Bright Sword: Starting from the Improved Grenade

The next day, after getting up and having breakfast, Zhao Tianyang led everyone in the arsenal to begin fine-tuning and polishing the shell casings and gun barrels that had been processed yesterday.

After leading them to make a few, Zhao Tianyang put down his tools, told Chang San to do as he did, and led the workers to complete the rest. Then he left the arsenal and walked into the mountains.

The barrel and shell casings are all out, now all he needs is explosives. He has to go up the mountain to get some.

Inside the wooden house of the sulfuric acid factory, Zhao Tianyang stood in front of the workbench and began to prepare experimental equipment.

Due to the poor conditions, he was unable to industrialize TNT and could only use laboratory methods and manpower to produce it.

Although the amount of TNT obtained in this way is very small, it should be enough as long as people keep repeating the experiment.

"Watch my steps carefully. Making TNT is very dangerous. It can explode if you're not careful."

"Uh-huh."

Li Yun on the side nodded.

"Whoo~~~"

Zhao Tianyang took a deep breath, picked up the beaker beside him and started to operate.

To produce TNT, toluene must first be nitrated in three stages.

先是把43毫升68%硝酸，116毫升98%硫酸，40毫升水，58毫升甲苯分别加入烧杯中。

"Pay attention to the final drop of toluene. The speed must not be too fast. After toluene enters the mixed acid, it will not react immediately."

"It will take about 4 to 5 minutes for the reaction to start. During this process, if the temperature in the beaker does not rise, stop adding toluene and increase the stirring speed."

"After the temperature rises to a constant temperature, you can continue to add toluene."

While doing the experiment, Zhao Tianyang explained to Li Yuncai beside him.

Li Yun nodded, but didn't dare to say anything. He quickly wrote down the precautions in his notebook.

"Also, if the temperature is too high, remember to remove the water bath heating device in time (water bath heating is to place the beaker in a large basin of water and heat the beaker by heating the water in the large basin)."

"Then add an equal amount of cold water. After adding the toluene, the temperature should be maintained at 50 degrees and not exceed 60 degrees."

"Otherwise, the reaction byproducts will further generate resinous substances that cannot decompose the reactants, causing the efficiency to decrease."

As Zhao Tianyang added the last of the toluene, the color of the beaker gradually turned orange-yellow.

"Okay, we can take out the beaker, make it still, and then we can go out and get some fresh air."

Zhao Tianyang took off his mask and instructed Li Yuncai.

"Hey, good."

Outside the thatched hut, Li Yuncai took out a pack of cigarettes with a red sun and white flowers printed on them and asked, "Does the factory director smoke?"

"Hey, where did you get the Japanese cigarettes?"

Zhao Tianyang took the cigarette and asked casually.

"Where else could it have come from? It must have been a reward from the leader."

"The day before yesterday, I went to the regiment headquarters to collect daily necessities. When the regiment commander heard that we were about to make explosives, he was so excited that he immediately rewarded me with a pack of cigarettes."

"Huh~~~~ Japanese cigarettes just don't taste strong enough and are not good to smoke."

Li Yuncai took a puff of cigarette and explained.

Hearing this, Zhao Tianyang looked at the cigarette in his hand and thought of his previous life, when cigarette taxes accounted for most of the national defense taxes.

I also thought of the history of our army making a lot of money from cigarettes to earn military funds.

"It seems that I have to hurry up and come up with one or two cigarette brands so that smokers can contribute to the rise of New China."

"Whoo~~~~"

After exhaling the last puff of smoke, Zhao Tianyang threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out: "Let's go and see how the static is doing."

Li Yuncai took a deep breath and almost finished his cigarette. Then he dropped the cigarette butt and hurried after him.

As soon as he entered the room, Zhao Tianyang saw the liquid in the beaker. It had already been stratified. The turbid orange-yellow oily liquid on the upper layer was mononitrotoluene.

The clear liquid at the bottom is the nitrate solution (with a strong smell of bitter almonds).

Zhao Tianyang then poured the liquid in the beaker into a separatory funnel and separated the upper layer of mononitrotoluene (200 ml).

Add 10 ml of water separately, shake and extract thoroughly, then use a syringe to suck out the upper orange-red liquid, and dry the remaining liquid to obtain 73 grams of mononitrotoluene.

"Okay, let's start the second stage of nitration."

二段硝化和一段硝化差不多，准备52毫升68%硝酸，150毫升98%硫酸，4毫升水加上刚刚得到的73克一硝基甲苯。

Add them into a beaker and stir. After a series of chemical reactions, a large number of light yellow needle-shaped crystals are obtained. These are dinitrotoluene.

But now the dinitrotoluene is still in liquid state, so add 70 to 80 degree hot water, stir it thoroughly, and pour out the orange waste water on the top.

After repeating the process twice, the mixture was cooled naturally and filtered to obtain light yellow dinitrotoluene, which was dried and weighed to be 82 grams.

Now the only thing left is the last step of three-stage nitration. Prepare 38 ml of 98% nitric acid, 127 ml of 98% sulfuric acid, and 82 g of dinitrotoluene.

This step is also the most difficult step. Add dinitrotoluene into three beakers respectively and then heat them to 50 degrees.

Wait for the dinitrotoluene to melt, then add sulfuric acid. Continue heating and keep the temperature at 80 degrees during the process.

Finally, add nitric acid to obtain a brown-red turbid liquid, then heat it to over 100 degrees and stir rapidly.

After one hour, remove the heat and stir until it cools naturally. At this time, you can see that the mixture in the beaker is separated into layers, and the oily substance on the top is TNT.

After adding a large amount of water and filtering, the crude TNT was dried naturally to obtain 90 grams of TNT.

"Now we can use the dilute nitric acid method to extract TNT."

An hour later, looking at the 88 grams of light yellow substance in front of him, Zhao Tianyang nodded happily.

"It finally worked."

“This is TNT.”

Li Yuncai was also very happy, although with his knowledge he didn't quite understand what TNT was and what its significance was.

"Don't be too happy, it's not over yet, bring the ammonium nitrate."

As we all know, TNT, as the safest explosive, is usually used in conjunction with detonators and other things.

So Zhao Tianyang specifically asked Li Yunlong to find a way to get some fertilizer back.

After looking at the mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate on the chopping board for a while, Zhao Tianyang touched his chin.

"This thing should be quite powerful. We need to find an open area to use it."