Chapter 125 - Acid and Alkali (Part 1)

On second thought, he understood. “You want to use radiation for sterilization?”

“Alcohol sterilization and moist heat sterilization both have their shortcomings. It would be great if we could use radiation sterilization.”

“That’s not possible. I can’t make that decision, and the Planning Committee certainly won’t agree. The X-ray machine also has a radiation shielding problem, so let’s just forget about it,” Shi Niaoren said. “If you really need it, you can just transport the things to the hospital’s radiology department to be done.”

Ji Situi looked at the chemical industrial zone, which was already taking shape before his eyes, with its forest of towers and crisscrossing pipelines, and felt a great sense of satisfaction. This most crucial facility of the transmigrator group was finally taking shape. Although the construction of the chemical industrial zone in Bopu had begun since they were able to mass-produce native cement and bricks, due to the lack of various manpower and material resources, the entire project had been in a state of slow and steady progress. The countless equipment installation problems encountered during this period had also driven the person in charge of chemical engineering crazy—he had worked in a chemical plant before, but working in a chemical plant was very different from installing one.

Looking at the various towers that had been erected and installed with great difficulty before him: comprehensive tower, ammonia stripping tower, ethanol rectification tower, ammonia scrubbing tower, absorption tower, decarbonization tower, debenzolization tower, rectification tower, ammonia synthesis carbonation comprehensive tower, ammonia synthesis saturated hot water tower, shift gas desulfurization tower, saturated hot water tower… these large and small towers and the pipes connecting them added up to more than three hundred tons. Just unloading them, transporting them here, and then installing them one by one was a miracle—it cost countless manpower, racked their brains, and even cost a few lives and several injuries. In the end, they even used all the methods shown in documentaries about the Egyptians building the pyramids and the Celts building Stonehenge. Fortunately, there were many capable people in all aspects, with experience in chemical plant construction and construction. Otherwise, he would have gone crazy on his own.

This set of equipment was certainly nothing in the 21st century: an 800-ton ammonia synthesis and combined alkali production system and a coal coking chemical system—the manufacturer was surprised when they customized and purchased the equipment—in terms of output, the small chemical plants in the county towns now had a higher output. Their power lay in their strong joint product manufacturing capabilities. The simplest example: the ammonia synthesis industry could not only produce ammonia water, and then produce nitric acid, but also use ammonia water as a raw material to react with salt to produce soda ash, as well as many by-products. It can be said that with the ammonia synthesis industry, the transmigrators would permanently occupy the top of the food chain in this time and space. No one could compete with a ruling group that controlled high explosives and efficient chemical fertilizers.

Ji Situi’s heart was surging with emotion, but in the end, he sighed: there was a shortage of coal!

Coal was not only the production raw material for these two systems, but also necessary for the supporting facilities. The large amount of steam, hot water, and electricity required for production all depended on coal. It seemed unreliable for the large boiler of the Bopu thermal power plant, which was under construction, to continue to burn firewood for steam like a pot-bellied machine.

The curse of coal shortage had been hanging over his head. Once it started running, the amount of coal required by the entire chemical zone far exceeded the amount of coal that could be transported from Guangdong at present. And this coal also had to bear the increasingly large appetite of the steel plant, cement plant, and the increasing number of boilers—the huge productivity was limited by the bottleneck of transportation.

Once a chemical industrial enterprise started production, it would generally not stop running unless there were special circumstances such as maintenance. With the current shortage of coal, it would be embarrassing if they ran out of raw materials after starting operation.

The rumbling of the machines from the shipyard not far away and the constant loud sound of steel rolling from the steel plant slightly soothed his uneasy mood. A groundbreaking ship was under construction, the first iron-ribbed wooden-hulled ship designed and built by the transmigrators themselves—the complexity of the craftsmanship of building an all-wood sailing ship had made the people in the machinery department lose confidence. The lack of large timber for making keels and ribs; the cumbersome processing of timber; the heavy weight, weak strength, and low effective payload ratio of wooden ships. This made Wen Desi determined to try to build a hybrid-powered large iron-ribbed wooden-hulled ship earlier than planned, to transport the bulk cargo that was urgently needed at present.

The keel of this ship was laid after the expedition team returned from their circumnavigation of the island. In order to meet the demand for producing ship materials, the steel plant was manufacturing and installing a steam-powered forging hammer. This was the largest industrial equipment ever built by the transmigrator group. All the elite soldiers and strong generals of the Industrial and Energy Committee were sleeping in the factory, working 24 hours a day.

