Opening a new era for the world's alkali-making technology
Before the early 20th century, the soda ash used in our country was either oral alkali from Inner Mongolia or "foreign" alkali imported by Bu Nemen Company. After the outbreak of World War I, transportation between Europe and Asia was blocked, and the source of "foreign" alkali dropped sharply. People have no alkali and can only eat sour buns. Factories that used alkali as raw material also closed down. Some patriots who were concerned about the country and the people were determined to develop our country's national industry during the European War when the imperialists were busy with the war and had no time to look elsewhere. After the success of the Chinese chemist and entrepreneur Fan Xudong (1883-1945) in establishing the Jiuda Refined Salt Company in Tanggu, Tianjin, he raised funds to establish the Yongli Alkali Production Company in Tianjin in 1918, and set up an alkali production plant in Tanggu, using the Solvay method to produce alkali. In 1920 Ground was broken in 1921 to build a factory building. In 1921, Hou Debang (1890-1974) was hired as chief engineer and manufacturing director.
Hou Debang was born in a rural area on the outskirts of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In 1903, he entered the Yinghua College run by the American Church in Fuzhou. Three years later, he was imprisoned for participating in a strike demonstration against the large-scale persecution and expulsion of overseas Chinese workers in San Francisco by the United States. He was expelled from school and entered the Shanghai Fujian-Anhui Railway School in 1907. He graduated three years later and worked as an intern at Fuliji Station on the Jin-Pu Line Railway for three months. In 1911, he was admitted to the higher section of Beijing Tsinghua University Preparatory School for Studying in the United States. After graduating in 1913, he was sent to In the United States, he studied chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a bachelor's degree in 1916 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1921. He returned to China in October of the same year and was hired by the Wynn Soda Manufacturing Company. From then on, Hou Debang formed an indissoluble bond with Wynn Soda Manufacturing Company and made outstanding contributions to my country's soda production industry.
Yongli Soda Plant was put into trial operation in 1922, but failed to produce qualified products for a long time. The borrowed funds exceeded the rated capital several times, and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy three times. It finally succeeded in 1926. Fan Xudong, the general manager of the factory, said excitedly with tears in his eyes: "Everyone, today we finally produced a qualified Chinese alkali. This has been our long-cherished wish for many years, and we have worked hard and suffered all the hardships in the world for this. With Solvay We are the 31st company in the world to make soda by law, and we are the first in the Far East and Asia. When I saw this snow-white and pure product today, I felt extremely happy and excited to make our products different from those produced using local methods. I propose to name the oral soda ash and the imported nemenine soda ash. "So sodium carbonate is called soda ash in our country to distinguish it from caustic soda sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide and clean soda sodium bicarbonate.
In August 1928, Wynn Alkali Company exhibited a bag of snow-white soda ash at the World's Fair held in Philadelphia to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the United States' independence. The center of the bag had the words "embedded in a double ring" printed on it. The inverted red triangle trademark has "China Wynn" printed on the top and "Soda Ash" below. The label indicates that it is an international Class A company. It has been praised as "a symbol of China's industrial progress" and won the gold medal of the conference.
The reputation of "Red Triangle" soda ash is growing day by day. In 1927, Wynn defeated Bu Nemen and forced Bu Nemen to sign an agreement to sell "Red Triangle" soda ash in Japan. Since then, the Chinese have used their own soda ash, which has also been sold to Japan, North Korea and other countries.
In 1934, the Yongli Alkali Manufacturing Company expanded and was renamed Yongli Chemical Industry Company. It was decided to build the Yongli Ammonium Sulfate Plant in Xiejiadian on the other side of the Yangtze River in Nanjing. The designed scale was to produce 39 tons of synthetic ammonia, 120 tons of sulfuric acid and ammonium sulfate per day. 150 tons and 10 tons of nitric acid. Hou Debang was appointed as the company's chief engineer and director of the alkali and ammonium plants.
The Chinese went through untold hardships and built Asia's first-class Yongli ammonium sulfate plant. Less than a few months after it was put into production, on July 7, 1937, the Japanese army provoked and invaded Wanping County, Hebei Province. Launched an offensive, and then attacked Songhu on August 13th. Our country's Anti-Japanese War broke out. The Japanese army crazily invaded North China, Shanghai and other places. The largest alkali plant and ammonium sulfate plant in Asia built by Fan Xudong and Hou Debang after 20 years of hard work fell into the hands of the Japanese invaders.
