Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 346: Large Chemical Industry System

On New Year's Day, January 1880, 1, people across South America decorated the streets with lanterns and colored brocade to celebrate the arrival of the Gregorian New Year.

At the Susong Textile Factory in Chang'an City (Cordoba City), ordinary workers in the factory went home on holiday and celebrated New Year's Day. Inside the factory, sixty or seventy key employees, more than one hundred researchers from the Royal Academy of Sciences, and technical bureaucrats stayed in the stuffy workshop, patiently waiting for the final results of the experiment.

"Mr. Lin, how confident are you that you can succeed?"

The director of Susong Textile Factory asked in a low voice.

"The newly discovered dye easily turns blue when it encounters acidic substances, and if there is a slight error in the processing method, it is difficult to improve the wet fastness to the required level.
Therefore, workshops that use new dyes to dye cloth must strictly follow the prescribed ratio to add strong acid reagents such as sulfuric acid. "

A young Chinese youth watched the technicians operating the machines beside the dyeing pool and said seriously, "Although the use of the new dye is subject to certain restrictions, considering the dyeing technology level of the textile industry in Western powers such as England, France, and the United States, the new dye has better dyeing performance than the indigo dye invented by Bayer of Germany two years ago.

And after hundreds of laboratory tests, I can tell you with certainty that the industrial application of the new dye is at least 90% certain to be successful.”

"With your words, I feel relieved."

The director of Susong Textile Factory looked much more relaxed. He sighed, "Only seven or eight years have passed, but the development of the textile industry is completely different from before. A few years ago, it was still done by hand in workshops such as vat dyeing, urn dyeing, and sulfuric acid. Now, it is all done by machines such as textile machines, dyeing machines, and cloth drawing machines. It really changes every year."

"Your Majesty often said earlier that technology is developing rapidly today. If you lag behind other countries even a little bit, it will be very difficult to catch up."

A young man affiliated with the Royal Academy echoed, "Take the development of dye industry in Western countries in recent years. In 1873, French chemists Crucion and Bretonnier obtained brown sulfur dye in the experiment of roasting lignite, steel dust, paper, leather, etc. with sodium sulfide and sulfur.

Not long ago, British researchers Thomas and R. Holliday soaked cotton cloth with a sodium salt solution of ethyl naphthol in a low-temperature environment, and then used ethyl naphthylamine diazonium salt to develop the color, successfully turning the cotton fiber red, thus obtaining an ice dye. …………

Western countries did not start much earlier than us in the field of chemical textile dyes, but seeing the rapid development of science and technology in Germany, England, the United States and other countries, we cannot just imitate and import, the right way is to independently develop new technologies. "

"In the past few years, the local educated population was small, the country lacked applied and research talents, and it was an objective fact that science and technology lagged behind the West as a whole. However, after ten years of large-scale financial subsidies and investment, the number of overseas students exceeded 3,000. The first six batches of students who returned after completing their studies were able to engage in basic technology research, and emerging industrial categories such as chemical and electrical industries would not be without people."…………

While several young chemical researchers were talking, textile workers carefully took out the dyed cloth and dried it in a medium to high temperature environment.

Two hours later, the first dyed grey cloth was dried and the workers took out a piece of bright red cloth more than ten meters long and spread it on the table. Everyone gathered together and discussed loudly.

"Director Wang, how is the quality of the cloth?"

"Very good, very good. The color is bright. The cloth does not fade or wrinkle after being soaked in water and rubbed. It is a top-quality dye."

The director of Susong Textile Factory touched the bleached and dyed cloth and exclaimed in admiration.

"It is naturally a good dye. Using this dye to dye grey cloth not only has a good dyeing effect and does not fade, but the dye cost is about 20% lower than the mainstream dyes in the West. If combined with the latest printing and dyeing machines, the dye cost can be further reduced."

"Now the price of a piece of finished cloth is two Han yuan. If the cost of dyes consumed by each piece of finished cloth is reduced by 20%, a lot of money can be saved in a year."

The factory manager said with a happy look on his face, "The cost is low and the color of the cloth is good. After using the new dye, our finished cloth export advantage will be even higher.

Mr. Lin, this is a great thing. You should let His Majesty know as soon as possible on this festive day." "Don't worry about it. Director Wang may not know that the research and development of the new dye was carried out under the leadership of His Majesty. The research and development principles and various ingredients of the new dye were all proposed by His Majesty. We are just conducting detailed experiments based on His Majesty's suggestions."

The researcher who successfully completed the development of the new dye, a man named Lin Shenhe, explained.

"But since the trial production of the new dye was successful, we should at least give it a name, right?"

"When the verification experiment was completed the day before yesterday, His Majesty personally chose the name, Congo Red Dye, to commemorate the country's first large overseas colony."...

Being used as a dye in the textile industry is just one of Congo red's many uses. It can also be used as an acid-base indicator, a biological analysis reagent, an adsorption indicator, for the determination of halides, thiocyanate and zinc, and is used in large quantities in paper production.

In 1869, at the same time when Mendeleev compiled the periodic table, China's chemical industry also began to take off. The rubber industry was the first branch of the chemical industry to be put into practical application. Since then, Li Mingyuan recalled the applied chemistry professional knowledge he learned in college, selected some knowledge points, and simply compiled four basic subjects: "Basics of Organic Chemistry", "Basics of Inorganic Chemistry", "Basics of Analytical Chemistry", and "Introduction to Physical Chemistry", which are specifically for chemical engineering students who have returned from studying abroad to study and conduct research experiments.

