Chapter 91 Dry Distillation Acid Production

That evening, Luo Chong used a small cart and a copper shovel to scrape off a layer of soil around the animal pen and toilet. The collected soil was piled up into a small mound, which was piled next to the cave entrance like a grave.

The next morning, Luo Chong found four women to purify saltpeter. They used several large water tanks to dissolve the soil. After it was clarified, they filtered it with hay. Then they put the filtrate in a clay pot on the fire and boiled it dry. Finally, saltpeter crystals would precipitate in the clay pot, which looked like yellowish salt.

"Chief, is this salt? How can there be salt in the soil next to the toilet?" The elder and the cripple said in surprise. They saw Luo Chong asking people to burn something again, thinking that something new would appear, but they didn't expect that what they got in the end was salt.

"This is not salt, this is saltpeter, you can't eat it, it's poisonous, don't touch it." Luo Chong was afraid that they would interfere, so he quickly warned them.

"Ah? It's not salt, it's poisonous, what's the point of making this thing? It's a waste of firewood. I also need a lot of firewood to make pottery." The lame man asked in confusion.

"Since I made it, of course it must be useful. Why do you care so much? Go and use the white clay to make mud first. I will make something later." Luo Chong arranged for the lame man.

"Do you want to make that crucible again? I have learned how to make it for you." The lame man immediately patted his chest confidently.

"It's a crucible, but not the old one. You go and mix the mud first, I will make it myself later."

"Oh, a new crucible, then I will prepare it now." When the lame man heard that he could learn new things again, he ran away happily. This guy is now interested in making anything.

Speaking of "fire", this thing is really magical. Humans have been able to rule the entire planet only after learning how to use fire. Without fire, we can't eat cooked food. Without eating cooked food, the brain will not evolve. Without fire, we can't make pottery, bricks, and glass; without fire, we can't smelt metals. Without fire, we can't burn wasteland to reclaim land. Without fire, humans are just monkeys eating leaves on trees.

Luo Chong knows how to use fire, and he is the person who knows the most on this planet.

After demonstrating the process of boiling saltpeter to several women twice, Luo Chong completely ignored it. He had other things to do.

Of course, it is not black powder that can blast granite. Not to mention how much black powder is needed to blast the hole, even the materials for making black powder are not available now.

Saltpeter is available, charcoal can be burned, but is there sulfur? Actually, there is, it is in pyrite, but the content is limited, and it is also troublesome to refine. Even if it is made, it is not powerful enough, so Luo Chong used another method to use limited resources to make the most powerful explosive-nitroglycerin.

Glycerin can be separated from oils and fats. Because of the wolf incident in winter, the Han tribe obtained a lot of animal oils, which were not lacking. Then the only thing missing was nitric acid.

Nitric acid can be prepared by dry distillation of saltpeter and sulfuric acid, but there is no sulfuric acid now, so we can only think of a way from pyrite.

Pyrite is not actually pure iron sulfide. Its main components are: carbon, silica, bauxite and iron sulfide. If you want to use pyrite to prepare sulfuric acid, you must first turn them into metal sulfates, so you must first let them undergo a reduction reaction.

It is easy to reduce pyrite. Just heat it directly, but don't burn it in a furnace, otherwise it may explode.

Luo Chong chose a flat land where he usually burned charcoal, piled up a pile of firewood on the ground, and then piled the flakes of pyrite in a "well" shape around the firewood. Finally, he piled it directly into a small hill to bury the firewood, leaving only a few holes for ignition at the bottom.

Cover the outside of the ore pile with a layer of hay, and finally apply a layer of wet mud, just like burning charcoal, but leave a few ventilation holes at the bottom and top to prevent it from being completely suffocated, because the reduction reaction requires oxygen.

Finally, use a thin branch to clamp the tinder and ignite the firewood from the vent below. Because pyrite contains carbon and sulfur, these ores will soon burn in the mud shell.

This heating reduction reaction takes a long time, about half a month. Finally, the iron sulfide in the ore will turn into iron sulfate, and the alumina will turn into aluminum sulfate, that is, metal sulfate, so that sulfuric acid can be produced. Taking advantage of this period of reduction reaction, Luo Chong just made some special equipment.

What equipment is needed to refine sulfuric acid? Mainly a distillation pot and a condenser. As the saying goes, no matter what you do, you can't do without fire.

The refractory clay for the lame man was ready, and Luo Chong started the plastic work directly. The lame man watched carefully beside him. In fact, he didn't know that Luo Chong only needed to make one set of such equipment. He would never have the opportunity to make it in the future. It was useless to learn it. Who would make sulfuric acid every day? There was no need for so much now.

It was still the old pottery making method. First, a round mud cake was pinched as the base, and then some mud strips were rolled on it to make a cylindrical straight tube. Then all the gaps were smoothed with water. The most important thing was that there was no closing on the upper edge. Another key thing was the pot cover.

The crucible used in metallurgy does not need a lid, but this distillation pot does, and it has a "chimney" on it.

The pot cover is also made by pinching a mud cake with a diameter slightly larger than the crucible so that it can fit on the crucible. When using it, the pot cover is covered, and the joints are sealed with wet mud. The gas can only be released from the chimney on the pot cover.

Well, the shape is like the aluminum pressure cooker used at home, the kind with a gravity valve, except that this pot does not have a valve.

The condenser is also a clay tube, the size of the joint is just right to cover the chimney on the lid, and a few elbows are made as connecting accessories. The most important part is a double-layer condenser.

It is a thin tube with a thick tube on the outside, and the thick tube is open on top. When it is used, cold water can be added from the top, so that the steam passing through the thin tube inside will condense into liquid and finally flow out from the other end of the tube.

In terms of shape, it can be understood as a straw that penetrates a beverage bottle. The straw is the ventilation tube, and the outer beverage bottle is used to fill with cold water to cool the steam in the ventilation tube. The principle is very simple, and anyone who has passed junior high school physics will know it, but Luo Chong is a person who has attended a military university.

Three sets of such equipment were made in the same size. One set was used to purify sulfuric acid, one set was used to purify nitric acid, and the other set was used to purify soda, also known as soda ash. Although some natural alkali was obtained before, the ore could not be used directly, so it had to be purified.

After the things were kneaded, they were dried and fired. The rest of the work was left to the lame man to do. They were directly fired together with the pottery utensils used in daily life.

After all the preparations were done, Luo Chong also had time to inspect the animals raised.

The bison shed its hair, and a lot of hair fell off its body like alopecia areata, revealing patches of skin. This is a forest cattle. It is not like a buffalo that does not grow hair. When it is cold in winter, they will grow a thick layer of hair, and then fall off when the weather warms up in spring. Many animals will do this.

What a magical way to keep warm. It would be great if humans could grow a down jacket in winter, Luo Chong couldn't help but sigh.

Alpacas also shed their hair, but they are not bald. It's just that the hair on their bodies is not as thick as in winter, but they still look round and cute like plush toys.

The rabbits have also shed their hair, and a group of more than 20 rabbits are pregnant again. They are really fertile.

The animals have shed their hair, which means that the weather has become very warm. Now the night temperature is above zero degrees. It is time to start sowing.

Luo Chong even thinks that the time of animal shedding can be set as the time of spring ploughing every year. As long as the animals shed their hair, it means that the temperature is high enough. Their perception of the environment is much stronger than that of humans. Luo Chong does not have a thermometer, so he can only use this most primitive method to determine the time of spring ploughing.

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(End of this chapter)