Since the pre-Qin period, the preparation of sea salt has been boiled, and the seawater is evaporated by artificial heating, and this salt-making process consumes a large amount of fuel, that is, firewood. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

The same is heating, but there is another more trouble-free, firewood-saving method, that is, let the sea water bask in the sun, compared to the boiling salt method, this is the salt drying method.

The method is also very simple, that is, the seawater is introduced into a large salt pan composed of salt ponds, and the seawater is evaporated with the help of strong sunlight, and finally the remaining salt is obtained, which does not require artificial heating at all, so it can save a lot of costs.

Of course, Yu Wenwen knew about the salt drying method, but he had never actually operated it, so after this novel salt-making process was proposed, it was the reborn stove farmers who tried to put it into practical use.

In short, two ponds are dug on the beachside tidal flats, and the seawater is introduced into the first pool when the tide level is high, and then the water is introduced into the second pool to continue drying after the water has evaporated to a certain extent in the sun.

At this time, the pool water (brine) is very salty, and after a period of drying, the salt will gradually precipitate from the bottom of the pool.

It's really simple, but it's not so simple to do it on a large scale, but it's not a problem for cookers, who may not be literate at all, but who have been working with seawater for generations and have accumulated a wealth of experience in salt making.

Because of the full forgiveness of debts, the family situation has been greatly improved, and the enthusiasm of the stove households to ponder the new process is unprecedentedly high, and several salt farms are pondering the salt drying method at the same time, and they also exchange experiences with each other, so they quickly sorted out a set of effective salt drying processes.

The first is to build a beach, build a square beach pool according to a certain size on the flat beach along the beach, the beach pool is dug down step by step from top to bottom, the drop is generally a few inches, and there is a pool door between the upper and lower pools, which is used to guide the pool water to go down.

A platform is built in the bottom pond to store the precipitated sea salt, which is tentatively called the salt platform.

Dig two or three sides of the ditch around the beach pond to prepare for the tidal water storage, tentatively called the salt ditch, open a water gate to the ditch embankment on the sea side, and set up a sluice gate to switch and control the water flow.

Outside it, a tidal ditch is opened, which leads directly to the sea to lead the tide into the ditch, and is used to prepare the salt ditch to absorb the tide.

After the salt flat (pool) is completed, it is necessary to tidy up, dig up the soil in the pool, dry it, and then put it into the seawater to soak it thin, step on the soil evenly in the pool with your feet, and then use a scraper to flatten the bottom of the pool, and then discharge the seawater in the pool, and compact and flatten the bottom of the pool with a stone mill.

When the tide is high, when the sea reaches the highest level, open the sluice gate to divert the sea water into the salt ditch, and then use a vertical shaft windmill or rickshaw to introduce the sea water from the salt ditch to the highest level in the salt flat (pool).

After one day of drying, the seawater in the first stage pool is introduced into the second stage, and after one day of sunning, the third stage is introduced, and at the same time, the seawater is introduced into the first stage, and so on, using the sun to evaporate the seawater, so that the brine concentration in the pool becomes higher step by step.

When the brine flows into the lowest layer of the salt table, it is close to the maximum salt concentration, and the salt will be precipitated after a period of drying, which is "salt".

Of course, the process of increasing the concentration of brine by increasing the concentration of the brine by the sun requires technical operation, and it is up to people to judge whether the concentration has reached the point of "salt production", because when the brine flows into the salt table of the last stage, the concentration is not enough to lead to low salt output, and the concentration is too high and the water is not enough to also lead to low salt production.

This requires experience, but it is not a problem for stove households, in fact, there is no difference between the evaporation process and the difference between human and non-human in the evaporation process, and there is no difference in the judgment of brine concentration.

Hundreds of years of experience in boiling salt, so that the stove households are very good at how to judge the brine concentration, they divide the brine concentration into ten, ten percent of the brine is the brine with the largest concentration, to meet the conditions of salt.

