No one can disturb my retirement life in the Red Mansion

"Madam, we can pick out the impurities and wash them more times; but we really can't do anything about the brittleness! We used drying before, then wind, and finally the fire wall. The brittleness of the paper has little to do with thickness, pressing, and drying. It's not shameful to present this paper to the emperor!" The head technician was about to cry. They had been working here for three months, and the paper they made was getting better and better, but the old lady was never satisfied, which made them lose their minds. This was all about persuasion. Telling the old lady not to worry about it, because if such paper was taken outside, it would probably be sold out. This is far from enough.
Ou Mengmeng was also depressed. Bamboo paper is very suitable for printing paper because of its fine fibers. Later, some ancient books were repaired using the restored version of Fuyang paper.

In theory, she has a more mature formula. She has also gone through countless small experiments and optimized the process. Could it be that she is now forced to go back to the previous cumbersome process? You know, they have gone through a lot of improvements, whether in terms of cost or process flow. It can be said that she is much better than those modern people who imitate antiques. However, because the flexibility is not achieved, she has to try to go back to the previous method? Cost and quality cannot be achieved at the same time?

"Mother!" Sun Shangxiang gently pulled Ou Mengmeng. Sun Shangxiang almost forgot what the old lady was like before. She would be lost in thought from time to time. But it was because of this, she would be lost in thought from time to time, that these papers became what they are today. She believed that her mother must be very useful.

"Oh, you are absolutely right. We have tried everything here. Now we can only think about the source." Ou Mengmeng nodded. She thought, why not look back?
This workshop is a paper-making workshop at the foot of the mountain, and there is also a pulp-making workshop on the hillside behind the mountain.

There is a spring on the mountain. Ou Mengmeng is educated after all, so she must not forget that green water and clear mountains are as valuable as gold and silver. Papermaking is extremely water-consuming and pollutes water sources. Because bamboo is washed, paper is fermented, wood ash is cleaned, and lime water is used to soften and soak. These steps not only waste water, but also pollute water.

Ou Mengmeng remembered that there was a period of time when countless small papermaking workshops were closed in their area, and large papermaking enterprises also transformed later. Of course, she also understood that the green mountains and clear waters had not been destroyed for thousands of years, but after the 1980s, they began to be destroyed? There were countless technologies and hard work in between. In traditional papermaking, the biggest pollution is lime. Everything else is degradable. Although Ou Mengmeng understood it, she still didn't make that decision in the end.

Therefore, when she was studying the process, she actually did a small experiment in the yard of Sun Quan's house. She used various methods to experiment with each step and finally determined the most suitable one for herself.

The various early processes of water soaking, wood ash cooking, lime flooding and running water washing are, in fact, simply to degrade the pectin in the raw materials and achieve the purpose of softening the fibers.

According to the explanation of modern science and technology, this is a microbial fermentation process. Bacteria play a major role in water-immersion fermentation. After long-term immersion in water, the bacteria in the material and in the water slowly grow, combine with each other, and decompose each other. The fermentation process uses this decomposition to remove the pectin in the raw materials.

Ou Mengmeng's original idea was to use time to exchange for space, and to achieve the purpose of deep fermentation by soaking for a long time. However, at this time, she also understood why modern technology and ruthlessness are necessary. She is not practicing the way of immortality, and she does not have so much time to waste.

Moreover, long-term fermentation actually damages the environment, so she had to find another way. It must be said that Ou Mengmeng is a strong person. Since pollution is unavoidable, then we will find another way.

She had people build a huge square stone stove pool with stone bricks behind the mountain. There was a pool on top and a fire on the bottom. There was also water in the pool. The sides were backfilled with soil so that workers could watch the fire and the pool from both sides. There was also a horizontal hanging on the side!
This is the caustic soda pool designed by Ou Mengmeng. After the new bamboo is cut down, it is cut into bamboo tubes of the same length, then divided into four halves with a machete, tied with hemp ropes, neatly arranged into a cube, and then fixed with a hemp net and hung up. The size is the same as the caustic soda pool, and it is completely immersed in it, with fire burning underneath to heat it.

Caustic soda can corrode protein and pectin, but not fiber. Because of this property, it has become an important step in papermaking. Ou Mengmeng used this property to wrap the bundled bamboo strips with fiberized hemp nets and soak them in a strong alkaline pool at a constant temperature. After soaking for seven to ten days, he used a wooden crane to lift the hemp bags and put them in a running water pool for washing.

On the other side, new sacks are prepared, dipped in again, and sprinkled with new caustic soda.

The bamboo strips in the sacks hoisted into the flowing water pool have become soft, and the flowing water pool is on the other side of the caustic soda pool. This way, one cart can be used for multiple purposes horizontally and manpower can be reduced as much as possible.

The flowing water pool was also specially dug. The upstream is a Tianchi mountain spring. Ou Mengmeng first artificially dug a reservoir on the mountain with two pipes connecting to the caustic soda pool and the clear water pool downstream.

The pipes of the caustic soda pool are not often opened. The pressure of water flowing through the reservoir and the action of surface gravity create an impact force that strongly washes the sacks.

While flushing, there is a waterwheel here. Through hydraulic flushing, there will be a wooden hammer that keeps hitting the sacks. The first five minutes of beating is to knock out the caustic soda and the corroded and rotten pectin in the sacks. The sewage flows down the river and is discharged into the streams downstream, and then into the rivers.

After the water is clear, the sewage pipe is cut off, and the fibers in the sacks are slowly crushed. When the sacks are rotten, they will flow down the river. There is an interception port below, and the hemp and bamboo fibers will directly enter the paper workshop downstream. They are manually sorted, the green skin and impurities are cleaned, and then processed again, and then they can be put into the paper pool together with paper medicine for papermaking.

So they had been in the workshop for more than half a year. But papermaking officially started only three months ago, because in the first three months, they were constantly adjusting the process upstream. The soaking time, the temperature of the pool water, the dosage, the intensity of the flushing, the frequency of the water hammer, all of these took time to adjust.

Of course, this also eliminates the question of how many steps and processes the old artists often talked about. For example, Fuyang Paper also said that the softener put into the pool contains boy urine. To be honest, with so much paper every day, how many boys do they have to raise to urinate in it?
Just like Ou Mengmeng's strong alkaline pool, medicine is still added into it every day. It is really a change of material without water. A pool of material is divided into nine grids, and then there is a package in each grid. The first time is to see the soaking time, seven to ten days, to study at what temperature and concentration time, how to make the material completely degummed.

Each degummed material is made into several specifications downstream. Some are thick, some are thin. The pulp is the same, but the concentration of paper medicine in each pool is different. Different concentrations are also made into thick and thin. She marks each one and takes notes.

So now there is really no way to find the problem, now we have to start over, and then Jiang was stunned, she and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law went back together, and looked at the drawings that her mother-in-law had drawn before, at this time, she was left with admiration for her mother-in-law, this was all designed by her mother-in-law, the most labor-intensive part here has been reduced to the minimum, so all women can solve the problem. (End of this chapter)