While Li Di was tinkering with his collodion, the chemical engineering team designed and built a large courtyard on the bank of Wenlanhe, far away from the buildings and residential areas.
The open space within a diameter of 200 meters with the courtyard as the center has been cleared without any growth. The ground is made of loess plus lime. The fine sand has been repeatedly crushed. Even the stones have been picked out. The road is paved with bricks. Two roads have been erected around it.
The barbed wire fence has pieces of wood painted with ferocious black skulls and large fire signs hanging on it.
This is the gunpowder factory of the chemical industry group. The construction team has gone to great lengths to implement fire prevention and collision prevention, using cement and brick structures. The roof does not use wooden beams and columns, but brick arch structures. The entire house does not use iron, wood, or even stone.
No, to prevent any sparks and burning.
According to the suggestions of several gunpowder enthusiasts, the floor of the production workshop was not paved with bricks, but with a layer of river sand to absorb any acids, alkalis and chemicals that might fall.
The structure of the house is also very special. The production workshop in the middle not only has windows on the north and south sides to facilitate ventilation, but also has east-west doors. Next to the door is a trench deep for one person, paved with fine sand. This thing is an escape ditch, in case something happens.
You can use this to escape when there is an uncontrollable chemical reaction - the premise is that everyone reacts quickly enough and the legs and feet are flexible enough.
These two escape ditches brought a solemn atmosphere to the chemical team. Just as many people in the mechanical team dreamed of making guns, there were few chemists who did not yearn for gunpowder. Many people secretly dreamed of gunpowder in the laboratory.
I have made all kinds of gunpowder, but in this simple environment, how confident I can be, the passionate gunpowder maniacs in the chemistry team are dumbfounded.
A group of people sat in the middle of the barbed wire fence with skulls hanging on them, discussing the direction of the gunpowder.
"Do you know what we are going to do?" Ji Sixui looked at the group of people in front of him.
"Making gunpowder, we have been waiting for this day for several months."
"Everyone must be mentally prepared to die and be maimed!" Ji Situi said fiercely, "Now is no longer a trick of using black powder and adding some batter."
"You crow's mouth!" Ji Sidui was hit with a pile of mud clods and slid aside in despair.
In addition to the people from the chemical engineering team, the mechanical team, and Li Di, who suffered a tragic failure with nitrocellulose, also attended the gunpowder meeting - he was unwilling to accept the failure of his nitrocellulose.
"I just don't understand why nitrocellulose just can't be done!" He was extremely annoyed, thinking that this was something that could be easily solved.
"Chemistry is a very delicate activity, it can't be that simple." Ji Situi said, "There is something wrong with your process, and you still lack some of the most basic equipment."
"If we get the equipment together, nitrocellulose is trivial." Ye Yuming said. He is a small civil servant, but he studied chemistry and has extensive research on mining and blasting.
"Well, if we can build a larger centrifuge." Ji Sidui thought that everyone knew about this. The problem is where can this thing be found except for a small centrifuge in the laboratory.
Without a centrifuge, it is difficult for nitrocellulose to completely remove the free acid in cotton fibers. In actual use, nitrocellulose will become extremely unstable. The Austrian army suffered from this in the 19th century.
"We need help from the industrial department." Xu Yingjie said that he is very obsessed with chemical products. He especially likes to prepare various chemical agents and is the kind of experimental maniac who loves hands-on work.
"It's difficult," Wang Luobin shook his head, "Our prime mover is not good enough."
"How about it?" Li Yunxing suggested. He had also recently transferred from the military group to the artillery group.
With nitric acid on hand, it is not difficult to prepare glycerin, and there is a constant supply of ice cubes in the Fengchenglun cold storage for cooling, so it should be relatively reliable to make it.
"I have a recipe." Ye Yuming said with great interest, "I made it myself in the laboratory -"
Everyone took a breath, there are really daring people in this world. Although it is famous for its simplicity of manufacture, it was often manufactured and used by various terrorists and revolutionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but he died in the manufacturing process. There were more martyrs killed than the police.
If sodium carbonate is available, sodium carbonate can also be added to enhance stability.
"I'm willing to give it a try," Ye Yuming said confidently, "I've done it once or twice, so I'm relatively experienced. These things are not hard to come by, and the equipment is available. If possible, we can manufacture them on a large scale."
"This method will blow you to the sky." Xu Yingjie shook his head repeatedly, "The glycerin used in the laboratory is analytically pure. The only glycerol we can make now is the saponification method, which contains saturated fatty acid salts. It will first react with the mixed acid to release heat, and even if you use the ice-salt mixture, you may not be able to stop it in time. In the end, it will be - boom!"
"Oh, I didn't expect this question."
Xu Yingjie said: "I think the development directions of chemical industry from high to low are: 1. Nitrocellulose, gun power multiplier, which other gunpowder cannot do. 2. Synthetic ammonia, this can be done as long as our synthetic ammonia factory is completed. 3. Picric acid is an impact-resistant, powerful gunpowder that can be fired with nitrocellulose. It is useless and can only be loaded with gunpowder bags, grenades and the like. Its power is not significantly better than picric acid, and its stability is too poor."
"There is no problem in synthesizing ammonia. It can be done as soon as the factory is built. Picric acid is too difficult." Ji Situi flatly denied, "The process of making phenol may be possible in 10 years. It will be useless just under the conditions of 13 atmospheric pressure."
