Material Empire

Stick and carrot are always the best combination. In the desperate situation, most of the small steel mills in Xingchuan County accepted Qin Hai's proposal. They combined freely according to their distance and closeness. An average of more than a dozen companies were combined into one company. With the original equipment and backlog of raw materials as collateral, they applied to Qin Hai for a loan to update equipment, purchased second-hand equipment, and established a group of powerful enterprises. A new type of steel mill with a certain technical level and a production scale specified by the State Economic and Trade Commission.

During the period when steel products were confiscated by the working group, many small bosses took out usury loans due to insufficient funds, which became a heart problem for them. With the help of Guo Qiushi, Qin Hai carried out a special campaign against usury in Xingchuan County, knocked out several gangs that specialize in making profits from usury, and helped small bosses get rid of the nightmare of usury. This move won him a lot of praise among the small bosses.

Li Linguang brought a group of students to provide technical guidance for the new steel mills in Xingchuan, helping them get on the right track quickly. The energy consumption and raw material utilization efficiency of the new steel plant are much higher than those of the previous small workshops. Due to the reliable quality of the products, the price of finished steel products is much higher than that of the previous strip steel, so the profit margin is much higher than the original ones. level. At present, the domestic steel market is still in a state of short supply. The products of these new steel mills are not worried about sales, and their benefits can almost be described as making money every day. In this way, the last grievances in the hearts of the little bosses disappeared, and everyone regarded Qin Hai as their savior.

Of course, there are also people who, like Lu Quanlin, have identified a deadly truth and are determined not to cooperate with Qin Hai. For these people, Qin Hai didn't bother to care about them, and let them fend for themselves. Lu Quanlin originally planned to take advantage of the fact that the new steel mills in the county were going into production one after another, continue to produce some steel strips, and transport them out to sell for money. Unexpectedly, those newly established steel factories in Xingchuan County jointly established an industry association to inspect the steel products shipped out of Xingchuan County, and those who did not meet the standards were not allowed to leave the country. Although Qin Hai's working group withdrew, Lu Quanlin and some other remnants of strip steel companies were still unable to operate, and eventually they inevitably went bankrupt.

The successful experience of small iron and steel transformation in Xingchuan County was quickly promoted, and a vigorous movement to seize ground strip steel was set off across the country.

No matter how well those strip steel manufacturers hide, their products will eventually be transported on the road. The Economic and Trade Commission, together with the public security and armed police, has established a number of checkpoints in areas where steel strips are flooded, specifically inspecting the steel products that have been transported in the past, and has cut off the channels for the steel strips to be transported abroad. This strategy is simple and effective, and soon put the floor steel production enterprises in various places into a desperate situation.

Subsequently, the Iron and Steel Enterprise Upgrading and Transformation Foundation led by Daqin Group began to intervene. Relying on the strong financial resources of Daqin Group, the foundation has facilitated the merger of thousands of strip steel enterprises and carried out technological upgrades, making them embark on a benign path. development path.

At the same time, the iron and steel industry alliance with the Daqin Group as its core gradually took shape, and only those small iron and steel enterprises that received funding from the Daqin Group joined the alliance at the beginning. As the "steel alliance" became more and more popular, some private iron and steel enterprises with a certain scale also chose to join it in order to obtain the protection of the alliance. Li Linguang, a metallurgical expert, was hired by the Steel League as the honorary chairman, and Song Hongxuan served as the chairman of the Steel League, responsible for specific work.

It is naturally impossible for Qin Hai to participate in these cumbersome affairs. He has explored a problem-solving model, which is a huge contribution. After reading the internal reference on the management of small iron and steel in Xingchuan County, the chief happily wrote a large paragraph of instructions, and spoke highly of the work of Qin Hai and the Economic and Trade Commission. There is no need to elaborate on these things.

During the period when Qin Hai was concentrating on the integration of the steel industry, Daqin Group's other work did not stop. Among them, the most gratifying thing was the major breakthrough in the research of iron-based superconducting materials chaired by Tranquility. Her team doped rare earth elements with iron-selenium compounds, and obtained superconducting properties in a "high temperature" environment of 240K, setting a new record for high-temperature superconductivity.

The temperature of 240K, converted into the Celsius temperature commonly used by people, is equivalent to minus 30 degrees, which is an extremely low temperature for the human living environment. But for superconducting materials, being able to achieve superconductivity at a temperature of 240K is already a remarkable achievement. The highest critical temperature of traditional superconducting materials is only more than 100 K, and liquid nitrogen is needed as a medium to maintain low temperature. When the critical temperature is increased to 240K, the low-temperature medium only needs to use liquid carbon dioxide, ammonia, etc., and ordinary household refrigerators can produce such low temperatures, which greatly reduces the application cost of superconductivity and makes superconductivity The field of application of guides has expanded rapidly.

