national surname chiming

Chapter 285 Your semi-finished product is also a big step for mankind
When Shen Shuren arranged tasks for the arsenal here in Daye half a year ago, of course he also provided Fang Yizhi and Song Yingxing with some ideas.

In particular, he chose some military technologies that he was relatively familiar with in later generations and seemed to be easy to implement, and let the researchers figure out ways to tinker with them.After thinking about it for half a year, Song Yingxing and the others certainly didn't gain anything at all.

So facing Shen Shuren's question, Song Yingxing only said: Of course there are other breakthroughs, but they are not in the field of metallurgy and forging, and they will not be displayed in the forge of this ironworks.If Master Futai wants to see it, he can inspect the newly built "Pharmaceutical Factory" not far outside the city tomorrow.

Shen Shuren knew that the "pharmaceutical refinery" Song Yingxing mentioned was actually a chemical plant that had just been built in the second half of this year.It’s just that there was no term “chemistry” at the end of the Ming Dynasty, so Song Yingxing and Fang Yizhi just used the original gunpowder bureau as their team to set up a “refining factory” to be responsible for the improvement of gunpowder formula, and other strange things. Chemical raw material technology optimization.

Of course Shen Shuren was very interested in this.

……

The inspection at the steel factory and the forging factory was originally done to brainwash the miners and refugees, and by the way.

Since there were not many novel weapons and technological breakthroughs to see here, he took a short rest that night, and Shen Shuren continued his journey to inspect the refinery the next day.

It was his first time here, but he had known about the new factory for several months.

Because at that time, Song Yingxing asked him for a large amount of funding to conduct research, and the first batch of funds was tens of thousands of taels. When applying for scientific research funding, of course, he must explain the purpose.After Shen Shuren knew about it, he readily approved it.

Song Yingxing was also shocked at the time. To be honest, when he came to ask for money, he never expected that the funder would approve the funds so readily, and he was worried that Shen Shuren would be like the rotten scholars in the past, treating the research on material transformation as the sorcery research of alchemists. .

Only Shen Shuren knew that Song Yingxing would spend tens of thousands of taels to do chemistry casually, but if he could produce some results, it would definitely not be a loss, the money was well spent.What's more, Song Yingxing didn't just look for research directions in the beginning, it was all propositional research, and everything revolved around upgrading and optimizing gunpowder technology, which was an achievement that could be used in actual combat immediately.

The pharmaceutical refinery is located in Daoshifu in the east of Daye County. It is the place where a small river on a nearby Iron Mountain finally flows into the Yangtze River. There is a certain drop and a small waterfall. When it flows into the Yangtze River, the water will form a whirlpool. Easy to drain.

These days, the scale of chemical industry is very small, and there is no theory and technology for sewage treatment, so it can only be discharged directly.

In small ditches and small lakes, if it is stagnant water, or at least insufficient fluidity, it may still cause adverse hazards.

But if this amount of water is directly discharged into the Yangtze River, it is not a problem at all. It has been purified naturally, and it is located in the most downstream of the nearby small river, so it will not pollute the upstream water source.

When Shen Shuren arrived, he also saw a stele pavilion at the entrance of the village where the refinery was located. Inside stood a stone with a poem engraved on it: "When the river is in danger and the stone has no roots, it will fly and fall. Suddenly squatting. Looking down The secluded palace is thousands of feet away, and the whirling currents stir things up and down."

Shen Shuren read it once, but he didn't think the poem was well written, so he casually asked Fang Yizhi who accompanied the inspection: "How can this level be engraved on a stele?"

Fang Yizhi smiled: "My dear brother, if you look carefully at the inscription on the back, you won't have such a question - this stele pavilion was erected decades ago, and this poem was written by Zhang Juzheng, describing the scenery of this place.

