After Li Mengxi analyzed the reasons for the failure of papermaking from tree trunks with his limited knowledge, he believed that there might be several reasons.

One is that the trunk contains more substances than the bark, and this substance cannot be dissolved by strong alkali. Therefore, the bark can be made into paper after being boiled with alkali, but the trunk cannot.

The second reason is that Li Mengxi suspected that the alkali may not be strong enough and a super strong alkali may be needed.

Regarding the first reason, it is assumed that the components in the trunk are really more complicated, and there really is some kind of substance that does not exist in the bark. Then, we have no idea what this substance is, what the method of removing it is, and what it is.

No matter what is in the trunk, no matter what he uses to disintegrate the fibers in the trunk, no matter what it is, Li Mengxi thought, just try all the substances.

Common types of substances include acids, alkalis, salts, greases, alcohols (alcohols), and starch solutions. These are the most common solutions, and you can’t find anything else.

Li Mengxi found the trunk of a willow tree. He asked someone to chop the trunk into pieces with an axe, and then used scissors to cut the pieces into smaller pieces. Then he put a vertical roller on it to crush it, and then put a millstone on it to crush it again. It took a lot of effort.

In the end, less than twenty kilograms of willow wood debris was produced.

Then, find all the pressure cookers, put water in the first pot, plant ash solution in the second pot, white vinegar in the third pot, salt in the fourth pot, butter in the fifth pot, flour in the sixth pot, and finally

In a pot, put a strong liquor with an alcohol concentration of more than 80%.

After the solution is prepared, put a few kilograms of willow wood residue into each pot, then cover the pressure cooker, pour molten iron into the pot rim, and seal it.

What follows is a long high-temperature and high-pressure cooking process.

Li Meng didn't know which kind of acid, alkali, salt, oil, and alcohol was useful. Before the results were announced, everything was at a loss.

Li Mengxi had no confidence in this experiment, and he almost expected its failure.

Time gradually passed, and after a long time, Li Mengxi went to check the results.

His mood was calm and unruffled, a little tired, very lack of energy, and he was lazy. He didn't even want to say anything. He pointed casually and ordered the craftsmen to open the pot.

The craftsmen were already very familiar with the pressure cooker. They walked over with hammers and chisels and gently broke open a corner of the pot. After breaking the gap, the steam in the pot shot out along the gap, white.

Steam evaporates.

Li Mengxi looked at the rising white vapor and thought, it's over. All the alcohol vapor has gone out of the pot of alcohol, and the whole pot of spirits is gone.

After a long time, the steam was exhausted, and the craftsman took a hammer and banged it, breaking the iron seal, lifting the lid, and the craftsmen all looked at Li Mengxi.

Li Mengxi stepped forward again and inspected them one by one.

The first pot is water. How can water boil wood residue into pulp? If only water is used, then tree trunks have been used to make paper in ancient times.

I picked up a spoon and took a spoonful of it from the pot. When I saw it, sure enough, among the soup in the pot, the water was still water, and the wood residue was still wood residue.

The second pot is white vinegar. White vinegar is no longer ordinary vinegar. It is high-purity vinegar distilled from table vinegar. Its acidity should be much stronger than that of table vinegar.

Unsurprisingly, white vinegar also failed to boil the wood residue into pulp. White vinegar also failed.

Then, the grease failed, the starch solution failed, the plant ash solution failed.

Li Mengxi had already anticipated the result. He was already calm and moved to the last pot. The last pot was filled with highly alcohol.

When Li Mengxi walked to the pot, he took a look and found that the pot was almost dry and only the bottom was left. He thought that it was a high-strength liquor with more alcohol than water. Almost all the alcohol evaporated when heated, and the remaining

There definitely won't be too much water.

Li Mengxi took a spoon and scooped up a spoonful of something from the pot. The stuff he scooped out was dark and dirty and exuded an unpleasant smell.

Li Mengxi's first reaction was that the alcohol had dried up and the wood residue had burned into the lake. However, after taking a closer look, Li Mengxi noticed that something was vaguely wrong.

The stuff in the spoon was pitch black, I don't know what it was, it was thick and black, like jelly, but there was no wood residue in it.

Li Mengxi accidentally stretched out his hand to catch some, but accidentally, he was burned.

——

The city lord's mansion brought back the black pulp. Li Mengxi poured the black pulp into the bowl and looked at it over and over. When the pulp cooled down, he started to squeeze a little. The black pulp felt semi-sticky and not very good.

However, there aren't many hard objects inside.

Li Mengxi was puzzled. Where did the wood residue go? Could it be that this thing from Heihuhu is actually wood pulp?

Li Mengxi was keenly aware that he might have accidentally discovered the method of making wood pulp.

He immediately cheered up.

The black slurry was too viscous. I took water and added a lot of water to the viscous black slurry and stirred it for a long time. There were many impurities in the black slurry. As you mixed it, you could see that there were many large and small black spots churning in it.

.

After stirring for a while, the residue will sink to the bottom, remove the upper layer of clear slurry, and then take activated carbon and throw it into the slurry to absorb color and remove impurities.

After the activated carbon was used to remove impurities several times, the color of the black pulp gradually became clearer, but the color was still very dark. It seemed that the activated carbon was no longer enough to completely remove the pigments in the wood pulp.

Finally, take the net, pour the wood pulp on the net, and let it flow.