Of course, the research and development of high-temperature superconducting materials with a critical temperature of 240K cannot be accomplished overnight. Tranquility led a team of hundreds of people, and it took four or five years to test tens of thousands of materials before they achieved such results. According to Tranquility, every time the critical temperature of the superconducting material they study is increased by 1 degree, the price paid is as high as tens of millions of yuan. There is no laboratory in the world that can have such strong financial support, so it is not surprising that this material eventually ended up at Capital University.

The advent of iron-selenide superconducting materials has set off a new round of superconducting research upsurge on a global scale. Governments and enterprises in various countries are aware of the new opportunities brought by high-temperature superconductivity to the fields of science and technology, national defense, and industry, thus changing their previous dubious attitude towards superconducting research, and investing manpower and material resources in an attempt to occupy the peak of superconducting applications.

As the inventor of iron-selenium high-temperature superconducting materials, Tranquility has naturally become a favorite. Numerous academic conferences have sent invitations to her, and many companies have offered high remuneration to hire her as technical guidance. She was busy with all kinds of requests all day long, taking planes almost more frequently than others taking taxis, so that Qin Hai had to rush to this secret naval base on the coast of the East China Sea if he wanted to see her.

"Haha, it turned out that President Qin came here, and it really made our place flourish."

Zhou Linlei, chief engineer of the navy, came to meet Qin Hai at the gate of the base in person, and laughed and joked as soon as they met.

"I can't help it. My wife has been detained here by you, so I can't come and visit?" Qin Hai said with a smile while shaking hands with Zhou Linlei.

Zhou Linlei said apologetically: "I'm really sorry, we left Xiao Ning here to help us with our research, and President Qin had to come over to visit him in his busy schedule. But there is no way, we don't have a professional in superconducting materials. Talent, we can only rely on Xiao Ning to help us."

"That's what it should be." Qin Hai said, and after finishing speaking, he asked in a low voice: "How is it, Mr. Zhou, is it going well?"

Zhou Linlei also lowered his voice, with an excited look on his face, and said: "It went very well, the results of the ground experiment fully met the expected requirements, and it won't be long before we can go on board for the experiment."

"Great, it seems that the launch time of our aircraft carrier can be greatly advanced again." Qin Hai said happily.

This base of the Navy is dedicated to the research of aircraft carrier catapults. Previously, the catapults on aircraft carriers were driven by high-temperature steam, the device structure was complex, and the construction and maintenance costs were very high. All countries in the world are actively researching electromagnetic ejection technology, but they all face a series of technical bottlenecks.

Zhou Linlei studied electromagnetic ejection in his early years. Because the key technology has not been breakthrough for a long time, electromagnetic ejection has always been just a concept and has not been formally approved for development. After the supercapacitor was developed by the School of Materials, Zhou Linlei realized that the time for the development of electromagnetic catapults was ripe, so he persuaded the upper echelon of the Navy to start research on electromagnetic catapults. The emergence of high-temperature superconducting materials has removed the last obstacle in Zhou Linlei's development of the electromagnetic catapult system for carrier-based aircraft, making the advent of aircraft carriers near at hand.

The principle of electromagnetic ejection is not complicated. It uses the principle of magnets with the same sex to repel each other, and passes current through a coil to generate strong magnetism, which drives the traction slider to move at high speed, thus achieving the effect of ejecting the carrier-based aircraft. .

In the electromagnetic ejection system, the energy storage device and the coil are two key difficulties. Electromagnetic catapults need to eject aircraft weighing dozens of tons in a very short time, requiring the energy storage device to be able to provide a strong current in an instant, and the coil is also required to withstand such a large current. The technology to solve the former difficulty is supercapacitor, and to solve the latter difficulty, high-temperature superconducting materials are needed.

The electromagnetic coil made of superconducting material has no resistance, so it will not generate high temperature when a huge current passes through it, which is an advantage that ordinary wires do not have. As early as a few years ago, Qin Hai predicted to Zhou Linlei the emergence of high-temperature superconducting materials, and Zhou Linlei also designed the electromagnetic coil according to this prediction. After Ning Jing developed the iron-selenium high-temperature superconducting material, Zhou Linlei immediately contacted her and invited her to the naval base to assist in the development of superconducting coils.

These situations are of course highly confidential to outsiders, but in front of Qin Hai, there is no such thing as confidentiality. Qin Hai helped Zhou Linlei solve the two key problems of electromagnetic ejection, why should Zhou Linlei keep a secret from him.

Under Zhou Linlei's guidance, Qin Hai walked into the heavily guarded experimental workshop. As soon as he entered the door, he saw a group of people busy around a huge device, among them were wearing overalls, explaining something to a few people, it was the tranquility that he had not seen for many days.