It was estimated that the effective payload of the ship could reach 1,200 tons, far exceeding all current ships. The huge hull and powerful hybrid power were enough to enable it to escape most maritime threats.

But the demand for the three acids and two alkalis was already very urgent, and they could not wait for the large-scale arrival of coal. The finished products brought from another time and space were about to be used up, and the small amount of sulfuric acid dry-distilled from raw materials such as soapstone was really too little—it was not even enough to fill the gaps between their teeth. There were more and more places that needed sulfuric acid and caustic soda, which made Ji Situi have to settle for second best. He decided to start two sets of simple chemical equipment before the coal supply was stable—fortunately, the raw materials for these two processes did not require coal, and the equipment requirements were also easier.

One set was a native method of electrolysis of salt to produce caustic soda, and the other was a contact process for producing sulfuric acid from pyrite. These were both backward processes that should be eliminated, with large waste and serious pollution. Fortunately, the construction requirements were extremely low, and barbaric production without regard to consequences could also make do. In the future, after the joint chemical plant was put into production, this small plant could also be used as a supplement. Moreover, the expedition ship had transported back almost a full 20 tons of pyrite from Wanning. The sulfuric acid produced would be enough for a long time.

This contact process sulfuric acid plant built by Ji Situi was located at the downwind edge of the industrial zone, far from the residential area and farmland. The complete set of design drawings and construction technology were found in the Grand Library. Its crudeness and disregard for safety were so terrifying that Ji Situi gasped—he only knew that there was a native method for making sulfuric acid in the world, but he did not expect that the native method could be so terrifying. No wonder the teeth of the Eighth Route Army’s military industrial soldiers were all damaged by acid back then.

The overall construction was not difficult, it could even be said to be simple. The acid tower was made of large glazed ceramic water tanks. The instructions in the book said to use ceramic tanks. The transmigrators could now mass-produce this thing. Because of its wide use and corrosion resistance, the orders were extremely large. Xiao Bailang had already summed up enough experience from countless failures. He was not only skilled in making water tanks, but also very efficient—he used a mechanized demolding method to make the tank blanks, and his firing level was also superior to that of the local workers—the transmigrators had industrial thermometers and combustion control means. As long as they figured out the temperature at each stage of production, they could accurately control the rise and fall of the kiln temperature. This quantitative ability was far more accurate than the workers’ personal feelings of seeing with their eyes and feeling the temperature with their skin.

However, Ji Situi did not intend to order water tanks. Water tanks were a substitute out of necessity. Since they were going to be used as a substitute, it was better to use a substitute with higher technical content. Why bother to knock out the bottom of the water tank and then find something to seal the joints between the tanks to prevent acid mist from leaking—given that he had no particularly useful acid-resistant sealing materials on hand, the native sealing method would definitely have leaks—he still wanted to continue to eat with his own teeth for the rest of his life. So he asked Xiao Bailang to make a complete ceramic reaction tank, with a diameter of 700mm and a height of 3.65 meters. This almost drove Xiao Bailang crazy—the difficulty was too high. It was very difficult to fire oversized ceramic products.

After several days of hard work, Xiao Bailang finally came up with a compromise product. The entire reaction tank was composed of two parts, but in order to strengthen the sealing, the connecting parts were treated with sleeves, and the sealing effect was not bad. With a little more acid-resistant material for sealing, it would probably be fine.

Then he ordered a batch of cast iron pipes from the metallurgical department. The block ore furnace for burning pyrite was built with refractory bricks, with four combustion furnaces inside, each with a hearth of 0.3 square meters. The grate and furnace door were made of cast iron for easy sealing and no leakage. A cyclone dust collector was built above the furnace with refractory materials. For the combustion and dust removal of the entire furnace, Ji Situi got a 2-horsepower small blower. This amount of electricity was not a problem in the Bopu industrial zone.

The pyrite was first crushed into fine particles in the ore crusher and then put into the block ore furnace for roasting. The furnace gas passed through the cyclone dust collector made of refractory bricks and then entered the first converter. The gas in the first converter was cooled by cast iron pipes and then sent to the second converter for further reaction.

