Chapter 339 - Acids and Bases (II)

Raw lacquer harvested from lacquer trees was impervious to nearly any form of corrosion—water, strong acids, strong alkalis. Lingao itself didn't produce lacquer trees, but Guangdong had them in abundance. The Industrial and Energy Committee had imported a supply, and Xu Yingjie had mixed a large vat of lacquer to an ideal consistency, then soaked straw ropes in it as a substitute for asbestos rope and water glass.

He paid a price for his efforts. Despite wearing full-body protection, his hands succumbed to lacquer allergy. His fingers swelled painfully, and he was forced to rest for several days.

Ji Situi picked up one of the jars and tested the threaded lid. "These will do nicely. To sustain long-term production, we're going to need enormous quantities of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid..." He produced a sheet of paper. "Here's another list—chemical equipment. Please organize your people to start production as quickly as possible."

"More?" Xiao Bailang groaned. "I haven't slept properly in three or four days. The ceramic factory only has a dozen workers, laborers included. This is too much!" He scanned the list, which specified over thirty water vats of varying sizes, along with assorted other ceramic ware.

"This many vats! Are you making pickles?"

"It does involve salt, in a manner of speaking," Ji Situi said. "But they're for industrial processes. Please hurry."

"Then give us overtime pay. The potters here have been working day and night."

"Take that up with Wu De—where would I find circulation coupons?" Ji Situi had no interest in labor welfare discussions. "Didn't they work day and night firing kilns back in Fujian? Did their masters give them overtime pay?"

"You capitalist black-heart—"

Ji Situi cut him off. "This is urgent. Please hurry."

Once the jars were transported back, Ji Situi built a straw shelter beside the sulfuric acid plant and caught a few hours of sleep. That night, after twelve hours had passed, he directed his workers to rake out all the firewood with iron rods, then immediately loaded a layer of crushed stones—roughly ore-sized—into the furnace. Wood was loaded into the four hearths and lit.

When the fire was burning strongly, Ji Situi ordered the addition of top-grade Hong Gai anthracite. The flames intensified immediately; tongues of fire shot up across the entire installation.

"Good. Everyone except the furnace watch can rest. Report back the morning after tomorrow!"

Seeing there was nothing further requiring his immediate attention, Ji Situi hurried to the next construction site—the Caustic Soda Workshop.

The Synthetic Ammonia and Combined Alkali Plant could only produce soda ash. Caustic soda, which had far broader industrial applications, was comparatively easier to manufacture. The raw material was simple: electrolyzed salt. The process yielded not only caustic soda but also valuable byproducts, including another essential chemical: hydrochloric acid. Producing hydrochloric acid as a byproduct eliminated the need for a dedicated production line—one of the key advantages of integrated chemical manufacturing.

Even the Ministry of Light Industry had taken an interest in caustic soda production. Two of their flagship products—white paper and soap—depended on it. Ji Situi decided to address everything in one go.

Herding one sheep is herding; herding two is also herding. Let the capable do more. With this thought, Ji Situi set off for the caustic soda workshop. A train carrying building materials to the site happened to be passing; he jogged a few steps to catch up, climbed aboard, and settled himself on a pile of reed mats.

"Who's there? Do you have a death wish climbing onto the train?" someone on the traction tractor shouted.

"You call this a train?"

"What else would it be?" Before they could continue, the flatbed cars arrived at the caustic soda workshop construction site.

Ji Situi hopped off and saw the man in the safety helmet was Bing Feng—which confirmed that this workshop would feature a steel frame structure.

Indeed, the caustic soda workshop was crude, but at least it had a roof—unlike the sulfuric acid workshop, still exposed to open sky. Electrolysis involved electrical equipment that couldn't be left in wind and rain. The building was a frame structure of brick columns and wooden beams, mostly open-sided for ventilation, with walls only in critical areas. The precious, fragile transformer had its own separate room, fitted with glass windows for easy observation.

The workshop covered roughly five hundred square meters. The floor was brick-paved. Chang Kaishen and Ling Tian were leading several indigenous apprentices through a transformer installation: converting the alternating current supplied by Bopu Power Station into the direct current required for electrolysis.

Ten electrolytic cells had already been positioned. Ji Situi had originally considered purchasing ready-made units, but their weight made that impractical. In the end, only core components were purchased from the modern timeline; the tank bodies were manufactured locally. Each cell was a square tank—1.4 meters long, 0.8 meters wide, 0.4 meters high—formed by weaving steel bars and pouring cement and sand. The interior was lined with ceramic tiles to prevent corrosion. An iron wire mesh lay flat inside each tank, positioned ten centimeters from the bottom. Each cell was fitted with a wooden lid coated in wood tar pitch for corrosion protection.

