Autumn in Pyongan County has always been pleasant, and this has been the case for thousands of years, until one day the mysterious people of the East Coast came here......

Inside and outside Ping'an County, in a small space, there are many chimneys, dusty noses, and even the air seems to be filled with a smell of gas, which impresses newcomers. In the face of such serious environmental pollution, in order to avoid physical harm, Qian Hao, the magistrate of Ping'an County, even moved his office to the Ping'an Fort, about 10 kilometers north of the Ping'an Port Wharf and at the mouth of the Ping'an River. However, considering that Ping'an Fort is located in the economic lifeline of the East Coast Republic of China - the General Administration of Textile Industry and the Ping'an Machinery Weaving Factory, and a large area around it is a controlled area, and it is very difficult to manage the entry and exit of such a large group of people in and out of the Ping'an County Government, so in April of the first half of this year, he moved the administrative office eastward to about ten kilometers east of the later Alvorada.

It is beautiful, with rivers and lakes, shady trees, and fertile land, which is ideal for the development of agriculture and animal husbandry and the orchard economy. Therefore, with the approval of the Executive Committee, the Ping'an County Government decided to set up a new town in this area to serve as the new seat of Ping'an County. The city, which is almost two kilometres in circumference and second only to Port Oriente, is already under construction, and the town is named Dawn Town ("Alvorada", meaning dawn in Portuguese). Last month, Qian Hao, the county magistrate, had already taken the administrative team to the Dawn Fort, which was still under construction, and at the same time began to apply for immigration to Lu Shangtou to develop agriculture and animal husbandry and orchard planting in the local area. After Liming Town was upgraded to the seat of Ping'an County, the original Ping'an Town was renamed Ping'an Township, and it is still the only heavy industry center in China.

And at the moment, the most polluted Ping'an Port Wharf Industrial Zone. A newly established factory stands in the middle of large state-owned enterprises such as the Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, the Coking Plant, the Dye Factory, the First Machinery Factory, and the Northern Arsenal. The wooden sign hanging at the gate of the factory reads "Northern Soda Factory" with five big characters. Soda plant. As the name suggests, the plant's products are all kinds of alkaline chemicals, more precisely soda ash - the scientific name sodium carbonate.

The turmoil in the French cotton market had spread from Bordeaux to China a few months earlier, and the members of the Executive Committee attached great importance to this matter. Putting aside their various countermeasures, this incident also reminded the members of the Executive Committee that the single cotton industry is destined to have poor anti-risk ability of the East Coast people. It just so happened that the country had been consciously developing the leather processing industry to make full use of the very rich local sources of animal hides, but the pace of development has not been fast enough due to various factors such as manpower. As soon as this incident came out, the people of the East Coast immediately felt the crisis. Therefore. Under the instruction of the Executive Committee, the Government Council took this turmoil as an opportunity to start planning and integrating the development of the leather processing industry.

In order to develop the leather processing industry, all kinds of chemicals required in the previous process, that is, the tanning process, such as soda ash, sulfuric acid, alum (a substitute for potassium dichromate, the main component of liquid chromium), are indispensable. Among them, the East Coast people have achieved large-scale industrial production of sulfuric acid, and the first chemical plant in Ping'an Township uses the tower method to produce more than 300 tons of sulfuric acid with an annual purity of more than 76%; Soda ash and alum are still in a state of mass imports and cannot be self-made. Let's not talk about it first, just say that this soda ash is definitely the most urgently needed chemical intermediate for people on the East Coast at the moment.

Soda ash is a substance. It is in great demand in today's fast-growing industrial system on the East Coast, and is used in large quantities in steel, paper, printing and dyeing, tanning, textiles and the soon-to-be-growing soap industry. In the past, the East Coast people partly used natural soda ash imported from Europe. Some use substitutes such as lime water, plant ash, etc. to fool around. However, it is obviously not possible now, such as printing and dyeing and textiles, to compete with Europeans, in addition to price, more attention should be paid to the improvement of product quality. In order to improve the quality, some of the current processing processes that are not very standardized should be corrected, such as the cotton degreasing process, it is best to use soda ash, and the same is true when tanning animal skins. Otherwise, if the product quality cannot be opened up with Europe in a big way, it is not a very reliable thing to rely on the price alone.

In such a situation, this northern soda plant, which focuses on soda ash manufacturing, came into being. Due to the lack of a method to produce ammonia, the process of producing soda ash in the plant still uses the ancient Lübran method, and all the production processes and equipment are designed by Song Qiang, a former middle school teacher who is now the director of the No. 1 Chemical Plant and the director of the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences. The Lübran method was invented by the Frenchman Lübland in the 18th century, and the equipment and conditions required for production are very low, and it can even be said that there is basically no need for special equipment.

