On New Year's Day, January 1, 1880, people from all over South America put up lanterns to celebrate the arrival of the Gregorian New Year.

In the Susong Textile Factory in Chang'an City (Córdoba), ordinary workers in the factory area went home for the holiday to celebrate New Year's Day, while inside the factory, sixty or seventy key employees of the factory, more than 100 researchers of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and technocrats stayed in the stuffy workshop, patiently waiting for the final results of the experiment.

"Mr. Lin, how sure are you that you will succeed?"

The director of Susong Textile Factory asked in a low voice.

"The newly discovered stain can easily turn blue when it encounters acidic substances, and it is difficult to improve the wet fastness to the required level if the treatment method is slightly incorrect.

Therefore, the workshop that uses the new dye to dye the cloth should add the amount of strong acidic reagents such as sulfuric acid in strict accordance with the specified proportion. ”

A young Chinese man watched the actions of several technicians operating the machine next to the dyeing pool, and said seriously: "Although the use of the new dye is limited by certain conditions, based on the technical level of the textile industry dye in England, France, the United States and other Western powers, the performance of the new dye is better than the indigo dye invented by the German Bayer two years ago.

And after hundreds of verifications in the laboratory, I can tell you with certainty that the industrial application of the new dye is at least more than 90% sure of success. ”

"With your words, I am relieved."

The director of Susong Textile Factory had a much more relaxed expression on his face. Sigh "time is only the past seven or eight years, the development of the textile industry is completely different from the past, a few years ago is still vat dyeing, urn dyeing, sulfuric acid and other handicraft workshops, now all on the textile machine, dyeing machine, cloth machine and other machine operation, it is really a year of change." ”

"Your Majesty often said earlier that with the rapid development of science and technology today, it is very difficult for other countries to catch up after being a little behind."

A young man belonging to the Royal Academy chimed in: "Take the development of the dye industry in Western countries in recent years, in 1873, the French chemists Crucion and Bretonnier obtained brown sulfur dyes in the roasting experiment of lignite, steel powder, paper, leather, etc., with sodium sulfide and sulfur.

Not long ago, the Englishmen Thomas and R. Hollid soaked the sodium salt solution of ethyl naphthol on cotton cloth in a low temperature environment, and then used ethylnaphthylamine diazo salt to develop color, successfully turning cotton fibers red, so as to obtain an ice dye. …………

Western countries did not start much earlier than us in chemical textile dyes, but looking at the rapid development of science and technology in Germany, England, the United States and other countries, we can not just imitate the introduction, independent research and development of new technologies is the right way. ”

"In the past few years, the local educated population is small, the country lacks application-oriented and research-oriented talents, and it is an objective fact that science and technology lag behind the West as a whole, but after ten years of large-scale financial subsidies and investment, the number of students studying abroad has exceeded 3,000, and the first six batches of international students who have returned to China can engage in basic technology research, and emerging industries such as chemical industry and electrical industry will not be unavailable." …………

While several young chemical researchers talked, the textile workers carefully fished out the dyed cloth and dried it in a medium-high temperature environment.

Two hours later, the initial drying of the earliest dyed grey cloth was completed, and the workers took out a large red cloth more than ten meters long and spread it on the platform, and everyone gathered around and discussed loudly.

"Director Wang, how is the color of the cloth?"

"It's good, it's beautiful, the cloth doesn't fade or wrinkle after being soaked in water and washed, it's a good dye of the highest quality."

The director of Susong Textile Factory touched the bleached and dyed cloth and exclaimed.

"Naturally it is a good dye, the use of this dye to dye grey cloth, not only the dyeing effect is good, no fading, and the cost of dye is about two percent lower than that of Western mainstream dyes, if it is combined with the latest printing and dyeing machine, the cost of dye can be reduced."

"Now the price of a finished cloth is two Han Yuan, if the cost of dyes consumed by each finished cloth is reduced by two percent, it can save a lot of money in a year."

The director of the factory said with joy on his face, "The cost is low, the cloth color is good, and after the use of new dyeants, our finished cloth export advantage will be higher."

Mr. Lin, this is a great thing, you should take advantage of today's festive day to let Your Majesty know as soon as possible. ”

"Don't be in a hurry for this time, Director Wang may not know that the research and development of new dyes is carried out under the leadership of His Majesty, and the research and development principles and various components of new dyes are proposed by His Majesty, and we are just carrying out detailed experiments according to His Majesty's prompts."

A researcher who successfully completed the research and development of a new type of dye, a man named Lin Shenhe explained.

"But the trial production of the new dye is successful, so we should always give this new dye a name, right?"

"At the end of the verification experiment the day before yesterday, His Majesty personally chose the name, which is called Congo Red Dye, which means to commemorate the country's first large overseas colony." ……

Used as a dye in the textile industry is only one of the many uses of Congo red, it can also be used as an acid-base indicator agent, a bioanalytical reagent, as an adsorption indicator, for the determination of halides, thiocyanates and zinc, and in large quantities in paper production.

