Ming Dynasty: Traveling through the harem, Zhu Yuanzhang was dumbfounded

Chapter 128: The Advent of Traditional Coke Making
Zhu Biao paced to the door of the room where Yang Chen usually discussed important matters with several elderly people.

Just as he was about to push the door and go in, he heard a loud discussion from inside.

"Friend Yang, is this secret recipe you mentioned really able to increase soil fertility?
Is there such a magical thing in the world?"

The person who spoke first was Tao Chengdao. Ever since he left the Ministry of Industry and entered the battlefield, Yang Chen began to impart his chemical knowledge to him intentionally or unintentionally.

However, Tao Chengdao was already very old, and his thinking was somewhat fixed. He could not remember the formulas for hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, etc. He could only remember these chemical names in the same way he remembered gunpowder.

For example, the role of sulfur is to increase the power of gunpowder, and gunpowder must be combined with oxygen to produce an explosion. The stronger the thrust, the higher it can fly and the farther the shell can be fired.

There was a huge square table covered with papers with inscriptions on it. Yang Chen picked up one at random, and the contents were layers of vats similar to those used to refine sulfuric acid.

"Increasing soil fertility does not conflict with making gunpowder. If you want to realize your dream, you must learn to benefit the people in the process.

If people live happily, there will naturally be people who will help you with what you want to do.

Increasing soil fertility is imperative. When the time comes, we will move the experimental site to Ningming County. If we don’t produce something, do you think the local people will allow us to take charge of all the fields?

I have sent people to inquire some time ago, and many regions want to implement the three policies announced by the prince.

The result was unprecedented opposition. I had expected this. If the pilot had not been successful, these things would never have been implemented smoothly.

The secret to increasing soil fertility is the reason why we are stationed there. If we want the horse to run faster, we must let it eat grass. Even children at the village gate know this. You old soldiers should know it, right? "

Zhu Biao was standing outside the door and was obviously stunned when he heard this. He didn't expect that Yang Chen already knew what happened outside without him telling the other party.

It seems that his three-phase policy has caused a lot of controversy and has become known to everyone.

"But even if there is a commotion, so what? Anyway, the incident has already happened. The next step is to wait for Brother Yang's pilot to succeed.

What is unexpected is that Brother Yang actually wants to develop fertilizers as a bargaining chip to go to Ningming County and buy the hearts and minds of the people. This psychological strategy is really a fatal blow.'

Tao Chengdao and others also knew that this was not their strong point, but as long as they could realize their dream of flying, it didn't matter what they did.

"Okay! Since Young Master Yang has said so, then we will naturally follow your arrangements.

But I wonder how much this fertilizer can increase the people's harvest if it is made?"

Since leaving the palace, Tao Chengdao followed Yang Chen for some time and found that the other party did have real skills. He made up his mind to learn how to fly into the sky from him in the future.

But I didn't expect that I could get exposed to other magical knowledge in the process.

Before he joined Zhu, he had worked as a farmer for a while, so he knew best how to win the hearts of the people.

Farmers make their living from the harvest from their fields.

If the harvest is good, you can have enough food and clothing throughout the year. If the harvest is bad, you can only do everything you can to save money and eat less to survive.

Yang Chen fiddled with the documents on the table and said without raising his head:
“According to my secret recipe, if it goes well and is produced on a large scale, it will not only be low-cost but also bring unexpected benefits.

Every acre of land is given fertilizers I made to increase soil fertility, and the normal yield of only a hundred kilograms of grain per acre can be increased to two hundred or even three hundred kilograms per acre. "

"Hiss! If that's the case, then this fertilizer can double or triple the people's grain harvest!"

"This is a yield of 200 or even 300 kilograms per mu!"

Everyone in the room wondered if they had heard it wrong. They had never heard of anyone's fields producing more than 200 kilograms of grain since they were young.

Even if it was the royal land, with the most experienced farmers and tenants taking care of it, only a very lucky few acres of land could produce close to 200 kilograms.

It is simply a pipe dream to achieve more than 200 kilograms per acre.

Zhu Biao stared into the house with wide eyes in disbelief, his face full of surprise.

He knew that fertilizers were very useful, but he didn't expect that even using them on ordinary rice could increase the yield so much.

One mu of land is two or three times the size of the entire Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Biao no longer dared to think about it. If the Ming Dynasty could fully use these fertilizers to increase soil fertility, the taxes collected by the Ming Dynasty in a year would be an astronomical figure.

Zhu Biao was well aware that food was the people's will.

As long as the people have a bite of food to eat, they will never have breakfast. As long as the soldiers have a bite of food to eat, they will go to the battlefield to kill the enemy.

"If the emperor knew this news, he would definitely say to produce more food, raise more soldiers, and fight whoever he wants!"

