Besides, now that there are electric lights in the workshop, working at night is almost the same as during the day?
When Li Zexuan heard this, he staggered and almost fell to the ground. He thought to himself: I invented the electric light just to let you stay up late to work, right? When you say that, I look a bit like that kind of black-hearted capitalist~!
"Mr. Wang, you always listen to my advice. Staying up late will hurt your body. Don't stay up late again! Whether it is the refining of vanadium ore or the production of sulfuric acid, there is no rush. You don't need to work so hard. If you hurt your body , is the biggest loss to the academy~!"
Li Zexuan looked at Wang Ji and persuaded him earnestly.
Wang Ji looked confused: "Chief, it's not that I like to stay up late, but when I see those good materials, I feel a little itchy and unbearable. If I can't refine these good materials into the desired items, I will feel uncomfortable all over. ! This is an old problem that can’t be changed! But don’t worry, I’m definitely fine with my health, I know it~!”
Li Zexuan was speechless for a moment, thinking of his previous evaluation of Wang Ji - a possessed alchemist. This evaluation was very appropriate. This old man used to love alchemy and did some things that others thought were vain. Now that he has entered the Chemistry Department of the Academy, he has completely found the "organization", because the method of material transformation in "Chemistry" itself is similar to alchemy. It is not difficult to understand that Wang Ji is in it and is crazy. !
For this kind of "madman", Li Zexuan knew that no matter how much he tried to persuade him, he could not persuade him. He sighed and stopped trying to persuade him. He walked to the carriage and Han Yuxi on the other side said: "Madam, the workshop There are some things over there, so I won’t go back to the county today, so I’ll ask Liu Feng and the others to escort you back~!”
Han Yuxi opened the car curtain, came out, and said softly: "Since my husband has something to do, go and get busy! I will stay in Yunshan Villa for the past two days to take care of my husband's food and daily life~!"
Li Zexuan thought for a while, nodded and said: "That's fine! I'll send someone back to the county to tell my parents, madam, please go back to the other courtyard~!"
"Hmm~!"
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Liu Feng was asked to take Han Yuxi back to Yunshan Courtyard with his guards, and Li Zexuan followed Wang Ji to the steelmaking plant of the workshop.
"Look, Chief Mountain, this is the refined vanadium!"
In the steelmaking plant, Wang Ji pointed to a sack and said to Li Zexuan.
Li Zexuan walked over and took a look, and saw small pieces of light gray stones lying quietly inside. Compared with the newly mined vanadium ore, the color of these refined vanadium blocks is undoubtedly more delicate!
"This is the only vanadium metal in the whole world! This thing has great uses, not just for making sulfuric acid. Mr. Wang, you have to take good care of it!"
Li Zexuan picked up two pieces of vanadium, weighed them in his hands, and said to Wang Ji.
"Don't worry, Chief Shan. Even if you don't tell me, I will take good care of it~"
Wang Ji nodded in agreement, and then said: "Shan Chief, the sulfuric acid is stored in steel tanks in the warehouse, but for the convenience of use, I put some in a glass bottle. Chief, come and see if the purity is enough?"
"Hmm~!"
Li Zexuan nodded and followed Wang Ji to a small laboratory nearby. Wang Ji put on thick rubber gloves, took a bottle of transparent liquid from the shelf, and handed it to Li Zexuan.
Li Zexuan took it and shook it slightly. He saw that the liquid inside was not as flexible as water, but rather viscous. He nodded secretly, because high-concentration sulfuric acid is indeed a viscous liquid.
"Have you ever roughly estimated the concentration of this sulfuric acid?"
Li Zexuan turned to look at Wang Ji and asked.
Wang Ji nodded and said: "Based on the input and output ratio of each raw material, as well as the total amount of water added, if the leakage loss of sulfur dioxide during the production process is ignored, the concentration of sulfuric acid is about 97%. However, considering Various errors will occur in actual production, and the concentration of sulfuric acid should be around 90%~!"
"Ninety percent? That's almost enough for our workshop in the future!"
Li Zexuan smiled happily and said.
Then he opened the bottle cap, dipped a glass rod into a few drops of concentrated sulfuric acid, and dropped it on a piece of rice paper on the table. Where the sulfuric acid fell, the paper quickly turned black, and there was a smell of burning paper in the air. This is the strong dehydrating property of concentrated sulfuric acid that causes paper to char! Seeing this, Li Zexuan couldn't help but sigh:
"Very good! Now our workshop can finally produce sulfuric acid in batches! This is the cornerstone of the development of Datang's chemical industry~!"
