Chapter 247: Project 2300

Due to the extremely urgent demand for explosives from all sides, the explosives factory was put into trial production under the slogan of “production while construction is ongoing.”

Limited by the technical level and production capacity of the chemical industry itself, from the official production of the first batch of black powder in 1629 to the beginning of 1631, the Council of Elders had only added three types of explosives: brown powder, nitroglycerin, and mercury fulminate. Brown powder had only recently been put into production and was used as the propellant for the large-caliber cannons used by the increasing number of forts and the navy—brown powder burned slowly and was less likely to cause a breech explosion when used as a propellant for heavy artillery.

In general, the Council of Elders’ explosives industry had a complete range of products: gun and cannon propellants, detonators, and high explosives were all available. Although the technical level was not high, it could roughly meet the current demand.

The biggest problem was the large gap in the supply of high explosives, which were in great demand for both military and civilian use. At present, the only high explosive they could mass-produce was nitroglycerin adsorbed and desensitized with diatomaceous earth—dynamite.

Because nitroglycerin itself required a sufficiently large-scale glycerin industry, and the glycerin industry in turn required a sufficiently large-scale oil and fat industry as support, and the quality of the glycerin needed to be quite pure—the chemical industry of the Industrial and Energy Committee mainly used the saponification method to produce glycerin, which had more impurities, limiting the production capacity. Therefore, so far, dynamite has only been used in small quantities for civil engineering. In the military, black powder is still widely used to fill shells and grenades.

Although some people believed that it was also fine to fill grenades with dynamite—in the old world, it was common to use dynamite to fill landmines—the problem was that dynamite could not be used to fill artillery shells. The G-force during shell firing was as high as several thousand, and dynamite would inevitably cause a breech explosion.

Black powder had a low detonation velocity, a lot of residue, and was too sensitive. It was barely acceptable as a propellant for Minie rifles, but it was really difficult to use as a military explosive. The engineers of the Industrial and Energy Committee had been looking for a suitable substitute to replace the dominant position of black powder.

The requirements were that the manufacturing process should be as simple as possible, the raw material supply should be sufficient, the power should be sufficient, it should have a certain degree of safety, and it could be used to fill artillery shells.

In response to this requirement, the personnel of the chemical and military industrial departments proposed two plans: one was to use the by-product phenol from the coal coking complex to produce picric acid, and the other was a process to double the power of black powder.

The process for picric acid was relatively simple. In the history of the old world, it was synthesized in Britain in 1771. Phenol was sulfonated with concentrated sulfuric acid or sodium sulfite, and finally nitrated with concentrated nitric acid. The difficulty was the production of phenol. Without a coal coking industry, it would have to be produced by fat cracking or wood tar refining. They now had a ready-made coal tar industry, which could provide a fairly stable supply of phenol, so making picric acid was a relatively easy matter.

The code name for the picric acid production work was Project 0017—because the production process proposed by Xu Yingjie had a final yield of 17%.

The other project besides picric acid was the black powder power doubling plan, proposed by Lin Shenhe. Simply put, it was to improve the processing technology to double the power of black powder, so that it could temporarily replace some high explosives.

Now, Lin Shenhe’s workplace was in an earthen and stone enclosure in the explosives factory. The enclosure was only a little over a meter high, and a circle of willow fences was planted on top. Seven or eight labor reform prisoners were filling the middle with stones. The enclosure was surrounded by an artificial forest and a natural forest planted by the Forestry Department, making it extremely secret. From the outside, it was just a forest. An inconspicuous dirt road snaked towards the enclosure, with a ditch beside it. At the end of each bend was an earth mound to block fragments and shock waves in case of an evacuation. This path was only for people to walk on. A simple railway for transportation was under construction, and for the time being, only hand-cranked and ox-drawn rail cars could be used. The official name of this enclosure was the First Research Center of the Special Chemical Complex, and the project Lin Shenhe was in charge of was codenamed Project 2300.

He was currently wearing a dark cotton work uniform, nervously watching several workers unload an inconspicuous machine from a rail car.

The machine was not large and was simply wrapped in waterproof canvas. The workers carried it into the laboratory. Jiang Ye, who was in charge of installing and debugging the machinery, jumped off the car.

The two exchanged simple greetings and then entered the research center’s dedicated laboratory together.

The laboratory was surrounded by thick concrete walls, with sandbags both inside and outside. The ceiling was a light wooden structure, acting as a pressure relief panel. Outside the room were two deep explosion-proof trenches—if the people in the laboratory could escape in time, they could jump in for shelter.

