African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1005 Man-Made Fibers

New Frankfort.

As an emerging city, the industrial level of New Frankfurt has been continuously rising. During the First Five-Year Plan, a large number of high-quality projects were established in the region, especially the textile industry, equipment manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, electronic product manufacturing and other high-quality industries have flourished.

The regional advantages of New Frankfurt are mainly reflected in the field of transportation. The area is one of the most important land transportation hubs in East Africa, where waterways, railways and roads converge densely, extending across East Africa like the tentacles of an octopus.

A section of the East African Canal passes through the city of New Frankfurt, connecting the Congo River and Zambezi River systems. Of course, it does not pass through the city, but passes through its subordinate jurisdiction.

This canal has achieved connectivity between the copper mining belt and southern cities, and opened up navigation to parts of the Congo River and Zambezi River tributaries. The entire section is more than 180 kilometers long. This kind of insane project is not an isolated case in East Africa in recent years. A large number of black people have fallen under the horrific scale of infrastructure construction in East Africa.

The artificial canal takes advantage of the terrain of the Katanga Plateau and flows from northeast to southwest, so the main water source comes from the Congo River basin where there is more abundant rainfall. It not only improves the navigation capacity, but is also a water diversion project that effectively supplements the Zambezi River basin.

Its source mainly comes from the tributary of the Lualaba River in the upper reaches of the Congo River, so the overall water volume is relatively abundant. There is a ditch system for farmland irrigation along the river, which plays a significant role in stabilizing the grain production around Rhine City.

After all, the annual precipitation in the vicinity of Rhine City has reached more than 800 mm. Through the water diversion project, the water security issue near the capital area and the entire central province can be basically guaranteed.

The Central Province is originally located in the transition zone between tropical savanna and tropical rainforest climates, so the precipitation increases and becomes more stable as you go north. Therefore, the Central Province section of the Grand Canal in East Africa is very important.

As the city of New Frankfurt is the area where the canal passes through, the canal is actually some distance away from the urban area. However, the future urban development of New Frankfurt will inevitably move towards the canal section.

Some key enterprises, especially the textile industry, chemical industry and other water-intensive industries in New Frankfurt are gathering here, and the New Frankfurt Man-Made Fiber Factory is located here on the Central Province Canal section.

The factory was a key enterprise of the new Frankfurt city during the First Five-Year Plan. It was officially built in March last year and has now started production.

The New Frankfurt Man-Made Fiber Factory was not large in scale and could only be considered a medium-sized enterprise, but it was highly valued by the government. Ernst came here specifically to inspect the first man-made fiber factory in East Africa.

The employees and management of the New Frankfurt Man-Made Fiber Factory were naturally very nervous in front of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince. After all, man-made fibers had been Ernst's focus from the very beginning, and today Ernst came here to inspect the results.

"Your Highness, this artificial fiber technology was introduced by us from the German company JP Benberg. This technology appeared in the early 1990s."

"At that time, German scientists Brunner and Fremey made artificial copper ammonia by dissolving cellulose in a copper ammonia solution and obtained a patent for the invention."

"Then in the late 1990s, JP Benberg successfully applied the new method of manufacturing fiber, the copper-ammonia method, to industrial production. The government obtained the relevant technology through cooperation with Germany, and the industry was eventually established in New Frankfurt."

This is the cuprammonia silk in the previous life, but Ernst didn’t know much about it because the development of artificial fibers or chemical fibers around the world has only just started.

In 1884, the famous French chemist Chardonnet put nitrocellulose into alcohol and ether to make slender and beautiful artificial silk, and began mass production in 1891.

In 1891, the British Cruise and Bevan decomposed cellulose with strong alkali and carbon disulfide, and then used a rotary box to use centrifugal force to dehydrate and spin to make viscose rayon.

This safe and cheap method of producing artificial fibers quickly became popular and is the most widely used method of producing artificial fibers. From the time period, we can see that chemical fibers started as early as the 1980s, and began to develop by leaps and bounds in the 1990s. New technologies continue to emerge, and the cuprammonia fiber technology introduced in East Africa is a product of the 1990s.

Therefore, the development of chemical fiber industry in East Africa started relatively early, and the New Frankfurt Chemical Fiber Factory is one of the important symbols.

The technology has also been introduced in several textile-focused cities including Bulawayo, Mogadishu, Nairobi and Gezira.

The textile industry in New Frankfurt is also relatively developed. It is one of the important distribution centers for inland cotton. The reason why cuprammonia silk technology overlaps with the developed cotton textile industry in East Africa is that

It has an important relationship with the raw materials it needs. The main raw material of cuprammonia silk is cotton linter, that is, the fluff on the outside of cotton seeds. The fiber extracted from cotton linter through a special process is cuprammonia silk.

Therefore, cuprammonia fiber is a regenerated cellulose fiber. It is made by dissolving natural cellulose raw materials such as cotton linters in a concentrated ammonia solution of copper hydroxide or alkaline copper salt to form a spinning solution. In the coagulation bath, the cuprammonia cellulose molecular chemicals decompose to regenerate cellulose, and the resulting hydrated cellulose is processed to obtain cuprammonia fiber.

As the name implies, the characteristics of copper-ammonia silk are more in line with "silk". The cross-section of copper-ammonia fiber is round, without skin-core structure, and the fiber can withstand high stretching, and the monofilament is thinner. Therefore, the fabric of copper-ammonia silk products feels soft, has a soft luster, and has a silk feel.

In addition to cotton linter, copper-ammonia solution is essential for copper-ammonia silk. East Africa is an important copper-producing country, and ammonia production has also started, so there is no shortage of either.

The city of New Frankfurt began to use ammonia to produce cuprammonia silk fibers based on the textile and chemical industries.

"With the help of German experts, our factory has thoroughly mastered the technology and is now able to carry out large-scale production."

Later, under the guidance of technical staff and management, Ernst visited the entire production process of cuprammonia wire. Everything went smoothly without any mistakes. At the same time, Ernst personally experienced the feel of the finished product.

Ernst nodded and said, "The quality is acceptable. At least it feels somewhat similar to ordinary silk. It seems that you have really mastered the relevant technology."

The factory manager said, "Your Highness, in addition to the help from the Germans, the main reason for mastering this technology is our own talent advantage. It only took them a few days to master it all. I am a rough man, but I don't have the brains of today's college students."

East African college students with high academic qualifications and certain knowledge of chemistry naturally have obvious advantages over ordinary people, and this is with the help of the Germans. It would be embarrassing if they couldn't learn it.

Because this is not a new technology that we have broken through. In fact, East Africa must have trained a lot of chemical talents over the years, but it will take some time to produce results.

After all, East Africa is mainly learning from European and American countries, and the chemical fibers of European and American countries are just starting out. If East Africa can follow up quickly, it will have met Ernst's psychological expectations.

The chemical industry is definitely one of the emerging industries of this era, and Germany is one of the best. This also provides convenience for the development of the chemical industry in East Africa. That is, East Africa and Germany have close relations. If Americans and British have the right to speak in the industry, it will be much more difficult for East Africa to obtain relevant technologies.

Of course, if East Africa can obtain some emerging technologies from other countries, it will definitely be beneficial. However, East Africa itself has a lot of chemical talents. As long as it is given time, East Africa will definitely occupy a place in this field in the future.

(End of this chapter)