In 1869, during the same period when Mendeleev grouped the periodic table, the chemical industry of the Han Kingdom also began to take off, and the rubber industry was the earliest chemical branch industry to be put into practical application.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, chemical industry has not yet become an independent industrial category, and Li Mingyuan, as a graduate of applied chemical engineering, although he only learned broad and basic chemical knowledge, but the knowledge system based on the premise of the wisdom summary of his predecessors for a hundred years has not yet been put forward in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.

A set of chemical reaction equations behind a common chemical process in later generations, a simple principle of chemical phenomena, can be a major chemical discovery alone, but limited to the current overall level of science and technology, Li Mingyuan can only write out some knowledge that can be remembered, hand it over to local students who have returned from studying abroad, and then pay attention to confidentiality, and strictly limit this knowledge to a small number of researchers in the chemical industry of the Royal Research Institute.

The discovery of Congo red reagent is a small progress in dye chemical industry, and in the planning of the chemical system of Han Guoda, the chemical branch industries that are currently developing include dyes, rubber, explosives, soda ash, pharmaceutical chemicals, coal chemicals, plastics, catalyst chemicals, photosensitive materials, coating industry, artificial fibers, petrochemicals, and fertilizer industries, a total of 13 directions.

In the chemical dye industry, the work of alkali melting with aminoanthraquinone as the main raw material to obtain reduced blue RSN substances, separation and obtaining 2-naphthol-3-formylaromatic amine with higher firmness, and improvement of naphthol AS color system are still in progress, and the current research direction is mainly inorganic dyes, and the development of organic dyes has to wait until after the twentieth century.

In terms of rubber industry, the local mastery of pneumatic bicycle tire technology has attracted the attention of Germany, Britain and other scientific circles, the use of natural rubber as raw materials, the development of a variety of practical products of scientific research, Western countries are also stepping up, at the same time, relying on the early accumulation of technical advantages, some local researchers in the Academy of Sciences began to follow the technical plan prepared by Li Mingyuan, try to use aniline as a vulcanizing agent, carbon black as a reinforcing agent, continue to improve the plasticity of rubber related experiments.

Soda ash can be used in glass manufacturing, food processing industry, monosodium glutamate production and other industries,

In 1861, E. Solvay was working on the concentration of dilute ammonia at the gas plant, absorbing ammonia and dioxygen with brine

Sodium carbonate is obtained in the test of carbonization. In the same year, he was offered a job to produce sodium carbonate from table salt, ammonia and carbon dioxide

patents for industrial production methods.

This production method is known as the Solvay method, also known as the ammonia-alkali method. In 1863, E. Solvay and his brother A. Solvay raised funds to form Solvay Gongtong and established a soda ash plant in Couille, Belgium, which was put into operation in January 1865 and produced 10 tons per day in 1872.

In 1873, the soda ash produced by Solvay Company won the Rongpu Award for Quality Purity at the Vienna International Exposition, and since then until the fifties of the twentieth century, the Solvay method has been the mainstream method of making soda ash.

It is relatively difficult to improve the Sowell method, and the local research direction in this area is to try to restore the main process flow of Hou's alkali production method with the fragmented technical points provided by Li Mingyuan.

The Han Dynasty started with the military, and the military weapons and equipment directly related to the explosives chemical industry is also the focus of the large chemical development plan, the production of smokeless gunpowder picric acid has two main methods, namely the sulfonation of phenol and the nitrification of dinitrophenol, the latter is prepared by the hydrolysis of chlorodinitrobenzene. The first method involves a two-step process that includes a sulfonation step of the phenol, followed by a nitration of the resulting sulfonated phenol. However, such a process has a number of drawbacks: long sulfonation times and inevitably low productivity levels, and then nitrification in diluted media, which in turn leads to reduced productivity. Another method for the preparation of picric acid also involves the nitration of chlorobenzene in the many steps to obtain chlorodinitrobenzene, which is subsequently hydrolyzed and then nitrified dinitrophenol from a mixture of nitric acid and oleum. This method is unsatisfactory due to its long time, complexity, and high level of pollution.

The general method of making picric acid is recorded in Li Mingyuan's mind, but because it is a matter of confidentiality, the personnel engaged in the research of picric acid production methods are all locally cultivated Chinese students, and they have suffered many setbacks in the experimental process, and it was not until the day before New Year's Day in 1880 that the experimental preparation technical route was completed.

Rubber chemical industry, dye chemical industry, soda ash chemical industry, explosive chemical industry is one of the top chemical industry in the large chemical system, and more than 70% of the local chemical talents trained in the past ten years and the chemical talents studying abroad are concentrated in the above four major chemical branch industries.

Man-made fibers used as textile raw materials, plastic chemicals in the polymer processing stage, photosensitive materials mainly used to produce camera films, and other chemical sub-industries such as coal chemical industry and petrochemical industry with immature technical conditions, although some products have export advantages, but considering the difficulty of subsequent technology development, they are only in the stage of technical reserves, and are not the key direction of development in the next ten years.