Chapter 67 Chemical Engineering Skills
"Song Yingxing is a rip-off in civil science!" Su Ze looked at the pot of yellow mud and sugar water and couldn't help complaining.
The sugar production went smoothly at first. The Jiaozhi brown sugar was boiled and melted with water, and then yellow mud was added. After a day and night of precipitation, the yellow mud did absorb some of the colored substances in the brown sugar and settled at the bottom of the cauldron.
But the upper layer of the sugar water is far from being "white as snow" as Song Yingxing said, but a turbid solution like yellow-brown muddy water.
Sure enough, this method was just something Song Yingxing heard about and wrote in "Tiangong Kaiwu". Even if sugar can be refined using this method, it still cannot make the snow-white frosting that Song Yingxing mentioned.
Su Ze poured the upper layer of brown sugar water into the pot, and after heating it, he got a ball of burnt black sugar. The appearance was not even as good as the previous Cochin brown sugar.
Su Ze sat down and began to think. The principle of the yellow mud water leaching method is adsorption, sedimentation and filtration. Yellow mud is the adsorbent for adsorbing colored substances in brown sugar. There is no problem in principle, but if you want to absorb all the colored substances in brown sugar water, you need to rely solely on Yellow mud will definitely not work.
In other words, the method recorded by Song Yingxing is just the first step in refining white sugar.
Thinking about it, the method of refining white sugar must be a trade secret. Song Yingxing only heard about the first step of the process and took it for granted that white sugar could be refined using this method.
However, many notes in the late Ming Dynasty do record this kind of white sugar as white as snow, which should indicate that the technology for refining white sugar has indeed matured in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
Su Ze began to recall the articles he had read related to sugar production.
Although the yellow mud water leaching method for making white sugar in "Tiangong Kaiwu" is hearsay, the technology for making rock sugar in the Ming Dynasty was already very mature.
Sugar production is actually somewhat similar to salt production. An important step in modern sugar production is crystallization.
When salt workers like Zhu Qi and others refine salt, the way to precipitate the crystallized salt is to pour brine on it and let the salt in the saturated turbid liquid precipitate.
The method of crystallizing sugar is to use protein as a seed crystal, and after heating, the sugar crystallizes out around the seed crystal.
Fuqing rock sugar generally uses egg whites as seeds, but eggs are a relatively precious food in Changningwei, so Su Ze decided to use soy milk.
Egg white is protein, so soy milk is protein, so there should be nothing wrong with it, right?
Su Ze put the brown sugar water that had been precipitated with yellow mud into the stove, then used a bamboo skewer to stick it in the soy milk, then put it into the pot, and waited for the sugar crystals to precipitate while heating.
As expected, this pot of candy was mushy.
Seeing the sugar water getting darker and darker as it was cooked, Su Ze also felt a little distressed. But he put down the spatula and began to think about the reasons for this failure.
Fine brown crystals have appeared at the bottom of the pot, so the idea of adding protein to precipitate crystals should be correct.
Why does the color get darker as it cooks? On the one hand, the temperature is too high, causing the sugar to change color. On the other hand, the sugar water in the pot is boiling and cannot crystallize normally.
Su Ze thought of the process of frying the color of sugar in "Cooking Skills". As the iron pot is heated, the color of the sugar will become darker and darker. The failure this time should be due to the temperature at the bottom of the pot being too high.
Now that the reason was found, it was necessary to control the heating temperature. Su Ze quickly thought of a method he had learned in high school chemistry class - the water bath method.
Su Ze scooped up some sugar water again, placed a small iron pot in the iron pot filled with water, and repeated the previous steps.
Sure enough, after using the water bath method and adding the bamboo sticks with soy milk in the brown sugar water, light yellow sugar crystals began to gradually grow along the bamboo sticks!
Done!
Su Ze looked at the precipitated sugar crystals in surprise. Although the color was still a little yellow, it was much better than before!
[Make white sugar, sugar making experience +10, Lv1, 11/100] Experience has increased! This also represents a sense of success in making your own sugar!
The next message from the system made Su Ze even more ecstatic!
[The location "Sugar Factory" was found, and the skill "Chemical Engineering" can be learned. Do you want to learn it? 】
Chemical industry!
What are you waiting for, study and study!
This is a vital divine skill! Su Ze is also planning to find a way to rub the rifle by hand. To improve gunpowder, he needs "chemical engineering" skills!
Not to mention that chemical industry is the foundation of modern industry!
Why was this skill not triggered the last time I refined salt?
Is it because the last time the refined salt was made in the kitchen of the temple? Doesn’t qualify as a “factory”?
This broken system really has no instructions at all, so you have to figure it out on your own.
Su Ze has "chemical engineering" skills in his pocket, and some basic chemical production knowledge comes into his mind.
Looking again at the method of making sugar crystals that I had devised, I found that a simple prototype of chemical production was indeed in place.
The yellow mud precipitates by physical adsorption to remove impurities, and protein is added and heated in a water bath to precipitate sugar crystals. The reason why the sugar crystals are not pure and transparent is because the temperature in the pot is still too high.
Sugar water will still change color at 100 degrees. In modern production, not only the water bath method is used, but also the boiling point is reduced by reducing pressure, so that sugar crystals can precipitate before the sugar water reaches 100 degrees.
However, with the current level of metal casting, there is no need to think about pressure vessels. It is already quite good to be able to produce such light yellow sugar crystals.
When the bamboo sticks were covered with sugar crystals, Su Ze took the sugar crystals out of the pot, and after crushing them, he got light yellow white sugar.
Su Ze has never seen what the white sugar in Fuzhou looks like, but the appearance of his own white sugar is much better than that of brown sugar, and it can definitely be sold for more than rock sugar!
Once you find the right direction, all that's left is repetitive physical work.
With Su Ze's strength attribute reaching seven points, he worked for a full day and night, and finally made half of the fifty kilograms of Jiaozhi brown sugar into twenty kilograms of white sugar.
Su Ze calculated that the actual sugar yield should be about two to one, that is, two pounds of Jiaozhi brown sugar can produce one pound of white sugar.
The reason why the output is low this time is because a lot of sugar water was wasted in the previous experiment.
Last time I was in a sugar shop in Nanping County, the price of a pound of Fuqing rock sugar was one or two and a half yuan. How could I sell the white sugar at a similar price?
That twenty kilograms of sugar is a full thirty taels of silver!
Su Ze secretly smacked his tongue, what does huge profit mean! Sure enough, technological progress leads to huge profits!
However, Su Ze also knew very well that this kind of huge profits could only last for a while.
When the method of making white sugar becomes popular, white sugar will no longer be a high-end luxury product, the price will return to a rational level, and profits will not be so high.
During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the price of a pound of white sugar was five coins, which was almost twice that of brown sugar. In this way, the profit of white sugar was only twice that of brown sugar.
Since history books say that refined sugar technology had already appeared during this period, it is possible that those who mastered the technology were just like Su Ze, still making a fortune in silence, and the technology had not yet spread.
Once the technology spreads, the price of sugar will drop dramatically.
The yellow mud water drenching method recorded by Song Yingxing came from the Fujian and Guangzhou areas. Su Ze wanted to use sugar to make money for luxury goods, so he had to act quickly.
Thinking of this, Su Ze wrapped up the sugar. He couldn't wait for the ghost market at the end of October. This time he went to Nanping County to sell the sugar as soon as possible.
(End of chapter)