As New Year's Eve approaches, every household in Xiyang City is busy buying New Year's goods. Many residences are doing business. The shopkeepers and the guys are busy for the last peak sales season before the New Year. Production of workshops and workshops is gradually stopped. Workers are about to receive wages and buy New Year's goods to go home for the New Year.

However, a papermaking farm outside Xiyang City is still working hard to start construction. As the demand for paper in various places increases, the papermaking farms are becoming more and more busy, and even by the end of the year, they are still busy.

·However, going home for the New Year is everyone's obsession, so even if the market demand is strong, the owners of various papermaking farms have to make a difficult decision: to make a surprise production at the end of the year so that there will be enough paper supply market during the New Year holiday.

But now, in a workshop in this paper farm, workers and technicians are not working hard to produce.

A huge steaming kettle was running, and everyone was nervously watching the huge creature behind the safety protection wall, including several Taoist priests and the observation commander Li Sanjiu.

This cooking kettle is equipped with several key devices. It is precisely with these devices that the cooking kettle can steam wood (sliced) into wood pulp. After a series of processes such as bleaching, the wood pulp can be made into paper.

The technicians thought about these devices for a long time but failed. Master Liang from Wuzhuangguan also studied them for several years with the technicians, and finally the experiment was successful not long ago.

This success occurred with the big explosion of the reactor.

Now, it is time to witness the breakthrough, and everyone present is looking forward to it, but Li Sanjiu is confused.

As an observer, he naturally had to observe what happened everywhere and report to the emperor. Now he is in Xiyang, there is a technological breakthrough, so he must observe on the spot so that good news can be reported as soon as possible.

Of course, if it succeeds, the Xiyang Paper Industry Guild will also report this news.

Seeing that it was still early, Li Sanjiu looked at the information carefully, and a technician from the papermaking farm explained.

He is not familiar with papermaking and needs someone to give advice.

Simply put, papermaking is a technical job, especially large-scale papermaking, and its technical difficulty is not comparable to that of small workshops.

Large-scale production refers to low cost and high yield. In the past, the papermaking workshops in Huangzhou were basically mainly bamboo paper, because bamboo is relatively easy to "steam and cook" and pulping, and the bamboo grows quickly and has a large quantity.

However, with the surge in demand for paper, so a long time to plant bamboo alone can no longer catch up with the strong market demand. Therefore, an old question more than 20 years ago resurfaced: Can we use wood to make paper on a large scale?

Although it is wrong to cut down indiscriminately, if so many trees can be cut down properly in the lush Dabie Mountains and the endless mountains in the south of the Yangtze River, using them as the raw material to make paper, the production capacity of the paper industry can explode.

However, how to efficiently and at low cost steaming and pulping wood has always been a big problem.

Just as the bone soup in a pressure cooker can make the bones soft, the technicians in various papermaking farms have thought of using a pressure cooker to steam wood, but they have tried this many times and all ended in failure.

But every failure has accumulated valuable experience, and countless technicians have continuously improved on this basis. As time goes by, they finally arrived at the most critical step: a pressure cooker that can withstand high pressure and high temperature (relatively speaking).

In other words, an efficient and durable cooking kettle (reactor, allowing the wood to be steamed into wood pulp).

Other processes have been broken, and this cooking kettle has become the last blocking stone.

Either the steamed wood pulp is inappropriate, or the steaming kettle is unstable and easy to explode. Anyway, it is impossible to develop a durable steaming kettle.

Now, this blocking stone is about to be moved away.

Master Liang solved the design problems of several key devices on the cooking kettle. Not only did the experiment succeed, but he also verified at the expense of a reactor in order to confirm the absolute effectiveness of these devices.

Hearing this, Li Sanjiu couldn't help but look at the gray-haired Taoist Master Liang, and thought to himself that "experimental maniac" could not be judged by common sense: a common experimental reactor in Wuzhuangguan costs no less than 50,000 jin!

But in order to make paper, such experiments must be afforded.

Li Sanjiu understood the importance of paper, not to mention it is used for printing, writing, and painting. Nowadays, paper has more uses. One of them is to replace toilet chips as "toilet paper" and as "namon paper" as a replacement for cloth.

These two points don’t seem to be anything, but the market demand is extremely amazing, and Li Sanjiu has a deep understanding of this.

For thousands of years, people have to rely on wood chips, wooden sticks and other toilet chips to clean after changing clothes. No one thinks there is anything wrong with this. Of course, rich families can use cloth, but this behavior is really extravagant and wasteful.

Of course, paper is fine.

In the past, paper prices were not low. Although using paper to "clean" was cheaper than using cloth to "clean", it was still expensive. Regardless of the high and low, toilet chips were basically used to "clean".

However, when the price of paper dropped significantly and the cheap and easy-to-use "toilet paper" appears, if anyone who has used toilet paper has to choose, he will not choose to return to the toilet chip.

Therefore, when papermaking farms in various places were able to produce cheap and easy-to-use toilet paper on a large scale, at least the wealthy families had abandoned toilet paper completely, and the cleaning utensils prepared in the toilet were "toilet paper".

Lower-grade toilet paper is made of grass paper made of thatch, reed and other grass as raw materials. It is cut into pieces when it comes on sale for easy use.

Higher-end toilet paper is made of bamboo and bark as raw materials. When it comes to sale, it is rolled up by roll, also known as "roll paper".

Li Sanjiu knew that as far as Chang'an City is concerned, the monthly toilet paper sold is an astonishing number. At the same time, the sales volume of "namon paper" that replaces fabric as a hand wipe is also amazing.

After the meal at Zhong Mingding, a few thin sheets of "namon paper" can wipe off the greasy hands. However, it is very convenient. The napkin is like toilet paper. It will melt and not block the ditches when thrown into the water.

Therefore, it is indeed good news if large-scale wood papermaking can truly achieve technological breakthroughs.

As paper becomes cheaper, it means that the price of books will become cheaper, more and more people can afford to read books, and more and more poor students will take the imperial examination.

As he thought about it, Li Sanjiu looked at the huge steaming kettle in front of him, just like everyone else, and after a while, the valve on the steaming kettle began to spray water vapor, and then people became busy.

The complete production line began to operate, and Li Sanjiu watched in the safe area. Amid the roar of the machine, the steaming kettle "opened the lid" and a strange smell came towards him.

Li Sanjiu pinched his nose and continued to watch, only to see several kinds of steaming, different colors of liquids rushing in the sink, turning between many jars and jars.

After a long time, a large stream of white and sticky liquid appeared in a sink.

There was a thunderous cheer at the scene, with the white-haired Taoist Master Liang and middle-aged. The young technicians cheered and Li Sanjiu, who was confused, was entangled for a moment and decided not to pretend to understand, otherwise the report would be difficult to write.

He whispered to the technician beside him: "Is this?"
Chapter completed!