The rise of the prince

Chapter 140 Perfume and Gunpowder

Li Ye's [-] catties of high-grade wine is still there, which is why he went to cauliflower.

That altar was prepared by him as a spare. The wine in the first altar was close to alcohol and would burn when exposed to fire. It could be used to disinfect wounds, dissipate heat quickly, and kill microorganisms.

The human body is more fragile than imagined, especially in such an era of frequent physical labor and poor sanitation and medical conditions.

To put it simply, if you have a fever or suffer from serious trauma, you can only resign yourself to fate. It is a [-]-[-] split between life and death, because microorganisms are fatal, and high-alcohol can solve this problem to a large extent. There are so many workers in the palace now. It is inevitable that there will be bumps and bumps, and Li Ye does not want any accidents.

In addition, alcohol is also an excellent solvent, so it can be used to make perfume.Because it can dissolve essential oils in plants, essential oils are difficult to extract, and at the same time, they are organic substances that will be oxidized, so alcohol can protect them, but the alcohol concentration should not be too high, otherwise it will destroy it.

Moreover, alcohol is highly volatile, and the expansion speed of fragrance molecules requires an environment with a relatively constant temperature. Therefore, in many cases, perfume needs to be applied to the exposed parts of the arteries of the human body, and the constant temperature of the blood can quickly exert its effect.

Unlike essential oils, alcohol volatilizes quickly, so when the alcohol completes the function of evenly diluting the carrier, it will quickly break away from the essence molecules, allowing the perfume to develop its own flavor. This is why the perfume is obviously made of alcohol. Only smell the aroma but seldom smell the wine.

Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages in everything. The strong volatility of alcohol also makes the perfume not easy to preserve, so you can also add base oil to make the perfume last longer. The base oil can be olive oil, coconut oil and other vegetable oils.

There is indeed a little vegetable oil used in the Jing Dynasty, but it is not for food. Most of it is used for making cloth and silk, and there is no olive oil or coconut oil. It will be used to make wine and medicine, but it has never been squeezed for oil.Olives are easy to ferment and change in quality. To extract oil, they need to be harvested and squeezed on the spot. He obviously has no conditions to obtain it now.

So Li Ye had to give up the idea of ​​adding base oil after much deliberation.

Under the curious eyes of Yue'er and Wei Yubai, Li Ye used five small porcelain bottles, each with a capacity of about [-] milliliters, filled them with plum blossoms, added high-quality wine, shook them well, covered them, and gave each bottle Stick on a label and write the sealing date with a pen for easy memory.

"Making plum wine? That's not how you make it." Wei Yubai said.

"No, I'm making perfume. I'll give you a bottle when I get it out." Li Ye clapped his hands proudly. He knew the principle of perfume and the theory of making it, but he had never done it before, so he had to try it to know.

After that, filter the alcohol with gauze every three days, take the filtrate, replace the plum blossoms and continue to seal and soak. Repeat this for more than three times, that is, it will be completed after more than ten days. At that time, you can add water and dissolved beeswax, of course, you can not Add beeswax, and finally filter through paper to complete.

If it can be successful, it will be considered an extra source of income, but this thing can only go through the route of high-end customers. He is the heir of the royal family, so why not know high-end customers?

After finishing all this, Li Ye carefully placed a few porcelain vases on the bookshelf in the study before finishing the work.

Yue'er and Wei Yubai were full of curiosity, what exactly is Shizi's so-called perfume?
After working on the perfume, Li Ye started to work on the pile of dirt from the stable again. The reason was simple. He had promised Mr. De to help him figure out how to deal with the cavalry.

As a later generation, even if you ask three-year-olds, eight-year-olds, anyone who has studied history for eight-year-olds knows what eliminated the knight class?That's right, gunpowder.

In fact, gunpowder is not accurate, because although gunpowder was invented in ancient China, it was the product of Taoist alchemy, so the ratio and formula were not perfect for a long time.

Not to mention that the ratio of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal is wrong, the material is not pure, and it is also mixed with various lead, incense ash and other messy things. .

Yesterday he personally took Yan Shen to the streets to look for saltpeter and sulfur, and after asking around, they were both available in the pharmacy and sold as medicine.

When I went to the largest pharmacy in the west of the city, the boss told him: There are two kinds of sulfur, one is a by-product of iron refining, which is cheaper, and there is more expensive natural sulfur, which is obtained from the Tianshan Mountains in the north and the Yunnan Sea in the south. It is shipped thousands of miles, so it is more expensive.

Li Ye took a quick glance and understood the difference between the two.

The sulfur produced by iron smelting is a by-product of pyrite refining, and there are too many impurities. Natural sulfur should be found near the crater, and it is close to pure. There are volcanoes in Changbai Mountain, Inner Mongolia, Tengchong, Yunnan and other places in later generations, so The places the boss said should be similar.

Although he said that the price is only [-] Wen a catty, that is to say, you can buy [-] catties with the usual money, which is indeed a lot of money for a small family, but no one will buy more of this thing, because it is used as medicine Yes, anyway, Li Ye dare not eat it.

Li Ye directly bought all the boss's inventory, a total of one sack about fifty catties and six taels, and told the boss to let him buy more, and in the future, he would send it directly to Prince Xiao's mansion as much as he wanted, and the boss was happy flowers.

The saltpeter in the pharmacy is not what he imagined. The owner of the pharmacy calls it "Xiao Shi", which means that it has the effect of eliminating fossils in the body, and it is used to clear the stomach. Li Ye can't help but think that he has never eaten this thing until now. .
But after seeing the color, Li Ye felt something was wrong. It had no glassy texture, grayish white with a yellowish tint. This was not the saltpeter he wanted, and it would not dissolve in water. It might be some kind of nitrate-containing mineral, which made him very disappointed.

The main ingredient of the saltpeter he wants is potassium nitrate, a translucent white crystal that can dissolve in water and absorb a lot of heat to freeze it. It is also the main raw material of black powder, accounting for about [-]% of its weight.

In desperation, he had to do it himself.

With the help of Wei Yubai and Yue'er, he crushed the soil dug from the side of the stable, then put it into a wooden bucket and soaked it in water for a while, then stirred it with a wooden stick, filtered it with gauze, poured in water several times, stirred it and then filtered it. After several repetitions a large vat of filtrate was collected.

Li Ye threw away the dregs, put the filtrate aside and waited for it to clarify in the sun, but Yue'er and Wei Yubai, who had been busy for half a day, were at a loss, what was this for?
In fact, nitrate is ubiquitous in the soil. In autumn and winter, rural children can still see things like white salt flowers on the corners of toilets and pigpens. That is the nitrate precipitated from the ground under the action of microorganisms. This kind of nitrate is very close to pure.

Therefore, those soils with frequent microbial activities generally have high nitrate content, such as toilets, pigpens, and around stables. Li Ye will go to the stables to dig soil, and nitrate is easily soluble in water, so after water dissolving, stirring, and filtering, now the precious nitrate Should have been in this vat of water.

Of course, these are just theories. Li Ye doesn't know what the nitrate content of the soil here is. Everything is waiting for the result, so he is also very nervous now. It would be embarrassing if the bamboo basket fetches water in vain.
(End of this chapter)