Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 249 Scientific Thinking and Alchemy
Coal-to-oil technology first originated in Germany during World War II. German chemists at that time hoped to use this technology to replace oil with coal to solve Germany's shortage of oil.

The core of this technology is to use coal as raw material to produce oil and petrochemical products through chemical processing, including two technical routes: direct coal liquefaction and indirect coal liquefaction.

The direct liquefaction technology of coal is to directly liquefy raw coal to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuel through catalytic hydrogenation under high temperature and high pressure conditions, and remove atoms such as sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen.

This technology has high requirements for the quality of raw coal, and its early technology required a reaction temperature of 470°C and a reaction pressure of 70MPa.

Moreover, the fuel produced through this technology has high content of aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur and nitrogen and other impurities and low cetane number, making it difficult to be directly burned in engines and requires further processing to meet the standards of refined oil. .

Therefore, this technology was not widely used and valued at that time. It was not until the later oil crisis that countries again paid attention to this technology, and based on it, they successively developed the hydrogen-coal method, the solvent refined coal method, the hydrogen-donating solvent method, etc. as a second generation technology.

Although these technologies have made great progress compared with the first-generation technologies, they are not worthy of large-scale industrialization due to their high cost.

Before Purficott traveled through, the mainstream technology in various countries had developed to the third generation. However, what she was exposed to was not the direct liquefaction of coal technology, but the production of syngas from raw coal and then processing of the syngas. Indirect liquefaction technology for producing oil or chemical products.

The requirements of this technology are not that high. It only needs to gasify the raw coal first, and then purify it to obtain the raw gas of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Then at about 270~350℃ and 2.5MPa environment, relevant oils or chemical products can be synthesized through the action of catalysts.

For Purficott, coal-to-liquid can indeed make up for the needs of industrial production in the absence of oil, but this technology is not yet fully mature even in the original world before she traveled, and she wants to apply it directly. In this world, that is not what she can do now.

After all, the things involved are too complicated. Even if Purficott had been exposed to it before, it would be difficult for her to reproduce it now.

No, with Purficott's attainments in alchemy, she can even directly convert coal into various oils and petrochemicals she wants.

Just like oil, in the original world, fractionation technology was needed to extract various components of oil, and then separate them for different uses.

For Purficott, she could have devised an alchemical ritual to convert coal into oil.

But fortunately, this is a world where alchemy exists. Coal-to-liquid production was very complicated in the original world, but in this world? Learn about the Midas touch.

This is where Purficott suddenly realized that she had fallen into a misunderstanding from some angles, that is, she did not need to replicate the technology of the original world, but should use the technology of this world to achieve similarity and sameness. Even a transcendent effect.

Unless she can open more pages of Cuiyulu and obtain the ability to acquire technology according to needs, it will be possible to establish a complete coal-to-liquid chemical system.

As for alchemy... the decomposition of matter can only be regarded as a basic course of alchemy. It does not even involve the transformation of matter. Any alchemy apprentice who has received systematic education can do it.

Thinking of this, Purficott felt that his thinking was still limited by his life experience in the original world.

In the original world, there is no technology like alchemy that rubs physics and chemistry on the ground. Although according to Occam's razor theory, there is no need to increase entities, when alchemy really exists and can be falsified, it is scientific. But alchemy, a technology that can change material forms and even structures, only consumes the alchemist's own spiritual power. In the original world, this completely breaks the conventional rational scientific understanding.

So for Purficott, what she needs is to break her original inertial thinking and think about the problem from a perspective closer to alchemy.

Just like if she thought about the problem she was facing from the perspective of alchemy, she would not consider replicating the oil fractionation technology and coal-to-liquid technology of the original world, but would consider how to use alchemy to achieve her own goals. .

She has many ways to break down oil, whether it is to extract various substances one by one, or to set different goals and then convert crude oil composed of multiple substances into a single substance. This can be done.

Ordinary alchemists cannot create something out of nothing with the help of the Philosopher's Stone like Perficott, but they can at least transform existing substances into new substances.

Even a qualified alchemy apprentice can devise a plan to separate oil into different single substances to obtain the desired product.

As for catalysis, synthesis, reaction, etc., they are entry-level things for alchemy.

To put it more simply and straightforwardly, alchemy can use a set of alchemical rituals to directly turn crude oil into various required finished products, without the need for step-by-step separation and reprocessing like petrochemical industry.

The same goes for coal-to-liquids. Alchemy can directly convert raw coal into crude oil, let alone just use raw coal as raw material to refine various required substances.

This is actually just specifying the raw materials and then transforming them into the required products. Alchemy has been studying this for many years. Perficott can completely leave it to the alchemy professors and apprentices to deal with it. As long as Perficott says If you ask, they will do it without even giving them directions.

In fact, this level of request would even be considered an insult to those alchemy professors, because only an ordinary alchemist can handle it.

Of course, there is a big difference between using alchemy to do this and industrial production.

If you just want to build a small workshop to meet the needs of use, you can really find a few alchemists of decent level to do it.

But if you want to obtain industrial raw materials or finished products through oil and coal like factory assembly line production, you still can't save any of the production lines and processes.

It's just that the principle has changed from chemistry and physics to alchemy.

What Purficott has to do is to use alchemy to decompose, transform, and synthesize the oil and coal, and then prepare the various things he wants, and then give them to the alchemy professors and other alchemists. Warlock, and then let them design a production plan according to the goals they gave.

(End of this chapter)