Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 116 Development always takes time
Struvite can be used to make saltpeter. It is reacted with hydrochloric acid to convert the ammonium ions in the struvite into ammonium salts. It is then piled up like a pile of manure and aged to allow nitrifying bacteria to convert the nitrogen in the ammonium salts into nitrate ions under aerobic conditions. Potassium salts are then added to precipitate potassium nitrate, or saltpeter.

Hydrochloric acid is readily available in Yuanye, and the soy sauce workshop has been using it all the time, so there is no shortage of it. Potassium salt is also easy to obtain, and there is the sea next to him. He can use the salt spraying technology to repeatedly spray crude salt to obtain potassium salt, or use a more earthy method, directly burn the wasteland to obtain a large amount of plant ash, and directly add brine to the plant ash solution to obtain potassium salt.

However, obtaining saltpeter in this way is not only troublesome, but most of the guano is wasted, and the cost is also very high, so it is not cost-effective. Therefore, Yuanye only plans to announce to the outside world that this is how he obtains saltpeter, so as to prevent this business from being too profitable and causing some people to become jealous and want to take it over - this should be able to delay a lot of time. Even if some people are jealous, they will first find ways to find guano and try to produce saltpeter themselves, instead of rushing over to rob him.

Of course, this is just a small sleight of hand, and it also serves as a way to store some natural "fertilizer" for the future in case there is not enough food. It may not really work, but it is always good to have more insurance.

As for actually obtaining saltpeter in large quantities, it still depends on the cooked guano soil that is mixed with guano stone and transported back together.

It is even easier to make saltpeter from this thing. The general principle is the same as that of making saltpeter from guano, but the conditions are not as strict. There is no need to use hydrochloric acid. You can directly build a few large filter tanks, throw the cooked guano soil and wood ash into them, add water and heat them, add a small amount of brine to the filtered solution, and finally let it cool and crystallize naturally, then you can scrape out the raw saltpeter.

This step needs to be repeated until no more saltpeter is produced. What is left is not waste, but still an excellent natural fertilizer that can be stored for later use.

Finally, boil the obtained raw saltpeter in water, filter out the precipitated impurities such as sodium chloride, cool it and recrystallize it, you can get saltpeter of quite good quality.

If you feel the quality is not good enough, this step can be repeated until crystals that meet the requirements are obtained.

Yuanye attached great importance to the work of obtaining saltpeter. After all, it was related to his life and property. The "saltpeter making workshop" that was prepared early on was built separately in his home, not far from his private laboratory. It was the most strictly controlled place in the entire Wanjin.

Now that the "Saltwater Workshop" is about to go into production, confidentiality is of paramount importance. Yuanye selected all the elderly from the original 29 "old, weak, sick and disabled" and asked them to be responsible for the saltpeter-making work - nowadays the average age is only over 50 years old, and those over are considered elderly and still have certain working abilities.

Once these people go in, they won't be able to get out in a short time, and they might even die of old age in there. However, these elderly people, whose life span is hard to say, don't care. The work in the saltpeter workshop is not too tiring, but the food, clothing and other necessities are very good. It is an excellent retirement job in this unfortunate era, and they can all enjoy their old age. They don't care at all whether they can stroll around every day, and no one has any objection.

It is very difficult for common people to survive these days, and it is normal for them to go into the mountains to commit suicide when they get old. Now having a job can ensure that they have enough food to eat every day, and it is not dangerous or tiring. They just lose some freedom. As long as they start recruiting people, this place will be crowded the next day. Maybe young people will come to grab the job, and no one will have any objections.

Of course, Yuanye was not a demanding person, and he also made a promise. As long as they worked steadily and ensured smooth and stable production, he would naturally reward them. All the credit would be attributed to their families, and in the future, those who deserved promotions would be promoted, those who deserved rewards would be rewarded, and those who deserved more land would be given more land. These would not be a problem.

A pound of saltpeter costs three strings of coins. He would not be stingy with this little money for such a high-profit industry. Moreover, if something goes wrong, for example, he is forced to evacuate urgently, in order to maintain confidentiality, no one inside can survive. This can be considered as an advance payment for life.

He planned to do so in the future. All work that required a certain degree of confidentiality and did not require much physical exertion would be done by this kind of old man. He even planned to see if he should move things like the preparation of hydrochloric acid to the saltpeter workshop, so that he wouldn't be exhausted from time to time.

In a sense, this is a win-win situation, and neither side suffers.

The workshop was fine, but outside they dug deep trenches and had the most loyal senior Langdang members who survived the Battle of Takeuchi-sho guard it. Of course, they couldn't go in either, but they just had to watch and prevent others from going in, or prevent people from coming out. They would complete their mission and become a member of the Yuanye Internal Guard, and be directly managed by Qing.

In short, just as the country invited people into the mountains to develop the atomic bomb, he treats the production of saltpeter with the same seriousness today. However, his land here is too small, and there are no deep mountains to drill into, so he can only build a small bunker inside his house, dig deep trenches, and lock people in.

This may be a bit redundant, and if you relax a bit, nothing will probably go wrong, but this way he can feel at ease.

After everything was ready, he locked himself up for a few days, and took these "old death warriors" - they should be considered death warriors, anyway, he upgraded these people from ordinary families to "death warriors" - he took these "old death warriors" to personally process the first batch of cooked guano soil, determined the process flow, calculated the output, and finally determined that for every stone of cooked guano soil of more than 200 kilograms, he could get about 15 kilograms of high-quality saltpeter.

