I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 173 Punishment
The specific steps are to add a small amount of fresh water to the crude salt to make it saturated brine, precipitate and filter it, then add excess slaked lime solution and soda ash solution, and then purify it through precipitation, filtration and crystallization, so that refined salt can be obtained.

This process is more difficult to make soda ash solution, but it can also be produced through the wood ash alkali method. Usually, plants contain a certain amount of potassium carbonate and soda ash. After the plants are burned into ashes to form wood ash, the wood ash is put into a cloth bag and then rinsed with water to get alkali solution.

In addition, with the current technical conditions of the Ming Dynasty, there are simpler and more brutal methods.

Just use clean water to wash the coarse salt. Because the solubility of salt in water is relatively low, so after stirring with clean water, the impurities with relatively high solubility will be dissolved into the water. At this time, just pour out the water.

As for impurities with lower solubility than salt, the operation is reversed.

Wash the salt directly with clean water, stirring it to leave the brine and remove the remaining crystalline solids.

Because the salt has dissolved into the water, what remains are impurity solids with small dissolved amounts.

In short, just wash it repeatedly with clean water, wash it forward 3 times and backwash it 3 times.

10 parts of coarse salt, at the cost of losing 1 part of coarse salt, takes away 2 parts of impurities. So after washing several times, you can use 10 parts of coarse salt to get about 6 parts of refined salt.

Zhu Houxun, who had mastered the method of refining sea salt, naturally would not save a little money by using coarse salt.

It is very important to replenish salt and electrolytes in time when working in the summer. Fortunately, although the weather is hot, the construction site is right by the sea. The cool sea breeze takes away a lot of heat from the workers' bodies, making them feel less hot, so no worker has suffered from heatstroke so far.

"Is the treatment for working for the royal family so good?" someone asked the question that was on everyone's mind.

Everyone looked at each other, and finally cast their eyes on a white-haired old man in the team. Everyone called him Fourth Uncle. He was the oldest person in the Zhoujia Village team. He was only in his early fifties this year, and he had been conscripted for labor service many times.

"It's not easy to work in the royal family! You have all experienced the imperial manors and stores in the past few years." The fourth uncle sighed and said.

Everyone nodded silently. Who in the vicinity of the capital didn't know about the arrogance of the imperial farms and shops? Although Leting County was far away from the capital, there was also an imperial farm in the county. The farmers in the imperial farm had no personal freedom and the annual rent was very heavy. They could not save any money after working hard for a year. To put it bluntly, they were serfs.

The people in Zhoujiazhuang had all seen the miserable plight of the serfs in the imperial farms, but they didn't know what happened later. All the imperial farms and shops in their county were removed, and the land of the removed imperial farms somehow became the land of a few wealthy households in the county.

"I've never encountered such hard labor in my life. The supervisors are all friendly young men, and they also help us work together." The fourth uncle stroked his sparse beard and said, "No matter what, we have to work hard! People are so kind to us, isn't it just because we can work hard and do a good job?"

Everyone agreed with this and after drinking water, they all went back to work.

Zhou Abao looked at the red-bottomed black dragon flags flying on the surrounding earthen embankments. He had seen the blue dragon pattern on the flags frequently in various places in the past few days, and it left a deep impression on him. He always felt that this might be the answer to the question.
Such treatment boosted the morale of all the workers, who worked very hard. Ten sacks of sand were quickly filled, sealed with steel needles, and then neatly stacked on the beach as required, forming a low wall. Many people finished their work early and took the initiative to compact the stacked sacks.

Just then, someone came to warn that the tide was rising, and Zhou Erwa organized everyone to retreat quickly. Everyone then took their tools and retreated to the shore.

After making sure that everyone in his team had retreated, Zhou Erwa followed everyone's pace and retreated.

When the workers returned to the shore, they looked at the low wall they had built and watched it being submerged by the rising tide. They rested on the shore for a few hours, and when the tide receded, they saw that the low wall was still standing in the same place, not at all dissolved. Everyone cheered for this.
Because the time of high and low tide varies slightly every day, their working hours are constantly adjusted. Sometimes they work at night. At that time, oil lamps will be hung on the entire embankment to illuminate the embankment. They work under such circumstances.

However, after working twice at night, the engineering command no longer organized work at night, because the people in the command found that there were a large number of night blindness among the workers. They could not see anything at night. They had a genuine fear of the darkness. Even if there were a large number of kerosene lamps, there would always be blind spots. For the sake of the workers' personal safety, the command tried to arrange working hours during the day as much as possible.

The workers are very satisfied with this working schedule, which means they spend half of their day resting on shore. This working rhythm makes everyone comfortable.

In this way, as the tide receded, people came in, and as the tide came in, people receded, and in just a few days the base of the levee took shape.

Of course, these days have not been peaceful. With more than 100,000 people gathered together, friction is inevitable, and there are bound to be bad apples.

Various violations of the rules kept happening. Some people fought over trivial matters, and some even started gambling privately. Because everyone lived in huts, theft was not uncommon.

The engineering command center responded extremely quickly and cracked down on various illegal activities.

Minor problems like not queuing or not using the toilet at designated locations will result in wages being deducted as punishment.

If fighting does not cause serious consequences, wages will be deducted and whipping will be imposed depending on the cause. If the consequences are serious, the offender will be expelled directly.

As for gambling and theft, the perpetrators were directly expelled and their personal property was confiscated. Those who committed the most serious thefts were handed over to the government.

There are always people who think that the people in the project command are easy to bully because they are friendly. The team that organized the gambling even brought their fellow villagers to confront the people in the project command and put forward conditions in order to reduce the punishment. As a result, that team and their fellow villagers were all expelled and their personal property was confiscated.

The engineering command was very strong and overbearing in this incident, showing no mercy at all, making those who disrupted the construction order feel the taste of the iron fist.

This swift and powerful crackdown also cleared up the atmosphere on the construction site. Everyone understood that the people in the project command center were very friendly and reasonable, but once their bottom line was touched, they would strike with thunder and no mercy.

(End of this chapter)