Chapter 255: Grasping with both hands, success with both hands!
Gretel regretted it within half an hour.
Why did he buy so many?
How much water has gone into his brain to buy a whole cart of oranges?
Obviously buying ten or eight pounds is enough for him to make. If not, it’s not like he won’t be able to sell it on the market!
In addition to oranges, he also bought lemons, cabbage, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, peas, radishes...
"Aunt Susan! Aunt Susan!" Gretel had to go and apologize to the cook:
"Can you do me a favor? Peel these things when they need to be peeled, slice them when they need to be sliced, remove seeds when they need to be done, and get them to the way they look before you prepare to cook. No need to do more, just a few things.
Add it all up, and it’s enough to process one pound!”
"Okay, Master Gretel." The cook agreed without saying a word. Soon, the sound of the chopping board was heard in the kitchen, and the cook's aunt sighed:
"Young man..."
Grete shrugged. It must be admitted that the cook did these tasks much more efficiently than them. In the blink of an eye, a plate of fruit and vegetable slices was brought out. Grete smiled at the cook and shouted:
"Aurora! Come here and help me!"
Aurora rushed over. According to Gretel's request, he diligently threw ice spells on the lemons, cabbage, and cauliflower to quickly freeze them. Until all the fruits and vegetables were frozen hard, he then directed Aurora to freeze them.
The fruits and vegetables were put into a thick-walled iron bottle and the air was sucked out.
As the air pressure decreases, the water in the fruit and vegetable slices begins to sublimate rapidly. Those fruits and vegetables still retain their fresh and bright colors, but they have become dry and brittle, and they break when touched.
"Okay! Aurora, thank you! Give this to the cook and grind it into powder, mix it thoroughly, and put it in a bottle!"
Freeze-dried comprehensive fruit and vegetable slices!
Grind powder!
Seven or eight kinds of fruits and vegetables are thoroughly mixed!
Grete tried to throw an identification technique, but the information displayed was too confusing and there was no feedback. Aurora also threw one, but still could not get the result. Not bad, not bad, I will take it to the Tower of Babel tomorrow and find a master of identification through my connections.
Check it out...
Anti-scurvy potion, elementary version, completed! If the appraisal master can’t recognize it, and it’s really not possible at that time, just use it to submit the task!
With the guarantee in hand, Grete made up his mind and began to fight with vitamin tablets. There is no need to think about chemical synthesis. Extracting vitamins from natural products is still a path that can be taken...
"Dong, dong, dong——"
Bernard was like a big rabbit, holding a stone pestle that was half a man's height, and pounding it down with all his strength. The huge stone pestle was as light as nothing in his hand, and streams of juice shot out from under the stone pestle.
It spun around and sank to the bottom of the stone mortar. After a while, Bernard leaned the stone pestle on the edge, picked up the stone mortar, and tipped it out.
Amidst the sound of gurgling water, a pot full of freshly squeezed orange juice was filled.
Extract.
Use gauze to twist hard, filter, filter, and filter again. You will get a clear liquid - or at least, a liquid that looks clearer. The barbarian's mission is over. Next, is Gretel's own battle!
"Boss, okay! Is there anything else you can help with?"
The barbarian shook his two hands stained with orange juice and grinned. Gretel waved to him: "No more! Thank you for your hard work! By the way, eat less oranges these days, you see your hands are all yellow!"
"
Then, how to make solid vitamin C...
Gretel glanced at the manuscript paper beside him. Before starting the experiment, he wrote down several technical routes in advance: evaporation method, cooling method, vacuum cooling method, salting out method, and reaction crystallization method. Next, he will try each one one by one.
chant……
Take 100 ml, heat and evaporate the water.
Take the dried residue of orange juice, redissolve it, and use starch indicator and iodine solution - thanks to the bacterial stain he made before, he made iodine - to determine the content of vitamin C. Unfortunately, the residue after heating
, Vitamin C content...
It was too tragic to watch.
Grete scratched his head and suddenly remembered that things like vitamin C will oxidize quickly and lose their effectiveness when heated. Okay, let's eliminate it by evaporation.
Cooling method...
Obviously, the concentration of vitamin C in orange juice is insufficient, and it does not become solid until it is frozen into a popsicle.
Vacuum cooling method...
The results are the same as above.
Salting out method...
I added a bunch of sodium chloride and kept adding it until the liquid was saturated. What finally separated out was table salt...
fail.
Reaction crystallization method...
The fundamental of the reaction crystallization method is to add a reactant to the solution to produce a new substance. When the solubility of the new substance exceeds the saturated solubility, crystals will precipitate. So, what can vitamins react with to produce insoluble substances?
calcium?
Potassium?
sodium?
Grete jumped up suddenly. Yes, that's it, sodium ascorbate! It also has the effect of treating scurvy, but sodium ascorbate is a more stable compound than vitamin C!
It is also a common drug in clinical practice!
He should have remembered it long ago!
Grete held his breath, diluted one milliliter of sodium hydroxide solution, and added it drop by drop into the citrus juice. He kept stirring the glass rod in his left hand, adding one drop, stirring twice, and then using litmus paper to test the pH. Drop it again, and again.
stir……
When the pink color of the litmus paper was almost invisible, Grete finally stopped. He filtered, heated, evaporated and crystallized again. Then, he dissolved the crystals again and tested...
fail.
Not made.
Grete kept up his efforts. Anyway, the barbarian had squeezed enough orange juice, so he could slowly stir it up. If sodium hydroxide didn't work, he would use baking soda!
Baking soda doesn't work either, just replace it with sodium carbonate...
Time passes minute by minute. Weighing, dissolving, titrating, heating, crystallizing. Redissolving, reacting, measuring. Record the mass of reactants, record the reaction temperature, record the reaction time——
One failure, another failure, and another failure. From noon to evening, from night to late night. Page after page of the experiment notebook was turned over, and cup after cup of orange juice in the big pot was consumed. Aurora always
He stayed by his side, helping with weighing, heating, recording, and doing this and that. However, as Grete announced his failure, he gradually fell silent and no longer had the intention of joking.
Gretel's face remained calm.
What does this mean? What does this failure mean?
Basic research is always a lonely and difficult road. To prepare the same product, raw materials, concentration, temperature, reaction time, catalyst, endless ratios need to be tried.
There are tens of thousands of possibilities, and sometimes the difference is just 0.1 degrees Celsius, and it may not work out.
Even if he is just doing the simplest experiment, walking on a path that has been paved by his predecessors, without making a hundred and eighty mistakes, is that still called research?
This time, the crystallization solution fell drop by drop, and the blue solution produced by the reaction of iodine and starch faded visibly to the naked eye!
"yeah!!!"
Grete raised his hands and waved vigorously.
Success!
Sodium ascorbate - even sodium ascorbate with a lot of impurities, he made it!
*****
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