Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 721 Freezing and Anesthesia

Liu Rui hurried into the gate of the North Chemical Plant with his briefcase under his arm. Several police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs standing guard at the gate immediately stood up and stood at attention.He is one of the directors of the technical department of this factory, and one of the few powerful figures in this large enterprise. Liu Rui, a time traveler and former middle school student, has worked in this factory for more than ten years.

However, in his own opinion, these ten years of life are somewhat wasted.First of all, in their hands, there are very few industrialized chemical products, partly because there is no international market for such products at this time, and partly because they lack professional knowledge and equipment.Of course, the lack of industrialization does not mean that they have done nothing, at least under laboratory conditions, they have produced quite a few products.The level of confidentiality of these products is top-secret, and the leakage of any of these secrets may cause huge waves in the world.Especially after a certain chemical product leaked and the executive committee specially approved the execution of several researchers involved in this time and space, now even the product recovery operations between these laboratories have been suspended, because the executive committee does not want these Black technology has been mastered by Europeans, which will definitely be a huge disaster for the East Coast.

Just because the east coast is not capable of mass production doesn’t mean Europeans don’t have the ability; similarly, just because the east coast doesn’t have the ability to carry forward things doesn’t mean the Europeans don’t have the ability either.

When the national power was weak, if the East Bank resorted to black technology that was not commensurate with its own strength, it would definitely be the way to death.Especially for those national defense technologies that can be seen from the outside, such as mini bombs, etc., whoever equips the troops without authorization may suffer serious political mistakes, and the risk cannot be underestimated.

But if in the field of knowledge that you are studying, you occasionally produce some practical small technologies for civilian use, then it will be harmless.For example, the workshop that Liu Rui came to today is that this workshop produces a chemical product that is very useful in medicine and other aspects-ether.

Originally, people on the east coast didn't know much about how ether was made, or they only had a vague idea.Later, under the research of some funds and personnel allocated by the Academy of Natural Sciences, this technology finally achieved initial success in 45. Then the Academy of Natural Sciences withdrew some researchers and turned to other subjects. The small number of technicians under it began to perfect the details of the technology, and at the same time studied how to industrially produce this kind of thing on a large scale.

After another three years of improvement, the research team led by Liu Rui, a senior researcher at the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences, finally proposed a relatively mature production process.And before that, they have successfully trial-produced the micro-experimental line in the research institute. What they need to do now is how to replicate this production process to large-scale industrialization with larger scale, more unexpected factors, and less controllable On the production line, so that it can mass-produce such things as ether.

To be honest, the production principle of ether is quite simple. It is nothing more than dehydration of ethanol with hzsm-5 or concentrated sulfuric acid as a catalyst, that is, two ethanol molecules are heated and dehydrated to form an ether molecule and a water molecule, and a small amount of ethylene. generate.However, this reaction process is simple to say, but there are many difficulties, such as the temperature control of the reaction during the production process, the addition rate and proportion of the catalyst (sulfuric acid), the absorption of tail gas, etc., and of course the manufacture and production of reaction equipment, These are quite fatal things, and a lot of manpower, financial resources, material resources and time must be spent to solve these practical difficulties in the production process.

The Chemical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Natural Sciences on the East Coast of China has spent many years solving these problems one by one, and finally achieved initial success recently. The ether workshop of the Northern Chemical Plant (currently the main products are sulfuric acid and soda ash) The production line was also formally established.Liu Rui and his scientific research team are the inventors and beneficiaries of the patent rights of ether (50% of the patents of ether belong to the investor, the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the other 50% belong to the scientific research team), and they are also the newly established ether workshops. The technical consultant at this moment naturally came to the workshop to prepare for production.

The production equipment they designed is not very complicated. Simply put, it is a glass reactor, a heater, a heat exchanger, a condenser, a separation tank, and a rectification tower.The general principle is that preheated ethanol is dehydrated under the catalysis of concentrated sulfuric acid (exchanging external heat through a heat exchanger) to form a mixed gas of ether, ethanol, ethylene and water vapor.This mixed gas then enters the condenser to cool down, and then separates the liquid phase ethanol (soluble in water) and gas phase ether (slightly soluble in water) through the separation tank.