How to determine the concentration of brine? It's not impossible to taste it with your tongue, but there are too many shortcomings, so the stove owners have an ancestral method, that is, to use brine floats.

This is a special float, divided into two, one for the "fifty percent float", one for the "ten percent float", if the fifty percent float in the brine rises, then it means that the brine concentration is about two to three percent, if the flat float on the brine surface is fifty percent of the brine.

If the float floats obliquely in the brine, it means that the water is seven to eighty percent brine, and if the float floats flat on the surface of the brine, it means that the brine is ten percent brine, and the salt can be produced.

Yu Wenwen looked at the two floats in his hand, and thought of a modern device for measuring the salinity of seawater: a salinity hydrometer, and looked at the sincere stove in front of him, he couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion.

These cookers are illiterate, and it is impossible to know that seawater has "salinity" and "specific gravity", nor do they know that there are chloride salts such as sodium chloride and magnesium chloride in seawater, but they rely on the accumulation of experience for generations to make low-end brine floats.

Without any theoretical basis to support, there is no scientific masterpiece, and the brine float made purely by summarizing experience is actually the prototype of a hydrometer that can measure the salinity of seawater, and it appears silently in the folk.

Empirical science, passed down from father to son, came to an abrupt end in troubled times, the brine float is still good, after all, the salt industry will not be cut off, but how many science and technology sprouted in the folk have disappeared in the long river of history in obscurity?

Yang Ji saw that Yuwen Wen was distracted, and the others did not dare to come out, so the scene was deadlocked, so he coughed dryly and let the other party come back to his senses.

"Something is good, and then what?"

"King, these are two kinds of salt, one is boiled salt, and the other is dried salt."

Two small plates each contain table salt, one dish looks very white, it is boiled salt, and the other dish looks impure in color, this is dried salt.

Yu Wenwen tasted the salt in the dish separately, it was obvious that the purity of the boiled salt was high, basically there was no miscellaneous taste, and the taste of the dried salt was mixed with bitterness, although it was not the same as Huanglian, but it could be felt.

"King, the salt drying method saves effort and firewood, but the taste of coarse salt is not good, if it is compared with boiled salt, I am afraid that ordinary people will still choose boiled salt."

Yu Wenwen nodded, he understood what the stove households meant, and as a person who had received compulsory education, he also knew why this was the case.

In addition to sodium chloride, there are also magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride and other salts in seawater.

How to eliminate this impurity? He didn't know, and the stove households knew about it originally, but in the end they figured it out.

"King, the same seawater, the salty taste of the boiled salt is relatively pure, but the salty taste of the salt is a little bitter, and the grass people have been pondering for a few days and have come up with a solution."

"That is, the coarse salt that has been dried out is dissolved in clean water and boiled on the fire, so that the refined salt obtained tastes the same as the previous boiled salt."

Another dish of salt was served, the color was white and clean, and the quality was obviously much better than the coarse salt that came out, no different from boiled salt, Yuwenwen tasted it, except for the salty taste, there was no bitter taste, and when it came to the purity of the salty taste, it was slightly better than the ordinary boiled salt.

The same is boiled, the salt boiled in the brine obtained by secondary dissolution is higher in purity than the salt boiled in the natural brine on the tidal flat, so the coarse salt obtained by the salt drying method, if the secondary treatment is not carried out, its taste is not as good as the common boiled salt.

Not far away, there is a row of new houses, which is the place for the secondary processing of coarse salt, which uses a newly built large iron pot, not to mention the firewood, there is a roof to block the sun, the new stove has a good thermal insulation effect, and the salters no longer need to endure high temperature baking when boiling salt.

The comprehensive cost of drying salt and then boiling salt is not higher than the cost of simple boiling salt, and according to Yu Wenwen's point of view, coarse salt and refined salt can actually have many tricks, among which the most profitable one is, of course, his first choice.