Besides, there are electric lights in the workshop now. Working at night is almost the same as during the day.
Li Zexuan staggered and almost fell to the ground. He thought to himself, "So I invented the electric light just to make you stay up all night to work? Now that you mention it, I'm a bit like a black-hearted capitalist ~! "
"Mr. Wang, listen to my advice. Staying up all night is bad for your health. Don't stay up all night anymore! Whether it's the refining of vanadium ore or the production of sulfuric acid, you don't have to work so hard. If you hurt your health, it will be the greatest loss to the Academy ~! "
Li Zexuan looked at Wang Ji and persuaded him earnestly.
Wang Ji looked troubled. "Yamachō, it's not that I like to stay up all night, but when I see those good materials, I feel a little itchy. If I can't refine these good materials into the things I want, I will feel uncomfortable all over! This is an old problem that can't be changed! But don't worry, my health is definitely fine. I know what to do ~! "
Li Zexuan was instantly speechless. He thought of his previous evaluation of Wang Ji — an alchemy warlock who was obsessed with alchemy. This evaluation was very appropriate. This old man used to love alchemy and did things that were superficial in the eyes of others. Now that he had entered the Academy's Chemistry Department, he had completely found his "organization". Because the way of material transformation in "Chemistry" was similar to alchemy, it was not difficult to understand why Wang Ji was crazy about it!
Li Zexuan knew that no matter how he persuaded this "crazy person", he would not be able to persuade him. He sighed and simply stopped persuading him. He walked to the front of the carriage and said to Han Yuxi, "My wife, there are some things in the workshop. I won't return to the county today. I'll ask Liu Feng to escort you back ~!"
Han Yuxi lifted the curtain and came out from inside. She said softly, "Since my husband has something to do, then go ahead and do it! I'll stay in the Yunshan residence for the next two days and take care of my husband's food and daily life ~! "
Li Zexuan thought for a while and nodded. "That's good too! I'll send someone back to the county to inform my parents. My wife, you can go back to the residence ~! "
"Okay ~!"
…
Li Zexuan asked Liu Feng to lead the guards to send Han Yuxi back to Yunshan Villa. Then, he followed Wang Ji to the steel mill of the workshop.
"Yamachō, look! This is the refined vanadium!"
In the steel mill, Wang Ji pointed at a sack and said to Li Zexuan.
Li Zexuan walked over to take a look and saw pieces of light gray stones lying quietly inside. Compared to the freshly mined vanadium ore, these vanadium pieces that had been refined were undoubtedly more delicate in color!
"This is the only pure vanadium metal in the entire world! This thing has a lot of uses. It's not just used to make sulfuric acid. Mr. Wang, you have to take good care of it! "
Li Zexuan picked up two pieces of vanadium, weighed them in his hand and said to Wang Ji.
"Yamachō, don't worry. Even if you don't say it, this old man will take good care of it ~!"
Wang Ji nodded and responded. Then, he said, "Yamachō, the sulfuric acid is stored in the steel tank in the warehouse. But for convenience, this old man put some in the glass bottle. Yamachō, can you take a look and see if the purity is enough?"
"Okay ~!"
Li Zexuan nodded and followed Wang Ji to a small laboratory nearby. Wang Ji put on thick rubber gloves, took a bottle of transparent liquid from the shelf, and handed it to Li Zexuan.
Li Zexuan took it and shook it slightly. Seeing that the liquid inside wasn't as agile as water, but was rather viscous, he nodded inwardly. This was because highly concentrated sulfuric acid was indeed a viscous liquid.
"Have you roughly estimated the concentration of this sulfuric acid?"
Li Zexuan turned his head to look at Wang Ji and asked.
Wang Ji nodded and said, "This old man has calculated the ratio of raw materials input and output, as well as the total amount of water added. If we ignore the leakage of sulfur dioxide during the production process, the theoretical concentration of sulfuric acid is about 97%. But considering the various errors in the production process, the actual concentration of sulfuric acid should be about 90% ~!"
"90%? It's almost enough for our workshop to use in the future! "
Li Zexuan said with a gratified smile.
Then, he opened the bottle cap, dipped a glass rod in a few drops of sulfuric acid, and dripped it on a piece of rice paper on the table. The paper quickly turned black where the sulfuric acid landed, and there was a burnt smell in the air. This was the strong dehydration of the sulfuric acid, causing the paper to be charred! Seeing this, Li Zexuan couldn't help but sigh.