Industrial three acids - nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid. At present, workshops can produce sulfuric acid on a large scale, and they can also produce hydrochloric acid (electrolysis of salt water produces sodium hydroxide, hydrogen, and chlorine. Hydrogen is burned in chlorine to produce hydrochloric acid. ), the only thing left is nitric acid!
The production of nitric acid is relatively complicated. The nitric acid industry is closely related to the synthetic ammonia industry. The catalysts used in it are not currently available in workshops, so this can only be left to the future!
"Mr. Wang, I will take away some sulfuric acid later to make a battery, a battery that lasts longer than the previous voltaic battery! At the steelmaking plant, I hope Mr. Wang can use the refined vanadium to make Make vanadium steel!”
After a moment of pause, Li Zexuan ordered.
"Vanadium steel? Could it be that Chief Shan wants to add vanadium and carbon to the molten iron to refine a new type of steel?"
Wang Ji's eyes lit up. This was the first time today that he heard Li Zexuan talk about using vanadium to make steel.
Li Zexuan nodded and said: "Yes, that's roughly what it means! As for the specific proportion of each raw material, I will give you a few references later! The addition of vanadium to the steel is like adding wings to a tiger. Vanadium is in the steel. Its function is to enhance the hardenability and carbide, and can withstand high temperatures. It has a strong secondary hardening effect and has a significant effect on increasing the hardness, which can be increased by more than three times. Moreover, vanadium can refine the steel grains and stabilize the structure, which is more suitable When it comes to forging and polishing, it’s a god-given material for making weapons and armor!”
"More than three times the hardness?"
Wang Ji's eyes widened in surprise when he heard what Li Zexuan said. However, he soon realized something was wrong and quickly swallowed his saliva and said: "Gudong...what? Chief, you want to use vanadium steel to make weapons and armors." ? This... This is absolutely impossible! If someone discovers it, His Majesty will not tolerate you!"
This old guy thought that Li Zexuan was inflated and wanted to build weapons and armor and gather troops to rebel, and he almost lost his mind with fear!
However, his first reaction was to persuade Li Zexuan to "put down the butcher's knife" instead of clamoring to report him, which shows that he really cares about Li Zexuan!
Li Zexuan knew that Wang Ji had misunderstood, and he quickly said: "What are you talking about, Mr. Wang? I do intend to make weapons and armor, but this is all given to me by His Majesty's instructions. As for His Majesty's plan to use this batch of vanadium steel to make I can’t tell you the details of what you do with your weapons and armor! Haha! Don’t worry, I, the Xiaoyao Marquis and Xiaoyao Mountain Chief, haven’t done enough? Why can’t I think of rebelling! I’m very satisfied with my current life!”
When Wang Ji heard this, he couldn't help but breathed a sigh of relief. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, "That's good! That's good! I was really shocked just now! Since it was ordered by the Holy One, I naturally have no objections. After you gave me the proportion formula, Chief Shan, I went to trial-produce vanadium steel~!"
"Okay~! Then Mr. Lao Wang is here!"
After Li Zexuan explained to Wang Ji the optional proportions of vanadium, carbon, and iron in vanadium steel, he moved a can of concentrated sulfuric acid and left the steelmaking plant!
After coming out of the steelmaking plant, we came to the office building in the front yard of the workshop. There was a laboratory dedicated to Li Zexuan.
After stumbling all the way and rejecting the kindness of several boys who wanted to help carry the steel cans, Li Zexuan came to his laboratory.
Placing the steel tank containing sulfuric acid in the corner, Li Zexuan leaned in front of the case and began to draw drawings.
What he drew was the shell structure of a lead-acid battery!
The negative plate, positive plate and electrolyte are the main components of the battery flow reaction. The anode plate is lead dioxide and the cathode plate is lead. When the battery is discharged, the negative plate reacts with the electrolyte to turn into lead sulfate and water, releasing electrical energy; when the battery is charged, under the action of external electric energy, the lead sulfate reacts with the acid in the water to generate fluffy lead and sulfuric acid, which converts the electrical energy into Store it.
In this way, a complete charge and discharge cycle can be formed!
Compared with lithium batteries commonly used in modern times, although lead-acid batteries have smaller specific energy (that is, they store less electrical energy per unit weight, mainly because the volume and weight of lead-acid batteries are generally larger), the electromotive force of lead-acid batteries is relatively stable when discharged, and the working voltage It is stable, has a wide range of operating temperature and operating current, can charge and discharge hundreds of cycles, has good storage performance (especially suitable for dry charge storage), and has low cost, so it is widely used in the electric vehicle industry.
