Chapter 82 Iron Bamboo
October 15, 2019.
After a storm, about 63 kilometers southeast of Bandon Island is the famous World War II battlefield - the Battle of Sibuyan Sea.
The Japanese battleship Musashi sank in this sea area.
On the north side of the Sibuyan Sea is Sibuyan Island, a medium-sized island with an area of 445 square kilometers.
This island is also one of the core areas of the Fernando family.
Sibuyan Island, San Fernando Town.
This small town with a population of just over 20,000 was a small place engaged in traditional agriculture more than eight months ago.
It was not until Zhang Jueming brought people here and established the 606 laboratory directly under the Sapiens Company that some changes appeared here.
After more than half a year of boring scientific research, Zhang Jueming's team has undergone a significant transformation from being flustered at the beginning to being familiar with it now.
Zhang Jueming, who was born as a scientific research worker, had been working in the field of genetic modification. Although he had made many achievements, they were not his own after all.
I am almost 35 years old and my parents are getting old. With my little income, it is difficult for me to make a fortune, let alone buy a house in my hometown Jinyang.
After much deliberation, he resigned from his previous company, and was eventually tricked into going to Luzon by accident.
At first he thought he had been cheated, but after his job became stable, he felt that he had made the right choice.
As a scientific researcher, his treatment within the Sapiens company is higher than that of employees of the same level. In addition, the company has allocated him a house in the town of San Fernando. Therefore, Zhang Jueming, who is not married, does not find it troublesome.
What this 606 laboratory studies is genetically modified bamboo.
At the beginning, Zhang Jueming did not understand the company’s purpose of genetically modified bamboo. After all, what’s so good about genetically modified bamboo?
But when they successfully cultivated Iron Bamboo No. 5, Zhang Jueming understood the company's idea.
Of course, they were able to quickly develop Iron Bamboo No. 5 not only because of their hard work, but also because of the powerful supercomputing center of the Sapiens Company and some genetic modification ideas provided by Li Qingye.
Currently, Sapiens has built the world's most powerful supercomputing center, Fuxi Supercomputing No. 1, on an uninhabited desert island, with a floating-point computing limit of 300 teraflops.
You should know that the floating-point computing limit of Tianhe-1, currently ranked first in the world's supercomputer, is only 2.57 gigaflops.
Fuxi Supercomputer No. 1 is composed of 30,000 biological chips, with a total construction cost of only about US$6.73 million, and daily operating costs are approximately US$6,271 per day.
This is the advantage of biological computers. Once developed, their production and operating costs will be several orders of magnitude lower than those of traditional electronic computers.
Zhang Jueming's team can use the company's supercomputer all day long, and use this huge computing power to brute force many problems.
With the guidance of Li Qingye behind the scenes, they were able to achieve success on Tiezhu No. 5.
Currently, Iron Bamboo No. 5, which has been castrated of its seed reproduction ability, has been planted on 10 hectares of mountain land.
Zhang Jueming, along with several assistants, used a high-pressure water jet to cut off a large piece of iron bamboo, and then put on a work exoskeleton and brought the bamboo back to the laboratory.
Laboratory 606 is right next to the bamboo forest.
Today, in addition to Zhang Jueming's team, there are also Coral Building Materials Company's general manager Harlin Lopez and his team in the laboratory.
Harlin looked at the iron bamboo that had been processed in the laboratory, picked up one of the bamboo sticks, put it in his hand and twisted it .
However, the strength of this two-finger-wide bamboo stick was beyond his imagination. He twisted the stick until his face turned red, but he still couldn't break it.
"Huh... Is this thing almost as strong as steel bars?"
Zhang Jueming smiled and shook his head: "Ordinary steel bars are only about 300 strong, while Iron Bamboo No. 5 can reach about 650."
"So high? Can't it replace steel bars?" Harlem's eyes showed great excitement.
Zhang Jueming nodded: "It can indeed replace steel bars. After deep processing, it can replace some steel bars in buildings."
Harlem was not interested in knowing how iron bamboo was processed. After all, he was not an expert in materials science, so there was no need for him to delve too deeply into it.
He turned around and whispered to Ji Xingchen, the director of the Building Materials Market , "Xingchen, what do you think of the performance of this iron bamboo? Can it replace the function of steel bars in construction?"
Ji Xingchen did not answer immediately, but asked Zhang Jueming about the specific material parameters of iron bamboo, as well as the planting cost and processing cost.
After writing and drawing on the small notebook for more than ten minutes, Ji Xingchen finally figured out the performance, cost, and uses of iron bamboo.
"General Manager, I think this iron bamboo can replace a large part of the steel bars. Its strength is higher than the steel bars on the market, and its flame retardancy and corrosion resistance are no less than those of steel bars. In terms of unit weight, it is only one-third of that of steel bars, and its unit cost is only one-quarter of that of steel bars. This iron bamboo has great potential."
Harlin thought for a moment and then asked, "If we launch it on the market all at once, will it be difficult for customers to accept it?"
"This..." Ji Xingchen suspected for a moment: "It is indeed possible. After all, bamboo has always been inferior to steel bars. This concept has been deeply rooted in people's minds."
Holding the iron bamboo strips in his hand, Harlin suddenly laughed: "It's too early to think about this problem now. Our company's products are all supplied to sister companies. If the market does not accept it, it has little to do with us."
"That's true." Ji Xingchen almost forgot that about 70% of their company's products are supplied to Coral Construction Company.
Harlem immediately announced that Iron Bamboo would enter commercial promotion.
Coral Building Materials Company will invest in the construction of a bamboo plantation on Sibuyan Island. The planting area is expected to reach 150 square kilometers, which will be divided into three phases over three years.
In fact, Harlin, the general manager of Coral Building Materials, has been under great pressure recently, mainly because the steel plant's production capacity cannot keep up with demand.
Currently, after integration and expansion, Coral Building Materials owns a total of 3 steel mills with an annual output of 2.4 million tons of crude steel.
If these small steel mills were in China, they would be shut down due to their backward production capacity.
But in Luzon it is the leading heavy industry.
However, the crazy scale of infrastructure construction of the Sapiens Company means that the annual production capacity of 2.4 million tons of crude steel cannot meet the construction needs.
Due to a large number of projects including roads, docks, bridges, employee dormitories, factories and sea fields, Coral Construction Company had to import 840,000 tons of construction steel from China this year to fill the demand gap.
Although this situation can be solved by importing, it is not a wise move to rely on imports for a long time.
What's more, the Sapiens Company also has to maintain a New Luzon Shipyard, and in the future, shipbuilding steel and military steel must be self-sufficient.
Continuing to expand the steel mill is also not a good idea.
Because the iron ore in Luzon is all pyrite with relatively low iron abundance, it is a notoriously low-quality iron ore. Currently, the mining of the tens of millions of tons of pyrite controlled by the Homo Sapiens Company has been suspended.
Therefore, the Coral Building Materials' steel plant can only import cheap and easy-to-use iron ore from Australia.
The problem is that Li Qingye doesn't trust Australia. In order to avoid being strangled in the future, Coral Building Materials can only prepare for both scenarios.
On the one hand, we will import double the amount of iron ore, and at the same time suspend domestic iron ore mining and make good preparations for iron ore reserves.
On the other hand, we are looking for alternatives to steel.
It was in such a background that the iron bamboo research and development project was launched. Now that construction steel accounts for the majority of steel consumption, as long as iron bamboo can replace a part of it, the saved steel can be used in military industry and shipbuilding.
