Zhu Houzhao did not go to Mingyue Tower at this time, but returned to his leopard room.

To be exact, now he is at his own "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

The so-called "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" was still only in the initial stage, but there was only one wooden door and three brick houses.

The heavy eaves wooden door is written with eight big characters of "Royal Industrial Experimental Base", the words are written by Zhu Houzhao in his own imperial pen, although he does not have the style of a famous family, but it is also neat, and no one dares to say that he writes badly.

This double-eaves wooden door is now the main entrance of the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

The three brick houses are considered the current laboratories and manufacturing workshops of the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base", which are very simple, but there is no way, Zhu Houzhao's funds are limited, and even the leopard room is not a luxury, not to mention this "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

Even if it weren't for the sake of fire prevention, Zhu Houzhao wanted people to build a wooden shed to make do with it.

Among the three brick rooms, one is used as a warehouse, and the other two are laboratories and manufacturing workshops, all of which are large window rooms, and the laboratory does not have small windows for ventilation.

In the manufacturing workshop, on the first day of Zhu Hou's copying, he had already ordered the little eunuch to start working inside, and they were busy collecting distilled water.

Five large stoves with iron pots are boiling water in the workshop, and the hot steam meets the wooden plank groove and condenses into distilled water, which is collected by the small eunuch into a washed and dried water tank, and then sealed.

No matter how simple the soap making process is, it also belongs to chemical products, chemical products need to be prepared with distilled water, ordinary water is impurity, in order to ensure the purity of chemical products, you can only ensure that the solvent is distilled water without impurities from the beginning.

And the only laboratory of the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" is now a soap experimental workshop.

Zhu Houzhao is here now, personally directing a few small eunuchs to add distilled water to a large wooden barrel, and then after filling the water, he asked these small eunuchs to add quicklime to the large wooden barrel.

Because quicklime reacts into calcium hydroxide, that is, hydrated lime, when it meets water, it will produce a lot of heat, and the soda ash will be added more violently, in order to ensure the safety of these little eunuchs, he also specially let them wear specially made white coats.

Even, Zhu Houzhao himself put on a white coat, and the eight tigers such as Luo Xiang, Qiu Ju, and Wei Bin who followed him also followed him in white coats in accordance with his will.

Luo Xiang and other eunuchs of the "Eight Tigers" did not know what the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" meant, and they did not even understand why His Majesty had formulated the "Experimental Code" and strictly ordered those who entered the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" to wear white coats, regardless of their official rank.

They only thought that His Majesty was refining the pill, so that he could deceive the ministers of the court.

Zhu Houzhao naturally knew that these eunuchs around him didn't understand his true purpose, and as the emperor, he didn't need to explain to his minions.

This is his own territory, and naturally he can do whatever he wants.

These little eunuchs didn't understand what their majesty was going to do, so they honestly obeyed Zhu Houzhao's command to add lime to the barrel, and soon the water in the entire barrel was gurgling and tumbling.

These little eunuchs were dumbfounded, basically they grew up in the palace and didn't expect that adding lime to the water would make the water tumble violently.

Zhu Houzhao himself was not idle, when he was a child and the eunuchs added distilled water, he was making experimental records to determine the amount of various raw materials added.

Luo Xiang, Qiu Ju and other eunuchs also secretly marveled, thinking in their hearts, when will His Majesty play these magical things.

At this time, Zhu Houzhao was already busy ordering these little eunuchs to immediately pour alkali noodles into the big wooden barrel, that is, soda ash, and the water temperature rose sharply for a while, and it boiled directly, and the whole air became hot, Zhu Houzhao himself was hot and sweaty, and a large amount of water vapor that came out at this time was sharply cooled into water mist because of the cold air, making the whole brick house like a fairyland.

When the water temperature is cooled, the whole barrel becomes a precipitate of calcium carbonate and an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide, which is the first step of the reaction.

Immediately afterwards, Zhu Houzhao ordered these little eunuchs to scoop the sodium hydroxide solution into the pre-prepared iron pot with a spoon, pour the sodium hydroxide solution into the iron pot, and at the same time order people to pour the distilled high-concentration alcohol solution.

The reason why alcohol is added is because lard is insoluble in water, and adding alcohol can promote the full dissolution and contact between lard and soda ash in aqueous solution to promote the reaction.

The functional group of ethanol is hydroxide, which does not react with sodium hydroxide, so there is no problem when adding alcohol.

But contrary to expectations, there was an accident.

A little eunuch poured alcohol without paying attention, causing the sodium hydroxide solution to splash on his hand, and the highly corrosive sodium hydroxide solution began to corrode the skin of the little eunuch, Zhu Houzhao hurriedly let him put his hand into the pre-prepared vinegar jar, so as not to cause too much damage.

At this time, Zhu Houzhao ordered these eunuchs to add lard to the iron pot and let them stir constantly.

This time, the eunuchs did not dare to be careless, and after seeing the power of sodium hydroxide, they carefully poured in the lard and stirred, and soon, the lard gradually dissolved and saponified with sodium hydroxide and formed a viscous liquid.

But this did not mean the end, Zhu Houzhao personally came over and took a small bottle with a small porcelain bottle and added it to the pre-prepared distilled water to stand, and found that there was still oil separated, so he ordered the eunuch to continue to add sodium hydroxide solution to the iron pot, and at the same time heat the iron pot as always.

After repeating this several times, Zhu Houzhao finally asked the eunuchs to saponify the lard and obtain a large amount of viscous mixture containing soap, which was the second step of the reaction.

Then, it is salting out treatment, Zhu Hou ordered the eunuchs to add the viscous liquid to the pre-saturated salt solution, and after standing, the soap will float because of the salting out, and then do further alkalizing treatment to become a pure soap liquid.

Finally, it is cooled and solidified.

Looking at the solid soap solidified into yellow in the iron pot, Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but smile with satisfaction.

Even if the first modern industrial product of the Ming Imperial Industrial Experimental Base was born, Zhu Houzhao has reason to believe that it will change this era and bring a lot of economic benefits to himself.

However, this does not mean that mass production can be carried out now, Zhu Houzhao also has to quantitatively record the experimental process, and then conduct another experiment to optimize the most efficient and low-cost process.

Zhu Houzhao finally determined the soap-making process of his Royal Industrial Experimental Base, from the required volume of wooden barrels, the corresponding amount of distilled water to be added, the corresponding amount of sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide, as well as the amount of soda ash and lard to be added in the future, and even how many times the existing liquor was distilled at how much heat.

However, the fly in the ointment was that there were no standard containers in this era, and Zhu Houzhao was unable to determine the concentration of the sodium hydroxide solution after the first step of the reaction and the concentration of the alcohol solution after the final distillation, so he could not improve the production quality and purity of the existing soap.

In any case, Zhu Houzhao could at least produce soap in batches in the Ming Dynasty.