The original plan for the first and second converters was to use water tanks, but Ji Situi decided to use iron oil drums instead. The converters and dust collectors both needed insulation. Ji Situi had no ready-made insulation materials available, so he built an outer frame with bricks around these three objects and then filled the surrounding gaps with plant ash. These two converters each contained an iron catalyst for catalysis.

After the gas came out of the converter, it was cooled by cast iron pipes and then sent to the absorption tower to be showered with acid by a hand pump. After cooling and recovery, it was the finished acid, with a concentration of 98%.

The acid tower was Xiao Bailang’s three-section combined ceramic tank. Xiao Bailang’s tolerance control was good, and it was easily assembled and put in place after being lifted. The inside of the acid tower was filled with broken pieces of ceramic tiles stacked on top of each other. The external sealing material was made of water glass mixed with porcelain powder—for this, many porcelain items were smashed and then ground into powder. Fortunately, there was only one place to be sealed, so it was fine to pile on more. This material had a characteristic that it would harden after encountering acid, and its strength would increase. It was a relatively useful acid-resistant sealing material.

The coastal wind in Lin’gao was relatively strong, and there were one or two typhoons every year. The outside of the entire acid tower was fixed on all four sides with brick pillars.

After the core equipment was completed, the other water cooling and recovery devices were easy to handle. Most of the delivery pipes were made of ceramic pipes, and some were made of cast iron pipes. Only for the valves, Ji Situi did not make do with what was available, but used real chemical industry special valves. He personally inspected every seal. After confirming that there were no errors, Ji Situi ordered to prepare for ignition and production.

Ji Situi selected a few careful people from the laborers to be operators and gave them a three-day safety production class first. However, for the first few days of production, Ji Situi decided to only let the transmigrators do it themselves, with the native operators watching and learning on the side—he did not trust these peasants who had just put down their hoes a few days ago. If a major casualty accident occurred, the tragic scene of chemical burns would cast a great shadow on the future workers.

For this groundbreaking industrial progress, Ji Situi led a group of chemistry enthusiasts and his laborers to work hard for a whole day—they collected a large amount of dry firewood and also received a lot of coal from the Planning Committee. The quality of the Wanning pyrite unloaded from the ship was quite good. After testing, the average sulfur content was over 50%. These ores were first sent to the ore dressing plant for dressing, then crushed into small pieces. The loaders used human-powered derricks to lift baskets of ore onto a long train of flatcars on the track. Then two workers climbed onto the diesel locomotive in front. The driver paid attention to a tall tower a few hundred meters away. When the red flag turned yellow, a worker started the diesel engine. As soon as the green flag was raised, the whole train started to move, slowly heading towards the sulfuric acid plant.

While Ji Situi was organizing manpower to build the sulfuric acid plant, the rail transport built by the Lin’gao Construction General Company also quickly extended here. Now, the various factories, warehouses, and docks in the two industrial zones of Bairen and Bopu had completed their rail connections—flatbed trucks, pulled by diesel-powered locomotives, were running around, fully loaded with various raw materials and finished products, occasionally emitting muffled horn sounds.

After the last train of pyrite sand was transported, several small mountains had already been piled up behind Ji Situi: firewood, coal, pyrite, and a lot of lime.

He asked the native workers to light the firewood at the ash outlets of the four furnaces of the block ore furnace and start the furnace warming process. The whole process would last for about 48 hours, so Ji Situi took some time to go to Xiao Bailang’s place again—this time he ordered sulfuric acid tanks.

“The tanks have been made,” Xiao Bailang pointed to a row of tanks in the open space. These tanks were all covered with a bean-green glaze, with ears on both sides. The shape was similar to a small wine jar, but the body of the tank was very straight.

“According to your requirements, each has a capacity of 25 liters, and they have been threaded, with screw-on lids. It’s really rare!” Xiao Bailang smacked his lips. “Ceramic jars with screw-on lids.”

“These are jars for concentrated sulfuric acid. They have to be sealed tightly.”

These special ceramic jars for concentrated sulfuric acid could be tightened with a screw-on lid—in fact, this alone could not guarantee a seal. According to the traditional method, an asbestos rope was dipped in water glass and wrapped around the mouth of the jar before the lid was tightened. However, the transmigrators did not have asbestos rope, and even water glass was not much. Water glass could be manufactured in the future, but asbestos was probably not available without trade. Fortunately, nature had another natural corrosion-resistant material: raw lacquer.