In a blink of an eye, Zhao Guohua has traveled to the end of the Ming Dynasty for a month, he sleeps in bed every night, thinking about how to find a way to make money in this Ming Dynasty, do distilled spirits, no, he asked Sun Laohan, the Ming Dynasty has already had distilled spirits, do medicine and sell, but he has no good prescription, it seems good to open a restaurant, but Yongxin is a county town, there are not many people, not to mention hard work, making money is slow, in less than ten years, the Ming Dynasty will be over, if you don't quickly gather your own strength, form a strong army, Then after a few years, you can only choose whether to keep your hair or keep your head. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

At noon that day, Zhao Guohua came back from learning about the market in the county seat, and walked to the small river outside the village in a depressed mood in a daze.

This is the third time he's been here for inspiration. I've been in the county for more than ten days, but I haven't figured out what to do, everything that can be made in this era is being sold, and he can't make a rice cooker or a TV.

At this time, he deeply experienced the sorrow and helplessness of unemployed young people in later generations, and the difficulty of wanting to start a business but not finding a market vacancy.

"Could it be that I crossed over to kill a white tiger and save a girl? That's funny, isn't it? In later life, he will be unemployed after graduation, but Lao Tzuzi will be unemployed after crossing......" he laughed at himself.

After sitting by the river for a while, he really couldn't think of any golden idea to make a fortune, so he had to get up and go back to the village with a sad face.

After another month, he still couldn't think of a way to get rich, he couldn't sleep every night, and a few white hairs grew on his forehead.

Early in the morning, Zhao Guohua ate a bowl of half-dry and half-thin multigrain porridge, and invited Sun Fuzheng to go to Ji'an Mansion for a walk.

"Brother Sun, bring your clothes and I'll wash them." Sun Xiaomei smiled at Zhao Guohua and said

When he went back to the house to change his clothes, Zhao Guohua took the clothes and handed them to her, and said casually, "Xiaomei, don't forget to bring laundry detergent when washing clothes." ”

"Brother Zhao, what is laundry detergent?" Sun Xiaomei stopped and asked curiously.

"Huh? ......" Zhao Guohua reacted suddenly, this is the Ming Dynasty more than 300 years ago, how can there be laundry detergent.

Thinking of this, his heart jumped, and he thought: I can't make laundry detergent now, but I can make soap, but there is no soap in the Ming Dynasty.

The easiest way for ancient people to wash clothes is to rub with plant ash or soaphorn and then smash it with a mallet, and later, some people found that washing clothes with burned animal ashes is very clean, and slowly produced the first soap - animal fat and plant ash, and caustic soda appeared in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China.

Ancient people washed their hair with soap or pig poria cream. Zhu Ling paste is used by wealthy people, it is to grind the pig Ling finely, add some spices to it, and there will be a relatively strong aroma after use. Ordinary people use soap horn to shampoo their hair, and some use rice washing water to wash their hair.

The production method of soap is roughly that alkaline noodles are boiled with vegetable oil, and it is cut quickly after cooling, and it is not complicated. Once the soap is made, this is the only one in the whole Ming Dynasty. ，

"Xiaomei, what do you use to wash your clothes?" Zhao Guohua asked with excitement.

"Oh, that's it......" Xiaomei took the bag of black things and handed it to him.

Gray-white some gray powder, I don't know what it is.

"What is this?" Zhao Guohua asked.

"It's the ash left over from the burning of the bark, dead grass and some branches, which can be used to wash clothes." Sun Xiaomei said with a smile.

Grass ash (containing alkali) can be used to wash clothes.

Holding back his excitement, Zhao Guohua asked again: "So what do you use to wash your hair?" ”

"I wash my hair with rice washing water, the people in the city use soaphorns, and the rich people use pancreas and pig jelly." Sun Xiaomei said.

"Xiaomei, thank you, you have helped my brother a lot......" Zhao Guohua said excitedly.

The reason why he is happy is that he wants to make soap, and the caustic soda needed to make soap can be made as long as he finds trona.

This method was accidentally seen when he was learning how to make DIY soap on the Internet. The above links the history of the development and use of trona. He clearly remembered a sentence: "In the Song Dynasty, there was a trona mining and processing industry; In the Yuan Dynasty, the trona processing handicraft workshop became the object of taxation by the state......"

He had a good chemistry foundation in high school, and vaguely remembered that it seemed that caustic soda (NaOH) could be made from soda ash and lime water.

Sun Yiping Sun Laohan was chopping firewood in the yard, and when he saw Zhao Guohua walking out with a smile on his face, he put down the axe and said with a smile: "Guohua, but what good things happened, saying it makes the old man happy."

Zhao Guohua said with a smile: "Uncle, make something good and sell it." ”

"What's good?" Sun Laohan asked curiously.

"Something that only I have lived in overseas has and that Daming does not have." Zhao Guohua said with a smile.

"Oh! Good! Good! Sun Laohan said repeatedly.

Hearing that Zhao Guohua was going to do something that only existed in that fairy-like place, Sun Laohan couldn't help but be surprised, and his beard shook with joy.

After entering the county seat, Zhao Guohua looked into the shops on both sides as he walked, as if he was looking for something.

"Big brother, are you looking for something?" Sun Fu asked.

Nodding, Zhao Guohua said: "Yes, I'm looking for alkali, it's a block or columnar block, gray or yellow-white, shiny." ”

"This thing you're talking about is a bit like alkali stone......," Sun Fu said thoughtfully.