At this point in the production process, it can basically be said that it has achieved initial success, but Liu Rui and others are obviously not satisfied.On the basis of the original design, they modified and added a rectification tower to further extract the ethanol and ether in the mixed liquid of the condenser, so as to improve the conversion rate and utilization rate of ethanol, and the economic benefits are quite considerable.

The production process designed by Liu Rui and others is still relatively primitive, and the conversion rate is about half, which is far lower than that of later generations, but it has exceeded the expectations of the leaders of the Institute of Chemistry, Academy of Natural Sciences.Therefore, this time they are very interested in investing in a new ether production line in the Northern Chemical Plant, and of course this cannot be separated from Liu Rui's vigorous activities.

At this time, this production line has been debugged once or twice, and intermittently produced some ether with not very high purity (it can be used). All arrived, and Liu Rui was obviously one of the last few people to arrive here.

Liu Rui, who came to the workshop, first carefully checked the status of the equipment, and then asked the person in charge of each station—no way, they were all transferred from other workshops—after confirming that everything was ready, With a wave of his hand, he ordered the official start of serial production.

The production process is the same as before, but this time it is continuous production. The semi-finished products produced by each process enter the next process without any pause, so the purity of the finished product is still quite high.When the person in charge of the last process brought Liu Rui a bottle of transparent liquid in a glass bottle, Liu Rui smiled reservedly, and then asked the people below to measure the concentration of the finished product, calculate the conversion rate of ethanol, and of course, calculate Cost of production.

But this last step is obviously finitely redundant.Because in the view of Liu Rui and others, the demand for ether on the east coast is still relatively broad, and there are generally two aspects, namely, medical use and refrigeration.

The medical aspect mainly refers to as an anesthetic.This is in great demand for shell surgery. At present, the only analgesic and anesthetic used in East Coast surgery is probably opium, and this drug can only act as a placebo in this case. The effect is limited.But ether is different, it can really cause people to enter a state of coma and anesthesia, and the side effects are very small, and the effect is quite outstanding.

However, if we only talk about economic benefits, the biggest application of ether is obviously not for medical use, but for industrial use, that is, as a refrigerant for refrigerators.The cold storage method is still at a very low stage on the east coast today, that is, people on the east coast are used to storing winter ice in a sealed, well-insulated underground ice cellar, and then take it out for use when needed, which is called cold storage. Natural refrigeration method.The opposite of the natural refrigeration method is the artificial refrigeration method. This method is to transfer the heat of one object to another object through a refrigerant (ether, ammonia, etc.), and the machine manufactured according to this principle is a freezer.

The earliest industrial refrigerator in the world probably belonged to the Harrison ether refrigerator in 1857. At that time, people used this machine to successfully extract solid paraffin from shale oil.Later, people dug out more uses, such as freezing groundwater so that people can better dig coal, such as transporting a shipment of frozen meat from Australia to London, and so on.Later, people built refrigeration factories, refrigeration ships and other equipment one after another. So far, the international trade of frozen meat (mainly fish, beef and mutton) began to flourish in the middle and late 19th century.Especially Australia, the British colony exported a large amount of wool and frozen meat to the mainland, and made a fortune.

People on the east coast began to study the technology of this refrigerator when ether first came out.Everyone understands the principle, but how to design and produce can be smeared at a glance, so there is no choice but to start from scratch and independently study how to make this thing.The task of design and production is naturally handed over to Universal's No. [-] Machinery Factory. This factory has a wide variety of product categories, and there is no shortage of another refrigerator project at this time.

After more than a year of research and development, the prototype of the ether refrigerator has almost been completed.Although this equipment designed and produced by a machine factory is stupid and crude, its basic functions can be barely achieved.It is believed that with the strong demand of the market and the rapid development of technology in the future, the technology and application prospects of this refrigerator will also be greatly developed.At the same time, for the New World countries with more livestock, this kind of invention can almost be called a cross-age, because the obviously surplus cattle in the New World are very sought-after in the Old World, and ranchers are doomed because of this technological breakthrough And make a fortune.

But these are long-term visions.The improvement of the freezer cannot be completed overnight. In addition, how to move the freezer to the ship-a critical step-is the place where technicians need to continue to work hard.Before these solutions, the use of ether on the East Coast was still limited to general anesthesia for surgery.

(End of this chapter)