Li Mengxi waited quietly, waiting for the wood pulp to solidify, wait for it to dry, wait for it to take shape, and then lift it up.

When a piece of paper with uneven thickness and uneven shape and a brownish-yellow color was held in his hand, Li Mengxi took the paper and rubbed it twice, and then tore it twice. This feeling...

"...Grass!" He was surprised. He looked at Huang Bu Laji's paper in surprise. It was actually paper, and the paper was very strong. It had the same texture as bark paper, but the texture was far better than straw paper!

Why is this.

Li Mengxi then frowned and began to think deeply.

The test process is obvious. Add high alcohol, add pressure cooker, add willow wood chips, and cook for a longer time. As a result, an ugly black pulp with many impurities is cooked. As a result, the black pulp can be used to make paper, although the paper produced is of different colors.

Not pretty.

This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Li Mengxi was puzzled as to why it was spirits, why spirits were useful, but if spirits were useful, why did they make paper before...

Li Mengxi suddenly recalled that when he tested the papermaking technique before, there were not enough tools at that time, and there was only one pressure cooker, so he could only do it one by one. At that time, the test started with water, then grease, then vinegar, and by the fourth

In the first step, a plant ash solution was used, and the pulp was boiled in the fourth step, and then the key to papermaking technology was discovered.

After it was discovered that alkali solution could make paper, because the experiment had been successful and alcohol was scarce at the time, the test was not continued. As a result, it was not continued.

However, alcohol can also be used to make paper. It is incredible that alcohol can boil wood.

To this day, Li Mengxi realized belatedly that he should not have given up after discovering the effects of alkali solution during the test last winter.

If he had not been satisfied with the only results and continued testing, the art of alcohol papermaking would have been discovered long ago.

This time, if it were not for the fact that ordinary lye could not boil the wood chips into pulp, and if the test had not been restarted, the important role of alcohol in papermaking would have been buried forever.

After learning an important lesson, Li Mengxi decided that in all future experiments, whether results are produced at the beginning or results are produced halfway, he must insist on completing all tests, because no one knows whether the biggest surprise will be at the end.

that one.

——

Li Mengxi was the least hopeful test, and as a result, an unexpected surprise suddenly came.

The test used was willow wood. Since willow wood can be pulped by boiling it with spirits, it is likely that other woods can also be used.

Furthermore, since strong liquor can turn tree trunks into pulp and its cracking ability is so strong, it is possible that using strong liquor to boil tree bark or grass can also cook pulp.

Subsequent testing will follow.

Li Mengxi got a bunch of materials, including pine trunk chips, poplar trunk chips, pine bark, poplar bark, and raw hemp.

Put all these materials into the pressure cooker, pour in the spirits, seal the pot, and start a new round of cooking.

Half a day later, in the evening, Li Mengxi went to check the results.

As expected, the pine wood chips were successfully cooked into pulp, and the poplar wood chips were also successfully pulped.

Li Mengxi thought to himself, indeed, spirits can be widely used on tree trunks.

Later, the bark and raw hemp materials were examined and they were also boiled into pulp.

The experiment was a perfect success. Spirits can not only process herbs, but also bark and boil tree trunks. It is a versatile material for making paper.

However, Li Mengxi silently calculated that countless spirits were used in this test, and as many as seven or eight pots of spirits were consumed. This was seven or eight pots of high-intensity alcohol. After a wave of it, the cost was estimated to be thirty-five percent.

Hundreds of dollars.

Calculating the costs equally, it took so much liquor to boil seven or eight pots of wood pulp. The amount of paper that can be made from such a small amount of pulp is only three to five hundred sheets. Calculating on average, one piece of wood pulp paper can be produced

The cost is consistently high.

This earth-shattering cost...

A huge problem was easily solved, and a solution capable of producing wood pulp was easily measured in just one round of experiments. However, before Li Mengxi could feel happy, a bigger problem came.

Li Mengxi was thinking that the cost of alcohol papermaking is so high that it is impossible to improve the brewing technology. No matter how good the brewing technology is, it will inevitably consume food. In today's troubled times, large-scale brewing is too luxurious, so in the end there is only one way left, recycling.

Alcohol is the way to go.

Recovering alcohol is technically difficult. If you have advanced equipment, distillation and collection can be done in one go, and recycling is not a problem. But what is the tool now? The current tool is a rough pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is so rough that it is just an iron pot and a lid.

, every time you use it, you have to pour molten iron on the lid, and when you open it, you have to use a chisel. With such a simple set of tools, collecting alcohol is not easy.

[To be honest, I have been using Yeguoyuedu to read and catch up on books recently. I can switch sources and read aloud with many sounds. Yeguoyuedu is available for Android and Apple.]

If the pressure cooker is not improved, there will be no way to recycle alcohol. If there is any way to improve it, the only way Li Mengxi can think of is to change the lid of the pot into a shape with a long tube on top. In this way, the pressure cooker can

When cooking pulp, plug the long tube with linen or a wooden plug. When the pulp is cooked, immediately remove the cork and connect a hose. The hose is connected to the basin, so that the alcohol is absorbed.

Collected in the basin.

However, the operation is so cumbersome, the labor cost increases greatly, and the production efficiency drops greatly. To reduce the labor cost, the only way is to cast a giant pressure cooker like a tower and cook more than ten tons of pulp at a time. Only in this way can the labor cost be reduced.
To be continued...