Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1004 Project 2300
Due to the extremely urgent demand for explosives from all sides, the explosives factory put into trial production under the slogan of "production while construction".

Restricted by the technical level and production capacity of the chemical industry itself, from 1629 to the beginning of 1631, when the first batch of black powder was officially manufactured, the types of gunpowder in the Senate only increased by three types: maroon gunpowder and nitroglycerin. and mercury.Maroon gunpowder has only recently been put into production and is used as propellant for the increasing number of forts and large-caliber artillery used by the navy-maroon gunpowder burns slowly and is not easy to explode when used as propellant for heavy artillery.

All in all, the Senate has a complete range of propellant and explosive products: gun propellant, priming powder, and explosives are all available.Although the technical level is not high, it can roughly meet the current needs.

The biggest problem is that there is a large gap in the heavy explosives that are in great demand in the army and civilians.At present, the only strong explosive that can be mass-produced in them is the nitroglycerin that is passivated with diatomaceous earth-Dynamite explosive.

Because nitroglycerin itself requires a sufficient scale of the glycerin industry, and the glycerin industry needs a sufficient scale of the oil industry as a support.Moreover, the texture of glycerin needs to be quite pure-the chemical industry of the Industrial Energy Commission mainly produces glycerin through saponification, and there are many impurities.Capacity is limited.So far, Dynamite explosives are only used in a small amount in civil engineering, and black powder is widely used in the military to load shells and grenades.

Although some people think Dynamite can be used to load grenades - it is common to use Dynamite to fill mines in the old world.The problem is that Dynamite cannot be used to load shells. When the shells are fired, the G force is as high as thousands, and Dynamite will inevitably cause the chamber to explode.

The detonation velocity of black powder is too low, there are many residues, and the sensitivity is high.As a propellant for a Minie rifle, it is not bad, but as a military explosive, it is really difficult.The engineers of the Industrial Energy Commission have been trying to find a suitable substitute to replace the dominance of black powder.

The requirement is that the manufacturing process is as simple as possible, the supply of raw materials is sufficient, the power is sufficient, there is a certain degree of safety, and it can be used to load shells.

In response to this requirement, personnel from the chemical industry department and the military industry department proposed two sets of plans: one is to use the by-product phenol of the coal coking joint plant to produce picric acid, and the other is the black powder power multiplication process.

The process of picric acid is relatively simple. In the history of old time and space, it was synthesized in Britain in 1771.Phenol is sulfonated with concentrated sulfuric acid or sodium sulfite, and finally nitrated with concentrated nitric acid.The difficulty is the preparation of phenol.If there is no coal coking industry, fat cracking process or wood tar extraction has to be used.They now have a ready-made coal tar industry that can provide phenol fairly steadily, so it is relatively easy to make picric acid.

The production code of picric acid is 0017 project - because of the production process proposed by Xu Yingjie, the final yield is 17%.

Another project besides picric acid is the Black Powder Power Multiplication Project.This was proposed by Lin Shenhe.To put it simply, it is to improve the process and processing methods to double the power of black powder, so that it can temporarily replace part of the explosives.

Now Lin Shenhe's working place is in an earth and stone enclosure of the explosives factory. The enclosure is only one meter high, and a wicker fence is planted around the enclosure. Seven or eight labor reform prisoners are filling the middle with stones.The fence is surrounded by artificial forests and natural forests planted by the Forestry Department, which is extremely secretive.From the outside, it was just a forest. An inconspicuous dirt road meandered to the fence. There was a ditch beside the path. There was a mound at the end of each bend to block debris and shock waves when people evacuated.This path is only used for walking, and another simple railway is under construction for transportation. For the time being, only hand-operated railcars and ox-pulled railcars can be used.The official name of this enclosure is the First Research Center of the Specialty Chemical Consortium, and the code name of the project presided over by Lin Shenhe is Project 2300.

He was wearing a black cotton overalls at the moment, watching nervously as several workers unloaded an inconspicuous machine from the rail car.

The machine is not big, simply wrapped with waterproof canvas.The workers carried it to the laboratory.Jiang Ye, who was in charge of installing and debugging the machinery, jumped out of the car.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two entered the dedicated laboratory of the research center together.

The laboratory is surrounded by thick concrete walls with sandbags inside and outside the walls.The roof is a wooden light structure, which is equivalent to a pressure relief plate.Outside the house, there are two deep explosion-proof ditch - if the people in the laboratory can escape in time, they can jump into it for refuge.

