Chapter 231 Chemicals and Digging for Money

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In the chaotic Xinyang Railway Station, there were soldiers and squires waiting to be evacuated, and the entire booth was densely packed with human heads at a glance. With the sound of a whistle, the crowd suddenly became agitated, and before the train could stop and everyone was already rushing into the stuffy tank car.

"Get out of the way, Lao Tzu is from the 2nd Division."

"Fuck you, Lao Tzu is still from the 5th division."

Quarrels in such an environment were inevitable, and there were even many people beating each other because of crowding and stampede, and the squires who had no money or power could only hide far away and wait for the GIs to see if there were any empty seats.

Chen Yan and Xu Shuzheng, who came to check the retreat in the face of this scene, both sighed.

"Commander, where is Division Commander Wu?"

The news that Wu Peifu took it upon himself to lead the Eighth Division to Tongguan also caught the Beiyang First Army by surprise, and his departure meant that there was a huge gap in the right flank of the First Army, forcing the troops to withdraw in advance. But from a strategic point of view, his move is also a last resort to save himself, only by blocking Tongguan, blocking the national defense forces from southwest Shaanxi, the first army can rely on the numerical advantage to recover the disadvantage after withdrawing to Luohe, if Tongguan cannot be blocked, then everything is over.

"If I were me, he wouldn't have a choice, only by keeping Tongguan can there be hope of a counterattack, but." Chen Huan frowned and didn't go on, the gap on the right flank is too big, and the Ni army at the junction of Henan and Anhui on the left flank doesn't know when it will be reintegrated, there is a guard brigade that is said to be more powerful than the main division is advancing towards Fuyang, although at least four divisions can be regathered after returning to Luohe, and the sixth division will begin to move south again, but if it is broken through, it will be unimaginable.

Will it be breached?

Chen Huan has no bottom in his heart, judging from the battles during this time, the Wehrmacht has almost changed its troops compared with a year and a half ago, and it has surpassed Beiyang in terms of equipment and morale, and a brigade may not be able to complete the task of horizontal insertion, but if the two wings are inserted at the same time.

Before he could finish thinking about it, there was a buzzing sound overhead, two Curtis racing planes visited the sky above Xinyang as promised, these planes that took off from Wusheng Pass came to reconnoiter almost every day, from this point it can be seen that Yang Qiu's grasp of military technology has surpassed Beiyang a lot ().

As soon as the plane arrived, the shells fell.

"Boom, boom."

The rumbling explosion was like a reminder, and the station suddenly became more chaotic, and the train driver was probably frightened by this retreat of the line of fire, and before it was full, he pulled up the whistle to start the train, and hundreds of soldiers and squires ran after the train in the sound of the clanging wheels, eager to put on their wings and fly up.

Chen Chang sighed, Beiyang only learned to use heavy machine guns, Yang Qiu was equipped with Madsen light machine guns, when Beiyang finally raised funds and bought hundreds of them, but they were replaced with planes and ten lives and five heavy guns, the huge gap in firepower made the soldiers below suddenly have a huge gap, how can they fight after the morale is low? Can I recover after going to Luohe to replenish and recuperate?

"Commander." Xu Shuzheng glanced at the grain and baggage piled up in the entire county, and scratched his head: "Do you want it?" ”

"Forget it, it's all our Chinese, it's not good to do things." Chen Eun shook his head, left a large amount of grain and baggage, and quietly got into the car, taking Xu Shuzheng and the remaining troops to withdraw to Luohe.

Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu!

When the eyes of the whole of China and even the whole world were attracted by a war in the Far East involving a total of 500,000 combatants, and countless people were worried about evacuating their homes, the northern front of the Wehrmacht took the lead in recovering Xinyang, an important town in Henan, after 10 days of fierce fighting, killing and capturing more than 6,000 people of the First Beiyang Army, and pulling out the nails that had been nailed to the north of Wushengguan for a year and a half in one fell swoop.

The news of the resumption of the letter undoubtedly gave a shot in the arm to the anxious south, but only a small number of people remained calm, and the war was far from a time when it was time to cheer, and the only 6,000 people could not hurt the Beiyang First Army, which had hoarded more than 100,000 people in Henan, and the sudden U-turn of the Beiyang Eighth Division to seize Tongguan was even more overshadowed by whether the Shaanxi National Defense Force could go south to join the division as promised.

While the initial victory on the northern front was successful, the southern front was extremely anxious, and after the 2nd Brigade and the 101st Brigade of the National Defense Army advanced out of Bengbu and Huai'an respectively, they were able to block the attack of the 3rd and 4th Beiyang Divisions, and finally relieved the southeastern army, which had just completed its organization and had low combat effectiveness.