Zhu Biao muttered to himself.

"Great! With Lord Yang's secret recipe, all the people of the Ming Dynasty will be able to live a life of plenty! From now on, I don't think anyone will dare to say that there are fairy mountains outside the Ming Dynasty. I think all places in our Ming Dynasty are fairy mountains and fairy waters!"

I don't know who exclaimed and said this excitedly.

Before anyone could speak up, Yang Chen shook his head and said:
"Calm down first. I can research the method of making fertilizer, but large-scale production may still be a problem.

Now it’s just an idea. Whether it can be realized or not, it needs continuous improvement and operation.”

Yang Chen didn't mean to dampen everyone's enthusiasm, but this was indeed the fact.

He didn't have any external plug-ins, so it was impossible for him to just conjure up sacks of fertilizer out of thin air and give them to everyone to use.

All you can rely on is your deep memories after traveling through time.

This matter has been made very clear from the beginning to now.

The purpose is to produce fertilizer certificates for the people to see. Only by establishing a foothold in Ningming County can we do the next things easily.

Otherwise, how could he build a fertilizer factory with only the dozens of people in his mansion?
No more rifles? No more rockets? No more gliders that can fly? There are still various facilities waiting for Yang Chen to solve one by one.

Without enough manpower, he certainly wouldn't be able to completely perfect something under the current conditions.

Besides, it is absolutely impossible to allow the people to produce fertilizers on a large scale in Ming Dynasty.

China's synthetic ammonia technology accidentally broke through the bottleneck technology threshold when manufacturing nuclear submarines. Before he traveled through time, there were only five countries in modern times that had the civilian technology to mass-produce fertilizers.

To make high-quality nitrogen fertilizer, you need to obtain a nitrogen source, which is ammonia. Ammonia is everywhere, especially in the human body. As long as you drink more water, ammonia can be extracted from the urine.

It takes many processes to turn ammonia into a nitrogen source, and each process is beyond the reach of Ming Dynasty's current technology.

Everyone was chilled to the core by Yang Chen's words.

The high morale suddenly plummeted.

"Young friend Yang? Is there no solution at all?"

Tao Chengdao broke the silence and was the first to ask.

Before Yang Chen could answer, Zhu Biao pushed the door open and walked in.

"Brother Yang! This fertilizer can save the lives of millions of people in the Ming Dynasty. You must think of a way to save it!"

"Prince!"

"A Biao?"

Everyone looked up and saw Zhu Biao, who looked anxious, walking to the table.

"The common people have worked hard for many years just to have a bite of food. This fertilizer can increase the grain yield per mu by more than double. Even if it can only increase it by half, the number of people who die of starvation and cold every year due to lack of food can be reduced by millions!
Brother Yang, I beg you not to give up."

It was rare to see Zhu Biao lose his composure like this, so Yang Chen quickly raised his hand to signal him to calm down.

"Hey, A Biao, you were outside all the time just now? If you want to do something, I hope you can calm down. I'm not saying that I have no ideas at all. I'm just thinking about it." After hearing what Yang Chen said, Zhu Biao felt a little uncomfortable all over.

After calming down a bit, he explained his gaffe just now:
"Ahem, I just heard you and them discussing something heatedly when I got outside. I thought it would be extremely inappropriate for me to show up at this moment, so I decided to wait until you guys finished discussing it before showing up. But just now."

He ran out of words halfway through his speech, and everyone knew what he meant, so someone immediately tried to smooth things over:
"Since the Crown Prince has come here, Lord Yang will certainly express his welcome. Please take a seat, don't stand. Now that you are here, let's discuss this matter together."

"That's right, please take a seat, Your Highness."

Surrounded by several court officials, Zhu Biao sat down, his mind still on fertilizer.

Yang Chen was not distracted by Zhu Biao's arrival.

Instead, start thinking of a solution in your mind.

In the industrial age and before, there were only two ways to obtain nitrogen sources.

Lightning nitrogen fixation and biological nitrogen fixation.

The former requires the nitrogen and oxygen in the air to react under the action of lightning.

This produces nitrogen oxides (such as nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide), which then combine with rainwater.

Nitric acid or nitrates are formed, which are eventually absorbed by the soil and converted into a nitrogen source that can be used by plants.

Obviously this method is unrealistic. If he could make a generator now, he could have enabled the Ming Dynasty to leap over the steam age and enter the electrical age.

It took Faraday several decades to gradually create a generator with electromagnetic induction. Now, Yang Chen can hardly even get a U-shaped magnet, let alone electromagnetism.

