Chapter 338 - Acids and Bases (I)
A moment's thought made the answer obvious: "You want to use radiation for sterilization?"
"Alcohol sterilization and moist heat methods both have their limitations. Radiation sterilization would be ideal."
"That's out of the question. I don't have the authority, and the Planning Committee would never approve it. There are shielding issues to consider as well—forget it." Shi Niaoren shook his head. "If you absolutely need it, transport the items to the hospital radiology room and have the sterilization done there."
Ji Situi surveyed the chemical industrial zone before him. The forest of towers and maze of crisscrossing pipes had finally taken shape, and a profound sense of satisfaction washed over him. This installation—the most critical facility in the entire Transmigration Group—was becoming a reality at last.
Construction of the Bopu Chemical Industrial Zone had begun the moment indigenous cement and bricks became available for mass production. Yet chronic shortages of both manpower and material had kept the project advancing at a measured crawl. The equipment installation alone had nearly driven him to madness. He had worked in chemical plants, certainly—but working in one and building one from scratch were entirely different propositions.
Now, gazing at the towers that stood before him—installed through sheer determination and ingenuity—Ji Situi allowed himself a moment of pride. The Synthesis Tower. The Ammonia Distillation Tower. Ethanol Rectification Tower. Ammonia Washing Tower. Absorption Tower. Decarbonization Tower. Debenzolization Tower. Rectification Tower. Synthetic Ammonia Carbonization Combined Tower. Saturated Hot Water Tower. Shift Gas Desulfurization Tower... These structures, along with the pipes connecting them, totaled over three hundred tons of equipment. Unloading them, transporting them to the site, and installing them one by one had been nothing short of a miracle—achieved through countless hours of labor, ingenious problem-solving, a handful of deaths and several injuries, and methods borrowed from every documentary on how the Egyptians built pyramids and the Celts raised Stonehenge. Thankfully, the Transmigration Group boasted a fair number of capable hands, including specialists in chemical plant architecture and construction. Had Ji Situi been forced to manage alone, he would surely have lost his mind.
Of course, by twenty-first-century standards, this equipment was modest: an 800-ton Synthetic Ammonia and Combined Soda Ash Manufacturing System paired with a Coal Coking Chemical System. The manufacturers who'd supplied it had been puzzled by the order—in terms of output, even a small county chemical plant could outproduce them. But the real advantage lay in the system's combined manufacturing capabilities. The synthetic ammonia industry, for example, produced not only ammonia water (which could be further processed into nitric acid) but also soda ash through reactions with salt, along with numerous byproducts. In short, once the synthetic ammonia industry was operational, the transmigrators would permanently occupy the apex of this timeline's technological food chain. No one could challenge a ruling group that controlled both high explosives and high-efficiency chemical fertilizers.
Ji Situi's surge of emotion subsided into a sigh: Coal.
Coal wasn't merely a raw material for these two systems—it was essential for all supporting infrastructure. The vast quantities of steam, hot water, and electricity required for production all depended on it. The large boiler currently under construction at Bopu Thermal Power Plant could hardly continue burning wood for steam like some oversized locomobile.
The coal shortage hung over his head like a tightening curse. Once operational, the entire chemical zone would require far more coal than current logistics could deliver from Guangdong. And this coal also had to feed the steel plant, the cement plant, and an ever-growing fleet of hungry boilers. Their tremendous productive capacity was being throttled by a transportation bottleneck.
Chemical enterprises, once started, generally ran continuously—shutdowns were reserved for maintenance or emergencies. But with coal supplies this precarious, launching full operations risked the humiliating prospect of grinding to a halt mid-production.
The rumble of machinery from the nearby shipyard and the thunderous clang of the steel plant's rolling equipment offered some comfort to his anxious thoughts. An epoch-making vessel was under construction: the first iron-ribbed, wooden-hulled ship designed and built entirely by the transmigrators themselves. The complexity of all-wooden sailing ship construction had sapped the mechanical department's confidence. Large timbers suitable for keels and ribs were scarce, wood processing was cumbersome, and wooden structures were heavy, weak, and offered poor payload ratios. These realities had convinced Chairman Wen to advance plans for hybrid-powered iron-ribbed wooden ships, specifically to transport the bulk cargo they so desperately needed.