The first step in the production of soda ash by Lublan is to react salt (sodium chloride) with concentrated sulfuric acid to obtain sodium sulfate. As for sodium sulfate, the North Soda Plant can directly ask the No. 1 Chemical Plant in Jushu Township, which has been steadily producing some sodium sulfate, and the hydrogen chloride gas obtained during the reaction process also uses a spray absorption tower - just like the absorption tower in the sulfuric acid production process - to absorb and prepare hydrochloric acid. At present, Song Qiang is also the director of the first chemical plant and the northern soda plant, and it is not a problem at all to transfer some finished products to the soda plant.

Once sodium sulfate is available, it can be heated with distilled charcoal and limestone. In this process, it is necessary to design a heating furnace, and by heating the air in the furnace or simply introducing hot air, sodium sulfate reacts with charcoal to produce the intermediate product sodium sulfide that everyone needs. After sodium sulfide is generated, it also reacts with the limestone in the furnace to form calcium sulfide and finally the finished product we need, sodium carbonate (soda ash).

Of course, the finished product produced by the reaction in the last step of the heating furnace is actually a mixture, and the composition is relatively complex, including soda ash, unreacted charcoal and by-product calcium sulfide, of which soda ash accounts for more than 40%. This purity is obviously not enough, so further purification is needed at this time. Since neither charcoal nor calcium sulfide are soluble in water, while soda ash is soluble in water, then it is very easy to do. The black charcoal inside is less dense than water, basically floating on the surface of the water, while the calcium sulfide is precipitated at the bottom of the water, and after these two substances are removed, sodium carbonate is precipitated by crystallization, and then the finished product is usable.

From this, we can see that Lübran is very suitable for the existing industrial level on the east coast, and it is completely feasible to use local methods. As long as you know the principles of the Dao, then there are no obstacles to the technique and equipment at all. In fact, the North Soda Plant has been in trial production several times in July, and the purity of sodium carbonate obtained when the last production was successful has been measured to reach more than 96%, which fully meets the purity requirements required for industrial production. With these high-purity sodium carbonates, the massive amount of soda ash required in China, whether it is papermaking, tanning, glass, printing and dyeing, textiles and other light industries, or basic heavy industries such as iron and steel metallurgy, can be completely localized. It is important to know that a Ping An Iron and Steel Plant alone consumes about 150 tons of soda ash (desulfurization) every year, and if the tanning industry is to be developed in the future, the soda ash required for the process of tanning animal skins is even more massive. Now after the successful operation of the northern soda plant, the country has saved a lot of money to import soda ash from Europe, so science and technology are really the first productive forces.

The development of the chemical industry in the past two years has been limited by the lack of talents, and the development has been relatively slow, but it is quite resolute, step by step. First, potassium nitrate was produced by soil method, and then concentrated sulfuric acid was prepared by soil production in the first chemical plant, and then there were inorganic drugs such as sodium sulfate and ferrous sulfide, and now there is soda ash prepared from sodium sulfate - sodium carbonate. The whole production system has been operating step by step, step by step, not only building some factories, but also cultivating a large number of talents.

According to the arrangement of the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences, they may have to launch a production line for producing caustic soda-sodium hydroxide this year and next, depending on the situation. Now that sodium carbonate can be industrially produced, it is logical to produce some caustic soda by reacting it with lime water (calcium hydroxide) for use. Sodium hydroxide, one of the three acids and two alkalis, is also an extremely important chemical raw material, with which the next step can be to produce soap. The principle is roughly that the oil and caustic soda produce a saponification reaction to produce soap. This is a money-making weapon, you must know that in Europe at this time, soap is a luxury that only the aristocracy can afford.

Once the East Coasters can industrialize the production of soap on a large scale and bring it down at a high price so that more people can afford it, then this will definitely be another cash cow for the East Coast in addition to textiles. However, when to launch a soap product needs to be considered holistically, mainly political and economic considerations, that is, whether there should be a rush to launch such a money-making weapon that is likely to attract people's attention before a strong self-protection ability, and whether European countries can tolerate a large outflow of silver from their own countries. This is not alarmist, in order to buy large quantities of grain from Poland, merchants often had to ask the king to allow the outflow of precious metals so that they could pay the Poles for grain in time.

Of course, these are all things that the Executive Committee needs to consider, and the technical bureaucrats of the Institute of Chemistry do not need to engage in those miscellaneous things, they only need to do a good job in technical aspects, just like the soda ash production in front of them. The Executive Committee will naturally ask them to start the production line when they think it is time to start the soap project, and if the Executive Committee thinks that the time is not very right, then they will have to rest for a while. Of course, it is not impossible to prepare some high-end soaps (such as whale oil soap) privately for the traversers and their families to enjoy, but this is another matter. (To be continued......)