Conference—Machines and the Chemical Industry

The next topic was machinery and manufacturing, which was Chief Wen’s area of responsibility. The discussion mostly revolved around what equipment should be brought over. Zhan Wuya had already pledged his shop, and he read out the list of equipment he had pledged.

“Is all that enough to make other specialised machinery? Uhhhh, for example, boilers?”

“In theory, yes. Although there aren’t many machine tools for now, as long as we have suitable materials, yes, we can make any machine you would ever want. Of course, my factory mostly specialises in making small parts for various clients and not entire pieces of equipment. There are also some smaller parts that we generally don’t make.” Zhan Wuya scratched his head. He was not used to presenting on stage like this. “For example, some standard parts…oh right–” He realised that most people wouldn’t know what a standard part was, so he explained, “They’re mechanical parts that are used to make fastening connectors, such as screws, bolts, washers, and so on. They are best made using specialised equipment.”

“Of course, it is possible to make them with what we have already, but it’s a bit troublesome. We’d have to make some specialised machines first.

“There are also various casts, moulds, gears, bearings, and so on that a small machinery shop like ours can’t manufacture in house. These require special processing lines, some even need special thermal treatments or electroplating. I don’t know much about that stuff, I just usually buy the parts directly.

“But of these things we can’t make, gears and bearings are incredibly useful. If we can’t make those then the entire manufacturing industry is doomed.

“So we’d have to bring specialised equipment. For gears we just need a gear hobbing machine. But bearings are harder… A full bearing production line might cost more than 10 million.”

“The money doesn’t matter. The bigger problem is how do we find the skilled workers we need to run the thing?”

“We can still rely on the original plan. Just try our best to make do with what we have. Trying to do it properly would be way too hard. To do bearings… we need a heat treatment furnace for the raw metal. The bearing retainer and bearing itself can be done manually. To seat them we can just use a punch press…”

The industrial group soon launched into a far more complicated discussion. After a while, having reached a consensus on the topic of gears and bearings, they started to write out a list of things. Xiao Zishan reckoned it was something like a required equipment list.

Wen Desi spoke up at this time. “I suggest that in order to slim down our load, we don’t bring shearing or bending machines, and instead include a few more punchers as substitutes. It would be better to bring as many identical machines as possible, so if stuff breaks we can share spare parts around. Also, we have to bring as many hand tools as possible. Finally, Zhan Wuya’s shop doesn’t have any milling machines or heat treatment furnaces, and we need to bring these.”

“No, no, we also need broaching and drilling machines, and we definitely need more lathes.” Jiang Ye, who had been a lathe technician for eight years, spoke up, “After all, lathes are the most basic of all machine tools.”

“How does 8 lathes sound?”

“That’s not enough, at least 12. They are very useful. I cannot understate this.”

“Wait, what about forge presses? We shouldn’t have too few of those either.”

…

While this discussion about machine tools went on, many of the other attendees started yawning. However, because of the restriction that they couldn’t leave until the topic was finished, they all started their own group discussions, and soon the conference room was abuzz with sound.

Wang Luobin suddenly stood up, and without asking for the host’s permission to speak—it would be a common trend that the people of the Industrial Group would ignore the host–“We also must have a small foundry. This is an absolute necessity for making engines in the future. The single-cylinder diesel engine is an universal tool: it can plough and plant the fields, move ships through water, generate power, and transport people and goods on land.”

“Small engines are not a big deal. Usual agricultural single-cylinder engines can be made from cast iron. HT250 is good for this: good shock absorption, good viscosity for casting, and easy to cut and shape during processing.”^[1]

“Speaking of casting, aren’t moulds going to be a problem for our manufacturing system? Mould-making is also a very technical job. Having just the casting machine isn’t enough. You also need the moulds. The equipment required by modern mould-making is way too demanding: CAD design, CNC…that stuff is not easy.”

“It’s not that exaggerated. You’re talking about now. Back then, the engineer designer drew the moulds and machined the parts, and then the machinist put everything together. The skill level of the machinists was crucial. There wasn’t a reliance on all the fancy computer design like nowadays.”

Gradually, the discussion on machinery wrapped up, and the Industrial Group had produced a giant pile of paper to show for it. It seemed they were very confident about the plan. Wen Desi saw Wang Luobin writing enthusiastically among the bunch, and couldn’t help but worry whether the final order list would be too long.

“I am Li Situi.” A man with a full beard but with a baby face stood up to speak. “On behalf of the entire Chemical Group, I want to make a strong motion of protest.” He emphasised the words “Chemical Group.”

“The chemical industry is a crucial and distinct industry, how can we be lumped into the Industrial Group without any distinction? They’re all talking about machines and have nothing to do with us!”