In the early days of the Wanli Dynasty, Zhang Juzheng was very powerful. He was from Hubei, and the gentry of the nearby prefectures would flatter and flatter this fellow scholar.Although it was liquidated later, the gentry in Huguang would not push Zhang Juzheng's poetry stele pavilion away.Anyway, no one cares, just keep it. "

Shen Shuren nodded, and read it again. Since it was written by Zhang Juzheng, he did not have such high requirements for literary talent. He was not famous as a poet in the first place.

After slowly entering the village, Shen Shuren noticed that the secrecy work and defense of the whole village were very strict. The whole village was surrounded by fences of sharpened wooden piles on rammed earth walls, leaving only gates at the entrances and exits of the roads. Just build the city wall directly.

As soon as you enter the fence, you can see that the village is almost all managed by militarization. The only local villagers are also hired by the government to do things, and there are no idlers.

On the outermost periphery, there are rows of gunpowder workshops. It is obvious that Daye has moved all the gunpowder production organizations that were originally in the Bingzhan Bureau.

In every yard, craftsmen are grinding various raw materials, and then carefully weighing, proportioning, and mixing them. Occasionally, you can see the clerk recording the data of each operation there, and they have saved a thick stack of account books. up.

Obviously, the improvement of gunpowder formula and mixing process has been going on.Shen Shuren asked them to control variables and scientifically control experiments, and there is no end to the experience summarization in this area.

Even if it is just traditional black powder, Shen Jiajun’s current craftsmanship does not dare to say that the best formula technology has been exhausted. Historically, black powder can be used in the West until the 1870s, and there must be room for improvement in the next 200 years.

Black gunpowder with faster burning rate and faster gas expansion rate can be produced, which can continuously moisten things and silently improve the firearms combat power of the Shen family army.

However, these are all manual labor of trial and error, all relying on time accumulation, the further the research goes, the more diminishing the marginal returns, and it is impossible to give any big surprises.Shen Shuren inspected for a while, and confirmed that the other party's way of doing things and his attitude were okay, so he didn't look any further, and went straight to the next stop.

After wandering around the village for about half a stick of incense, Shen Shuren gradually came to the core area of ​​the village, a workshop located in the scenic spot of the Taoist. Outside the house, you can see small waterfalls and turbulent currents, rushing into the Yangtze River.

The nearby buildings have also become decent and clean with whitewashed walls and neat gray tile roofs. They don't look like gunpowder workshops anymore.

When Shen Shuren entered a tidy courtyard, the first thing he saw were several Xiaowan spinning machines and shuttle looms, where cotton yarn and cotton cloth were produced.

Shen Shuren was also surprised when he saw it, and almost thought that he had gone to the wrong place.

Of course, he is no stranger to these machines, because he instructed Fang Yizhi and Dong Xiaowan to build them a few years ago.

Fang Yizhi did not seek fame, and he only provided theoretical support. It was Dong Xiaowan who did the tinkering and practice. The world only knew that this machine was called Xiaowan Spinning Machine, which was invented by a concubine in Shenfutai's mansion.

Shen Shuren couldn't help but ask: "Brother Fang, is this a skill? Did you think that the shuttle loom was not enough? Or did you think of a better optimization? Why did you put it in this refinery to tinker with the loom?"

Fang Yizhi pointed and explained: "Optimization, indeed, can be further optimized, but it's just piecemeal, and it can't improve the efficiency of spinning and weaving by one or two percent.

However, the original intention of moving these machines here is because when tinkering with gunpowder materials according to the idea explained by my brother, I accidentally produced other materials.We thought about it and experimented, and found that it could be used as a cloth for dressing injuries. "

As he said that, Fang Yizhi signaled a craftsman who was spinning and weaving in the courtyard to bring some semi-finished materials to show Shen Shuren.

When Shen Shuren saw it, it was just gauze and cotton balls. He had seen these before. The Shen family had a very large textile business in Susong, and they also joined forces with the old Xuge family in Songjiang, owning a cotton field of no less than one million mu.