Cai and the Southern Front Command were clearly not ready to move north, and only a few brigades of the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th divisions joined the battle.

The first to enter the orbit of the national defense forces was Guangdong, and the national defense forces stationed in Wuzhou, which had long been ready to attack, drove into Guangdong on the third day after learning of the coup, and in order to increase the firepower, the Chongqing Arsenal also urgently sent 2,000 grenadiers and 40,000 fragmentation grenades, and sent technicians to teach while fighting.

Therefore, when the Jiangxi incident ended and the 27th Brigade of the Fujian Army of the 7th and 8th Divisions of the National Defense Army advanced from Fujian and southern Jiangxi to Guangdong respectively, the Third Battlefield became an area where everyone agreed that the war would end by the end of April at the latest.

When half of China was drowned in explosions and shouts, Yang Qiu had quietly left Nanchang and came to the Anyuan Coal Mine in Pingxiang.

In the second phase of the coking plant under the sun, workers are transporting a large-scale desulfurization equipment imported from the United States under the command of American technicians, and the temporary plant shed in the distance is full of unpacked equipment transferred from Zhuzhou.

This is one of the supporting projects of Dangtu Iron and Steel Plant, because Dangtu lacks suitable coal mines and the output of Anyuan Coking Plant is insufficient, so according to the plan, Anyuan Coking Plant will be expanded several times, and the design requirements must meet the coke required for an annual output of at least two million tons of steel. Of course, the by-products of coking, sulphur, gas and coal tar cannot be wasted, most of the coal tar was sold as fuel in the past, and the gas was also wasted due to storage difficulties, but now it is different, next to the coking plant is a row of large gas storage tanks, which will be piped down the chemical plant for several kilometers away.

Many people still don't understand that coal gas can be used in chemical industry in addition to fire, but Yang Qiu knows very well that benzene can be extracted from coal gas and coal tar, and benzene can be hydrogenated to produce cyclohexane, followed by cyclohexanol, adipic acid and so on.

This is the coal chemical industry, petrochemical industry and three acids and two alkalis together called one foot of the power of the twentieth century, the other foot is the large metal heavy industry with steel as raw material, only when these two feet stand firm, can it be called a real world-class power.

Acrylic, butadiene rubber, and nylon, which influenced the twentieth century, are all masterpieces in the field of chemical industry.

Now the best chemical industry in this era is undoubtedly in Germany, followed by the United States and France, but the world's leader Britain began to lag behind in the field of chemical industry, seeing that it is now the last good time before the First World War, how to develop their own chemical industry as soon as possible, at least put up the shelf first is really annoying to Yang Qiu.

Zhang Xiaozhun did not accompany him because he wanted to reorganize the Gan army, and in addition to Murong Han, Xu Xiujun, who had just taken over as president of the Southwest Bank, and Cai Gongshi, director of the vice presidential office, accompanied him. Seeing him staring blankly at the workers installing the equipment, Xu Xiujun turned his head and asked Murong Han: "Hao Yu, the vice president doesn't care about the war, why did he pull us here in a daze?" ”

Murong Han took out two small paper packets from his bag, and when he opened them, there were two balls of caustic soda with very different colors, pointing to the brownish yellow caustic soda balls and sighing: "This is made by the newly put into operation Xiangtan Chemical Plant in Hunan last month, and the vice president is a little anxious." ”

After Murong Han's explanation, the two learned that Xiangtan, Chongqing and Pingxiang were the first batch of chemical bases in China selected by Yang Qiu, but it was difficult to purchase coal chemical equipment, so they built a soda plant, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid plant first.

The latter three are good to say, there is no shortage of domestic raw materials, and the old Hanyang plant produces sulfuric acid, so after the completion of not only the old workers to guide, but also from the country to collect a group of chemical engineers who have studied abroad, plus more than 20 chemical experts in the Austro-Hungarian Empire have begun preliminary production, for which Hunan Chemical Group also ordered twelve large marine storage tanks, specially for transportation.

But caustic soda is a problem.

"Solvay alkali law" was invented by the Belgian Solvay, Britain, France, the United States and other countries began large-scale industrialization at the same time, and organized the Solvay Guild to blockade and keep secrets from other countries in the world, so even the United States, which has always been generous, shook its head on this item, and the market could not purchase alkali making equipment and process formulas at all, and finally purchased a set of equipment from Italy and Austria-Hungary through other channels, and handed it over to Xiangtan and Chongqing respectively. But because he didn't have a processing process, it happened that dozens of chemical engineers in Austria-Hungary and Russia had never been involved in the caustic soda industry, so they only got this kind of jaund in two months.