The heavy reinforced concrete cells were supported by hardwood boards, suspended on two brick-built supports for insulation.

Ji Situi inspected each cell for leaks and loose tiles. He noticed that linoleum coated with wood tar pitch had also been laid between the supports as an additional insulation measure. When working with four-hundred-ampere currents, one could never be too careful.

"Is this safe?" Ji Situi studied the makeshift appearance with unease.

"Reasonably so—no absolute guarantees," Ling Tian admitted. "Working with electricity ultimately comes down to being careful. Safety gear and safety training are essential."

"A heavy burden." Ji Situi could already envision the chemical plant's troubled future. "Indigenous methods get people killed."

He made a circuit of the grounds. Outside the building, a chlorine absorption tower assembled from water vats stood ready. Chlorine gas produced during electrolysis would react with slaked lime in this tower to produce bleaching powder—a cheap, effective, widely useful disinfectant.

After returning from the caustic soda workshop for a brief rest, the furnace warming was finally complete. By then, everyone with any connection to chemical engineering had gathered.

"We're looking at two or three days without sleep," Ji Situi announced, gesturing for workers to drag out several boxes from the shelter. "Protective equipment—distribute it first. Don't lose any of it! Masks and goggles are irreplaceable right now."

Ji Situi had brought substantial quantities of chemical safety gear—enough consumables for nearly a decade. These items couldn't be replaced locally for the foreseeable future.

Everyone donned full protective suits, safety glasses, and chemical masks. Work commenced under Ji Situi's direction.

First, Ji Situi closed the chimney's blocking plate and opened the converter's drawing plate. He activated the blower and began measuring temperatures at various inlets. When the First Converter inlet reached 450°C, he ordered the top cover opened and catalyst loaded—quartz sand and iron catalyst. The lid was secured and sealed with acid-resistant mud. With soda ash production looming, water glass was no longer scarce, and porcelain powder was even more abundant. Ji Situi applied the sealant liberally, ensuring both lids were perfectly sealed.

Once sealing was complete, Xu Yingjie led teams to begin feeding crushed ore into the furnace—twenty kilograms per chamber. Furnace doors were secured. Simultaneously, 98% concentrated sulfuric acid from the Planning Committee warehouse was loaded into the absorption tower as a starter, beginning acid circulation.

Ji Situi tested sulfur dioxide concentration at the First Converter outlet. The reading was already approaching seventy percent—a confirmation that sulfuric acid production was essentially successful. After acid circulation commenced in the absorption tower, 1.5 liters of acid were showering every ten seconds. Tower temperature had risen to 60°C. Ji Situi ordered water cooling activated.

From there, the process became routine: ore was loaded into one furnace every hour. The four chambers rotated through feeding and slag removal cycles, and the indigenous sulfuric acid plant was running. As long as stable feeding and firing were maintained, a workshop of this scale could operate 345 days per year, producing 98% concentrated sulfuric acid.

Ji Situi and his team had no time to celebrate this milestone. They worked continually while explaining key production points to the indigenous workers—hands-on observation was far more effective than classroom instruction, especially given the workers' educational backgrounds.

Once running, the furnace would not be stopped except for maintenance or emergencies. Rewarming took too long and consumed too much fuel to be economical.

Nevertheless, Ji Situi had only twenty tons of pyrite in total. At full production, it would be consumed in under a month. When the next supply would arrive depended on shipbuilding progress—but by then, coal coking should be producing sulfuric acid in quantity. This facility's output would become less critical. Ji Situi was already considering alternative uses: if the coal chemical plant's sulfuric acid output proved sufficient, this equipment could be repurposed to produce ammonium sulfate fertilizer from pyrite.

The first batch of 98% concentrated sulfuric acid was carefully loaded into the custom-made jars and sealed. Plaster paste was applied over the lids, and earthenware caps were placed on top to protect against rain.

"Will this method hold up?" Xu Yingjie, accustomed to modern industrial packaging, found the sight of earthenware jars—identical to wine vessels—deeply incongruous. It seemed profoundly unreliable.

"Sulfuric acid has been produced for two hundred years. Trust me—it was all packaged this way in the past," Ji Situi assured him.

Labels were affixed to each jar: "98% Concentrated Sulfuric Acid," along with production date and location. The jars were carefully placed in wooden crates, one or two per crate, custom-made by the woodware factory. Straw rope was wound around each jar for shock absorption. Then the crates were loaded onto the train and transported to the chemical hazardous goods warehouse.

After this initial victory, Ji Situi led the indigenous workers through more than ten days of production-and-instruction, continuing until the workers had essentially mastered the technology and memorized all safety regulations.