I brought a Jurassic

Chapter 302 Fertilizer Industry
After having a meal and settling down at home, Wang Luo, Professor Yang and some students from the Agricultural University set off together by train.

Wang Luo and a dozen other people were in a carriage on the train, so apart from eating, drinking and chatting.

"Wang Luo, why are you studying machinery? With your ability, it would be great if you could come to our Agricultural University to work in agriculture. You were born to do this. Look at the pigs you raise, your plans for the future, the greenhouse vegetables you grow, and the hybrid rice that Professor Gao is planning to develop in the south. You are born to do this.

Although I don't know why you applied for the accounting major, and why you have to study accounting, you can study it, and it's too late to apply, but your talent should not be wasted, you should come to our Agricultural University with peace of mind. We promise to teach you attentively, and you will definitely be able to excel with your ability. Mechanics have nothing to do with us at all, and it's a waste for you to study it!"

When Professor Yang found out that Wang Luo was studying mechanics, he felt a little regretful and took the opportunity to let Wang Luo give up all these and focus on research and study in the field of agriculture.

"Professor Yang, I just want to have fun. It's always good to learn more while you are young. Besides, machinery and agriculture complement each other. In my opinion, agriculture must be mechanized. The current method is too backward. Generally, oxen pull the plow, and only a few areas use tractors. There are no harvesters to cut wheat. It is all done manually. How can this work? How can we ordinary people eat whatever we want?

So I studied mechanics because I wanted to study some mechanical equipment, strive for agricultural mechanization, and realize the mass production of fertilizers. After learning these, I can study these things. You see, agriculture and industry are closely related. "

"Well, that's great. If we can really figure it out, then people all over the country will be able to eat white flour buns. So let's do it. If you need our help, just let us know. We'll be your backer. No matter if it works or not, we'll just do it."

Professor Yang immediately clapped his hands when he heard this.

Wang Luo plans to start researching machinery, especially fertilizer equipment, after returning from his hometown.

The emergence of fertilizers such as nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, potash fertilizer and compound fertilizer not only greatly increased the output per unit area, but also shortened the production cycle of crops. The production model that used to require fallow and crop rotation to fertilize the soil has been changed. The number of people that can be supported on the same piece of land has greatly increased. As a result, the European population entered a period of rapid growth. However, fertilizers came to Longguo much later, especially now that Longguo lacks oil, let alone fertilizers, which are very scarce.

In the 1949s, Mr. Fan and other national entrepreneurs founded China's first fertilizer plant, the Yongli Sulphate Plant, in Jinling, and the fertilizer industry began to take off. However, until the founding of the Republic of China in , agricultural production across the country was still dominated by farmyard manure.

With the development of land reform and rural cooperative movement in various places, the demand for fertilizers has increased. The rural areas of Longguo started with vigorously accumulating fertilizers, and the amount of fertilizers applied increased year by year. This was also an important factor in the continuous growth of national grain output from 1949 to 1958. During this period, the amount of fertilizer applied per mu reached about 1000 kilograms. However, these fertilizers were basically farmyard manures with low fertilizer efficiency.

From 1957 to the winter of 1958, a nationwide fertilizer accumulation campaign was launched vigorously, calling for "domestic fertilizer to go out, mineral fertilizer to come out of the ground, mountain fertilizer to go down the mountain, and water fertilizer to come on the shore." Farmers asked for river mud and pond mud fertilizer from the bottom of the water, peat fertilizer and mineral fertilizer from underground, and manure from livestock, and made many innovations and inventions in fertilizer accumulation and production.

For example, farmers in Anhui Province summarized their experience in fumigating soil, sweeping dust, changing stoves and walls, and catching snails into the ten-step formula of "smoke, burn, dig, change, sweep, ferment, shovel, pile, pick up, and catch." Lianjiang County in Fujian Province organized fishermen to catch a large number of seaweed, sea urchins, clams, sea soil, and dozens of other "sea fertilizers."

Wang Luo remembers that when he was a child, there were some elderly people who got up very early every day, holding a basket, and went out to pick up animal feces and take them back home for use in the fields. They did not waste anything. This habit probably started at that time.

In the absence of chemical fertilizers, farmers in some places began to explore how to combine traditional farmyard manure with limited chemical fertilizers for comprehensive application to achieve the best benefits. In the autumn of 1954, the average yield of more than 51 mu of corn fields in Fenghuo Agricultural Production Cooperative in Liquan County, Shaanxi Province reached more than 566 kilograms per mu, of which more than 1 mu of high-yield land had a yield of more than 1500 kilograms per mu. This was not deliberately promoted in 59, but was real.

Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the yield of corn per mu here was only 300 to 400 kilograms. How did it increase so much? Wang Baojing, director of the cooperative, summarized a set of high-yield experience, including deep plowing and water storage, selection of good varieties, reasonable density planting, insect and wind prevention, artificial pollination, etc., and the comprehensive application of fertilizers and corresponding supporting irrigation measures are also one of them.

