Chapter 128 - Acid and Alkali (Part 4)

Xu Yingjie said, “Not exactly. We call it electrolyte. The caustic soda content in it is less than 10%, and there are many impurities that need to be separated and treated.”

“Look, chlorine gas!” Ji Situi patted Xu Yingjie on the shoulder.

“What, what?” Bai Yu wanted to get closer to see.

“Be careful, don’t move,” Xu Yingjie was a little excited. He wasn’t thinking about how chlorine gas could be used for disinfection, environmental purification, or making hydrochloric acid, but rather “poison gas.”

Although chlorine gas was common, it was the first poison gas to be used in modern warfare. It had achieved remarkable results in World War I, with countless casualties. Moreover, chlorine gas was easy to produce, making it a super weapon in this time and space. Whether you were a Manchu White Armored soldier, a Guanning Iron Cavalry, a retainer, or Cromwell’s Ironsides, you would only have one fate when you encountered it: “death.”

At present, the transmigrators’ industry could not manufacture gas pressure vessels, so storing chlorine gas was impossible. But Xu Yingjie knew that there were many perverts in the weapons research group, and they might come up with some strange things.

As this yellowish-green gas rose in the glass tube, all the transmigrators present held their breath. At this time, a small fan blade installed in another glass tube suddenly began to rotate, indicating that another colorless electrolysis product had also come out—hydrogen gas.

“Everyone, pay attention,” Ji Situi began to give safety education to the workers. “This yellow gas is called chlorine. It is poisonous…”

Watching Ji Situi explain what chlorine gas and hydrogen gas were to a group of half-understanding native workers, and how to prevent poisoning and explosions, Bai Yu thought to himself that he would not come to this chemical plant in the future—it was too dangerous.

The produced hydrogen gas was transported to the only modern device in this set of equipment: the hydrochloric acid reactor. The hydrogen gas was passed into the reactor for combustion, and then chlorine gas was passed in to produce hydrogen chloride gas. After cooling, it was absorbed by water to become hydrochloric acid.

This reaction was very dangerous. If the chlorine content in the hydrogen gas was too high, it would directly explode. The solution was to strictly control the amount of chlorine gas entering during the reaction process, so that the poisonous chlorine gas was surrounded by excess hydrogen gas, allowing the chlorine gas to react fully, preventing air pollution and possible mixed explosions.

Because of the great danger, Ji Situi had not considered native equipment from the beginning, but had directly purchased modern equipment from another time and space.

Making hydrochloric acid could only consume a part of the chlorine gas. The rest was passed into a small reaction tower on the side. The reaction tower was already filled with dried slaked lime in layers. The chlorine gas was absorbed by the slaked lime to produce calcium hypochlorite—it had a more familiar name: bleaching powder.

As the most common and effective disinfectant, the mass production of bleaching powder meant that the transmigrator group had reached a new peak in disease prevention and epidemic prevention. It was of great significance to the transmigrator group’s base on both sides of the Wenlan River, which was extremely densely populated. When the army launched an expedition, there was no need to worry about the hygiene of drinking water along the way.

It was difficult for slaked lime to completely absorb chlorine gas. The waste gas would more or less carry away some chlorine gas. In order to better utilize the chlorine gas and improve the air environment at the same time, a final waste gas absorption process was generally adopted.

The waste gas discharged from the absorption tower was piped to an absorption tank, which contained lime milk prepared from slaked lime. The chlorine in the waste gas was absorbed by the lime milk to produce calcium chlorate and calcium chloride.

After the lime milk was saturated with chlorine, it was pumped into a concentration pot, heated, and then cooled to crystallize the calcium chlorate. Calcium chlorate could be used as a herbicide. The liquid from which the calcium chlorate had been extracted was then heated and concentrated to obtain calcium chloride. This basically achieved zero emission of chlorine gas.

As for the electrolyte that continuously flowed out during electrolysis, it already contained about 10% caustic soda. However, it also contained a higher content of sodium chloride. Such a caustic soda solution could not be used and had to be concentrated.

The equipment Ji Situi used for concentration was a large pot, which was directly heated and concentrated with firewood to ignite the coal. The strong smell made everyone who was not wearing safety goggles flee.

“Isn’t the pollution too severe if we boil it in the open like this?” Bai Yu said.

“Yes, but we don’t have an evaporator, do we? This also consumes coal!” Ji Situi said loudly because he was wearing a chemical protective mask. “We’ll replace it when the machinery factory can provide us with the equipment.”