Therefore, the popularity rate of cotton products in the Shen family army is very high, and ordinary soldiers have ample daily expenses, and cotton balls and gauze have long been popularized in the medical supplies of wounded soldiers.

However, when Shen Shuren took a closer look, he noticed that the gauze and cotton balls felt very different from the original ones. After thinking about it again, he couldn't help but blurted out: "This is absorbent cotton? The gauze and cotton balls have been degreased. deal with?"

Fang Yizhi was stunned for a moment, but did not directly admit: "Absorptive cotton? This name is easy to understand. Indeed, it is cotton that has been treated with some alkali-coated plant ash and other powders, then dried, and removed. Part of the oil also removes the things that are prone to corruption, acidification and deterioration in the cotton, leaving only clean and pure velvet.

Originally, this was based on your explanation half a year ago. When we were making 'acid gun cotton', we found that it was not easy to do. The cotton had impurities and was unstable, so we thought about a lot of ways to pre-treat the cotton to remove various impurities.As a result, one of the ideas came to this.

After making it, I suddenly thought that although the military used gauze to wrap wounds and cotton balls to absorb blood to promote healing, the cotton balls are still easy to be stained with pus and blood and then gradually decay. Dirty utilization in.

So I thought about the utilization of waste, and used this semi-finished product that had gone astray, which was not good for making 'acid collodion', to make gauze for soldiers to wrap their wounds.At the Daye Mine, there are indeed some casualties in accidents from time to time, which happens to have sufficient opportunities for experiments.

In the end, it was found that the cotton washed out in this way was the cleanest, and when used to wrap wounds, the chances of soldiers' pus and blood getting worse could be reduced by as much as [-] to [-] percent! "

Shen Shuren was quite moved after hearing this.

It turned out that before he left for the expedition half a year ago, he also explained to Song Yingxing Fang Yizhi some ideas for improving gunpowder.What he thought of at the time, the easiest to realize and the most well-known to future generations, was naturally to develop "gun cotton" or "nitrocellulose" to replace black powder as the gun propellant.

After all, gun cotton, anyone who has a little understanding of history in later generations, knows that its production method is very easy-throw cotton into concentrated nitric acid, wait for the concentrated nitric acid to react naturally with cotton, and after it becomes black, put the cotton Take it out carefully and crush it to make nitrocellulose.

After this thing was invented by the French in the 1870s, it immediately replaced black powder and created the first generation of smokeless gunpowder, and only then did modern self-contained primer bullets come into being.

Nitrocellulose is used as the warhead charge of shells to provide explosive damage, and the effect is more doubtful.But as a propellant, it is more than enough, and it is definitely much stronger than black powder.Until World War II, nitrocellulose primers were still used in American and Soviet rifle cartridges.

However, although Shen Shuren knew this common sense and how to make nitrocellulose in the last step, he didn't know how to make the intermediate raw materials needed for nitrocellulose. Smokeless gunpowder - he knew that adding concentrated nitric acid to cotton would make nitrocellulose, but he couldn't make concentrated nitric acid!
Until Fang Yizhi and Song Yingxing were recruited by him, he felt that these people had a certain ability of self-research, and he could point out the general direction, and then the people below organized the experiments strictly by themselves.

At that time, the direction he gave was also very clear, that is, "I heard from the Hongmaoyi people that in recent years, in the far west, some top scholars in the Hongmaoyi have invented a concentrated saltpeter. Acid, combined with the strong gunpowder produced after the cotton is acidified and scorched, it is smokeless and explosive.”

Then Fang Yizhi and Song Yingxing were asked to figure out how to create this "concentrated acid that can react with cotton".This task was allocated half a year ago. At that time, a considerable part of the tens of thousands of taels of scientific research funds given to Song Yingxing was also used for experiments, and the second was to build another gunpowder bureau on the side of Taoist Wei.

Now it seems that no matter whether Fang Yizhi produced concentrated nitric acid or not, he at least first produced the by-product of absorbent cotton, which can improve the medical conditions in the army.

(End of this chapter)