He introduced the fertilization experience in detail: in addition to applying 8000 kilograms of pen manure and 1500 kilograms of ash manure per mu as base fertilizer, 20 kilograms of ammonium sulfate was applied at the time of sowing. In the process of corn growth, topdressing was applied four times: - When the seedlings were about one foot tall, 4 kilograms of old wall manure and 8000 kilograms of ammonium sulfate were applied per mu, and the first furrow irrigation was performed.

——When the seedlings are three or four feet tall, add another 20 kilograms of ammonium sulfate per mu and irrigate the furrows for the second time.

——During the period of corn ear formation, apply a mixture of 10 kilograms of ammonium sulfate and 20 kilograms of superphosphate fertilizer and irrigate the furrows for the third time.

——When the corn is filling, apply 10 kilograms of ammonium sulfate and spray 100 kilograms of superphosphate solution on the outside of the roots, and irrigate the furrow for the fourth time.

The work was done in a very meticulous manner, which shows that some people in our country at that time were already ahead of the times and began to sum up their own set of methods. However, this method, although good, is only an individual example. There is not so much farm manure for him to use. Ultimately, it still depends on the large-scale industrial production of chemical fertilizers to achieve the fundamental increase in grain production.

It would be great if chemical fertilizers could meet more agricultural production needs! This was not only the general voice of the farmers at that time, but also the wish of chemical professionals. While Wang Baojing and the villagers were enjoying a bumper corn harvest, on September 9 of that year, Hou Lao, one of the founders of China's modern chemical industry and the founder of the "Hou's Alkali Production Method", spoke at the National Conference and said that what farmers need most to increase production is chemical fertilizers. He suggested that the country should build more chemical fertilizer factories, such as nitrogen fertilizer factories and phosphate fertilizer factories, during construction.

"In order to strengthen the alliance between workers and peasants, we must not only produce chemical fertilizers in large quantities and supply them to farmers, but also greatly reduce manufacturing costs, improve technical efficiency, and sell them to farmers at low prices so that farmers can use them widely," said Mr. Hou at the time.

The historical mission of the new Longguo agriculture to feed more people also depends on the help of the young Chinese fertilizer industry. Therefore, during the first five-year plan period, Russia provided 156 aid projects in the industrial field of Longguo. In 1957, the Jilin Fertilizer Plant, one of the three nitrogen fertilizer plants introduced from Russia, was completed and put into trial production. The two plants introduced at the same time, Lanzhou and Taiyuan, were put into production in 3 and 1958 respectively. The products of Lanzhou Fertilizer Plant are ammonium nitrate, etc., and the products of Taiyuan Fertilizer Plant are ammonium nitrate and urea.

The most important part of the fertilizer industry is the synthetic ammonia industry, which is actually not complicated: nitrogen is obtained from the air, hydrogen is obtained from water splitting, and synthetic ammonia is obtained from nitrogen and hydrogen under high temperature, high pressure and catalyst. With synthetic ammonia as the core raw material, humans produce nitrogen-containing fertilizers, such as urea. The synthetic ammonia process seems simple, but it requires equipment and pipelines to withstand huge high temperatures and high pressures, and it is based on the production of alloy steel seamless pipes. Do you think you can weld special steel into a whole with just a little welding? Then you are not building a synthetic tower. If a crack appears one day, the big iron lump will explode, so the requirements are very strict. In the absence of large-scale synthetic ammonia technology, only local methods can be used.

While vigorously developing large and medium-sized chemical fertilizer plants, small-scale indigenous chemical fertilizer plants also spread like wildfire in various places. On August 1958, 8, the state issued a directive on fertilizer issues, pointing out that chemical fertilizers would not be able to meet demand in the next few years. In addition to actively working to increase the production of chemical fertilizers, various places also paid attention to the development of indigenous fertilizer production.

The directive also emphasized that farmers' accumulation and production of fertilizers are still the main and largest sources of fertilizers. Human and animal feces, green manure, river mud, pond mud, etc. are all organic fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers are inorganic fertilizers. Experience in China and abroad has proved that they must be mixed with organic fertilizers to better exert their fertilizer effects and avoid soil deterioration. Therefore, farmers should never relax their accumulation and production of fertilizers just because of the increase in the production of chemical fertilizers, especially soil-based fertilizers.

At that time, when the fertilizer industry had not yet taken off and the amount of fertilizer imported was quite limited, in order to solve the problem of food and clothing for people as soon as possible, the fertilizer production movement did better meet the demand for fertilizers in the production of important agricultural products such as grain, cotton and oil. Now, it is time for the fertilizer industry to make full efforts.

