Menicus was sharp-minded enough to notice that Alexander’s answer did not specifically say that he was going to reduce production.
‘How is he going to squirm out of this one,’ Menicus asked himself.
And Alexander gave a pretty good answer, “We will decrease steel quality. The lower-quality steel will be called normal steel, while the steel we are currently producing will be called military grade steel.”
“Oh! That’s a great solution my lord,” Heliptos was the most excited about this best-of-both-worlds solution, meaning they will get both the money and maintain their state security.
“How much will the steel differ?” Menes half-pointedly asked.
“I will design a demonstration,” Alexander simply promised.
He intended to make this normal steel for civilian use by simply not roasting the iron ore and not adding the flux during the Bessemer process.
This would make the steel have sulfur and phosphorus in them, making them alright for casting pots and pans, but terrible for making weapons.
This is because sulfur mainly causes something called hot-shortness, which is a phenomenon where the steel turns brittle and cracks and breaks when heated to high temperatures, like the temperatures used to forge a sword.
While phosphorus mainly causes the opposite effect, called cold-shortness, which, as you might have guessed, turns steel brittle at low temperatures, around up to three to five hundred degrees celsius.
This means that such a steel could not be worked at either temperature range, making it quite terrible for making anything that required strength and toughness, like a sword or armor.
And it had to be pointed out that sulfur and phosphorus also had other detrimental properties, making the existence of such elements very detrimental to any kind of structural steel.
In fact, Alexander even planned to add trace amounts of these elements intentionally to make the civilian-grade steel extra bad.
But just as Alexander thought so, he cursed, ‘Darn, now I will have to design tests for these two types of steel, and then train the workers on how to make them.’
Alexander was learning the hard way the saying, ‘The devil is in the details.’
Later, he would design a tensile experiment, where a piece of steel of specific dimensions would be clamped horizontally between two vices, and loads in the form of weights would be placed on it until it broke, thus roughly judging the steel’s strength.
And the military grade steel would be always found to be able to take more weight than the civilian one.
And this he would demonstrate to the others, thus making the lords relieved, along with Alexander’s reassurance that this steel could not be forged into any type of good weapon.
“Then we will do as the lord says,” Returning to the current time, Menicus voiced and then after a little bit of small talk, decided to end the tour.
“Oh, Your Grace, if I could have a little word,” Harun remembered something very important as he asked for some of Alexander’s time.
“Well, then my lords please go ahead. It seems mister Harun has some more things to say,” Alexander then waved the other lords off and then expectantly at Harun.
‘What more does he have to say?’ Alexander wondered.
“Ahem, I think it will be easier to show you, my lord,” Harun then gestured to follow and soon the duo, followed by Alexander’s bodyguards were shown to rows and rows and wooden warehouses.
“My lord, see all these loghouses?” Harun pointed and then said, “These are all full of coal. And we are rapidly running out of space to store them.”
Alexander’s coal extraction had far surpassed his demand and this created such a problem.
‘These are surface coal. That’s why they are so easy to mine,’ Alexander told himself the reason for the daily production of more than two tons of coal per worker.
“Such production will not last. And getting deeper deposits will be hard,” Alexander said, telling Harun that this large amount of coal might be their entire supply for the foreseeable future.
“Then does the lord want me to build more such warehouses?” Harun prudently asked, though he next added, “Please remember that currently all the bricks being made are all being used for other projects by your order my lord. That’s also why all these warehouses are made of wood.”
Alexander had put most other construction works to almost a total halt to build this iron foundry, and those works had just resumed, meaning he could not just again stop them without drawing frustrations from its leaders, the council members.
As Alexander was considering this, suddenly a very important fact that had up until now escaped him, entered his consideration.
“Wait, are the coals stored in there like how we store ores? In gigantic mountain like stacks? Alexander had a loud, scary tone to his voice, one of fear and trepidation.
