. In Jin Gehong's "Baopu Zi Neipian·Huangbai", there is a record that "Iron is painted with Zeng Qing, and the iron is as red as copper."

The so-called Zeng Qing is actually bile alum (cuso4·5h2o), and the bile alum solution is also called bile water. Of course, the ancients did not know what sulfuric acid was, let alone how to convert copper sulfide into bile alum. These so-called bile water were

Collected from nature, there are insufficient raw materials and backward production methods, so it is conceivable that copper output is low.

In addition to the wet method, the Ming Dynasty also used a sintered blast furnace to smelt copper, but it was not widely used. The wet method was mainly used. Wan Lei also planned to build a blast furnace for smelting, but considering the high cost of building a blast furnace, Shuntian Mansion

We cannot afford it for the time being, so we will use the wet method for the time being. After all, in addition to wasting sulfuric acid, the wet method has very low equipment requirements.

"Boss, this is it." Zhao Quanyi took Wan Lei to a small valley not far from the stream, pointed his finger at where there were several wooden stakes, and said.

Wan Lei looked up and saw that although the vegetation was very lush, there were some yellow ores of different sizes everywhere, and even some bright green stones. Although Wan Lei was not well-informed, he recognized these green stones at a glance.

It's malachite.

Malachite is also called green blue or stone green. It got such a beautiful name because its color resembles the green spots on peacock feathers. Malachite is produced in the oxidation zone of copper sulfide deposits and often coexists with other copper-containing minerals (azurite

, chalcocite, cuprite, natural copper, etc.).

Therefore, copper deposits containing malachite are generally easy to develop and utilize, because part of the copper sulfide has been oxidized, the sulfur content has become low, and part of it has been converted into basic copper carbonate. This mineral only needs to be exposed in the air

Medium calcination can produce copper oxide. Copper oxide can be made into bile alum by dissolving in sulfuric acid. The copper can be reduced with iron. The process is very simple.

Wan Lei looked around and said to Chi Xin and Xiaodao who were traveling with him: "With this valley as the center, dig a hole within a hundred meters. We want to see the mineral content underground."

When it comes to prospecting, they are already familiar with it. This is how they used to find iron ore. As soon as Wan Lei said this, they divided into groups and went to work. The Zhao brothers also followed eagerly. After all, this copper mine

They discovered the mountain, and they still have a patent certificate. If it proves to be valuable for development, they will get a 5% dividend without doing anything.

"Brother, it's time to eat barbecue." Zhao Xueer's voice sounded. Wan Lei turned around and saw her holding up a few skewers of wild deer meat, coming quickly, handed him a skewer, and asked: "How is it? Are you interested?

?Those two guys didn’t lie to you, did they?”

"It should be fun. Although it's not a rich mine, there should be a few hundred tons of reserves." Wan Lei rubbed his hands and said with a smile.

"Hundreds of tons?" Zhao Xueer was startled and almost choked on the food. "Isn't that hundreds of thousands of kilograms? If it's all made into copper coins, isn't it just a few hundred million yuan?"

"Is a few hundred million a lot?" Wan Lei shrugged and said, "A thousand Wen is worth one silver dollar, and a few hundred million is worth hundreds of thousands of silver dollars. When converted, it's less than one million taels of silver. And the Ming Dynasty had tens of millions.

The population is less than ten cents per person, which I think is too small."

"Now two taels of silver and one shi of rice, one million taels of silver is equivalent to 500,000 shi of grain. We have made a fortune." Zhao Xueer's eyes were still shining.

"Come on, it costs money to start production, and it also costs money to make money. Besides, this is privately minted money. Two thousand coins will definitely not be able to exchange for one stone of food. If five thousand coins can be exchanged for one stone, I will be satisfied.

After taking into account the cost, this mine is probably a loss-making business." Wan Lei's mind is clear and he will not get a fever just because he found a little copper.

"Whether you make money or not is secondary. The most important thing is to be able to exchange for food. I heard from Mrs. Zhao that Mr. Zhao is almost worried about money and food." Fu Wei also came over and very considerately brought some money to Wan Lei.

A pot of water.
Chapter completed!