Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1570 The Spring of Science ([-])

On January 1670, 1, in Xingguo County, Baoding Prefecture - under the jurisdiction of Xingguo Town, Chongxian Township, Xing'an Township, Shaxi Township, Gaogang Township, and Xingjiang Township, with a population of more than 25, it is the 2nd in the country. A county-level administrative unit—on the construction site of the Northern Railway, a group of construction workers from the First Bureau of Communications and Construction were placing explosives—no way, the railway was repaired here, and encountered a section of small rocks that could not be bypassed no matter what Poe, at this time, we must find a way to dig it out.

In fact, in the 17th century and before, it was really unlucky to encounter stones when building roads and digging ditches, and it often caused the construction party to pay more extra expenses, and sometimes even directly because of too much cost. give up.Not to mention, when the Ming Dynasty proposed to excavate the Jiaolai Canal, when digging from the south, it encountered a large section of rocks, and it was impossible to go around. In the end, it had to give up completely and never mention it again. The Guochaotang disagreed on the excavation of the Jiaolai Canal, but this also shows the impact of the stone layer on the construction.

Things that the Ming country can’t do, after arriving on the east bank—well, I admit that it’s not much better. The people on the east bank also forgive if they can.For example, when building the Caijiazhai-Shangcheng section of the branch line of the Southwest Railway, the Third Bureau of the Ministry of Construction of the Ministry of Construction tried their best to overcome these obstacles when they encountered stone layers. At that time, they used fire to crack and break the stones. , and then use the steam pickaxes used in coal mines for secondary crushing, which is extremely difficult and costly.

In fact, this is not bad. The possibility of encountering these natural obstacles is very small when building a railway on the prairie on the east coast. Gein's local area is mostly endless grassland, and there are some low, undulating hills occasionally. Construction does not create too many obstacles.But when you go to hilly areas with more undulating slopes—such as the Baoding area at the southern tip of the Brazilian plateau—you have more trouble than in the flatter south.

On this point, engineers from China Railway Corporation, the four major construction bureaus of the Ministry of Communications, Goshkin Construction Company, Batino Construction Company and other companies who have participated in the construction of this railway have long been taught.Baoding District Commissioner and Baode County Magistrate Shao Yaoguang, who was inspecting the construction site in Xingguo County at this time, clearly remembered that the Russian laborers of the Goshkin Construction Company were working in the gaps in the obstacles under the guidance of engineers and technicians on the east bank. Embedding explosives inside and eating away those obstacles bit by bit would really kill me.

The reason why it was so difficult at that time was probably related to the fact that the people on the east coast used black powder.However, on the east bank where there are grinders to grind ingredients, wheel mills to mix ingredients, and stable power (steam power) to suppress gunpowder, there are regulations on various work processes on the east bank, and on the east bank where management is relatively strict, The production efficiency of gunpowder is already higher than that of the old continent, and so is the quality.Therefore, the people from the east coast have actually done everything they can, and gunpowder is the best. Stack manpower.

Because of this, considering the needs of the civilian and military industries, the Executive Committee began many years ago to instruct people from the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences to study "more advanced gunpowder and even explosives."After the people from the Academy of Natural Sciences took the lead, they began to invest funds—the initial investment was average, because this was not an urgent project, and there were too many priorities ahead of it—with the North Chemical Plant, Some technicians from the Northern Armory formed a joint research and development team and began to study the "more advanced explosives" that the higher-ups wanted.

The direction of their initial efforts was nitrocellulose. This was the order of Wu Jun, the project team leader at the time (this gentleman has now been transferred to the commissioner of Hue District), and also received the support of Song Qiang, the director of the Northern Chemical Plant and the veteran of the chemical industry.However, for some people in the chemical port on the east coast with half a bottle of water dangling, the manufacture of nitrocellulose was a tragedy from the very beginning. There was a long pause.

In the era of rapid development of the country, all walks of life put forward a certain demand for high-quality gunpowder and even explosives. At the beginning, Wu Jun, the traveler who presided over the research and development team, only vaguely knew the name of nitrocellulose, so he asked people to use nitric acid ( Laboratory preparation, so far the output of the east bank is not large because the demand is small) to process the cotton, then take it out, wash it with water, neutralize the acidity with diluted lye, and dry it after repeated repetitions. This is his idea.

It's a pity that this idea is too rough, and there are almost no details, so the tragedy happened during this groping process.Wu Jun knows the power of nitrocellulose, so from the beginning to the end, he only asked the high school students of the Academy of Natural Sciences to lead a group of apprentices who had signed a non-disclosure agreement (generally junior high school graduates were also required, and they had to pass political censorship). He worked hard, but he never participated in the front line, so he avoided several serious accidents.

There are many and complicated reasons for the accident, but they are mainly related to lack of experience and ignorance of technical details and can only be groped by yourself.For example, the students did not know how to completely neutralize the acidity at the beginning (even with lye to neutralize this step, there are many skills and attention points, but Wu Jun, who has a high vision and a low hand, did not know at all); They don't know that it is necessary to strictly remove the foreign matter in the nitrocellulose; for example, they don't know that the cotton needs to be combed to remove the oil and fat in the cotton.In short, they don't know too many similar details. It is extremely irresponsible to start developing nitrocellulose based on the vague concept of "treating cotton with nitric acid", and it can even be said to be driving people to death. , No wonder there were so many accidents and so many people were killed and injured, so that the higher-ups were afraid, and asked them to stop first, and then proceed after the conclusion was clear.