In 1957, technicians at Lianshi Chemical Plant used lime kiln gas and ammonia to produce ammonium bicarbonate. Mr. Hou quickly went to investigate and proposed a technical route for producing ammonium bicarbonate by carbonation: using anthracite as raw material, first produce semi-water gas, then let the nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide mixed gas enter the carbonization tower, and then the carbon dioxide reacts with ammonia water with a concentration of about 17% to produce ammonium bicarbonate crystals.

Two years later, in November 1959, the then Ministry of Chemical Industry held an on-site meeting on small synthetic ammonia plants in Dalian. After visiting a simple small synthetic ammonia plant built by Dalian Chemical Plant, more than 11 conference delegates from provinces and cities across the country unanimously agreed that the plant was successful and promising, and that small synthetic ammonia plants were easy to build and use.

Hou Lao, who was then the vice minister of the Ministry of Chemical Industry, was a key figure in promoting the construction of small synthetic ammonia plants in various places. At this meeting, he said that after widespread promotion, small synthetic ammonia plants could provide a large amount of nitrogen fertilizer in a short period of time to support agricultural production. If one was built in every county in the country in the near future, the nitrogen fertilizer produced would be enough to fertilize hundreds of millions of mu of land, which would play a huge role in achieving the indicators stipulated in the agricultural development program ahead of schedule.

At the end of that year, Anhui Province decided to build the first batch of 20 synthetic ammonia plants with an annual output of 800 tons. The province and each prefecture set up a "fertilizer plant construction headquarters", with the person in charge personally in charge, and quickly set off a climax of building a large number of fertilizer "small foreign groups" across the province, and 11 were built in less than half a year.

With the in-depth implementation of the national policy of developing agriculture and grain, fertilizer became one of the important products of industrial support for agriculture, and a movement was launched on the national chemical production front to prepare "food" for grain and increase fertilizer production to support agriculture.

In 1962, Danyang Fertilizer Plant in Jiangsu Province successfully tested the new process proposed by Mr. Hou to produce ammonium bicarbonate, which opened up a new path for small nitrogen fertilizer plants in various places. According to the experience of Danyang Fertilizer Plant, it usually takes only about one and a half years to build a small fertilizer plant with an annual output of tons of synthetic ammonia, with an investment of million yuan, which is about half the investment of building a plant according to the old process. After this new fertilizer plant was put into production, the consumption of power and raw materials was much lower than that of the old process.

This year, the first domestically produced synthetic ammonia unit with an annual output of 2.5 tons was put into production at the Wujing Chemical Plant in Shanghai. After technical transformation, it eventually reached an annual output of 12 tons, which is the flagship of the fertilizer industry.

During the second five-year plan from 1958 to 1962, a total of seven large nitrogen fertilizer plants were built across the country. In addition to the Wujing Chemical Plant in Shanghai, the others were located in Guangdong, Anhui, Henan, Hebei and other places, all of which are famous grain, cotton and cash crop production areas in my country, and are relatively close to power sources and raw material bases. It was the first time in the history of New China that seven large nitrogen fertilizer plants were built at the same time entirely on their own.

During this period, the principle of "walking on two legs" in the fertilizer industry was further implemented, and large and small fertilizer plants developed in parallel. By 1964, a new type of ammonium nitrogen fertilizer, ammonium bicarbonate, was used in rural areas of 11 provinces and cities across the country. This was produced by 14 small nitrogen fertilizer plants with an annual output of 2000 tons of synthetic ammonia. Farmers called it an economical "yield-increasing powder" and "harvest fertilizer."

These small fertilizer plants adopt original production processes that are in line with national conditions. The complete sets of equipment they use are designed and manufactured by themselves. They produce and supply nearby rural areas locally, with fewer freight and turnover links. Their output accounts for more than half of the country's total nitrogen fertilizer output.

Since then, small fertilizer plants have sprung up everywhere, and Longguo has become the only country that produces ammonium bicarbonate fertilizer in large quantities. Before the introduction of large fertilizer production lines in the 1970s, these small fertilizer plants were the main force in meeting the demand for agricultural fertilizers.

Wang Luo’s current task is to combine the experiences and lessons of current predecessors and strive to independently design Longguo’s large-scale fertilizer production line, so as to save foreign exchange in the future national agricultural layout, enable the country to get rid of foreign exchange dependence earlier, and end the food shortage situation ahead of schedule.

"If there is food at home, there is no need to worry." Wang Luo has seen from his fellow villagers who came to Beijing last year how important agriculture is to a country's basic development, so he wants to change this phenomenon.

Of course, Golden Finger cannot be forgotten. When he has time, he will go to Xiaobenzi or Bangzi to have a look. If he can find their fertilizer production equipment or something, he will not give up. It is not impossible for him to find a way to move it back home.

(End of this chapter)