As for biological nitrogen fixation.
Yang Chen would rather extract penicillin from moldy orange peels than try biological nitrogen fixation. Without modern sophisticated instruments, it would be impossible for him to obtain the biological nitrogen he wanted from many biological reactions.
If we want to produce ammonia sources on an industrial scale, there are two difficulties that must be overcome.

First of all, if the catalyst is not displayed, it would be tantamount to asking the ancients to master a centrifugal device with an extremely exaggerated rotation speed.

The second is that it requires high-temperature and high-pressure equipment, and these equipment need to be made of alloys of a certain hardness.

After all, the reaction furnace in the synthetic ammonia source process will be subjected to high pressure of more than ten megapascals at high temperatures.

It is roughly equivalent to bearing more than 100 kilograms of pressure per square centimeter, and no deformation visible to the naked eye can occur, otherwise there will be a loud bang! A violent explosion will occur.

In the Ming Dynasty, it was difficult to forge a modern threaded steel bar, let alone alloys.

It is no wonder that some people say that if threaded steel bars were to travel back to ancient times, they would be magical weapons that could kill gods and Buddhas.

Yang Chen explained the above results to everyone in a simple and understandable way.

The people who originally had a glimmer of hope now only felt despair. Some people even forgot to breathe and lost their composure repeatedly.

The only exception was Zhu Biao. He could tell from Yang Chen's expression that the other party was definitely hiding his abilities.

"Brother Yang, why don't you stop talking nonsense and just say something useful?"

"Abia, Abia, no wonder you can become the crown prince, you discovered all this.

Well, since it has come to this, I will just say it straight out. The above method doesn’t work, and we can only use traditional methods to make fertilizers.

Although we cannot obtain high-quality fertilizers, the fertilizers refined by traditional methods are sufficient for our use.”

Yang Chen touched his chin with his fingers and said with great confidence.

The group of people who had been in despair regained their confidence, and some even asked questions.

"Master Yang? May I ask what is the difference between this high-quality fertilizer and the traditional fertilizer?"

"Difference?" Yang Chen spread his hands and said, "The difference is that the fine fertilizer is equivalent to the food that the prince usually asks the imperial chef to make, and the traditional fertilizer is the food that Ah Fu makes. They can both be eaten, but the taste is very different."

"Who is Ah Fu?" Zhu Biao asked with a frown.

Yang Chen rolled his eyes and responded:
"Ah Fu is the cook I fired before. His cooking is not to my taste. It tastes terrible."

Everyone: "."

"Okay, okay, let's get down to business. The traditional way to make fertilizer is coking."

"Coking?"

"The full name is traditional coking."

This technology... to be more precise, there is no technology at all.

Just find a flat ground to pile up the coke, then cover it with soil to make a furnace that looks like a grave, light a fire and start making coke.

But this is the most primitive method, and Yang Chen would definitely not do this.

With current technology, traditional coking can be carried out using special coking ovens.

Both safe and convenient.

A coke oven is very similar to a kiln, and their functions are almost the same.

"Brother Yang? What's the principle behind this? Can coking coal be used to make the fertilizer you mentioned?"

“Of course, coking coal contains a lot of nitrogen, but there are more impurities.

During the reaction process in the coking oven, the ammonia will float out in the form of gas. We only need to collect the ammonia vapor, solidify the liquid, dry it in the sun, and then screen it. In this way, we can obtain the most direct solid ammonia nitrogen fertilizer."

"So simple?"

"It's that simple!"

Yang Chen snapped his fingers, and everyone was suddenly enlightened.

Start a discussion about the paper on your desk.

In fact, Yang Chen had his own selfish motive when he proposed making fertilizer.

He saw the curiosity of Tao Chengdao and others in exploring science, so he wanted to use this to guide them and let him and his disciples know.

By mastering this knowledge, one can not only make powerful explosives for killing people, but also make various items for the benefit of the people.

The conversion rate of traditional coking is definitely not as good as that of industrial fertilizer production.

However, as long as this method can be developed and promoted throughout the Ming Dynasty and made known to people, it will surely arouse scientific awareness in many people's hearts.

In the process of human development, science has always been driven by curiosity. As long as someone has the idea, someone will be able to find the reason.

The only thing that worries Yang Chen is that once these fertilizers appear, new problems will arise.

Fertilizer is not like urine. You can't just sprinkle it out and then forget about anything. Applying fertilizer requires skills.

Otherwise, if too much is added, the seedlings will not be able to bear the fertilizer and the roots and rhizomes will be burned, resulting not only in no harvest but also no harvest for the whole year.

Moreover, the soil that has never been fertilized will also be compacted, pests will breed, and so on due to this sudden appearance of things.

Yang Chen must make all preparations before spreading these fertilizers. If that doesn't work, he will train fixed personnel to apply them. Ordinary people cannot abuse fertilizers.

(End of this chapter)