"Phenol can be extracted from coal tar, but benzene is not necessarily used. Phenol is originally a product of coal coking."
"The efficiency of this process is not very good. If we must make picric acid, our coal coke chemical plant will be able to produce phenol as soon as it is put into operation. If the output is not too low, then it will be fine. The problem is that the military team can't wait now." Ji Sidui had no choice but to say Spread your hands.
"Then there is only black powder." Xu Yingjie said, "If someone is not afraid of death, you can give it a try."
In the end, it seems that both picric acid and picric acid have to wait until the chemical plant is put into production. What is certain and certain to be produced at the moment is black gunpowder. They are confident enough to create fine-grained black powder with a quality far exceeding that of this era, including launchers. powder and explosive powder. Even the supply of saltpeter is not too difficult. Even if the supply of saltpeter is not available from Guangzhou, a certain amount of saltpeter can be obtained by using the saltpeter pile method. According to the information found, in 1959, a county in order to quarry , built a black powder manufacturing plant by itself, without relying on imported saltpeter, relying only on the county's soil saltpeter collection and saltpeter stacking methods, it can reach an annual output of 50 tons of black powder. If Lingao County Government is controlled , it is still possible to produce 20 to 30 tons of black powder a year.
Lin Shenhe said: "The most important thing is safety and stability. It doesn't matter if black powder can replace the problem, but we still lack flash caps. Without flash caps, the industrial sector will have to make muskets."
To make a flash cap, you need to have mercury fulminate. Mercury is the detonating powder. Black powder shells and grenades are fine, but the traveler’s mini rifle must have a flash cap.
The process of mercury fulminate is not complicated: simply put, the mercury is dissolved in nitric acid, mixed with alcohol, and finally the product is reacted.
Mercury is not something that is easy to obtain. The Guangzhou advance station even bought mercury and cinnabar, but only got back about ten kilograms of mercury. This has already sold out all the drug stores in Guangzhou. The chemical industry team also once I have considered using fulminant. At least there is much more silver than mercury, and silver is non-toxic. However, fulminant is more sensitive than mercury fulminate. Mercury fulminant is safer.
Making mercury fulminate requires high-purity alcohol. There is no technical difficulty in making alcohol. However, the potato crops have not yet grown, so it is a waste to use rice to make alcohol. The commerce and trade department purchased a batch of the strongest soju from Qiongshan County through purchaser Lin Quan'an. Back, the chemical engineering team designed and manufactured a still with a wooden and tin structure, which was used for secondary distillation. The liquor was first distilled into crude alcohol, and then distilled again, thus obtaining alcohol with a concentration of 96%. , the remaining about 3% of the residual liquid is fusel oil, which can be used as a raw material for penicillin. Of course, it is too early to talk about penicillin now.
Xu Yingjie was in charge of the trial production work. This person who liked to play with all kinds of disgusting chemicals read his chemical engineering manual countless times, and read the process flow copied from the database over and over again until he completely Remember the entire process.
The manufacturing of pyrotechnic products is the most dangerous part of the entire military chemical industry system. Even in a modern factory environment, danger always accompanies the producers, let alone those who prepare to use crude equipment and indigenous methods to manufacture.
Although mercury fulminate itself is sensitive and very dangerous, it reacts in a humid environment and is relatively safe. However, for the first time traveler to play with pyrotechnics, not being afraid is just bragging. For safety reasons, everyone quit He was the only one left in the reaction laboratory. The military team originally wanted to donate a set of explosion-proof suits, but it was difficult to work with those things on, so they had to give up.
Xu Yingjie first put *percent of pure mercury into a ceramic jar, then added *kg of nitric acid, and then heated it to *~*c using a hot water bath. During the heating process, it was necessary to oscillate from time to time to slowly dissolve the mercury. , after about 40 minutes, Xu Yingjie got a jar of green mercury nitrate solution.
After the mercury nitrate is made, preheat *% purity alcohol *kg to *~*c. At this time, add mercury nitrate to the alcohol. Controlling the temperature here is very important. Xu Yingjie always pays attention to the thermometer display.
The reaction started as soon as the alcohol was poured in, and the mercury nitrate solution began to boil. After all the alcohol was poured in, it shook a little. At this time, he saw that the temperature of the thermometer had risen to *c. This indicated that the reaction was successful. The temperature was slow After reaching *c, the reaction tank was filled with thick white smoke. Xu Yingjie knew that the preparation was basically successful. If there was no red smoke, he could just exit and rest and wait for the reaction to be completed. He looked at his watch , the time when the reaction started was recorded.
He checked the glass condenser above the tank and confirmed that it was working normally. This thing is used to collect smoke during the reaction. The thick smoke generated during the reaction is not only toxic and flammable, but once condensed in the reactor, it will affect the reactor.
Mercury yield and quality.
The people in the chemical engineering team all stared at the courtyard door from a distance. When they saw him coming out, everyone applauded. Xu Yingjie posed a few poses very cooperatively.
When they walked in again an hour and a half later, the reaction had completely stopped, and there was a layer of gray granular material condensed at the bottom of the reactor, a bit like gray sand.
Xu Yingjie carefully collected the wet mercury fulminate, wrapped it in cotton cloth, and then used a manual compressor to squeeze out the water so that the moisture content was less than 5%. Under normal circumstances, the mercury fulminate should be heated in a special drying room.
It takes 10 to 15 hours for air drying to be completed. Now that we don’t have this condition, we can only dry it naturally.