The laboratory is empty, except for the concrete base used to install the machine, there are only a few tanks of different sizes.Illumination is provided by natural light from skylights on the roof - to reduce the heat from the sun, the glass is covered with a black shade net.Rows of copper "radiators" are installed on the walls and under the floor of the house, but the cold air is overwhelming - the earthen alcohol thermometer shows that the temperature in the room is only 12°C.Instead of steam flowing through the radiators, water was cooled with a mixture of ice and salt.Because fireworks are strictly prohibited, gas air conditioners, their best refrigeration equipment, cannot be used, and the cooling effect of ground energy air conditioners may not be satisfactory.This forced cooling effect is adopted.

"It's cold enough—" Jiang Ye was sweating profusely, and wearing a short-sleeved sweater, he shuddered immediately when he walked in.

Lin Shenhe gave him a coat: "Put it on, the temperature here must be kept low for safe production."

The canvas was unwrapped, and inside was a bland machine.If someone has a little understanding of mechanical equipment, it can be seen at a glance that this is a hydraulic screw press.

"It was manufactured according to your requirements." Jiang Ye introduced while directing the workers to install, "It is a hydraulic screw type, with a simple structure and a stable stroke. It can be rotated and pressurized stably by hand. It fully meets your technical requirements. Brass is used for the dies, press heads and other places where there might be friction, so there are no sparks."

Lin Shenhe walked around the machine a few times: "You have to ensure that you fully meet the technical requirements, or I will be wiped out as soon as work starts tomorrow..."

Jiang Ye knows that making fire and explosives is all about working with his head, and there is absolutely no exaggeration.

"Don't worry, it's done completely according to the technical information you gave me. From the manufacture of parts to the assembly of the machine, the veterans did it by themselves, and I didn't dare to let the naturalized people do it."

Lin Shenhe nodded.He was still a little worried.His process is not difficult, but it has high requirements on the surrounding environment: the ambient humidity should not be lower than 60%, and the temperature should not be higher than 20 degrees.Otherwise, it will cause an explosion—no matter how weak the power of black powder is, it is still no problem to kill and injure a large number of people in such a room.

He has roughly solved the temperature with water and air conditioners.Humidity - The humidity in Lingao summer is very high, sometimes up to 90%.Even so, he ordered an air humidifier from the machinery factory to humidify when necessary.He also specially prepared a naturalized person to monitor the thermometer and hygrometer.

Jiang Ye was a little curious: "You are so mysterious, what kind of magic do you want to play? 'Black powder doubles the power', are you going to mix it with nitroglycerin?"

"The black powder mixed with nitroglycerin is used for suicide." Lin Shenhe said, "I want to use black powder, and I don't add anything else."

"What method is that used?" Jiang Ye became more and more curious.

"You should always know that the greater the density of explosives in the space, the greater the power of the explosion." Lin Shenhe said, "The power multiplication of black powder is based on this principle-to increase the density of black powder as much as possible."

The specific name of the 2300 project is black powder high-energy charge technology.Lin Shenhe had kept this technology secret before—he himself was not sure about it. After D-Day, as the person in charge of the military industry department, he conducted several small-scale experiments in private using laboratory equipment and raw materials. The test, and the actual combat test was carried out by using the public security warfare mission in Danzhou, and this plan was formally proposed after thinking that there was no problem.

To put it simply, the black powder high-energy charging technology is to press high-quality powdered black powder into a black powder column by a low-temperature wet pressing process.Creates a high-density black powder charge.Due to the extremely high density of this kind of powder, it can no longer be detonated by the traditional ignition method. It must use a special detonator to detonate, which greatly improves the safety.

In terms of power, the low-temperature wet pressing method is used to suppress the black powder powder column, which can increase the packing density to above 2.3g/cm3.This kind of high-density grain needs to be detonated with a detonator, and the detonation velocity can reach more than 2600m/s.The filling density of black powder in the traditional filling method is not higher than 1.7g/cm3, and the detonation velocity is not higher than 800m/s-in fact, black powder is deflagration rather than explosion.In terms of power, it is no longer doubling—this kind of powder column press-packing method can increase the explosive power of black powder of equal weight by more than 60%.Calculated by detonation velocity, it is equivalent to 39% of TNT and 36% of picric acid.

What this efficiency means, Lin Shenhe is very clear: that is to say, instead of spending a lot of resources to point new technology points on the technology tree, you can directly "upgrade" the black powder to double the power .The economy is far better than the 0017 project.This is very attractive to the Planning Academy and the Executive Committee.

To produce picric acid means that a large amount of phenol is required, a new production plant needs to be built, and additional sulfuric acid and nitric acid are required.The power of black powder is multiplied, and it only needs to simply add a few machines, and the black powder in the original inventory can exert greater power.

(End of this chapter)