After thinking for a while, Zhao Guohua said: "Almost." But you have to look at it to find out, do you know where it is sold? ”

"Let's go. I'll take you to buy it. With that, Sun Fu took Zhao Guohua to a store.

Found alkali stone, sure enough, it is the natural soda ash that Zhao Guohua is looking for, alkali stone, also known as sodium sesquicarbonate, is a common soda mineral, so it is called trona, also known as alkali stone. Sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate are both inorganic salts, which are called alkalis only because they are dissolved in water to produce hydroxide ions OH-which are strongly alkaline.

rented a house, then went back to buy 20 catties of alkali stone, asked them to process and grind it and put it in bags, and then went to the place where lime paste was sold, and bought several large vats of clarified lime water and pulled it back to the yard.

Lime water is alkaline and is an aqueous solution of calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2.

"Brother Zhao, what are you buying this lime water for? Could it be ........." Sun Fuhu asked suspiciously. Zhao Guohua looked at him and nodded, and then said, "This is just one of the raw materials. ”

The two went to buy firewood, buckets, wooden basins, iron pots, paper, pens, etc., looking at these messy items, Sun Fu didn't know what the use of these items was put together.

Then Zhao Guohua poured the alkali stone into the water, dissolved it, removed the impurities, and put it in the water tank for later use.

After dinner, Zhao Guohua instructed Sun Fu to pour lime water and a certain amount of alkali stone solution into the pot and stir.

In modern society, caustic soda can be easily bought and the price is not expensive. Caustic soda is caustic soda appeared in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and the current Ming Dynasty cannot find caustic soda, but caustic soda is the main raw material for making soap.

Caustic soda (scientific name sodium hydroxide, chemical formula NaOH,) commonly known as caustic soda, caustic soda, caustic soda, is a strong alkali with strong corrosiveness, generally in the form of flakes or granules, soluble in water (exothermic when dissolved in water) and forms an alkaline solution, is a soluble strong alkali.

Caustic soda is generally made by causticizing method. Causticizing the trona solution is causticized with lime water with a concentration of not less than 2% to convert sodium carbonate into sodium hydroxide to form liquid caustic soda: the reaction formula is Na2CO3+Ca(OH)2=2NaOH+CaCO3↓

The obtained liquid soda can be made into solid caustic soda through clarification, filtration, evaporation concentration, cold precipitation, desalination and melting.

Readers don't think I'm lewd when they see this. Trona, also known as alkali stone, has become a commodity in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and there were already special alkali households in the Yuan Dynasty, and the aqueous solution of trona plus a certain concentration of lime water (calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2) can indeed be made from caustic soda after causticizing reaction.

This method was still used by some small chemical directors in the sixties of the twentieth century.

After the reaction was completed, after a day of clarification, the two scooped the clarified water into the pot with a wooden ladle and began to boil.

"Brother Zhao, what are you boiling all this water for? There's nothing in there. Sun Fu asked puzzled.

Looking at the solution in the pot, Zhao Guohua said: "You just burn the fire, and you will see the contents in a while." If we want to get rich, we will depend on it. ”

Hearing him say this, Sun Fu didn't ask again.

Soon, white precipitation began to appear in the pot, and after heating and concentrating, Zhao Guohua dipped a little with his finger and licked it with his tongue, which was slightly spicy, similar to licking peppercorns.

"No, it's not spicy enough. I still have to adjust the formula," Zhao Guohua muttered to himself.

He bought another scale, weighed the alkali stone powder, dissolved it in water, and then mixed the clear alkali stone solution with a certain amount of lime water, and put it in a pot and stirred.

The raw materials were wasted pot after pot, and the silver in his hand had shrunk from eighty taels to fifty taels.

"Big brother, let's stop doing it, you poured all the silver......" Sun Fu persuaded with a sad face.

Zhao Guohua also wanted to give up his efforts to make soap, but thinking of the tragic situation of keeping his hair without a head and leaving his hair without a head after nine years, he gritted his teeth and said, "Do it a few more times." ”

After many experiments, I finally found out the appropriate ratio of alkali stone powder and limestone, filtered to remove insoluble substances such as precipitation, and then evaporated the solution to obtain solid caustic soda.

"Ahh It's done! It's done! Zhao Guohua happily jumped on the ground a few times. That night, he took Sun Fu to the restaurant for a good meal.

After making caustic soda, Zhao Guohua and Sun Fu went to buy some lard and went back.

Back in the rented house, heat and melt a certain amount of lard that has been weighed, dissolve a certain amount of caustic soda and a small amount of salt in water, heat it, add lard, and start boiling. The room was filled with the strange smell of lard mixed with alkali.

"Brother Zhao, these things in the past taste so weird." Sun Fu said with a fire

Soon a large amount of flocculent sediment appeared in the pot, and through a burst of concentration, the soap appeared, and the happiness of more than half a month finally had a harvest.

"Brother Zhao, what is this?" Sun Fu looked at the thick soap in the pot and asked curiously.

Zhao Guoqiang said with a smile on his face: "Brother Sun, this is soap"

"Soap? What is soap used for? Sun Fu asked curiously.

Zhao Guohua said: "Soap is used to wash clothes. ”

"Laundry? This thing looks dirty, so it's nice not to stain your clothes. Sun Fu smiled in disbelief.

Zhao Guohua smiled and picked up the rag on the ground that was used to wipe his hands.

"Brother Zhao, don't pick it up, it's almost too dirty, you have to change another piece," Sun Fu said.

"Brother, do you see if this rag is dirty?" Zhao Guohua asked with a smile.