The laboratory was empty, except for the concrete foundation for installing the machine and a few large and small vats. The lighting was natural light from the skylight on the roof. To reduce the temperature brought by the sunlight, a layer of black shade net was covered on the glass. Rows of copper “radiators” were installed on the walls and under the floor of the room, but the air was chillingly cold. A homemade alcohol thermometer showed that the temperature in the room was only 12°C. What flowed in the radiators was not steam but water cooled by an ice-salt mixture. Because open flames were strictly prohibited, their most proficient cooling equipment, the gas air conditioner, could not be used, and the cooling effect of the geothermal air conditioner might not be satisfactory. So, this forced cooling effect was adopted.

“It’s cold enough—” Jiang Ye was sweating profusely and wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. He shivered as soon as he walked in.

Lin Shenhe gave him a coat. “Put it on. It’s necessary to maintain a low temperature here for safe production.”

The canvas was untied, revealing a plain-looking machine. If someone had some knowledge of mechanical equipment, they would recognize it at a glance as a hydraulic screw press.

“It was made according to your requirements,” Jiang Ye said while directing the workers to install it. “It’s a hydraulic screw type, with a simple structure and stable stroke. It can be turned by hand to apply stable pressure, fully meeting the technical requirements you proposed. The molds, pressing heads, and other parts that might generate friction are made of brass to avoid sparks.”

Lin Shenhe walked around the machine a few times. “You have to guarantee that it fully meets the technical requirements, or I’ll be blown to smithereens when we start work tomorrow…”

Jiang Ye knew that working with explosives was a life-threatening job, and there was no exaggeration.

“Don’t worry, it was made completely according to the technical data you provided. The machine, from parts manufacturing to assembly, was all done by Elders. We didn’t dare to let the naturalized citizens do it.”

Lin Shenhe nodded. He was still a little worried. His process was not difficult, but it had high requirements for the surrounding environment: the ambient humidity could not be lower than 60%, and the temperature could not be higher than 20 degrees. Otherwise, it would cause an explosion. No matter how small the power of black powder was, it was no problem to kill and injure a large number of people in such a room.

He had roughly solved the temperature problem with a water air conditioner. As for the humidity, the humidity in Lin’gao in summer was already very high, sometimes reaching over 90%. Even so, he had still ordered an air humidifier from the machinery factory to be used for humidification when necessary. He had also specially prepared a naturalized citizen to monitor the thermometer and hygrometer.

Jiang Ye was a little curious. “You’re so mysterious. What kind of magic are you going to play? ‘Doubling the power of black powder,’ are you planning to mix in nitroglycerin?”

“Black powder mixed with nitroglycerin is for suicide,” Lin Shenhe said. “I’m going to use only black powder, with nothing else added.”

“Then what method are you using?” Jiang Ye’s curiosity grew even greater.

“You should know that the greater the density of an explosive in a space, the greater its power when it explodes,” Lin Shenhe said. “The power doubling of black powder is based on this principle—to increase the density of black powder as much as possible.”

The specific name of Project 2300 was High-Energy Black Powder Charge Technology. Lin Shenhe had kept this technology a secret before. He himself was not very confident about it. After D-Day, as the person in charge of the military industrial department, he had privately conducted several small-charge experiments using laboratory equipment and raw materials, and had also conducted actual combat tests during the public security war in Danzhou. He believed that there was no problem before he officially proposed this plan.

Simply put, the high-energy black powder charge technology was to press high-quality powdered black powder into black powder sticks using a low-temperature wet pressing process, creating high-density black powder sticks. Because of their extremely high density, these sticks could no longer be detonated by traditional ignition methods and required a special detonator, which greatly improved their safety.

In terms of power, using the low-temperature wet pressing method to press black powder sticks could increase the loading density to over 2.3 g/cm³. This high-density stick required a detonator to detonate, and the detonation velocity could reach over 2600 m/s. The loading density of black powder with the traditional filling method was not higher than 1.7 g/cm³, and the detonation velocity was not higher than 800 m/s—in fact, black powder deflagrates rather than detonates. In terms of power, it was not just a doubling. This stick pressing method could increase the explosive power of the same weight of black powder by more than 60%. In terms of detonation velocity, it was equivalent to 39% of the effectiveness of TNT and 36% of picric acid.

Lin Shenhe was very clear about what this effectiveness meant. It meant that instead of spending a lot of resources to light up new technology points on the technology tree, they could directly “upgrade” black powder to double its power. The economic efficiency was far superior to Project 0017. This was very attractive to the Planning Commission and the Executive Committee.

To make picric acid meant needing a large amount of phenol, building a brand-new production workshop, and needing extra sulfuric acid and nitric acid. But to double the power of black powder, they only needed to add a few simple machines, and the existing stock of black powder could exert greater power.