Of course, the most important thing is that with the current conditions of Qiquge Workshop, it is not easy to produce lead-acid batteries. As for higher-grade lithium batteries, let’s wait a little longer~!
As for the battery electrode materials lead and lead dioxide, these two things already exist in this era!
Lead is one of the earliest metals used by humans. In 3000 BC, humans were able to smelt lead from ore. The content of lead in the earth's crust is 0.0016%, and the main ore is galena.
Moreover, the history of using lead in ancient China is also quite long!
The "hu powder" used by ancient women to whiten their skin was an oxide of lead, such as the bronze mirrors used daily. Lead was one of the three main ingredients in ancient bronzes. Copper coins contained a lot of lead. In terms of dosage, the more depreciated the currency, the more lead it contains; for ancient alchemists, lead also had another use, and that was to make elixirs. Lead and mercury are important components of elixirs. Of course, both of them are toxic. Yes, so since ancient times, none of the emperors who favored alchemists and took "elixirs" lived long!
With lead, sulfuric acid, and a well-designed shell structure, you can basically make a lead-acid battery!
In his previous life, Li Zexuan had dismantled used lead-acid batteries and was quite busy understanding their internal structures!
About a quarter of an hour later, Li Zexuan finished drawing and walked out of the laboratory.
"Uncle Fu, let someone make a shell like this out of hard rubber according to this drawing! I'm in urgent need~!"
Arriving at Uncle Fu's "office", Li Zexuan handed the drawing to Uncle Fu and said.
The so-called hard rubber is rubber with a relatively high sulfur content.
At temperatures that are not too low, the sulfur bonds increase the free range of movement between the chains, so the rubber does not harden. But if more sulfur is added, such as 25%-50% based on the weight of the rubber, the bonds between the chains will be very tight, causing the rubber to become hard. Such rubber is called hard rubber.
In the modern 21st century, the casing of batteries is mainly made of ABS high-strength and high-density plastic. However, when batteries first emerged, there was no such plastic, and hard rubber was used at that time!
Today's Datang obviously does not have the conditions to produce ABS plastic, so Li Zexuan had no choice but to use hard rubber! For current workshops, it is not difficult to make a battery casing out of hard rubber!
This is all thanks to the fact that he sent people to Southeast Asia to look for rubber, otherwise many things would not be possible now!
"...Okay! I will arrange for someone to do it now! The structure of this shell is not complicated. It can be completed in more than an hour!"
Fu Bo took the drawings, glanced at them briefly, and then confirmed.
All kinds of machines in the workshop are ready-made, and he is still confident that he can make the shell within an hour.
He didn't ask Li Zexuan about the purpose of making this shell, because he knew that Li Zexuan was going to work on something new. As for what the new thing was, he would naturally know it when it was made!
This is the tacit understanding he has cultivated by following Li Zexuan for so long!
"Okay~! Then there's Uncle Lao Fu~!"
Li Zexuan smiled.
Fu Bo smiled and then took the drawings to the rubber production compound!
Li Zexuan went to the courtyard where colored glaze is fired, because the partitions in the modest battery are made of glass!
About two hours later, after the battery casing, cathode plate and anode plate materials, and the separators in the electrolyte were all ready, Li Zexuan began to prepare the electrolyte used in the battery!
This is very particular!
Generally speaking, lead-acid batteries require a sulfuric acid concentration specific gravity between 1.27-1.28. If the concentration is too small, it will easily lose electricity. After being used for a long time, lead sulfate crystals will form between the two plates, which cannot be removed during the subsequent recharging process and become a dead space. When the amount of lead sulfate crystals produced reaches a certain level, the battery will no longer store electricity. And if the concentration of sulfuric acid is higher than the standard, lead sulfate crystals are also likely to form.
Therefore, the proportion of sulfuric acid and distilled water in the electrolyte must be strictly controlled!
Just preparing the electrolyte took Li Zexuan more than half an hour!
The next step is to assemble these prepared materials and shells. This is not very troublesome. The only thing you need to pay attention to is not to bring debris and dust into the electrolyte during the operation!
Uncle Fu stood aside and carefully witnessed the entire production process of lead-acid batteries. At three o'clock in the morning, it was completely dark, and the lights in the laboratory had long been turned on by Uncle Fu. At this moment, Li Zexuan finally stood up He stood up, clapped his hands, breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "Okay! The world's first lead-acid battery is finally ready~!"
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