Liu Che was overjoyed today, because he saw gold, swarthy gold! Looking at the viscous dark brown liquid in front of him, he went crazy with excitement. In the "Book of Han" written by Ban Gu of the Eastern Han Dynasty in later generations, it was recorded that there was black water that could be burned in Gaonu County, and Duan Chengwu's "Youyang Miscellaneous" of Duan Chengwu of the Tang Dynasty also recorded that "Gaonu County's stone grease water, greasy floating water, such as lacquer, is used to burn lamps, and it is extremely bright." Liu Che decided that it was artesian crude oil, and sent someone to look for it, and now it really appeared in front of his eyes.

Oil, as the lifeblood of industry, was a key part of Liu Che's industrialization process in the Han Empire. In the absence of oil extraction, the discovery of crude oil artesian wells greatly accelerated his development plan. What's even more rare is that Gaonu County belongs to Shangjun, which is only a few hundred miles away from Chang'an, and the road is smooth, and it can be transported to it in a dozen days.

Of course, Liu Che is not a god, it is impossible to create petroleum fractionation equipment out of thin air, in this era when there is no special steel, if you want to build a petroleum fractionation tower, the probability of success is the same as building a spaceship, it is completely zero. However, as a crosser, as a master of chemical engineering, just a small flexibility is enough.

Since it is not possible to fractionate oil, distillation is perfectly possible. Fractionation, in fact, can be understood as multiple distillations. Distillation, the gas generally obtained is useful after condensation, and the residual substances are impurities to be discarded, such as distilled water. Fractionation, on the other hand, is all useful.

There is no way to control the temperature, fractionate all kinds of different ingredients, then completely distill, the Han Dynasty people always boiled water. As for the distillation equipment, it is almost exactly the same as the production process of sulfuric acid, as long as the opening direction of the sulfuric acid reactor is changed to horizontal, and the outlet is moved up a little. After all, it's all about collecting gases, it's just the difference between heating a solid and heating a liquid. Anyway, it's useless to get out a lot of gasoline, aviation kerosene, and diesel now, Liu Che only needs two things for the time being, one is called lamp oil, and the other is called oil residue.

In the Han Dynasty, the oil used by the common people to light the lamp is different according to the actual situation, such as rapeseed oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, pine nut oil and other vegetable oils have places for lighting, among which soybean oil is the most widely used, and the forest area is a point of pine. Princes and nobles, on the other hand, mostly used animal fats with low ignition points and small smoke as fuel, and usually used candle lamps with smoke pipes and candle drills that could place wicks in the middle of the lamp tray. If you distill lamp oil from oil, the profit can be very considerable.

And what Liu Che really wants, the residue of crude oil distillation - petroleum asphalt. Petroleum asphalt is black and shiny in color and has a high temperature sensitivity. Because it has been distilled to more than 400 degrees in the production process, it contains very few volatile components, but there may still be polymer hydrocarbons that have not volatilized, and these substances are more or less harmful to human health.

If you want to get rich, build roads first! The traffic problem has plagued Liu Che for a long time, and now the problem is almost solved.

In fact, Liu Che also considered burning cement, because many travel novels regard burning cement as the preferred task for building bridges and roads. However, after actually doing it, Liu Che found that it was almost impossible, and couldn't help but sigh up to the sky: vicious author! Why don't you give me the protagonist aura!!

In fact, there were cement-like cement-like concretions in the Han Dynasty. Qin Shi Huang built the road to Nanling is made of lime, glutinous rice water, ginger juice, plant ash, mud and sand. In the Great Wall of the Qin Dynasty, a small amount of lime was mixed with two parts of sand and small stones into the middle of two layers of wooden planks, and then the mixture in the middle of the wooden planks was rammed with a mallet until it was strong, and then water was poured on it. After two or three days, when the mixture has solidified, the planks can be removed and moved to another section for reconstruction.

During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, a building material called "sanhe soil" appeared, which was composed of lime, clay and fine sand. By the Ming Dynasty, there was a triple clay composed of lime, pottery powder and gravel. In the Qing Dynasty, in addition to the triad of lime, clay and fine sand, there was also a triad of lime, slag and sand. From Liu Che's modern point of view, Sanhe soil is a concrete that uses lime and loess or other volcanic ash materials as cementitious materials, and fine sand and gravel slag as fillers.

Liu Che had already asked his subordinates to experiment with various methods according to the description of ancient books, but he had no choice but to discover a reality - this ancient pseudo-cement, low cost, simple to make, but the ground used to build city walls and even houses is excellent, but it has great defects when used to build roads. Once this low-adhesion road is subjected to metal ruts and iron trampling for a long time, the surface structure will withstand all the impact forces, causing a large number of cracks and potholes, and repairs are extremely difficult. The ancients were not stupider than modern people, if Sanhe soil is really suitable for building roads, it will be our turn to cross the hearts of the people.

Liu Che didn't want to create a pothole-ridden road. In his plan, several main roads in the entire Han Empire should at least meet the standards of secondary roads in later generations, rather than the so-called "highways" that were connected to the villages of New China in later generations.

If you want to fire modern cement that meets this standard, you can't just take a stone and burn it casually. The production process of cement is generally divided into two grinding and one firing. First of all, limestone, iron powder, sand and other materials should be mixed in a certain proportion, and then ground into powder into the raw meal mill, and then this powder is sent to the rotary kiln, and after about 1,400 degrees of high-temperature calcination, cement clinker is made. Cement clinker plus a certain amount of mixed materials (such as slag, fly ash), gypsum into the cement mill and grind into powder.

In other words, calcination, stirring, and crushing are indispensable.

Of course, stirring can be carried out by manpower, and sending a large number of slaves can still barely meet the production. As for crushing, in this era when there was no mechanical power, in this era when there was no large metal forming equipment, the best way was to build a large waterwheel by the river, and make a large number of metal parts and spare accessories by hand, but at a very high cost.

If Liu Che can solve the problem of mixing and crushing at any cost, but the difficulty of calcination finally made him choose to give up temporarily. Rotary kiln, Amitabha! 1,400 degrees Celsius, Virgin Mary! Iron smelting and steelmaking are only in the early 1,000s, and the only furnace in the entire Han Dynasty that can complete the calcination requirements is the cellar that Liu Che used to fire glass. Not only the use of coke, but also the use of large-scale blower equipment, the cost is not mentioned for the time being, if there is such a cellar, fired glass is not more cost-effective than fired cement?

In short, just when Liu Che decided to temporarily abandon the road construction plan, oil appeared in front of him, and the only feasible asphalt road was finally settled. The highways of later generations are still used asphalt pavement, which is paved with fried mixture (fried gravel with asphalt like fried chestnuts with sugar), which is permeable and good, not easy to slip on rainy days, resistant to high temperatures, will not melt when it is hot, easy to maintain, and will be easier to mechanize in the future.

As for the harm to the human body caused by the use of asphalt, it was ignored by Liu Che's choice of surname. He is not a good person, and he puts a little human life and social progress at both ends of the scale, and a fool can see which is more important than the other. Under the wheels of the progress of the times, there has never been any humanitarianism. Besides, there will be a large number of slaves in the future, and it would be a waste not to dig rivers and build roads.

(I'm going to the company to test the equipment, and there's another chapter in the early morning, whirring...... Remember to get up tomorrow morning and watch it)

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