Chapter 16 Chemical Laboratory

Although the threshold for starting a business these days is indeed much lower than in the past, it is still not something that ordinary people can easily get involved in.

At present, Xu Qiang has more than 300 yuan in his hand, but now there is less than 60 yuan left, so the most urgent task is to make his peat field produce benefits. Only by getting the first pot of gold can he have the capital to do more things and business.

After returning to the village, Xu Qiang asked Liu Jun to drive the carriage to his yard, and then carefully moved the things on the carriage to his house.

Xu Qiang's father is a bricklayer and has worked in a factory for more than ten years. His economic conditions are much better than those of ordinary farmers. Two years ago, in order to arrange a marriage for his son, he used his savings to build four large tiled houses. They are warm in winter and cool in summer, and are considered the best houses in the village.

This provided Xu Qiang with very good hardware conditions to build his own chemical laboratory. In addition to the room where his mother lived, Xu Qiang also had his own room. The other two rooms were empty, which was perfect for storing chemical equipment and raw materials.

"Qiangzi, what are all these things you bought?" Mother Zhang Fenglan asked in surprise after seeing the bottles and chemical materials her son unloaded from the carriage.

"These are all white paints for people to paint houses, and there are also several generations of cement." Xu Qiang pointed to the plastic buckets of hydrochloric acid and the sacks of caustic soda, and said to the current one with a smile: "I used to go out to repair your old house and paint it to make money during my rest time. I can do this job, so I bought a few buckets of paint and glue to make more money for my family in the future."

"It seems that the brand your father bought before was not this one..." Looking at the trademark on the caustic soda bag, Zhang Fenglan asked with some confusion.

"Today's products have been updated. I bought new products, which are cheap and easy to use. No one uses the old brands anymore." Xu Qiang knew that his mother had a low level of education and could not recognize many words, so he made an excuse.

"Well, that's good." Zhang Fenglan nodded, turned and went into the house to make a fire and cook.

Seeing his mother leave, Xu Qiang moved the remaining things into his own room.

Chemical experiments have a strong toxic smell and are somewhat dangerous, but for top chemical experts like Xu Qiang, they have enough experience to avoid them.

If the chemical experiments are really dangerous, Xu Qiang can go to another place to complete them. There are many old and abandoned houses in the village that can be used as temporary laboratories.

Xu Qiang chose to place the laboratory in an empty room next to his own house. This house is a small one with north-south ventilation. It is usually used to store bicycles and some sundries. No one lives there, so it is very suitable to be used as a laboratory.

Xu Qiang first cleaned out the debris inside and put it in the old earthen house on the other side of the yard, and then cleaned the room again.

After two full hours, Xu Qiang's personal chemical engineering studio finally took shape. The layout inside was just like a middle school chemistry laboratory, with test tubes, beakers, balances, alcohol lamps and thermometers, all of which could be used to conduct some simple chemical experiments.

As for commonly used testing supplies such as three acids and two alkalis, Xu Qiang can also purchase them through the town supply and marketing cooperative at any time, which also gives Xu Qiang more room to play.

Seeing the completion of the laboratory layout, Xu Qiang was very excited. With this laboratory, many of Xu Qiang's ideas could be put into practice. In addition to testing products, he could also synthesize many other chemical products based on the formulas in his memory, such as daily chemical products such as laundry detergent, which would undoubtedly bring Xu Qiang a new source of income...

……

In the afternoon, Xu Qiang came to the peat field and assigned new tasks to Liu Jun and Erhu.

At present, the houses on this side of the peat field have been built. There are three mud houses made of dry-rammed earth. There is also an earthen stove in the house next to it, which seems to be used for making fire and cooking.

Liu Jun cut some branches from the mountain and built a fence around the house, while Erhu built a doghouse for his dog, obviously planning to stay there for a long time. "If we want to refine fertilizer, we need to dig a few large ponds." Xu Qiang took out the small notebook from his pocket, opened it, pointed to a sketch he had drawn and said, "This pond should be about ten meters long, two meters wide, and one meter and two meters deep..."

Xu Qiang has been thinking about the planning of the peat field these days, and has repeatedly worked out several design plans.

In fact, it is not difficult to extract humic acid from peat. In later generations, many humic acid fertilizer factories used the alkali extraction and acid purification process to produce it.

The specific operation method is to first crush the peat into 20~80 mesh powder, dry it, add 2% sodium hydroxide, and then add water in a ratio of 1:10, keep the pH value at around 11, then heat the mixed solution to 85 degrees Celsius, stir and react for 40 minutes, input it into the sedimentation tank for precipitation, filter the filtrate, concentrate it, dry and crush it to get the finished sodium humate fertilizer.

When it comes to the acid purification step, hydrochloric acid is added to the sodium humate solution to keep the pH value of the mixed liquid at around 3. It is then heated to 40 degrees Celsius and stirred for 30 minutes. Finally, it is filtered and rinsed until the filtrate is neutral. The filter bottom obtained is the finished humic acid product. After low-temperature drying, it can be bagged and sold.

The process involved is very rigorous. Whether it is the size of the crushed particles, the ratio of acid and alkali added, the pH value and the heating temperature, they will greatly affect the purity of the humic acid refinery, so it is not a simple matter.

There are also equipment needed for extracting humic acid, such as crushers, heating controlled reaction tanks, circulating water centrifuges, blower drying ovens, etc., which are all necessary.

But Xu Qiang doesn't have so many equipment at the moment, and he doesn't have enough money to buy so many professional things, so he can only use folk methods to replace these mechanical equipment.

"Do we need to dig such a big hole?" Liu Jun was a little surprised when he saw the design sketch in Xu Qiang's hand.

"This pit is dug at this location on the mountainside. We need to make a stepped sedimentation tank, and insert two pipes diagonally into the tank." Xu Qiang pointed to an open space next to the earthen house and said, "You must strictly follow the dimensions I require. Under the pit, we also need to dig a fire channel to heat the iron trough..."

"Okay, it's just digging holes. I will try to dig these holes in the next two days!" Liu Jun said while gritting his teeth.

Working in the peat field is indeed hard work, but when Liu Jun thought about the future when he could get married if the business was successful, he instantly became motivated again.

"There is also this location. I plan to install two water tanks, which we can use for our own use..." Xu Qiang already had the entire structure of the humic acid refinery in his mind, and arranged for Liu Jun to take over the next work.

Even if Xu Qiang simplified the design of the humic acid refinery, some things were still indispensable.

Fortunately, Xu Qiang still has more than 60 yuan in pension left by his father, which should be used to buy these basic equipment, such as small water tanks and homemade sinks.

Another problem is that the peat field has no electricity, which is also a problem that needs to be solved urgently.

It is currently unrealistic to pull an electric wire to such a remote mountain valley. You know, many surrounding rural areas do not have electricity, and many farmers still use kerosene lamps.

The only feasible solution is to get a diesel generator.

However, with Xu Qiang's current funds, he cannot afford to buy a diesel engine. This means that if Xu Qiang wants to make his first pot of gold from this peat field, he can only rely 100% on manpower...

(End of this chapter)