Compared to the snow-white foreign caustic soda, this mass of burnt yellow stuff is too dazzling ().

In fact, this is not the most worried, because caustic soda can at least be bought, not to mention the famous "Hou's alkali method" is a compulsory subject in chemistry class, I still remember some can be slowly explored, but the more complex coal chemical and petrochemical processes abroad have a higher degree of confidentiality, Germany is not even willing to sell any equipment at all, the United States is willing to sell equipment, but said that it will not provide any technical guidance, just to help you install the machine. It means that I can sell the machine, how to operate it is your own research, as for the process formula, I want to be considered.

Yang Qiu, who has received higher education in the parallel world, has enough chemical knowledge in his mind, and there are also some chemical materials related to the military industry in the data machine, but the problem is that chemistry is not just a formula, industrialization depends on equipment and machines, and modern people understand chemical equations, but few people understand how production equipment works. What's more serious is that even if the United States agrees to purchase equipment, the price is extremely appalling, taking oil refining as an example, an annual output of 50,000 tons will require a huge $10 million!

Not to mention 10 million, even if it is doubled or tripled, as long as you can buy back the equipment, it is worth it! Although the Hubei Industrial Company has been able to manufacture some small equipment, such as chemical vessels, separation equipment, heat exchangers, steamers, dryers, etc., and Austria-Hungary technicians can also manufacture some small machine tools and stamping machines, but whether it is output, quality and scale is not large, not to mention these big guys, it is impossible to produce their own products for less than ten years, so if you want to make a great leap forward, you must rely on foreign countries, but at this time there is a problem with the money bag.

Sometimes when he is free, Yang Qiu really hates to know the magic to move all the American machines back, but after the absurdity, there is helplessness and bitterness. There is enough capital in the data machine to dominate the world, but in order to turn drawings into physical objects, it needs machine tools, factories, chemical equipment, formulas, and metal processing capabilities, which are not available in China at present, or have just started.

A blank piece of paper is indeed easy to draw, but if you don't have money to buy a brush and an inkstone, it is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice.

He was really in a hurry, and the industry was basically fixed during the First World War, lacking the knowledge and inspiration. To put it simply, if you sell the T34 drawings to Germany, you can achieve mass production with the current industrial capacity of Germany and then sweep Europe. But if you want to build yourself, you must first wait for the tractor factory to be proficient in manufacturing tracked tractors, then have the ability to cut large metals, then make armor steel and suitable cannons, and finally the chassis and transmission require very exquisite technical ability ().

In the parallel world, he was very curious about the miracle of how he suddenly possessed the ability to build tanks overnight in novels where he had never even designed a car chassis and was not even skilled at assembling tractors from bulk parts.

As long as the country can be unified, he can make a fortune just by selling raw materials to Britain and France during World War I, and there is absolutely hope that he will be able to purchase ten or even dozens of equipment needed by large factories. The problem is that some things can't wait, can't waste four years of precious time in vain, so we must purchase a few sets of equipment to experiment and explore first, train workers, so that when the sweeping comes back, you can quickly establish a preliminary and complete industrial capacity, otherwise even if the purchase comes back, it will take a few years to run in, and there will be no time.

So far, there has been no news of the US loans, Britain and France are still waiting, Germany has begun to hesitate to sell arms because of the increasingly tense situation in Europe, and Japan is impossible. Neither Austria-Hungary nor Russia could take care of themselves, and even Lübicheng had no news, and they did not know whether the registration and sale of the patent for the pyrolysis method would be completed.

After listening to Murong Han's explanation, Xu Xiujun understood why Yang Qiu was in a daze. To put it bluntly, technology can be slowly studied, talents can be slowly gathered, but equipment and funds cannot wait, because without equipment, there is no way to train workers, and without money, you can't even buy experimental equipment.

Xu Xiujun walked quickly to the front and said with a smile: "The vice president actually has a lot of money to take." ”

"Oh?"

Yang Qiu raised his eyebrows, he heard what Murong Han said to them just now, but he didn't interject, and now when he heard that there was a sum of money, he immediately jumped up: "What money?" Zihong said quickly. ”

Xu Xiujun smiled: "Actually, this money is by your side, it depends on your determination." If you are determined to be small, you can get tens of millions of dollars, but if you are determined! One or two hundred million is not necessarily impossible. ”

"One or two hundred million!"

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