Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1528 Progress in Basic Industry ([-])

The dye market has not been a small market since ancient times, and it has always been very prosperous.This is true whether in China or Europe, or in West Asia and the Middle East.However, most of the ancient dyes are vegetable or mineral dyes, and they are much worse than chemical dyes in terms of color brightness and color fastness. They are afraid of washing and exposure to the sun, which are the common shortcomings of ancient dyes. These are exactly what chemical dyes can avoid.

The chemical dyes currently produced by the dye factory in Ping'an County on the east coast, such as aniline violet, anilin black, anilin yellow, anilin red, etc., are very popular in the market, and there are almost no domestic high-end textiles. No chemical dyes are used, because the improvement of product quality is too obvious.Only those middle and low-grade textiles, because of the limited supply of chemical dyes, cannot buy such high-end goods, so they can only import relatively cheap vegetable dyes from abroad, but the quality can be imagined.

Therefore, in today's East Coast domestic market and even the world market - the Dutch spend a lot of money every year to purchase part of the East Coast chemical dye procurement quota - there is a very broad market, Liu Xuefei wants to enter this field, no doubt It has a unique vision, although the purpose of others may not be to make money.

Liu Xuefei has now established a private research group.Most of the members of this group are recruited from domestic junior high school graduates. I am learning some superficial chemical knowledge.

This knowledge is allowed by the state to be taught among the people, mostly inorganic chemistry, and it is a little deeper than the content in junior high school textbooks, so everyone has signed a confidentiality agreement and voluntarily accepts the supervision of the Syphilis Patient Statistics and Investigation Bureau at any time, otherwise I am afraid there is no one. involved in this research work.After all, even the knowledge of inorganic chemistry is a deafening thing to scholars in the Old Continent where this field is almost blank. This can be seen from the fact that the Dutch spent a lot of money on junior high school chemistry textbooks. Knowledge beyond the age, although it is superficial.

The control of inorganic chemistry is so strict, not to mention organic chemistry, it is basically impossible to spread to the outside world.At the beginning, Liu Xuefei was engaged in the research of dyes in private, because it involved a lot of knowledge of organic chemistry, so it attracted a lot of attention from all walks of life. In the end, it was her supernatural powers, and she had to get a license through her connections, so she pulled up such a team.She even wasn't sure how many of the junior high school graduates she recruited were agents of Mei's agency, she only knew that there must be some, because the big bosses were not at ease.

When it comes to organic chemistry, the progress of Dong'an in recent years is really not very fast, and the breakthrough is mainly obtained from the field of dyes.To put it more simply, it is the theoretical research extended through the preparation of aniline violet, and it can be seen that it is basically market-oriented.At present, the East Coast people have learned through a large number of experiments and conclusions that the main component of organic compounds is carbon, and usually contains hydrogen and oxygen, and sometimes nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus; in addition, the quantitative analysis of organic compounds has also been carried out. Beginning to appear in high school teaching courses, this method is to take the known weight of the reactant and measure the weight of carbon dioxide and water when it burns.The data from this combustion, combined with the atomic weights of carbon and hydrogen, allowed the researchers to determine the number of atoms in a molecule of a compound containing only these two elements.This analysis method is crucial to determine the structure of organic compounds, and it is also one of the most basic (but also very important) methods. At present, people from the Academy of Natural Sciences are also studying the determination of other organic compounds containing sulfur and phosphorus. method of structure.

Perhaps due to the influence of dyes, the current research on organic matter by people on the east coast is mainly concentrated in coal tar, and many people claim that coal tar is a "rich and huge treasure" for organic chemists.For example, an important experiment in the high school affiliated to the Academy of Natural Sciences is to treat benzene separated from coal tar with nitric acid to produce nitrobenzene, a yellow oily substance; if it goes a little deeper, the teacher will ask The students reduced nitrobenzene to produce aniline, another oily substance.

It can be seen that the research on organic substances such as benzene, nitrobenzene, and aniline has actually been very in-depth on the east coast, and they have also found a large number of methods to prepare aniline, but they are limited by the availability of raw materials and intermediate chemicals. The output is always relatively limited—to be precise, among various dyes such as aniline violet, magenta (rose aniline), rose aniline blue, and aniline black, the one with the smallest output is rose aniline blue, and the one with the largest output is aniline black. .

The great increase in the output of nigrosine benefited from the development of the "simplified" chlor-alkali chemical industry on the east coast. The generation of strong oxidants such as chlorates made it possible to oxidize cotton textiles impregnated in aniline salts on a large scale, and this The result of this oxidation reaction is naturally black cloth - the Spanish priests especially like the black textiles produced on the east coast. The quality and fineness of the black cloth are excellent, not to mention how comfortable it is to wear.

Compared with the mass production of aniline black, the output of rose aniline blue is quite poor.The reason for this is mainly because there are some technical obstacles, that is, melanine blue is not very soluble in water, and its use is not wide enough.However, it is said that the Academy of Natural Sciences has recently found a more interesting improvement, which is to use concentrated sulfuric acid to treat roseaniline blue.In this treatment method, part of the sulfuric acid molecules entered the interior of the dye molecule, and the dye itself was sulfonated!However, compared with dealing with dyes, the sulfonation reaction itself may be more worthy of people's attention, because it is a new cognition for everyone, and it is a field that has never been involved before, which means infinite possibilities and great importance. It goes without saying.

Of course, the people on the east coast not only discovered the sulfonation reaction, they also discovered the extremely important thing of the diazotization reaction during a large number of chemical experiments (a large amount of financial allocation was "spent" in this way...), And this led to the development of a series of new dyes, because the objects produced by the diazotization reaction of aniline can produce highly colored bodies after being treated with phenol, and one of them is named "Ping An Brown" (born in In a laboratory in Ping'an County, later known as "Bismarck Brown").