After boiling for a while, crystals began to precipitate at the bottom of the pot, and they accumulated more and more.

“Bai Yu, quickly scoop them out with a spoon! Be careful not to bring out the lye as well.”

Bai Yu quickly took a special wooden spoon and stood by the pot to scrape out the crystals at the bottom.

“Be careful,” Ji Situi watched him nervously. This pot was originally used to cook pig swill from the Gou family’s estate and had a large diameter. One careless move and he would fall in and be finished.

Bai Yu carefully took out the crystals. The steam rising from the pot was pungent even with a protective mask.

“Is this salt?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s real refined salt!”

The refined salt was taken out and sent to a salt drying board. It was washed several times with dilute lye and then rinsed with saturated refined brine. The rest was a snow-white crystal. The purity of sodium chloride in this salt was as high as 95% or more. It could be used to prepare saline solution for medical infusion.

The electrolyte from which the salt had been precipitated was continuously heated and concentrated until the concentration of the lye reached about 30%, at which point it became a chemical product. Of course, it could also be further concentrated and dried into a solid, but this was too coal-consuming and not cost-effective for the transmigrators.

The successful production of sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and caustic soda gave the Industrial and Energy Committee great confidence. Wang Luobin, Zhan Wuya, and other people would all come to these two simple workshops to have a look whenever they had time, to see the equipment that was put into operation by native methods.

Although these two sets of equipment were simple, the benefits they brought were immeasurable. According to Ji Situi’s calculations, under the condition of ensuring the supply of raw materials and energy, the contact process sulfuric acid workshop would be equipped with 15 workers on a three-shift basis, with an annual operating time of 345 days, and a daily output of 1 ton of 98% concentrated sulfuric acid, which could be increased to 1.2 tons per day if necessary; the salt electrolysis workshop would be equipped with 24 workers on a three-shift basis, with an annual operating time of 345 days, and could produce 47.5 tons of caustic soda, 87 tons of bleaching powder, 2 tons of calcium chlorate, and 6 tons of calcium chloride annually. It could also produce 47.5 tons of refined salt (95% purity sodium chloride) and 30 tons of hydrochloric acid.

The output was insignificant by modern standards, but for the Planning Committee, which had to calculate every milliliter and gram of any chemical just a short while ago, the commissioning of these two workshops was like a windfall.

Even Shi Niaoren came. When he saw the 95% high-purity sodium chloride prepared by Ji Situi, he was so happy that he couldn’t close his mouth—this solved a big problem: saline solution for infusion and injection was now available. Bleaching powder was even more of a good thing that the Ministry of Health had been looking forward to. As for crude calcium chloride, after being refined by the pharmaceutical factory, it could be made into calcium chloride injection, which could treat tetany caused by low blood calcium, as well as intestinal colic, ureteral colic, urticaria, exudative edema, and pruritic skin diseases. It could also be used to treat vitamin D deficiency rickets, osteomalacia, and as a calcium supplement for pregnant and lactating women, greatly improving the physical fitness of the people of this time and space.

With enough hydrochloric acid, the planned glucose production of the pharmaceutical factory could also be put on the construction schedule. Shi Niaoren immediately contacted Wu Nanhai and asked him to quickly provide the starch raw materials. They would discuss it and immediately set up a glucose workshop.

As for Wu Nanhai, he was overjoyed to suddenly get the herbicide that he had never hoped for. He immediately requested that the entire relevant output be allocated to him. He also asked with concern when he could get ammonium sulfate so that he could set a super-high yield satellite with the hybrid rice.

Even people from the Ministry of Light Industry came to ask how much caustic soda and sulfuric acid quota they could get. With these two things, they could provide white paper. As for soap, it was even more out of the question. However, the chemical department and the light industry department had to cooperate in making soap, because the chemical department needed to obtain glycerin through the soap-making process.

It was like a snowball rolling. Once a technical bottleneck was broken, many production fields that were originally stuck suddenly started to move, and the number of products that could be produced increased by many kinds, and the production capacity also expanded.

The military department also reacted quickly. That day, Xi Yazhou called and asked the chemical department to seriously consider the military value and use of chlorine gas as a weapon.

Directly releasing chlorine gas was impossible. Xu Yingjie and a few people from the weapons research group studied it and developed a chlorine gas landmine: a can of hydrochloric acid with a pack of calcium hypochlorite powder—that is, bleaching powder—underneath, tied with a 30-gram guncotton charge. The explosion would atomize and mix these two substances. As for the effect, everyone agreed that it would be best to detonate multiple mines at the same time if it were to be used.