“Let’s save the administrative issues for later, alright? First, let’s hear your views on the chemical industry.”

“Three acids and two bases. Three acids: nitric, sulfuric and hydrochloric. Two bases: sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate. Our goal is to solve the production of these chemicals.”^[2]

“This means we need to rebuild the heavy chemical industry, the products from which are the foundation of all other chemical processes. But before then, let me cover some basic chemistry first about the three acids and two bases.”

Now, it was the machinists turn to yawn in boredom. However, most people were still rapt at attention.

“The chemical industry is the most versatile of all industries. The things made are rarely end products in and of itself, but are rather used in other industrial processes. For example, sulfuric acid is used to make fertilisers; soda ash is used to make glass, synthetic ammonia for explosives and fertilisers; and so on and so forth. As long as we can produce basic heavy chemical products we can solve many, many resource acquisition problems.

“Do you have any idea how much you rely on these chemicals in your lives? You don’t know, so chemicals and machines were grouped together!” He shook his head, “What a tragedy!”

“Don’t get so worked up, let’s talk about chemicals.”

“We need two basic processing lines: a combined synthetic ammonia and alkali production line, and then something for coking. These two sets can roughly meet our basic chemical needs, especially for synthetic ammonia.”

“What is coking equipment? A coke oven?”

“Not quite, it's something that uses coal tar to make various chemicals. It can make sulfuric and nitric acid, phenol, several dyes, oh, and of course sulfonamides. Sulfonamides are very useful for making antibiotics. Of course, their output is not high, but it should suffice under normal circumstances.”^[3]

“What about synthetic ammonia? For fertiliser?”

“It’s extremely useful for us. Put simply, without synthetic ammonia, we don’t get nitric acid. Without nitric acid, we cannot make explosives. There’s also fertiliser as you mentioned.”

“In addition to the equipment I mentioned before, we also need to prepare some spares. Such as, mixing towers, absorption towers, decarbonisation towers, distillation towers, saturated hot water towers, as well as various reaction vessels, pressurised pipes, pumps, heaters…I think we’d need at least 500-600 tons to get started.”

“Uhh, these things, can we not make them ourselves? We’ll have a relatively complete machinery industry soon enough, right?”

Everyone looked at the other members of the Industrial group, however, it was Li Situi who responded instead. “Materials. The problem is materials. Unless we can produce stuff like stainless steel and polyethylene, I think it will be difficult to build the chemical production equipment ourselves within a decade.”

Luo Duo spoke again. “Wouldn’t glass and ceramics work? The Eighth Route Army once used water tanks to make sulfuric acid. And many of the grassroots chemical factories during the Great Leap Forward also used these things.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone’s tried to imitate large-scale modern chemical processing using such methods. Regardless, if we have the chance to procure modern equipment, we shouldn’t need to use historical methods. Not only would it be safer for everyone involved, it would also improve our efficiency. If any of you want to use water tanks to make sulfuric acid, you’re welcome to try.”

“Hey, can I ask, with all the stuff you listed, can we get into organic chemicals?”

“I’m afraid it’d be difficult.” Ji Situi thought. So greedy, are organic chemicals so easy to make?

“Then there won’t be any nylon or rubber.” Someone lamented.

“The hell you need nylon for, stockings?” Someone else teased.

“Yeah of course, black stockings, skin-coloured stockings… we have to have these.”

When the atmosphere began to take a comedic turn, Xiao Zishan had to bring everyone back on track.

“It would take up to 11 years for us to tap rubber, but there are many places that urgently need rubber before then.”

“We don’t plan to make condoms right? Why do you need rubber?”

This aroused a wave of laughter around the room.

“Is the reason you want organic chemicals just for the sake of getting plastics?” Ji Situi directed at the person who had asked about it. Seeing the affirmative nod, he commented, “Although plastics are everywhere in our daily lives, the synthesis chain involved in their manufacture is incredibly complicated. It’s not a simple question of raw materials or a few reaction vessels. But we could feasibly make celluloid and bakelite.”

“Bakelite is very useful.”^[4]

“If we want a full electric power grid, bakelite is one of the things we need, but rubber is also important…”

“The question of rubber will be answered by the agricultural group later.”

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1. HT250 is a grade of cast iron in China, see for instance here for details. International equivalents are ISO 185 or ASTM A48 in the US standard. ↩︎

2. The original just says “three acids and two bases.” I added the actual chemicals. Reminder: sodium hydroxide is also known as caustic soda or lye. Sodium carbonate is also known as soda ash. ↩︎

3. This doesn’t sound right, I’m not sure if such a machine/process exists. These sound more like byproducts of standard coke furnaces. If you know more about chemistry let me know. ↩︎

4. Bakelite is a synthetic polymer, the first synthetic plastic developed. See wiki. ↩︎