Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 8 Royal Industrial Experimental Base
Zhu Houzhao did not go to Mingyue Tower at this time, but returned to his Leopard Room.

To be precise, he is now in his own "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

The so-called "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" was still in its infancy at this time, with only a single-eaved wooden door and three brick houses.

Inscribed on the double-eaved wooden door are eight large characters "Royal Industrial Experimental Base". These characters were written by Zhu Houzhao himself. Although they do not have the style of a famous calligrapher, they are quite neat and no one dares to say that he writes badly.

This double-eaved wooden door is now the main entrance of the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

The three brick houses are now the laboratories and manufacturing workshops of the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base". They are very simple, but there is no other way. Zhu Houzhao has limited funds, and even the Leopard House is not considered luxurious, let alone this "Royal Industrial Experimental Base".

If it weren't for the fire prevention considerations, Zhu Houzhao would have even wanted to have someone build a wooden shed to use as a makeshift.

Of the three brick buildings, one is used as a warehouse, and the other two are laboratories and manufacturing workshops. All of them are rooms with large windows, but the laboratories do not have small windows for ventilation purposes.

On the first day Zhu Houzhao moved into the manufacturing workshop, he ordered the eunuchs to start working inside. They were busy collecting distilled water.

Five large stoves with iron pots were boiling water in the workshop. The hot steam condensed into distilled water when it met the grooves of the wooden boards. The water was collected by the eunuchs into water tanks that had been washed and dried and then sealed.

No matter how simple the soap making process is, it is still a chemical product. Chemical products need to be prepared with distilled water. Ordinary water has impurities. In order to ensure the purity of chemical products, it is necessary to ensure that the solvent, that is, water, must be distilled water without impurities from the beginning.

The only laboratory in the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" has now become a soap experimental workshop.

Zhu Houzhao is here now, personally directing several eunuchs to add distilled water into a large wooden barrel, and then after filling the water, he lets these eunuchs add quicklime into the barrel.

Because quicklime reacts with water to form calcium hydroxide or slaked lime, which produces a lot of heat, and the addition of soda ash will be even more intense, in order to ensure the safety of these eunuchs, he also specially made them wear specially made white coats.

Even Zhu Houzhao himself put on a white coat, and the eight tigers following him, including Luo Xiang, Qiu Ju, Wei Bin, etc., also obeyed his orders and followed him in white coats.

Luo Xiang and other eunuchs known as the "Eight Tigers" had no idea what the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" meant, and they did not even understand why His Majesty had established the "Experimental Code" strictly stipulating that anyone entering the "Royal Industrial Experimental Base" must wear a white coat, regardless of their official rank.

They just thought that His Majesty was refining the elixir and was trying to create mystery to deceive the ministers in the court.

Zhu Houzhao naturally knew that the eunuchs around him did not understand his true purpose, and as an emperor, he did not need to explain it to his servants.

This is his own territory, so naturally he can do whatever he wants.

These eunuchs didn't understand what their majesty was going to do, so they just obediently followed Zhu Houzhao's instructions and added lime into the wooden barrel. Soon the water in the barrel began to gurgle.

These young eunuchs were all dumbfounded. Having grown up in the palace, they had never imagined that adding lime to water would cause the water to churn violently.

Zhu Houzhao himself was not idle. While the eunuchs were adding distilled water, he was making experimental records and determining the amount of each raw material to be added.

Luo Xiang, Qiu Ju and other eunuchs were also amazed, thinking, when will His Majesty play with these magical things? At this time, Zhu Houzhao had already hurriedly ordered these eunuchs to immediately pour alkaline flour, that is, soda ash, into the large wooden barrel. The water temperature rose sharply and boiled directly. The whole air became hot. Zhu Houzhao himself was sweating from the heat. At this time, the large amount of water vapor that came out was rapidly cooled into water mist because it met the cold air, making the whole brick house like a fairyland.

After the water temperature cools down, the entire wooden barrel becomes a solution of calcium carbonate precipitate and sodium hydroxide solution. This is the first step of the reaction.

Immediately afterwards, Zhu Houzhao ordered the eunuchs to scoop the sodium hydroxide solution into the pre-prepared iron pot with a spoon, and then poured the sodium hydroxide solution into the iron pot. At the same time, he ordered people to pour in the distilled high-concentration alcohol solution.

The reason for adding alcohol is that lard is insoluble in water. Adding alcohol can promote the full dissolution and contact of lard and soda ash in the aqueous solution to promote the reaction.

The functional group of ethanol is hydroxide, which does not react with sodium hydroxide, so there is no problem when adding alcohol.

But contrary to expectations, an accident still occurred.

A young eunuch poured alcohol without paying attention, causing the sodium hydroxide solution to splash onto his hand. The highly corrosive sodium hydroxide solution began to corrode the young eunuch's skin. Zhu Houzhao hurriedly asked him to put his hand into the vinegar jar that had been prepared in advance to prevent too much damage.

At this time, Zhu Houzhao ordered the eunuchs to add lard into the iron pot and stir it constantly.

This time, the eunuchs did not dare to be careless. Having seen the power of sodium hydroxide, they carefully poured in lard and stirred it. Soon, the lard gradually dissolved and reacted with the sodium hydroxide to form a viscous liquid.

But this did not mean the end. Zhu Houzhao came over personally and took a small bottle of distilled water prepared in advance from a small porcelain bottle and let it stand. When he found that there was still oil separating, he ordered the eunuch to continue adding sodium hydroxide solution to the iron pot and to continue heating the iron pot as usual.

After repeating this process several times, Zhu Houzhao finally let the eunuchs complete the saponification of the lard and obtain a large amount of viscous liquid mixture containing soap. This is the second step of the reaction.

Next comes the salting out treatment. Zhu Houzhao ordered the eunuchs to add the viscous liquid into a pre-saturated salt solution. After standing, the soap will float up due to the salting out, and then further alkalization treatment will be carried out to turn it into pure soap liquid.

Finally, it is cooled and solidified.

Looking at the soap solidified into yellow in the iron pot, Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but smile with satisfaction.

Even if the first modern industrial product of the Ming Dynasty Royal Industrial Experimental Base was born, Zhu Houzhao had reason to believe that it would change this era and bring him huge economic benefits.

But this does not mean that large-scale production can be carried out now. Zhu Houzhao still has to make quantitative records based on the experimental process, and then conduct further experiments to optimize the most efficient and lowest-cost process.

Zhu Houzhao finally determined the soap-making process of his own royal industrial experimental base, recording everything from the required volume of wooden barrels and the corresponding amount of distilled water and sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide to be added, as well as the amount of soda ash and lard to be added later, and even the temperature at which the existing wine was distilled and how many times it was distilled.

But the only drawback was that there were no standard containers in that era, and Zhu Houzhao had no way of measuring the concentration of the sodium hydroxide solution after the first step of the reaction and the concentration of the alcohol solution after the final distillation, which made it impossible for him to improve the production quality and purity of the existing soap.

In any case, Zhu Houzhao was at least able to carry out mass production of soap in the Ming Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)