This was far beyond his expectations. After all, if he used the saltpeter field technology to make saltpeter, mixing human feces with livestock feces, the output would be about three or four pounds of saltpeter per hundred pounds. However, he did not expect that cooked guano would be more useful, and the output of saltpeter per hundred pounds reached about seven pounds. It should be that the nitrogen content of cooked guano is higher, much higher than that of cattle, horses and human feces, and he added brine to provide more potassium, which can crystallize more and better saltpeter. This is good news. This time, "Ship No. 1" brought back more than 350 stones of guano stone and cooked guano soil. He had privately told Yu Daren before that he should bring back a mixture of soil and stone, and as much soil as possible. This time alone was enough for him to report to Oda Nobunaga - 3,000 kilograms of gunpowder only required more than 2,000 kilograms of saltpeter, and this trip was enough for his one-year mission, and there was even some surplus, which was quite good.

The saltpeter was finally obtained, which made him feel completely relieved. At least the land was stable and would not be taken back by others when it was halfway through construction. Moreover, he was not in a hurry to take the saltpeter to Nobunaga Oda to hand in the task. After all, it was agreed that there would be results in half a year and delivery in a year. Now it has only been more than three months, so there is no rush. After half a year, he can take out a few hundred kilograms or a thousand kilograms to deal with it, and sell the rest secretly so as to organize a larger fleet and bring back more ships of raw materials at one time, so as to snowball.

When doing tasks, just complete them on time, and then complete and hand in the rest at the end of the year.

…………

After Yuanye figured it out, he went to prepare the gunpowder workshop, planning to slowly produce gunpowder to fool the two powerful warriors sent by Oda Nobunaga - don't worry, I'm already working hard to complete the task, as for why it's so slow, it's because making saltpeter is difficult, and I'm still improving the process!

Of course, he secretly hid some saltpeter and asked Aman to secretly transport it out and sell it, so as to further increase the speed of obtaining funds. By the way, he could use his previous relationship to see if he could buy a few better ships.

As for the formula of black gunpowder, there was nothing to keep secret. It had been everywhere in the 16th century, and even a wild boy like Aman could figure it out. It was nothing rare. The most important thing was that the technology of wet granulated gunpowder had not been developed yet. The gunpowder was prone to stratification when packed in bags, affecting the ignition rate. However, this was none of his business for the time being, so he first produced the original version of black gunpowder, and even because the quality of the saltpeter was so good, he slightly reduced the saltpeter content.

He simply threw such unimportant trivial matters to Endo Chiyo to take care of. How many people to mobilize, who to choose as the foreman, and how to ensure production were all decided by her. When the time comes, he just needs to take a look at the report and sign his agreement.

As for other things you can do after getting enough saltpeter...

With sufficient saltpeter, nitric acid would naturally not be a problem. Struvite could also decompose into ammonium salts. It seemed that he could try to make the first version of ammonium nitrate explosives or TNT. However, after working on it in the office for a while, he temporarily gave up the idea - ammonium nitrate was an explosive, and with his current laboratory conditions, the possibility of his hand blowing apart was higher. The toluene in TNT was difficult to deal with. He could not find a large amount of coal in Owari, so he could not make coke and it was difficult to obtain enough coal tar. It would not be easy to make a large amount of TNT in a short time.

As for nitroglycerin and the like, they are also very dangerous. He has no way of teaching modern knowledge to others, nor can he let others do it for him. He can only give up for the time being. Otherwise, if he accidentally kills or maims himself while playing with explosives, he will really become a shame for the time traveler.

He gave up on the dangerous goods and considered less dangerous explosives, such as "a handful of gunpowder and a handful of sugar, nicknamed Big Ivan" and other very cruel things. However, sugar was not easy to deal with, and there was no place that needed large-scale explosions for the time being, so he gave up on these for the time being. It would not be too late to try again when there was a real need in the future.

The last one is the iron cannon. After the production of gunpowder began, the iron cannon should also be manufactured so that it could be equipped to the troops at any time. However, the iron cannon was only difficult to obtain in terms of raw materials. It was not difficult to manufacture the cannon itself. After all, it was just an old-fashioned matchlock gun and had no technical content at all.

At the same time, there was no need to keep the process of making this kind of primitive weapon secret. He could just go to the blacksmith's workshop a few more times and teach the craftsmen there. There was no need to make a big deal about it. Now the iron materials he had were only enough to make more than twenty cannons. If it weren't for the need to train talents and establish a production system, he could actually do the job himself.

Making a cannon is actually simpler and easier than making a bow, and it is a job that anyone with hands can do.

He pondered for a long time in the office, found the "menu" of territory resources, and went through it again from the beginning. Finally, he was sure that he had no shortage of supplies and was only short of people.

In order to acquire a large number of people at one time, he needs an army, but the future soldiers are still working in the workshop, and it is not time for them to be selected. At the same time, there is not enough iron material accumulated, so he cannot arm them on a large scale for the time being and needs to wait.

Yuanye looked around and found that he had been busy for so long that he had nothing to do. He could only wait for the population and supplies to accumulate slowly.

This is probably something that is difficult to avoid during the development process, and it always takes some time to accumulate.

(End of this chapter)