"Very good! Now our workshop can finally produce sulfuric acid in batches! This is the cornerstone of the Tang Dynasty's chemical industry! "
The three industrial acids were nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid. Currently, the workshop could produce both sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid on a large scale. (Electrolysis of salt water produces sodium hydroxide, hydrogen, and chlorine. Hydrogen can be burned in chlorine to produce hydrochloric acid). The only one left was nitric acid!
The production of nitric acid was more complicated. The nitric acid industry was closely related to the ammonia industry. The workshop didn't have the catalysts needed, so this could only be left for the future!
"Mr. Wang, I will take some sulfuric acid with me in a while to make a battery. A battery that can last longer than the previous voltaic battery! As for the steel mill, I hope Mr. Wang can use the vanadium extracted from it to make vanadium steel! "
Li Zexuan paused for a moment and said.
"Vanadium steel? Could it be that Yamachō wants to add vanadium and charcoal to molten iron to make a new type of steel? "
Wang Ji's eyes lit up. This was the first time he heard Li Zexuan talk about using vanadium to make steel.
Li Zexuan nodded and said, "That's right, that's the gist of it! As for the specific ratio of each material, I will give you a few references later! Adding vanadium into the steel is like adding wings to a tiger. The function of vanadium in steel is to enhance the hardenability and carbide. It can also withstand high temperatures and has a strong secondary hardening effect. It has a significant effect on increasing the hardness by more than three times. Moreover, vanadium can refine the grains of the steel and stabilize the structure. It is more suitable for forging and polishing. It is simply a heaven-sent material for making weapons and armor! "
"Increase the hardness by more than three times?"
Wang Ji's eyes widened in surprise when he heard Li Zexuan's words. However, he quickly realized that something was wrong. He quickly swallowed his saliva and said, "Gulp … What? Yamachō wants to use vanadium steel to make weapons and armor? This … This must not be done! If someone finds out, even His Majesty won't let you off! "
This old man thought that Li Zexuan had become arrogant and wanted to make weapons and armor to rebel. He was so scared that his soul almost flew out of his body!
However, his first reaction was to persuade Li Zexuan to "lay down the butcher's knife" and not to expose him. This showed that he really cared about Li Zexuan!
Li Zexuan knew that Wang Ji had misunderstood. He quickly said, "What are you talking about, Mr. Wang? I do have the intention to make weapons and armor, but this is all under His Majesty's instructions. As for what His Majesty intends to use this batch of vanadium steel to make weapons and armor, I can't tell you in detail! Haha! Don't worry, I haven't had enough of being Xiaoyao Marquis and Xiaoyao Yamachō yet! How could he be so stupid as to rebel? I am very satisfied with my current life! "
Wang Ji heard this and couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief. He wiped the sweat on his forehead and said, "That's good! That's good! This old man was really scared out of his wits just now! Since it's His Majesty's orders, this old man naturally has no objections. Yamachō, after you give me the ratio formula, I will go and try to make vanadium steel! "
"Okay! Thank you, Mr. Wang! "
After Li Zexuan told Wang Ji the ratio of vanadium, carbon, and iron in the vanadium steel, he took away a can of concentrated sulfuric acid and left the steel mill!
After leaving the steel mill, he came to the office building in the front yard of the workshop. There was a laboratory that belonged to Li Zexuan.
Along the way, Li Zexuan turned down the good intentions of a few servants who wanted to help him carry the can of steel and arrived at his laboratory.
After placing the can of sulfuric acid in the corner, Li Zexuan bent over the table and began to draw a blueprint.
He was drawing the structure of the lead battery's shell!
The negative plate, positive plate, and electrolyte were the main components of the lead battery's flow reaction. The anode plate was lead dioxide, and the cathode plate was lead. When the battery is discharged, the negative electrode plate reacts with the electrolyte to become lead sulfate and water, releasing electric energy. When the battery is charged, under the action of external electric energy, the lead sulfate and the acid in the water reacts to form lead fluff and sulfuric acid, storing electric energy.
In this way, a complete charging and discharging cycle could be formed!
Compared to the commonly used modern lithium batteries, although lead batteries had less energy (that is, the amount of electricity stored per unit of weight was less. The main reason was that lead batteries were generally larger in size and weight), their electromotive force was more stable, their operating voltage was stable, their operating temperature and current range was wide, they could charge and discharge hundreds of cycles, their storage performance was good (especially suitable for dry charge storage), and their cost was lower. Therefore, they were widely used in the electric vehicle industry.