“Ye…yes my lord. Is something wrong?” Alexander’s fear had infected Harun too, who had never seen the man ever show the slightest hint of fear at anything.
‘What did I do wrong?’ Harun involuntarily shivered with dread.
And soon Alexander let in the man on the reason for his hysterics, “When storing coal in bulk, the gases it gives off can catch fire by itself and cause self-combustion of the coal, resulting in huge explosions.”
Alexander then pointed out to the same warehouses as Harun did and with a pale face shakily said, “These warehouses are just waiting to blow up, along with anyone and everyone nearby!”ραпdα `n?ν?| сom
Alexander’s scary look and how he was excitedly spraying little droplets of spit on Harun’s mouth, made Harun wake up to the dangers they were in.
And so in a panicking voice shouted almost hysterically, “My lord, leave! We must leave here at once.”
And Alexander did not need more encouragement as he quickly evacuated the premises, his bodyguards bringing up the rear.
This warning of Alexander might have sounded excessive, but there was truly a significant chance of an explosion back there.
This was because, in such coal stockpiles, gases such as methane could be emitted by microbial metabolism, oxidation of carbon at low temperatures, and by absorption or desorption of water by coal due to the differences in moisture content between it and air.
All such reactions are exothermic and release heat, which might give rise to certain spots in the coal stack called hot spots, which are parts of the stack that are so hot that they can ignite themselves and the surrounding gases, resulting in a huge boom.
“My lord, what should we do?” Harun looked at Alexander with fear and askance.
“…..” And Alexander stayed only silent, giving himself time to think.
But Harun’s pleading eyes, which seemed to dart between confusion and worry were quite distracting for Alexander,
It was like a teacher was staring right into his answer script during an exam.
And so he decided to bring a bit of time for himself.
“Don’t worry. The warehouses will not catch fire any time soon,” Alexander first soothed the frayed nerves of the man as it seemed that his warning had been a bit too effective and then bluffed, “I know of a way to make use of all the excess coal.”
This made Harun break out a grin, listening eagerly for his solution, feeling relieved at having escaped death.
He was not naturally a timid man.
But after getting caught up in a mudslide and almost suffocating a few years ago, he had developed a fear of death as the very mention of his demise would have the man have flashbacks to that traumatic near asphyxiation.
Alexander was not aware of these thoughts, and neither would he care, as he bought time for himself to think while instructing Harun on the proper storage of coal.
“Harun remember, when storing such large coal, always prevent any airflow around it.”
“*Nod*,” Harun heavily nodded.
He did not ask why as he did not care for the reason, but the logic behind it was simple, -any air flow would provide the coal with a continuous stream of oxygen, aiding in the oxidation reaction and more importantly helping the air burn.
Alexander further said, “Also, try to use the coal as quickly as possible. The longer large coal stockpiles are kept, the more likely the spontaneous combustion process becomes.”
Later he advised, “Never mix too old coal with new ones.”
This was because old coal tended to be powdery and more combustible.
But they were less likely to spontaneously catch fire as most of the volatile gases had been driven out.
Whereas, new coal was the complete opposite.
Hence, when the two were stored together, disaster was waiting to happen.
And at last, Alexander advised, “And periodically water the whole stack, to cool the whole thing down.”
This was done because coal did not only burn with a blazing inferno.
It could also burn with a smoldering ember.
In Alexander’s previous life, there were multiple occasions where entire warehouses thought to be full of coal were opened to find that the coal had turned to ash, as it silently burned down in weeks or even months.
“My lord, how about we build an aqueduct? Like the one at the coke pit,” Harun was basically proposing having a continuous stream of water pour into the coal stack.
Alexander was impressed by Harun’s idea. 𝒷𝒹ℴ𝓿𝓁.𝓬𝓸𝓂
Though flawed, as a constant downpour of water would take away with it a lot of the coal with it, it was still a plan in the right direction.
And just then, linking the image of coal dust washing away in the water gave him an epiphany- coal briquettes