Later, Wu Jun and others had no choice but to break down the whole process one by one, and the experiments had to be carried out after confirming the safety.Although this has greatly delayed the progress of research and development, the frequency of accidents has been reduced a lot, and it is still a good deal in general.Now, through a lot of research and experiments, they already know how to deal with the cotton, that is, to select the returned cotton first, remove some unqualified lint, and pick out the foreign matter in it to ensure the purity of the raw materials; When this was done, they combed the cotton, treated it with a solution of sodium hydroxide to remove the grease from the cotton, and washed it repeatedly with water to remove the caustic soda; The cotton is dried, and after drying, it is put into some special large glass containers for airtight storage-in order to prevent moisture, some water-absorbing chemicals are also placed at the bottom of the above-mentioned glass containers as desiccant.

From the above, it can be seen that there are so many talks about the cotton processing link at the beginning. If there is a problem in each link, it will lead to a series of changes in the following. If it is heavy, it may cause some accidents, which will lead to a certain degree of personal and property losses.Therefore, scientific research is really a very serious matter. Wu Jun, this fellow, was eloquent in talking to people on forums before he traveled, but once he officially started the work, he made frequent mistakes, so that he was afraid and did not dare to rush to the first place. Wire.

After finishing the treatment of cotton, the East Coast people now have a considerable understanding of the next step of the nitrification process after years of painstaking research.First of all, they know that cotton needs to be treated with a mixed acid, not just a nitric acid-in fact, because of the way of thinking, people on the east coast have delayed too much time on this, who let the name of nitrocellulose hurt? As for people, no one would have thought that sulfuric acid is also needed for production; secondly, they know that the ratio of mixed acid to cotton must be at least 30:1, which is also the best ratio obtained by spending a lot of time and material resources; finally , there is another extremely important step, that is how to remove the mixed acid soaked in the nitrated gunwool. At present, the people on the east coast are stuck at this step, that is, although they can produce it manually in a laboratory environment There is a very small amount of gun cotton, but once it rises to large-scale production, various problems will appear.

Just like the last step of removing the acid from the collodion, there are many ways to do it in the laboratory environment, but in the ease of industrial mass production, it is blind, because it needs to redesign a production line and develop some urgently needed Machines (such as centrifuges, beaters, fine washing machines, mixers, etc.), and run-in production, so that success is possible.Moreover, in the process of running-in and trial production, it is hard to say how many more accidents will happen and how many more people will die.After all, if this thing is not dangerous and the production process is not troublesome, later generations of Europeans would not have given up the production of nitrocellulose in the middle of the 19th century. It is too dangerous, and there are landmines everywhere. Be careful and you will be tricked.

According to the news Shao Yaoguang heard last month, at present, the Northern Armory has reached a preliminary consensus on the third step of the nitration process of nitrocellulose with the people from the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences. If there is no accident, this preliminary process is still There are many problems that everyone does not know, and still need to be improved slowly in the trial production - and start to develop and design some equipment and large parts needed for the production line, that is, it is time to find someone to order the water tank, the casting The casting dipping pot (generally lead pot) of the dipping pot and the design machine of the design machine, strive to build this production line as soon as possible, and then carry out large-scale production verification. It is expected that this process will still take It took a long time before it was possible to produce some nitrocellulose with not very stable quality (only passable) on a small scale, and it was difficult enough. At the same time, the degree of pain of industrialization can be seen from this.

Before nitrocellulose quilts were officially mass-produced, people on the east coast used black gunpowder, which has remained unchanged for thousands of years, to open roads and build bridges, and only some chlorate explosives could be used for "playing".However, considering that this kind of explosive (in fact, in the process of gunpowder production, potassium chlorate is used instead of potassium nitrate), although it can produce an explosion stronger than black powder, it is too sensitive to friction and vibration. The process is very dangerous, so it is actually relatively rare in actual use, and many people think that it is impossible to commercialize it on a large scale, except that it may be needed for the production of matches.

This meeting is being used on the railway construction site. It is precisely a batch of chlorate explosives. Anyway, it is idle in the warehouse, so it was carefully transported from Pingan County, and then used in Kaishan. .Shao Yaoguang has seen that kind of explosion before, and it is indeed more powerful than black powder. When it explodes, it produces purple light and white smoke, and there will be some smell of rotten eggs. The technician told Shao Yaoguang that it is the sulfur explosion in chlorate explosives. Hydrogen sulfide gas is produced later.

But in all fairness, the power of this chlorate explosive should still be insufficient—especially when compared with nitrocellulose—it is at best stronger than black powder, but it is not as stable as black powder.Therefore, although Shao Yaoguang is not a professional, but through some superficial knowledge, he can roughly judge that chlorate as an explosive basically has no future, and no one will seriously invest in it, because it is too It is unstable, too dangerous, and raw materials are difficult to find, and the cost is too high, so it will only be ruthlessly eliminated by the market in the first place.

"Now we on the east coast really need a powerful explosive that can be mass-produced. Mining, road construction, and trench digging, who doesn't need this kind of thing. It's a pity that nitrocellulose is too dangerous. It's so dangerous. For many years, intermittently, it has never been able to be industrialized into large-scale production." Shao Yaoguang looked at the non-national laborers who were struggling to break the big rocks at the explosion site in front of him, and said with emotion: "But fortunately, we have seen such a glimmer of hope now. As long as The Chemical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences has sincerely cooperated with people from Northern Chemical Industry and Northern Ordnance Industry, and with the assistance of Yizhong, Tieling Special Steel, Western Forging and other factories, it should not be too difficult to initially build the production line. And a production line can be done. Now, then there will be a long period of debugging and production. At that time, everyone will be one step closer to success. I believe many people have been tired of using the black powder of this **** day, although there is no lack of research. , room for improvement, but after all, it is a relatively old and backward thing, there is no doubt about it... "

(End of this chapter)