The keel had been laid shortly after the expedition team returned from circumnavigating the island. To meet material demands, the steel plant was manufacturing and installing a steam hammer—the largest piece of industrial equipment the Transmigration Group had ever built. Every elite worker from the Industrial and Energy Committee was sleeping at the factory, working around the clock.
The ship's effective payload was expected to reach twelve hundred tons, dwarfing every vessel currently in service. Its massive hull and powerful hybrid propulsion would enable it to outrun most maritime threats.
But the demand for the Three Acids and Two Alkalis was urgent, and coal shipments could not be accelerated. Reserves of finished products brought from the other timeline were nearly exhausted, and the small quantities of sulfuric acid produced by dry-distilling raw materials like green vitriol (ferrous sulfate) were laughably inadequate—barely enough to wet one's teeth, let alone supply industrial needs. With applications for sulfuric acid and caustic soda multiplying, Ji Situi was forced to compromise: he would bring two simpler chemical systems online before the coal supply stabilized.
Fortunately, neither process required coal as a raw material, and their equipment demands were more forgiving.
The first was indigenous electrolytic production of caustic soda from salt. The second was the Pyrite Contact Process for sulfuric acid. Both were obsolete, wasteful, and highly polluting—technologies that would normally be condemned to the ash heap of history. But their construction requirements were minimal, and reckless production could at least yield results. Once the combined chemical plant was running, these crude workshops would serve as supplementary capacity. Moreover, the expedition fleet had delivered nearly twenty tons of pyrite from Wanning. That would sustain sulfuric acid production for some time.
The Contact Process Sulfuric Acid Plant Ji Situi had designed occupied the downwind edge of the industrial zone, well away from residential areas and farmland. He had found the complete design drawings and construction techniques in the Grand Library. The approach was so crude—so terrifyingly indifferent to safety—that it had taken his breath away. He'd known indigenous sulfuric acid production existed, but he'd never imagined it could be this primitive. Small wonder the Eighth Route Army's ordnance workers had lost their teeth to acid fumes.
The construction itself was straightforward, even simple. The acid tower was assembled from large glazed ceramic water vats. The original specifications called for ordinary ceramic vats; the transmigrators could mass-produce those now. Their corrosion resistance and versatility made them enormously popular, and orders were piling up. After countless failures, Xiao Bailang had mastered the craft—he now manufactured vat bodies using mechanized mold-release techniques, and his firing techniques left local workers in awe. The transmigrators' industrial thermometers and precise combustion controls allowed them to meticulously manage kiln temperatures at every production stage. This quantitative precision far exceeded what even the most experienced local artisans could achieve through intuition alone.
But Ji Situi hadn't ordered water vats. If he was going to improvise, he might as well improvise with ambition. Why bother knocking out the bottom of a water vat and struggling to seal the interfaces between stacked vats with whatever acid-resistant materials he didn't have? He intended to continue eating with his own teeth for the rest of his life. What he wanted from Xiao Bailang was a complete ceramic reaction vessel: 700mm in diameter, 3.65 meters tall.
The request nearly drove Xiao Bailang mad. The difficulty was extreme—firing super-large ceramic pieces was notoriously problematic.
After several days of intensive experimentation, Xiao Bailang's team produced a compromise: a reaction cylinder assembled from two sections. To ensure a tight seal, the connecting portions used a sleeved joint design, and the sealing performance proved quite good. A proper acid-resistant sealant would make it serviceable.
Ji Situi then ordered a batch of cast iron pipes from the metallurgy department. The lump ore furnace for roasting pyrite was constructed from refractory bricks, containing four combustion chambers, each with a 0.3-square-meter hearth. Grate bars and furnace doors were cast iron for easy sealing. A cyclone dust collector built from refractory materials sat atop the furnace. To meet the system's combustion and dust-removal requirements, Ji Situi requisitioned a small two-horsepower blower—an easily met power demand within the Bopu Industrial Zone.
The pyrite was first crushed into fine particles in the ore crusher, then roasted in the lump ore furnace. The resulting furnace gas passed through the cyclone dust collector and entered the First Converter, where cast iron pipes cooled it. From there, it was piped to the Second Converter for further reaction.
