Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 11: An Excellent Eunuch Who Can Make Two Acids and Two Bases
After Zhu Houzhao taught the Eight Tigers the correct business model, soap, a new chemical product, finally became popular in the capital.

It was not just Wei Bin's Wei Ji shop. The soaps from Qiu Ju, Luo Xiang, Liu Jin and other shops were basically all sold out in a very short period of time.

The shops had to place additional orders, and the soap-making team at Royal Industries became extremely busy.

Under Zhu Houzhao's initial arrangement, there were only ten eunuchs involved in making soap, but now Zhu Houzhao has added twenty eunuchs to participate in soap making.

As soap gradually became popular in the capital, more and more shops came to place direct orders with the Royal Industrial Company. In the end, there were even long queues of merchants just placing bulk orders for soap.

"Your Majesty, at first I begged those shops to purchase goods, but now I don't have to do that. They are vying to place orders, and some even paid deposits in advance. Now the deposits amount to more than 4,000 taels," Wei Bin said excitedly to Zhu Houzhao.

Luo Xiang also reported: "Your Majesty, more people are buying soap now, and our purchase of raw materials has also increased a lot. Because we purchase more and more, those who sell soda and lime are willing to lower the price for us. Now we can make a lot more money from selling a bar of soap."

Qiu Ju also reported: "Not only that, the soap business has been opened up, and the eunuchs who make soap at the Royal Industrial Experimental Base have also become more active. They now have shares and know that the more they make, the more they earn. They all work overtime and can now make more than 10,000 bars of soap every day."

Zhu Houzhao just smiled faintly and said, "This is just the beginning. Don't be too happy too soon. It's just a few cents profit from a piece of soap. When you can make tens of thousands of taels of profit a day, it won't be too late for you to be happy. The manufacturing of glass cannot be slow. The craze of buying soap will expire. After all, people who bought soap will not buy soap again. We have to think of other ways to make more money."

After Zhu Houzhao said this, Qiu Ju, Luo Xiang, Wei Bin and other eight tigers also quickly agreed, and no longer had any resistance to their emperor's plan to make glass. In their opinion, the new glass that the emperor wanted to make would definitely make money.

The reason why it is called new glass is that it is not that there was no glass in the Ming Dynasty, but the glass produced by the Ming Dynasty was not in large blocks and was generally not transparent and colorless. The glass Zhu Houzhao wanted was transparent and colorless and could be blown into various glass containers and low-cost large blocks of glass for building greenhouses.

Zhu Houzhao first asked Qiu Ju to find craftsmen who could build a glass kiln, and then he built a glass kiln on Tuer Mountain in the Royal Industrial Experimental Base, the former Royal West Garden, and remade the crucible.

Firing glass in a crucible allows the use of coal with a higher calorific value as fuel.

The crucible can isolate the sulfide in the coal from contaminating the glass liquid.

In addition, Zhu Houzhao also had graphite coated on the bottom of the crucible to ensure uniform heating when heating the crucible.

Graphite does not exist in the form of a compound in nature, is not difficult to mine, and can be purchased on the market.

As for the raw materials for making glass, they were also improved. In addition to the basic materials such as quartz, limestone, and feldspar, there were also materials such as soda ash and decolorizing oxidants.

Soon, Zhu Houzhao, with the help of skilled craftsmen from the glass factory, refined colorless glass liquid. Then, of course, he just put the glass liquid into the mold. It was okay for large pieces of glass, as they could be evenly spread out before the glass liquid solidified. However, it was not easy to get standard experimental glass instruments. The measurement units of this era were different from the basic measurement units of later generations. Zhu Houzhao had to use the data relationship between the current popular measurement units and the basic measurement units of later generations according to his memory to determine a glass experimental instrument mold with a standard measurement unit.

For example, a 250 ml volumetric flask and a 500 ml beaker, and then he would instruct the craftsmen to blow them according to his requirements.

Of course, mechanical blowing was not possible in the Ming Dynasty. It was only possible by manual blowing, that is, placing the molten glass in a mold and blowing it while rotating it with a metal blowpipe. Only then could a large number of glass experimental containers with quantitative significance be produced.

