When a certain prince saw that the tea merchant's family members were being captured by the soldiers of the Yongwei Battalion, he no longer had the posture of being ready to go, so he no longer planned to continue to watch the scenery on the tower. Today, he had to devote himself to of input into chemical experiments.
If the delay continues, the soldiers who were seriously injured while participating in the counter-insurgency will really be tortured to death or die of infection. Such non-combat attrition is unbearable for Yaoji.
As long as you have money, you can of course recruit enough henchmen, but there are very few who are loyal. Those who are loyal and capable of fighting like the Yongweiying are even rarer, so rescuing each one is a matter of time. .
"Your Highness, all the utensils and materials are ready! These are Qian Bentong, the general manager of the Weaving and Dyeing Bureau, Yang Jiaxu, the general manager of the Wine and Vinegar Noodles Bureau, and Shi Wende, the general manager of the Silver Making Bureau!"
Chu Xianzhang, the eunuch in charge of the various supervisory bureaus, didn't know how the prince was going to do the work, so he had to follow the previous instructions as much as possible and gather all the personnel, equipment and experimental materials in the shortest possible time.
"Ah, very good!"
The departments they are responsible for all belong to the eight bureaus in the 24th Yamen. The Neiwei and Dyeing Bureau is responsible for printing and dyeing fabrics, the Wine and Vinegar Noodles Bureau, as the name suggests, and the Silver Making Bureau is for making silverware.
The things and personnel needed to manufacture sulfonamide this time were all transferred from these three bureaus. If a certain prince alone could work until sunset, he would not be able to complete the project.
"Now check the identities of the people present one by one, and wear protective equipment if they are correct!"
After the official start of construction, all personnel were prohibited from entering and exiting the experimental site at will, for fear that someone would steal the experimental results and sell them.
Since toxic substances such as strong acids and alkalis need to be produced, protective equipment must be sufficient in quantity and distributed in place.
Helmets, hats, glass glasses, gas masks with charcoal filters, white coats and thick cloth gloves are essential. In addition, everyone must also wear leather armor to protect the torso. In short, they cannot be injured by splashes or explosions. Causing unnecessary personnel losses.
Seeing such careful protective measures, which was almost like fighting, Chu Xianzhang felt his heart in his throat. What the prince made must be extremely dangerous. No matter what, the absolute safety of the prince must be guaranteed.
After the identity verification was completed and everyone lined up facing the prince, Yaoji took off his extremely simple gas mask and gave a final lecture: "First, this and similar experiments in the future are the top secrets of our Ming Dynasty. Regardless of official position, no one will be leaked." He will be punished as collaborating with the enemy and treason, and his family will be confiscated and his family will be exterminated. There will be no amnesty! Secondly, because we are producing highly toxic substances, during the experiment, no one is allowed to take off protective equipment without the permission of the superior, let alone use it. Experimental raw materials are not allowed to come into contact with the skin, and they are not allowed to taste. Anyone who violates the order will be responsible for the consequences. Third, the steps that have been marked by this palace must be strictly followed to complete the process. There must be no deviation in the required materials, and the manufacturing process must not be tampered with."
Since sulfonamide is prepared from four raw materials: acetanilide, chlorosulfonic acid, liquid ammonia, and liquid alkali, the yard in front of the East Palace was divided into four pieces.
Two-meter-high iron screens were set up between the experimental sites, and a large number of wooden barrels filled with sand were also placed to prevent explosions and fires in a single site from spreading to other places, and to minimize casualties.
In order to use raw materials accurately, the Ministry of Industry also specially manufactured a batch of experimental weights. The reason for the special production was to convert the weights and measures of the Ming Dynasty into the standards of later generations. Otherwise, no matter how beautiful the work is, it will only be the weight of the Ming Dynasty, and conversions will have to be made during the experiment. .
The Ministry of Industry is not sure why the prince is so stubborn and insists on making a batch of weights with such strange weights. The ones they have on hand are already very accurate and can be accurate to about half a cent.
Yao Ji naturally has his own logic. If this experiment was done according to the weights and measures system of the Great Dynasty, all the dosages would have to be converted again, and he would be exhausted and vomit blood.
Based on the current manufacturing standards, the error of a weight weighing 5 grams within the range of 0.1 grams is completely acceptable. If you are not satisfied with it, it will be too much.
Anyway, I didn't plan to start with a small dose. The minimum dosage of the raw materials involved in the experiment was 50 grams, that is, one or two, so that it would be easier to see the chemical reaction in the test tube.
Because the production process is not delicate, the test tubes are also very rough, and the size is equivalent to the later large test tubes. The thinnest ones are as thick as an adult's tiger's mouth. The same is true for catheters, because no matter how thin they are, they will be easily damaged.