Some people also proposed that poison gas shells could be made. The principle was the same. The structure could be improved so that it could withstand the firing of a howitzer.

“Not recommended for use,” Xu Yingjie found it hard to imagine who could run around on the battlefield with many hydrochloric acid cans.

“In my opinion, if we’re going to rely on this kind of poison gas shell or poison gas landmine,” Lin Shenhe from the artillery research and development group made a concluding speech, “it would be better to make some glass bottles, fill them with hydrochloric acid, and throw them like grenades.”

The public response was very good, and the praise from various departments was like a tide. But as the person in charge of the chemical department, Ji Situi was not happy at all. Behind this dazzling product catalog and production figures, there was high energy consumption and extremely unstable production status.

A salt electrolysis workshop consumed 160 tons of salt, 60 tons of quicklime, 0.5 tons of hydrochloric acid, 35 tons of coal, and 140,000 kilowatt-hours of direct current electricity annually. This was a very objective consumption of materials and energy, especially electricity and industrial water. The installed capacity of the Bopu power station was originally only 213KW. A single electrolysis workshop would consume almost one-tenth of the power station’s annual power generation. The lack of electricity had actually become a major obstacle for the salt electrolysis workshop. The workshop, which was originally planned to start construction at the end of last year, had been pending. It was not until recently that the second phase of the expansion of the Bairen Beach hydropower station was successful, and a pot-bellied machine there was moved to the Bopu power station, that the installed capacity of Bopu was doubled and it officially started production.

Ji Situi planned to gradually replace the currently too simple equipment after the manufacturing capacity of the machinery department was upgraded to a higher level. Such high-energy-consumption and high-pollution production was really not the direction for the future.

Another drawback of the native method was that it “looked beautiful.” After it was actually put into operation, many problems that were not mentioned in the construction manual were exposed one after another.

The most typical one was the contact sulfuric acid workshop. Since the start of construction, there had been many major and minor problems. The most serious one was the low conversion rate, less than 70%, which resulted in the concentration of some sulfuric acid being too low, only 80%. It had to be re-blended to meet the factory standard. The blower outlet carried acid, which splashed everywhere, causing serious corrosion to the ground; the chimney outlet discharged a large amount of acid, which immediately turned into acid rain when it encountered humid air, corroding and destroying all the temporary workshops and sheds around the chimney. Several workers suffered minor acid burns and were sent to the hospital.

Ji Situi, Xu Yingjie, and the technical personnel from the machinery and construction departments made six modifications to the entire system. They even dismantled and refilled the absorption tower several times, added pebble dust collectors to the converter, added coke as an absorbent at the air outlet, and added acid-mist-removing tiles and coke to the top of the absorption tower… They held meetings, discussed, and flipped through books. Fortunately, the Grand Library was rich in information, and they found solutions to all the problems one by one. It took a whole month of hard work to stabilize the production.

Just as the sulfuric acid workshop was stabilized, the electrolysis workshop had several minor accidents. The most absurd one was that someone actually took a fancy to hydrogen gas and designed and built a balloon himself, saying that this was to prepare materials for the future balloon observation troops, and insisted on filling it with hydrogen in the workshop. But this person came up wearing synthetic fiber clothes and touched… he was sent to the hospital with second-degree burns covering 1% of his body. The entire electrolysis workshop was paralyzed for ten hours. Ji Situi was furious. He had to surround the workshop with a bamboo fence and hang a high skull and crossbones danger sign outside, prohibiting people from entering and leaving at will.

After visiting the Bopu chemical plant, Shi Niaoren also talked with the Planning Committee and the chemical department about the supply of several urgently needed materials for the pharmaceutical factory. Then he went to the dormitory area of Bairen City to collect a sample before returning to the general hospital.

“One touch, one touch…”

Shi Niaoren hummed “Eighteen Touches” as he walked into the Bairen General Hospital with a few bags of poop. Ye Yuming, who was passing by, muttered in surprise, “Is this guy crazy from looking at poop all day?”

The real reason was of course not so! Shi Niaoren sat in his “first medical testing center of this time and space,” confidently crossing his legs and smiling with satisfaction at a pile of poop sample jars. The successful commissioning of the chemical department had rekindled his gradually cooling enthusiasm for the pharmaceutical factory—it greatly boosted his morale, and he pondered what other drugs he could make. This was better than ten years of bitter internal cultivation. There were people in the transmigrator group!