Chemical industry in the second half of the 19th century had not yet become an independent industrial category. As a graduate of applied chemical engineering in his previous life, Li Mingyuan only learned broad and basic chemical engineering knowledge. However, most of the knowledge systems based on the summary of the wisdom of predecessors over the past centuries had not yet been proposed in the 1870s and 1880s.

A set of chemical reaction equations behind a common chemical process in later generations, or a simple principle of a chemical phenomenon, could be a major chemical discovery if taken alone. However, due to the limitations of the current overall scientific and technological level, Li Mingyuan could only write down some of the knowledge he could remember and give it to local students who had returned from studying abroad. He then paid attention to keeping it confidential and strictly limited the dissemination of this knowledge among a small number of researchers in the chemical industry of the Royal Academy.

The discovery of Congo red reagent is a small progress in dye chemical industry. In the planning of Han country's large chemical industry system, the chemical branches currently under development include dyes, rubber, explosives, soda ash, pharmaceutical chemicals, coal chemicals, plastics, catalyst chemicals, photosensitive materials, coatings industry, artificial fibers, petrochemicals, and fertilizer industries, a total of thirteen directions.

In the chemical dye industry, work is still in progress on using aminoanthraquinone as the main raw material for alkali melting to obtain vat blue RSN material, separating and obtaining stronger 2-naphthol-3-formyl aromatic amine, and improving the phenol AS color system. The current research direction is mainly focused on inorganic dyes, and the development of organic dyes has to wait until after the twentieth century.

In the rubber industry, the pneumatic bicycle tire technology mastered locally has attracted the attention of scientific circles in Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries. Western countries are also stepping up scientific research work to develop a variety of practical products using natural rubber as raw material. At the same time, relying on the technological advantages accumulated in the early days, some local researchers in the Academy of Sciences began to follow the technical plan written by Li Mingyuan, trying to use aniline as a vulcanizing agent and carbon black as a reinforcing agent, and continued to conduct relevant experiments to improve the plasticity of rubber.

Soda ash can be used in glass manufacturing, food processing industry, MSG production and other industries.

In 1861, E. Solvay was working on the concentration of dilute ammonia water in a gas plant. He used salt water to absorb ammonia and dioxygen.

In the same year, he obtained a method for producing sodium carbonate from salt, ammonia and carbon dioxide.
Patents for industrial production methods.

This production method is called the Solvay process, also known as the ammonia-soda process. In 1863, E. Solvay and his brother A. Solvay raised funds to form Solvay Corporation and built a soda ash plant in Cuye, Belgium. It was put into production in January 1865 and the output reached 1 tons per day in 1872.

In 1873, the soda ash produced by Solvay won the Royal Prize for Quality Purity at the Vienna International Exposition. From then until the s, the Solvay process was the mainstream method for making soda ash. The later Hou process and the German Zahn process were improvements and perfections based on the Solvay process.

It is relatively difficult to improve the Sovell process. The local research direction in this regard is to try to restore the main process flow of the Hou alkali process based on the fragmented technical points provided by Li Mingyuan.

The Han Dynasty started out as a military power, and the explosives and pyrotechnics directly related to the army's weapons and equipment were also the focus of the large-scale chemical development plan. There are two main methods for making smokeless gunpowder picric acid, namely the sulfonation of phenol and the nitration of dinitrophenol, the latter of which is prepared by the hydrolysis of chlorodinitrobenzene. The first method involves a two-step process, which includes a sulfonation step of phenol and then a step of nitrating the resulting sulfonated phenol. However, such a process has many disadvantages. The sulfonation operation takes a long time and inevitably leads to a low level of productivity. The nitration operation must then be carried out in a diluted medium, which in turn leads to a reduction in productivity. Another method for preparing picric acid also includes many steps: nitration of chlorobenzene to obtain chlorodinitrobenzene, followed by hydrolysis of the resulting product, and then nitration of dinitrophenol by a mixture of nitric acid and fuming sulfuric acid. This method is unsatisfactory due to its long time, complexity and serious pollution.

Li Mingyuan knew both general methods of making picric acid. However, because it was a confidential matter, the people who were engaged in the research on the method of making picric acid were all locally trained Chinese students. They encountered many setbacks during the experiment. It was not until the day before New Year's Day in 1880 that they completed the experimental preparation technology route. As for mastering the technical process and carrying out large-scale production, it would take about half a year to a year.

Rubber chemicals, dye chemicals, soda ash chemicals, and explosives chemicals are the top priorities in the large chemical system. More than 70% of the local chemical talents trained in the past ten years and the chemical talents who studied abroad are concentrated in the above four major chemical branches.

Artificial fibers used as textile raw materials, plastic chemicals in the polymer processing stage, photosensitive materials currently mainly used to produce camera films, and other chemical branches such as coal chemical industry and petrochemical industry whose technical conditions are not yet mature. Although some products have export advantages, considering the high difficulty of subsequent technological development, they are only in the technology reserve stage and are not the key development direction for the next ten years.

(End of this chapter)