All flasks are at least as big as a lead ball, and some are even as big as a volleyball. With experimental equipment like this, I feel sorry for them if I don't play simple and rough...
"I will first divide the labor. I am very familiar with making vinegar. You will be responsible for making acetic acid first!"
Acetanilide is easy to make. All you need to do is react aniline with glacial acetic acid. Glacial acetic acid is also easy to prepare. These masters who often make vinegar are very familiar with it. What is really difficult to make is aniline. It requires high temperature to prepare and it is difficult to control the heat. and temperature.
"The Bank is very familiar with smelting. Let's smelt the sulfur powder first. There are detailed instructions on how to do it!"
The raw materials for producing chlorosulfonic acid are sulfur trioxide and hydrogen chloride. Sulfur dioxide can be prepared by calcining sulfur, and then sulfur trioxide can be obtained by using platinum as a catalyst. With this, sulfuric acid is obtained.
Let sulfuric acid and sodium chloride react to produce hydrogen chloride, and the aqueous solution of the latter is hydrochloric acid. Of course, neither acid is pure, and under the current conditions, any chemical product produced is not pure.
That's why a certain prince ordered all personnel to be fully protected. As long as he was splashed with a drop, the unlucky guy would scream like a slaughtered pig. Yaoji didn't want to hear this kind of noise.
Before the experiment, Yaoji had to check the crucible. This was a top priority, because the crucible would react with the contents before preparing the required raw materials.
According to the request of a certain prince, the Silver Manufacturing Bureau specially prepared quartz crucibles, graphite crucibles, platinum crucibles, porcelain crucibles, silver crucibles, and nickel crucibles for different reactions.
Quartz crucibles are resistant to high temperatures and can be used for strong acid reactions. The disadvantage is that they cannot come into contact with alkaline substances, are fragile, and are much more expensive than porcelain crucibles.
In contrast, a certain prince preferred the acid-base-friendly graphite crucible, which not only had the advantages of quartz crucibles, but was also much lower cost. The arms factories under the Bureau of War mostly used graphite crucibles for high-temperature smelting.
"The inner weaving and dyeing bureau usually comes into contact with alkali a lot, so prepare to make liquid alkali immediately!"
Liquid caustic soda is liquid caustic soda. The original full name is pure liquid caustic soda. However, with such a copycat workshop, it seems very difficult to make something pure. Looking at the whole country, it seems that only a few shepherd dogs are pure...
The scientific name of caustic soda is sodium hydroxide. It can be prepared in the laboratory by reacting sodium bicarbonate with some calcium oxide.
In industry, the "causticization method" is used, that is, soda ash is made into soda ash solution, lime is made into lime milk, and the two are stewed at a temperature of 100 degrees.
Yaoji also asked the little eunuchs to make a bunch of metaphysical mercury thermometers, but even he didn't know whether these things were accurate. He tested them with boiling water and the values were okay. If it didn't work, he tried stewing two tea merchants first. Accuracy…
The process of making caustic soda is the simplest of the many raw materials used to produce sulfonamides. If you mess this up, I will put you all in the pot!
"As long as everyone strictly follows the instructions on the board, there will be no life-threatening danger!"
Yaoji didn't know if he was saying this as a reminder or a threat, but if someone took the initiative to die, no matter what he said, it would be in vain.
A large wooden board was placed in the venue of each experimental team, with the names and dosages of the required reaction substances written on it, as well as the order in which they should be put in and the operating temperature.
The upper part is a chemical equation, for the prince himself to read, and the lower part is the corresponding Chinese character names and numbers, for the illiterate metaphysicians to read.
Many people, including eunuchs, are actually literate, but their understanding of the internal reaction processes of matter is superficial and cannot reach the level of first-year junior high school students.
They all know that substance A and substance B will generate substance C after heating, but they have absolutely no idea why it is generated. This is also a bottleneck in the development of science, especially chemistry.
"Each team must report before the experiment. The experiment can only be carried out after approval. If any abnormality is found, call the team leader immediately. If there is a fire, it can be put out directly without reporting. Each team leader must be on site to supervise. Anyone who leaves his post without permission will be arrested and imprisoned immediately!"
He was surrounded by security personnel from the inner factory, all equipped with cold weapons. They were afraid that something might happen when they used muskets to shoot at lawless people.
Yao Ji believes that this is basically foolproof. Although making sulfa is very complicated and difficult to control the reactants and products, it still feels more reliable than making biochemical cantaloupe.
