asked the uncle next door to help take a look at the stall, and Xiang Yan took Xiang Yuyue to find Liu Yan.

After explaining to him about the uncle who sold melons and returning to the northwest, he also gave him the stall of watermelons.

Of course, although this matter is handed over to Liu Yan to do, it does not need Liu Yan to personally send Uncle Melon Away, just need to choose a trustworthy person from the fishing boat to do it.

Xiang Yuyue finally just picked one of the watermelons from the stall and took them home to eat.

After returning to the Right Prime Minister's Mansion, Xiang Yan first went to look at the batch of new paper made of hemp skin before.

When they were made before, Xiang Yan deliberately put them away.

I'm going to leave it for a few days and see if there's any problem.

"Huh? These papers were still very white when they first came out, why did they only get a little yellowed in the past two days? ”

After confirming that Xiang Yan didn't eat it, Xiang Yuyue split the watermelon in half, and then held half of it and ate it with a spoon.

While eating, I followed Xiang Yan to see the fruits of the labor that the two had worked together.

When she saw the papers, she immediately asked such questions.

Xiang Yan gave her popular science:

"The paper is made up of cellulose, and cellulose is white, so the paper that comes out is white."

"But if it is left in the air for a long time, it oxidizes with the oxygen in the air, so it turns yellow."

"On the other hand, light may also chemically change the cellulose in the paper, making the paper brittle and yellow."

Xiang Yuyue wanted to roll her eyes a little, but Xiang Yan was talking to her about the book of heaven again.

The feeling of knowledge coming in from the left ear and then out of the right ear is so fascinating. (Although she said this from her heart with tears)

"Huh?"

Xiang Yuyue picked out another fault on the paper:

"The texture of this piece of paper is too loose, it feels like it will fall apart if you pull it casually."

Xiang Yan looked at the first batch of experiments she made and felt very dissatisfied.

The quality shown on this batch of test specimens is necessarily not sufficient to serve as newspaper paper.

"No, I don't think it's going to work, and the idea of using hemp skin as a raw material doesn't seem to be so good."

"Although the procedure of soaking the bamboo for 100 days is omitted, it saves a lot of time and costs."

"But the paper made is similar to the paper made in that workshop, and even slightly insufficient."

"Huh?" Xiang Yuyue was a little disappointed.

"So what to do?"

Xiang Yan thought about it and said slowly:

"Looks like we're going to have to use wood!"

Xiang Yan remembered that in the original time and space, that society used wood to make paper.

And if that's the case, it means that wood is the best raw material for papermaking.

"Do you want to use bark?" Xiang Yuyue objected.

"It doesn't seem to be very good, before bamboo was used to make paper, people used tree bark, and this raw material seems to be almost abandoned by the paper industry."

Xiang Yan shook his head:

"No, not with bark, but with wood!"

Xiang Yuyue was a little puzzled, she couldn't imagine how wood could make paper?

Remember that Xiang Yan didn't say before that paper was formed after washing something in water at the beginning, and then the fine floc precipitated?

If this is the case, how can the wood be washed out of the precipitation?

They're so solid.

"Wrong," Xiang Yan pointed to the right point, "I won't say it again, the definition of paper is a thin sheet of various fibers intertwined. ”

"Since the fibers are intertwined, and the wood is rich in wood fibers, then the wood can naturally be used as a raw material."

Xiang Yuyue asked again, "Then what did you plan to do at the beginning?" ”

"Soak the wood in the pond like in the workshop of the Mars Paper Industry you bought, and then when the time comes, you take it out and boil it and hammer it?"

"Or the other two days you took me to make paper made of hemp skin?"

Xiang Yan shook her head again.

"I'm going to use a new approach this time."

"A new, simpler, but more effective way."

"It only takes three simple steps, three steps of pulping, blending, and copying!"

The first step in pulping is to convert wood into pulp.

In Xiang Yan's memory, there are three kinds of mechanical pulping method, chemical pulping method, and semi-chemical pulping method.

These three steps are not superior or inferior, but under the existing technical level of Da Zhou.

Obviously, it is easier to achieve the point with mechanical pulping.

After all, if you want to use the chemical pulping method, Xiang Yan can't remember which ones are those chemical reagents.

If chemical reagents are available, then I think it is a lot of work.

In order to increase the success rate and quality of this experiment, Xiang Yan decided to use the best wood.

The ones used to burn the fire in the firewood room are obviously not good.

So Xiang Yan instructed the old housekeeper Yang to go to the furniture making workshop and buy some of the fine wood they used to make beds and cabinets.

And then there's the so-called mechanical pulping machine.

In this era, there was no oil and no electricity, so the machine had to be driven by human power.

So Xiang Yan drew the design drawings again and went to the blacksmith shop to build the machine.

When building this machine, Xiang Yan also deliberately ran to the third prince Zhao Rui's house once.

Only then did he make up enough iron for the blacksmith shop due to the monopoly of salt and iron.

Just these little irons, the three princes are still grinding and chirping.

When he asked him for the house opposite Guozijian, he didn't hesitate so much.

During the construction of the machine, there were several failures, several improvements, and it took a long time to successfully build the first machine.

This machine was designed by Xiang Yan to have a structure like a stretch mill.

With this structure, manpower is transformed into the power of mechanical operation.

So Xiang Yan called ten more housekeepers, put the wood into the machine, and let them put it on the grinding ground.

Xiang Yuyue laughed at this scene.

"Hahaha...... Xiang Yan, it's so funny, it's too funny for you to make this ghost. ”

"Make your subordinates like donkeys, and you're too good at torturing people."

"Haha, no, I'm laughing to death."

"By the way, since it's a pull, why don't you use a real donkey? Instead, you have to use a housekeeper. Have they offended you? ”

Xiang Yan was a little embarrassed:

"This machine is not yet fully designed, and I am afraid that it will not be able to stand the chaos of the donkey."

"When the papermaking technology is successfully improved, we will consider improving the machinery again."

"Hahaha......" Xiang Yuyue was still smiling there.

"No, if you change this machine to donkey-pulling, then you will lose your job if you buy so many workers in that workshop."

"When you improve the papermaking process, they can also change jobs nearby."

"Hahaha......"

These words suddenly made Xiang Yan feel impressed with Xiang Yuyue.

This girl has the potential to be a people's entrepreneur!

If she has such a bad idea, she will take care of the papermaking workshop in the future.