Of course, the most important thing was that with the current conditions of the Strange Pavilion workshop, it was already very difficult to produce lead batteries. As for the higher-grade lithium batteries, that would have to wait!
In addition, lead and lead dioxide were the materials for the battery electrodes. These two materials already existed in this era!
Lead was one of the earliest metals used by humans. In 3000 BC, humans already knew how to smelt lead from ore. The lead content in the Earth's crust was 0.0016%, and the main ore was galena.
China also had a long history of using lead in ancient times!
In ancient times, lead was one of the three main ingredients. Copper coins also contained a lot of lead, which was the largest amount of lead in ancient times. The more debased a currency was, the more lead it contained. For ancient necromancers, lead had another use, which was to refine elixirs. Lead and mercury were important components of elixirs. Of course, both of these things were poisonous. Therefore, since ancient times, none of the emperors who favored necromancers and consumed elixirs had lived long!
With lead, sulfuric acid, and a good design of the shell structure, it was basically possible to make lead batteries!
In his previous life, Li Zexuan had disassembled old lead batteries, so he was quite familiar with their internal structure!
After about 15 minutes, Li Zexuan finished drawing the blueprint and walked out of the laboratory.
"Faubert, get someone to follow this blueprint and use hard rubber to make a shell like this! I need it urgently! "
After arriving at Faubert's "office", Li Zexuan passed the blueprint to Faubert and said.
Hard rubber was rubber with a high sulfur content.
At a low temperature, the sulfur bonds could increase the range of movement between the chains, so the rubber would not harden. However, if more sulfur was added, for example, 25% to 50%, based on the weight of the rubber, the bonds between the chains would become even tighter, causing the rubber to harden. This type of rubber was called hard rubber.
In the 21st century, the main material used for battery shells was ABS, high strength and high density plastic. However, when batteries first became popular, there was no such plastic. At that time, they used hard rubber!
The current Tang Dynasty obviously did not have the conditions to produce ABS plastic, so Li Zexuan could only use hard rubber! For the current workshop, using hard rubber to make a battery shell was not difficult!
It was all thanks to him sending people to Southeast Asia to look for rubber. Otherwise, many things could not be made now!
"… Okay! This old man will arrange for someone to do it! The structure of the shell is not complicated. I estimate that it will be done in about two hours! "
Faubert took the blueprint and gave it a quick glance.
The workshop had all kinds of ready-made machines, so he was confident that he could make the shell within two hours.
He did not ask Li Zexuan the purpose of making the shell because he knew that Li Zexuan was going to tinker with something new. As for what the new thing was, he would know when it was done!
This was the tacit understanding that he had developed after following Li Zexuan for so long!
"Okay ~! Then I will have to trouble Faubert ~! "
Li Zexuan smiled.
Faubert smiled and brought the blueprint to the yard where the rubber was produced!
Li Zexuan, on the other hand, went to the courtyard where the glass was fired. This was because the partition in the Modest Battery was made of glass.
About four hours later, the materials for the battery shell, cathode and anode plates, as well as the separator in the electrolyte were all prepared. Li Zexuan began to mix the electrolyte for the battery!
This was very particular!
Generally speaking, the sulfuric acid concentration of lead batteries was between 1.27 and 1.28. If the concentration was too low, it was easy to lose power. After a long period of use, lead sulfuric acid crystals would form between the two plates. It could not be removed during the recharging process and would become a blind spot. When the amount of lead sulfuric acid crystals formed reached a certain level, the battery would not be able to store power. Moreover, if the concentration of sulfuric acid was higher than the standard, lead sulfuric acid crystals would form easily.
Therefore, the ratio of sulfuric acid to distilled water in the electrolyte must be strictly controlled!
Just mixing the electrolyte took Li Zexuan more than half an hour!
The next work was to assemble the prepared materials and the shell. This was not troublesome. The only thing to pay attention to was not to bring debris and dust into the electrolyte during the operation!
Faubert stood aside and watched the entire process of making the lead battery. It was already dark, and the lights in the laboratory had been turned on by Faubert. At this time, Li Zexuan finally stood up, clapped his hands, and sighed in relief. "Okay! The world's first lead battery is finally done! "
…
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