In terms of antibacterial properties, penicillin is of course much more powerful than sulfonamides, but it is also much more difficult to manufacture than sulfonamides. First of all, it is completely impossible to set up a sterile laboratory.
A certain prince asked Yang Jinchao to prepare a bunch of items such as old leather boots, cotton cakes and even hairy cantaloupe, and placed them in petri dishes in three rooms. They were supervised by dedicated personnel and inspected regularly.
However, Yaoji doesn’t have high expectations for them, because no matter how difficult the reaction process of sulfonamide is, it is still controllable. To make penicillin, it depends on the mood of the penicillin masters...
For the first few batches, or even the first dozen batches of "quasi-penicillin", Yaoji didn't know exactly what they were making, so he could only use small white rabbits to test it, hoping that it would have some efficacy.
There is no need to be so cautious when making sulfonamides. At least the experimenters do not need to shower and change clothes every day, and can continue to work even if there are fleas on their bodies.
In order to prevent the poisonous gas from threatening the nobles in the rear residence, Yaoji specially sent people to build two huge hand-cranked fans, which were placed in front of the East Palace Room with an elevation of 30 degrees, specifically to blow away the toxic gas.
Among these raw materials, the most difficult ones are aniline and nitric acid.
The upstream product of the former is benzene, which can be obtained through coal coking and coal tar distillation to obtain crude benzene. Although the output is relatively low, one ton of coal can only produce one kilogram of benzene, but the most important thing in the Ming Dynasty is coal, which is so abundant that it can be dug casually.
It is extremely laborious to create the latter. The laboratory method is to combine sodium nitrate with sulfuric acid to "pop" nitric acid. This was also used in industry. However, because this method contained a large amount of acid and was easy to corrode equipment, it was changed to the ammonia oxidation method.
A certain prince is now pursuing speed and output. As long as the method is convenient for production, no matter how high the cost, he will put it into practice. There is plenty of saltpeter, and when sulfuric acid is produced, he will start to produce nitric acid on a large scale.
Nitric acid reacts with benzene to produce nitrobenzene, which is then combined with hydrogen to produce aniline.
The key is that when benzene is nitrified, the temperature needs to be controlled between 70 and 80 degrees Celsius, and the heat control is very precise.
A certain prince believed that if he was lucky, there should be one qualified nitrobenzene finished product for every three experimental products.
Producing hydrogen is both difficult and easy. The difficult method is the water gas method, which uses coke as raw material to react with water vapor to obtain carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and then convert the carbon monoxide into very stable carbon dioxide.
In this way, you can get hydrogen with a hydrogen content of about 80%. If you want to get purer hydrogen, you have to use cuprous ammonia acetate. Without this, you can only use hydrogen with 80% purity.
If it is prepared by electrolyzing water, the resulting hydrogen will be very pure, and the purity can reach more than 99%. Yaoji plans to make a few hand-cranked generators. Anyway, there are not many other things around, but there are so many eunuchs!
"Aww~!"
When Yaoji was thinking about the remaining steps, suddenly there was a scream in the yard.
The first batch of sulfur powder smelted by the Bank of China has been squeezed dry. The master in charge of smelting is holding the crucible with iron tongs and is preparing to dump it. The guy in charge of using the iron pipe to hold the pot has no idea what kind of life he is thinking about at this moment. He is distracted. The iron bucket shifted by more than ten centimeters, causing the hot sulfur powder to pour directly onto the gloves, which made them scream.
Fortunately, there were gloves to block it, otherwise this idiot would have been directly upgraded to first-degree burns. Even if the arm was still able to move, the skin would have been burned beyond recognition, and it would be as chilling as if it had been gnawed by a dog.
The gloves are double-layered, with coarse cloth on the outside to insulate from heat and leather on the inside to prevent splashing. If the outside is made of leather, I'm afraid it won't be able to withstand long-term high-temperature fire, and it will deform and affect hand movements.
After Shi Wende, the general manager of the banking bureau, reported the whole story, Yaoji issued a corresponding warning: "If this person makes another mistake, he will be fired directly!"
A certain prince didn't know what else was more important and dangerous than what he was seeing. Especially if sulfuric acid was poured on your hands, it would be completely useless regardless of whether you wore gloves or not.
Working here is dangerous, but the pay is very good. They have three meals a day, double the salary, and bonuses. The food they eat is much better than before, including lunch and dinner. Meat.
Today's lunch is beef ramen, which can cultivate a large number of potential customers. After this batch of work is completed, these people who have eaten noodles will develop a habit. If a ramen restaurant opens in the inner city, they are guaranteed to go and support it.
With ramen as bait, I believe these idiots will be careful, because if your hands are broken, even if the ramen is free, you won’t be able to eat it!
