On the huge screen, the asteroid capture spacecraft had successfully captured the asteroid numbered LKUJ-782719 and began to head towards Mars.
The vast cosmic space is extremely empty. The path of catching and returning asteroids seems long and clearly visible on the interface. However, in the real cosmic space, it is like a thin rope thrown into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, incomparably small and inconspicuous.
In the following time, Chen Mengchuan and others' attention was quickly diverted by other things.
Xu Shuwei's exploration team received good news, confirming the previous uranium mine and confirming its approximate inventory, which is extremely amazing and considerable. It almost reads as a very high quality pitchblende!
The discovery of these uranium deposits is of great significance to their understanding of Mars, such as estimating the age of Mars and the mineral history of Mars.
According to current private use of uranium, it is mainly used as nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants. You must know that assuming complete fission, one kilogram of uranium-235 extracted from the pitchblende mine can theoretically produce 80 trillion joules of energy, which is almost equivalent to more than 3,000 tons of coal. It can provide very sufficient energy support for the Mars nuclear power plant.
This time, the reserves of pitchblende ore are expected to reach more than 1.4 million tons! Just this one uranium mine is comparable to the uranium reserves of the entire Australia family on earth!
There are three main natural sources of pitchblende on Earth, hydrothermal veins, horizontal deposits in layered sedimentary rocks, and Precambrian pyrite conglomerate layers.
The main sources of hydrothermal veins are the Katanga region of Congo, the Erzberg Mountains in Saxony, Germany, and the Fire Bear Lake in Canada. Horizontal deposits in layered sedimentary rocks are mostly found in the plateau areas of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico in the United States. These plateau areas were originally barren and barren. The mining of pitchblende has brought them a lot of prosperity. The last kind of pitchblende ore in the Precambrian pyrite conglomerate layer was mined in the Blind River area of the Witwatersrand in Africa and Ontario, Canada.
Is pitchblende important? Importantly, China is quite rich in pitchblende ore, but compared with several large countries with pitchblende ore, it appears to be very limited. The proven uranium reserves are only a few tens of thousands of tons.
The pitch uranium mine on Mars has already started mining. Under the arrangements of Xu Shuwei and a large number of experts and engineers, the mining work is progressing very smoothly, using a variety of mining methods including open-pit mining, underground mining, in-situ leaching and drilling mining. The mined low-concentration uranium ore includes 0.01 to 0.25% uranium oxide. Currently, these uranium ores are stored first. After the uranium ore refinery is established, uranium metal will be extracted from it through a complex refining process, and high-purity uranium will be further extracted and provided to the Mars nuclear power plant for power generation.
The current Mars nuclear power plant is basically completed, and has begun power generation based on high-purity uranium brought from the earth. However, the power generation capacity is still relatively limited. After the uranium ore refining plant is formed and put into operation, the Mars nuclear power plant will begin to operate at full capacity, thereby providing a high degree of electrical energy to the metal smelting plant.
At present, a certain number of metal smelting plants on Mars have been built and experimental testing has begun. The reserve personnel brought from Earth this time had learned a lot of knowledge related to metal smelting on Earth, and were quickly assigned to one metal smelting plant after another under arrangements.
Nowadays, all metal smelting plants on Mars use high-intensity electric metal smelting technology. However, different metal smelting plants have also developed many different electrothermal metal smelting methods, including eight methods: arc melting, resistance melting, arc resistance mixed melting, high-intensity electric induction melting, high-intensity electron beam melting and high-intensity plasma melting.
Compared with general pyrometallurgy, the current electrothermal metallurgical technology mastered by Tenzhi Technology has the advantages of high-speed heating, precise temperature control and high temperatures exceeding 2000 degrees Celsius compared to traditional metallurgical technology. It can operate in various environments, various pressures and vacuums, and the amount of metal burning is very small.
It is the core method for Tenzhi Technology to smelt ordinary steel and dense steel, ferrous alloys, nickel, copper, zinc, tin and other heavy non-ferrous metals, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, titanium, zirconium and other rare high melting point metals, and certain other rare metals, semiconductor materials, etc. on Mars.
In the main control room, Chen Mengchuan unexpectedly discovered that the progress of the current metal smelting plants was faster than he imagined. Currently, dozens of metal smelting plants have been completed and deployed, and the first batch of tests have begun. The core engineer in charge of these metal smelting plants is a man in his 50s named Jiang Xiaomin.
"We have started the first batch of smelting. Judging from the current overall progress, the effect is very good. There are 16 metal smelting plants that have been started. The smelted metal minerals are collected from a mining area in the north of Mars. Although the quantity is not large, it is enough to try." Jiang Xiaomin said slowly. The tall and thin man wore thick-rimmed glasses, and the degree was obviously very high.
"With Lao Jiang here, there will definitely be no problems with our metal smelting plant on Mars." Xu Shuwei laughed and said, Jiang Xiaomin was introduced by him, and he was also a somewhat depressed academic talent dug out from China Xia Science Academy.
"Why do we have so many types of metal smelting plants now? Isn't it more troublesome if the technology is dispersed?" Chen Mengchuan asked shamelessly. He still didn't understand the construction of 8 different types of metal smelting plants, but these were not arranged by him, so he still wanted to know.
Although Jiang Xiaomin was a little cautious, he answered Chen Mengchuan's question very well, "According to the requirements of Manager Zhao, we will collect and mine a large number of various metal minerals on Mars in the future. There are many types of metal minerals, and many metals and alloys have different smelting effects using different methods."
"Let me give you an example of alloy steel, such as our dense steel. It is very good to use arc melting."
"Arc melting uses high-intensity electric energy to generate an arc between electrodes or between electrodes and the object to be smelted to smelt metal. The arc in direct heating arc melting is generated between the electrode rod and the smelted charge. The charge is directly heated by the arc. It is suitable for smelting various alloy steels. The direct heating vacuum arc melting furnace can be used to smelt active and high melting point metals such as titanium, zirconium, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium and their alloys. These metals are very important in the plan."
"Another example is plasma melting, which uses a plasma arc generated by electrical energy as a heat source to smelt metal. It has the characteristics of high melting temperature and fast material reaction speed, which is very suitable for smelting, refining, and remelting high-melting point metals and alloys. In our future plans, rapid and large-scale smelting will play a very important role in producing various spacecrafts."
"According to the current progress, once the asteroid is captured and its metal composition is confirmed, large-scale cutting and smelting can begin. In just one year, I am confident that we can achieve ten times the output of all the steel plants and metallurgical plants on the entire earth!"
Jiang Xiaomin's words made Chen Mengchuan and others look a little hotter.
I will start preparing for an update tomorrow, and then I will express my gratitude to all the book friends who have been supporting me. The child suffered from bronchitis some time ago and was a little exhausted mentally and physically, but it is over today. Thank you for your continued support.