The original plans specified water vats for both converters. Ji Situi substituted iron sheet oil drums instead. Both converters and the dust collector required insulation, but Ji Situi had no ready-made insulating materials. His solution was simple: brick frames around each unit, with the gaps filled with plant ash. Iron catalyst was loaded into both converters.
After exiting the converter, the gas was cooled through cast iron pipes, then pumped into the Absorption Tower by a hand pump to be showered with acid. Once cooled, the recovered liquid emerged as finished 98% concentrated sulfuric acid.
The Acid Tower itself was Xiao Bailang's three-section combined ceramic vat. His tolerance work had been excellent; assembly went smoothly once the sections were hoisted into position. The tower's interior was packed with stacked fragments of broken tiles and vats. For external sealing, Ji Situi used a mixture of water glass and porcelain powder—which had required smashing quite a few ceramics to produce. Fortunately, only one joint needed sealing, so they could afford to apply the material generously. This sealant had a useful property: contact with acid caused it to harden and grow stronger, making it a reasonably effective acid-resistant seal.
Coastal Lingao was prone to strong winds and one or two typhoons annually. The entire acid tower was secured with brick pillars bracing it on all four sides.
With the core equipment in place, the remaining cooling and recovery systems posed no great challenge. Most pipes were ceramic, with some cast iron sections. For the valves, however, Ji Situi refused to compromise—he used proper chemical industry valves procured from the modern timeline. He personally inspected every seal. Once he was satisfied, he ordered preparations for ignition.
Ji Situi selected a handful of the most careful workers from among the laborers to serve as operators. They underwent three days of safety training. Nevertheless, for the first several days of production, Ji Situi insisted that only transmigrators handle operations directly, with the indigenous workers observing from the side. He simply didn't trust farmers who had only recently set down their hoes. If a major casualty occurred, the horrific appearance of chemical burns would cast a long shadow over the workforce for years to come.
For this epoch-making industrial milestone, Ji Situi led his team of chemistry enthusiasts and laborers through an entire day of intensive preparation. They gathered vast quantities of dry firewood. They secured a coal allocation from the Planning Committee. The Wanning pyrite proved to be of excellent quality, testing at over fifty percent sulfur content on average. The ore was first processed at the dressing plant, then crushed into small pieces. Stevedores used manual derricks to load baskets of ore onto a long train of flatbed cars. Two workers climbed aboard the lead diesel tractor. The driver watched a tall tower several hundred meters away. When the red flag turned to yellow, an engine roared to life. When the green flag rose, the entire train lurched into motion and crept toward the sulfuric acid plant.
While Ji Situi organized the sulfuric acid plant construction, the rail network operated by Lingao General Construction Company extended rapidly in this direction. Rail connections now linked factories, warehouses, and docks throughout both Bairen and Bopu industrial zones. Diesel-drawn flatbed trucks ran fully loaded, ferrying raw materials and finished products while emitting the occasional muffled horn blast.
After the final train of pyrite sand arrived, several small hills had accumulated behind Ji Situi: firewood, coal, pyrite, and ample quantities of lime.
He ordered indigenous workers to light kindling at the ash outlets of the furnace's four hearths, beginning the warming process. This would take approximately forty-eight hours, so Ji Situi used the interval to visit Xiao Bailang again—this time to order sulfuric acid jars.
"The jars are ready." Xiao Bailang gestured toward a row of vessels arranged on a cleared patch of ground. They were all glazed in bean-green, with ears on both sides. In shape, they resembled small wine jars, though with unusually straight bodies.
"Per your specifications: each holds twenty-five liters, with threaded mouths and matching threaded lids." Xiao Bailang smacked his lips. "A truly exotic request—pottery jars with threaded lids."
"These are for holding concentrated sulfuric acid. If the seal isn't tight, we're in trouble."
These dedicated pottery jars could be twisted shut with threaded lids—though that alone wouldn't guarantee a perfect seal. Traditional methods called for wrapping the jar mouth with water-glass-soaked asbestos rope before tightening the lid. But the transmigrators had little water glass and no asbestos rope at all. Water glass could be manufactured eventually; asbestos would require trade. Fortunately, nature had provided another naturally corrosion-resistant material: raw lacquer.