Herald of Steel

"We are terribly sorry that we are late, Your Grace," Menicus lightly bowed as he greeted Alexander, followed by all the others.

"Haha, no worries, no worries. I just arrived too," Alexander lightly replied and then decided o to skip the tedious greeting ceremony as he hastily instructed, "Harun, the day is not getting younger. So let us start the tour."

"Yes, yes, my lord." Harun quickly answered and then gestured, "Then let us go this way please, my lords."

Harun's direction of gesture surprised the newly arrived men as it pointed not to the blast furnace but somewhere adjacent to it.

Sensing this confusion, Harun elucidated. "We will start from the very beginning of the iron production process, and it starts from there.."

'There' pointed to a huge shed, with a waterwheel attached to it, as Harun introduced not the building, but first the waterwheel.

"My lords, as I'm sure you all know, this is the waterwheel invented by the pasha and it is what enables us to do anything at all here." Harun flattered Alexander.

This got a unanimous nod from the whole group, who, when first introduced to it had been astounded by the simplicity and ingeniously of the wooden structure.

"Of course, I know. It was me who the pasha first showed it to. And I have also built two that both make this look like a toy!"

The loud, boastful remark was made by Diaogosis who puffed up his chest in front of all the others, pride dripping out of him as he reminded the others of the two 20m diameter waterwheels he had built and that operated 24/7, processing 200 tons of Portland cement per day.

"Yes, I also know you are scheduled to build five more similar ones to process not just the cement, but also to grind the bricks into small pieces to be used in concrete," Harun had a condescending tone to his voice, and then he sarcastically asked, "So what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be working?"

This bad blood between the two had started when Alexander had transferred a large part of Diaogosis's ten thousand men to Harun to work in the foundry, which did not involve just the blast furnace, but three other major devices as well.

There was also the fact that in addition, Diaogosis was also jealous of what the blacksmith had accomplished and felt acrid in his heart at the man's success.

Now Diaogosis did not have the guts to blame Alexander, and so took his anger out on Harun, who, not being a man to take a beating laying down, also launched his own counter-attack, resulting in such frequent clashes of words.

"Haha, both of you are doing an excellent job in helping Zanzan, and all its people. So there's no need for animosity," Alexander chuckled as he played the benevolent mediator, pretending to put a stop to this bickering.

He knew that in addition to Diaogosis not liking Harun, this boastful remark was a way to draw Alexander's attention towards himself and remind the pasha of his achievements, which was ultimately a roundabout way of asking Alexander to grant him a peerage, something the pasha had yet to promise him.

'Hehe, I don't like impatient men,' Alexander darkly mused about this little covert play, his displeasure about Diaogosis's character growing even more, as he decided, 'Stay a civilian for a while and cause some more trouble.'

This internal thought was the exact opposite of how he appeared outside and he did not truly oppose such barbed exchanges too much and even indirectly supported some of them.

And the reason for this, reason why Alexander somewhat approved and even encouraged such behavior was because if the nobles and high-ranking officials under him were too busy with petty squabbles among themselves, they would not have the time to plot against him, thus making this life on the seat much safer.

Of course, Alexander would step in if these small arguments flared up into full-scale hostilities, but a 'healthy' bit of animosity among his retainers was something desirable for him.

Alexander's intervention instantly made the two men shut and Harun's smirking, taunting face flipped to that of a wide, flattering grin in the blink of an eye who quickly addressed the crowd, "Haha my lords, then please enter the shed and let us observe it's operations."

With this invitation, the large number of people entered the enormous and enormously busy shed, eager to see its function.

A function that Harun, like the diligent guide he was, gave quickly, "My lords, this shed is used for two things, both hugely important."

"First," Harun pointed to one of the two huge flat, open concrete beds that combined covered 80% of the huge shed and introduced, "This first bed is the coke production bed."

This explanation was self-evident as right in front of them was a truly enormous field of coal, laid out horizontally across the entire structure, and being heated up via a blazing inferno that burned underneath.

To help facilitate this, there were numerous large firing holes underneath the bed to allow the entry of firewood and coal as fuel, while the simultaneous removal of soot ash.

There were small porous holes, around a centimeter (1cm) in diameter punched into the bed which allowed the hot gases to escape through the bed and into the air, while in the process also heating up the coal that is on it.

Harun gave the others a very succinct version of the explanation Alexander had given him, "Here coal is heated for twelve to fifteen hours to drive away all the water present in it and thus turning it a substance called coke." Harun claimed, and then gave its use,

"We need to do this because this coke burns much faster and hotter than coal and is ideal to be used to produce the heat needed to melt iron in the blast furnace."

This explanation produced an understanding nod from all the visitors.

The news about molten iron did not cause any commotion within them as they all came here knowing that a process for producing liquid iron had been discovered by the pasha and that the lord wanted all of them to see exactly how it was done.

While for one man named Alexander, it reminded him of many things currently wrong with this method of coke production.

First was the open bed design.

Normally the coke would be made in an enclosed furnace like the brick kilns where the temperature would be raised to 900 degrees Celsius by trapping most of the air.

This created the oxygen-lacking atmosphere needed to turn the coal into coke through pyrolysis.

But Alexander had chosen this open-air design for the time being because of a couple of reasons.

The first and biggest one was because it was adequate for the time being.

It was cheaper, easier to operate, and because the coal extracted here was of exceptionally high quality, hence the current design was enough to get the job done.

One major problem that Alexander had faced while designing a closed furnace was the loading and unloading of the charge.

Though the loading would be done by making the entrance large enough for horse carts to directly enter and dump their load inside, unloading the furnace was a lot more difficult.

The hot furnace had to be allowed to be sufficiently cooled, and then the tons and tons of materials had to be manually placed into carts using shovels.

This was not only very slow and time-consuming but also very inefficient fuel-wise, as the furnace had to be stopped, cooled, and then reheated from scratch again in the next cycle.

Hence, due to the periodic nature of these types of kilns, they were called periodic kilns and were generally quite inefficient.

It was not such a problem in Alexander's previous life, as then, the load could be mechanically loaded and unloaded using mechanical hydraulic levels, so even if the furnace was turned off, it did not have to be cooled down to room temperature.

The next problem with this method was Alexander using big lumps of coal in the coking produce and not crushed or even partially crushed ones.

This was highly inefficient as the ground-up coal would have had much more surface area and hence needed much less time to turn to coal, making the process much more time and fuel efficient.

And even more, was the fact that Alexander would have to grind this coke anyway before placing it into the furnace.

But Alexander did not do it because he was afraid that these crushed coals could fall into the small pores that let the flue gases out or do so as the coals shrunk in volume when transformed into coke.

And the last flaw with this open bed design was that producing coke not only drove away the water vapor but also volatile natural gases like methane and ethane, which currently he was just letting escape into the air.

And this was because Alexander did not have any way of collecting and storing gases.

For that, he would have to invent rubber which could then be used to make gaskets and produce an air-tight seal, an endeavor he was already working on.

'If I can get rubber from that, I won't need to look for any rubber trees. And I can then invent gaslighting,' Alexander ambitiously thought.

In this way, as Harun continued with the tour, showing the marvels of Alexander's creation, the chief guest of the tour was already busy making other plans.

Much, much grander plans.