However, no matter whether it is sulfonation reaction or diazotization reaction, the current research on it by Dongan people is still limited to a very low-level stage, which is equivalent to touching the threshold. There is still a long way to go before deep understanding and large-scale application. There is a way to go.Now, these two reactions are just a tool for some advanced researchers to mix various colors in the laboratory for fun.

As a senior chemical researcher, Liu Xuefei is naturally very familiar with the progress of dye technology in the Institute of Chemistry, Academy of Natural Sciences, but as a researcher who is inclined towards industrial applications, she herself is not very interested in such "cutting-edge technologies". She is more concerned about how to carry out industrialization in the organic chemical industry, such as how to optimize the production of aniline, which is called the "king of intermediates" in dye chemical industry.

In addition to studying, her own private research team probably did the most to cooperate with her in researching the use of nitric acid and sulfuric acid to treat benzene separated from coal tar, and then produce aniline.She personally spent a huge amount of money to set up a miniature aniline production line, and then continued to research and experiment, optimizing each production link, trying to be the best; the amount and usage of nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and acetic acid (needed for reduction) Research has also been done to maximize savings on these expensive raw materials - sulfuric acid may be cheaper on the east coast, but nitric and acetic acids are ridiculously expensive as there are no large-scale industrial production lines for either , and some are mostly laboratory preparation or semi-manual production.

Regarding Liu Xuefei's ambition to devote himself to the dye industry, the three friends here are not very optimistic, because as long as they are not blind, they can see that this kind of research is actually a bottomless pit, and no amount of money is enough to make it.Don’t you see, now the state-owned dye factory, the dye department of the Chemical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the coal tar department and other units are only steadily making plans to complete a small goal every year?It's not that they don't want to do more experiments and research, but there are too many projects and not enough money, so what can they do?We can only pick important projects!

"Could it be possible that you still want to be the king of aniline production?" This was the initial question my friends asked Liu Xuefei.However, when they learned that Liu Da's scientists researched more efficient and lower-cost production methods for aniline, they only wanted to earn a lot of money for their next scientific "spend" in the next step, and everyone could only say admiration .After all, this is the difference between life goals and ideals. Some people make money for enjoyment, while others are purely to satisfy their own ambitions. It is really impossible to say.

Wang Huadu thinks that he works for the East Coast Gas Company all day long for the sake of making money and social status, rather than the lofty reasons such as "lighting the residents" and "decorating the city's scenery" that he preaches.Therefore, in the face of relatively pure scientific researchers (or scientific research capitalists) such as Weng Guangan and Liu Xuefei, he still felt that he was a dwarf, so he did not dare to speak out, and mobilized everyone to buy East Coast Gas Company bonds or The matter of stocks was not mentioned again.On the contrary, Sheng Dehong, an intelligence bureaucrat who has never had much background, finally promised to contribute [-] yuan to buy a part of the fixed-rate bonds of the East Coast Gas Company.The money is idle, and in this country that is in a state of slow inflation, it is better to invest it to earn interest.

Everyone then chatted for about an hour or two. They said their goodbyes and left after having a sumptuous dinner together in the evening.Sheng Dehong left in a spacious oriental-style four-wheeled carriage.The carriage drove along the asphalt road where the gas lamps were installed, all the way to the dock area.He will probably stay there for one night, and then leave the mainland by boat to go to South Africa to work for a period of time, and to rectify and train the intelligence work there.

The docks at Qingdao Port are as busy as ever, even at night.On the sea near the hotel where Sheng Dehong stayed, a merchant ship flying the flag of the United Provinces was nervously loading cargo.Sheng Dehong had sharp eyes and found that the goods contained a dye they had just discussed: nigrosine, or more precisely, cotton textiles that were soaked in aniline salt and then reduced to an aniline black tone.

The textiles were stacked there one by one, then they were boxed, covered, and hoisted onto the deck of the ship. On the top of the box was written "Aniline Black Cotton Cloth" in Chinese characters. This was undoubtedly what Sheng Dehong recognized at a glance. The most common cause of dyes.Of course, the Dutch not only bought a dye such as nigrosine, but in fact they also purchased dyes of many other colors, all packed in large and small wooden barrels, which were intended to be shipped back to Leiden and sold to textile factory owners. of.

"Dye seems to be really profitable! Especially when most of the dye is extracted from such a disgusting item as coal tar. At least, it seems to make more money than selling mechanical parts, no wonder Liu Xuefei is determined to enter this industry. Sigh, it would be good if a high-efficiency aniline factory is established, but if not, then it’s just a waste of my own money.” Pulling the curtains of the room— ——It seems that the hotel owner is more willing to spend money. The color of the curtain cloth is dyed safe brown, a new type of dye that has only flowed out of the laboratory——Sheng Dehong turned and sat at the table, then made himself a pot of tea, and then Thinking about other issues.

"The Dutch have never made people worry. Apart from importing the superior products of our country, these birdmen have never stopped searching for technology. It is one thing to buy medical magazines with a lot of money. Recently, they secretly bought some Dong’an junior high school textbooks are another matter, and they have a thick skin, and they act as if nothing happened after being warned, I really don’t know what to say.” Drinking light camellia in his mouth, Sheng Dehong continued to think in his mind : "There are also British people! The businessmen of this country have not stopped smuggling all kinds of prohibited items from the east coast over the years - such as various machine parts, processing and cutting tools, etc. This is probably related to their country's manufacturing industry. Maybe it has something to do with the stronger attributes - now our country's basic industry has made great progress, and when the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Italians are extremely jealous, the pressure on Mei's agency is really not small. "

(End of this chapter)