With glass experimental instruments, Zhu Houzhao was able to prepare solutions and conduct quantitative chemical reactions much easier. For this purpose, he specially asked Qiu Ju to build another laboratory in the Royal Industrial Experimental Base, and directly named it the Chemical Laboratory.

Zhu Houzhao will further develop new chemical products in this chemical laboratory. One of the by-products of soap is glycerin, which can not only be used to improve the skin but is also a very important chemical raw material. Zhu Houzhao will now react glycerin with nitric acid to produce nitroglycerin.

Nitric acid is naturally not difficult to make. The Ming Dynasty already has gunpowder, and with gunpowder there will naturally be saltpeter. With saltpeter, making nitric acid is not a problem.

Qiu Ju now has a great interest in chemical engineering. Following Zhu Houzhao, he not only became familiar with the soap-making process but also learned a lot of chemical knowledge. Zhu Houzhao even took the initiative to teach him some. Now Zhu Houzhao asked him to be responsible for the preparation and purification of green alum, that is, to produce concentrated sulfuric acid.

Because to make nitroglycerin, nitric acid is required, and the simplest way to make nitric acid is to react concentrated sulfuric acid with saltpeter to produce nitric acid, but nitric acid and sulfuric acid are both strong acids and very dangerous. Zhu Houzhao would naturally not take the risk himself. Since Qiu Ju was interested, he naturally let Qiu Ju conduct the experiment for him.

Under the command of Zhu Houzhao, Qiu Ju conscientiously used distillation to boil green alum into concentrated sulfuric acid, and then reacted a quantitative portion of the concentrated sulfuric acid with a sodium hydroxide solution of a certain concentration, so that the concentration of the resulting concentrated sulfuric acid could be determined.

Finally, two hundred and fifty milliliters of concentrated sulfuric acid solution of a determined concentration was prepared.

Zhu Houzhao was very pleased with this and couldn't help but boast to Qiu Ju: "Very good, now I think you are the only one in the world who can determine the volume and prepare solutions. In addition, you can make one acid and two bases out of three acids and two bases. Based on this, I will definitely give you a second-rank or higher treatment in the future, because you are now worthy of the title of the great chemist of the Ming Dynasty!"

Qiu Ju was very happy after hearing this. Although he didn't know what a great chemist was, he knew that the treatment of a second-rank chemist was top-level treatment and there were not many people like him in the Ming Dynasty. It was his dream to become one of the top people. He couldn't help but follow Zhu Houzhao's arrangements more actively and continue to prepare nitric acid.

Under the command of Zhu Houzhao, Qiu Ju first put concentrated sulfuric acid into a gooseneck flask with gravel, then heated it on a wire mesh, and then poured it into a glass reactor. While the concentrated sulfuric acid was hot, he added saltpeter and stirred it slowly until the saltpeter was completely melted and precipitated. Zhu Houzhao then asked Qiu Ju to stop adding saltpeter, and then nitric acid was prepared.

Soon, Zhu Houzhao took the nitric acid from Qiu Ju and praised him again: "Good servant! Now you have learned how to make two of the three acids and two bases, but you need to keep up the good work. Follow the plan I gave you and react the nitric acid with glycerin. If you can make nitroglycerin, I will reward you with 10,000 taels of silver on the New Year's Day and grant you the honorary title of the highest royal science award! I will personally present the award to you in the Palace of Heavenly Purity!"

With Zhu Houzhao's popularization, Qiu Ju knew about compounds such as nitric acid and glycerin. He also heard Zhu Houzhao say that nitroglycerin made from nitric acid and glycerin was a miracle drug that could treat angina pectoris, but Zhu Houzhao did not tell him that nitroglycerin was also an explosive. So he still had beautiful fantasies about nitroglycerin, especially now that Zhu Houzhao said that if he could make nitroglycerin, he would give him 10,000 taels of silver and a prize, so he rubbed his hands excitedly: "Your Majesty, rest assured, I will make nitroglycerin for you!"

(End of this chapter)