The two gentlemen were staunch and patriotic, and would rather live in ruins than in ruins. They resolutely gave up the Gu and Ning factories and led the crowd to withdraw to Sichuan to build a chemical base in western my country.
Hou Debang and his colleagues braved the risk of bombing by enemy planes and traveled across mountains and rivers to investigate resources and factory sites in western Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. Finally, they decided to build a Taoist site ten miles southeast of Wudao Bridge on the east bank of the Minjiang River in Jianwei County, Sichuan Province. Purchased the factory site in Guanquan and established Yonglichuan Factory.
The salt used in western Sichuan has always been made by boiling brine pumped from deep wells. It is not as convenient as getting salt from the Tanggu seaside. The shortcomings of the Solvay alkali production method are the low utilization rate of raw material salt and Waste liquid treatment is difficult. This requires increasing the salt usage rate and improving the Solvay alkali production method.
In 1938, Fan Xudong and Hou Debang led a delegation to Germany for inspection. Later Hou Debang moved to the United States and dispatched technical personnel to conduct experiments in Hong Kong, China and the United States. By 1939, all improvement plans had been figured out, and experiments were carried out in the then French Concession in Shanghai, Columbia University in the United States, and Wutong Bridge in Sichuan. Finally, the new preparation method was successfully researched.
In order to commend Hou Debang for pioneering a new alkali production method, the Yongli Sichuan Plant held a factory affairs meeting on March 15, 1941. At the meeting, General Manager Fan Xudong personally proposed to name this new alkali production method "Hou Debang". Hou's process" (translated as Hou's process). The proposal was unanimously approved at the meeting, and a letter was sent to congratulate Hou Debang, who was working in the United States, on the next day. The congratulatory letter stated that Hou Debang "has great aspirations, and has accumulated the results of 20 years of profound academic research and dedicated hard work to design a new method of alkali production suitable for the environment of West China, and usher in a new era for the world's alkali production technology...".
The key point of Hou's alkali method is not to convert ammonium chloride after filtering sodium bicarbonate into ammonia, but to cool down the mother liquor after filtering sodium bicarbonate and add salt to precipitate ammonium chloride. Lowering the temperature can greatly reduce the solubility of ammonium chloride, while the solubility of table salt does not change much. Especially below 16°C, the solubility of ammonium chloride is smaller than that of table salt. Adding salt increases the concentration of chloride ions (Cl-) in the solution, causing ammonium chloride to precipitate. The ammonium chloride obtained after filtration is used as fertilizer. The salt contained in the solution is then introduced into ammonia and carbon dioxide gas to generate sodium bicarbonate. Such a continuous cycle operation produces two products: soda ash and ammonium chloride, which greatly improves the utilization rate of salt to 96, while the utilization rate of Solvay salt is only 70. It also solves the problem of calcium chloride produced in the waste liquid. question.
Li Zhichuan, Chen Xinwen. Hou De list. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 1986.
The test equipment of Hou's alkali production method was installed at Wutongqiao Yonglichuan Plant in the autumn of 1942, and satisfactory results were achieved in 1943. However, because the Japanese invaders had invaded Southeast Asia at that time, traffic jams entering Sichuan from abroad severely hampered the transportation of construction equipment for the Yongli Sichuan Plant. The expanded production test work of Hou's alkali method was forced to stop.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Hou's alkali process slept in the filing cabinet for 6 years. After the founding of New China, a 10-ton-per-day device designed according to Hou's alkali process was installed in Dalian in 1952. Although it was criticized by experts from the former Soviet Union, in 1961, a workshop with an annual output of 180,000 tons of Hou's alkali production process was completed in Dalian. In 1964, the State Science and Technology Commission formed an appraisal committee and went to Dalian to conduct technical appraisal of Hou's alkali method workshop, believing that this achievement could be promoted nationwide. At that time, experts and scholars from all over the country who participated in the appraisal all praised Hou Debang and the comrades who participated in this work for their hard work and fruitful results. They were also delighted with this major achievement achieved by our country.
Hou Debang not only made outstanding contributions to my country's alkali production industry, but also assisted in the construction of alkali plants at the invitation of the Brazilian and Indian governments in 1945 and 1949, becoming famous around the world. In 1935, he won the gold medal of the Chinese Society of Engineers. In 1943, he received the honorary membership of the Royal Society of Chemical Engineering (there were only 12 foreign members at that time, and there were only one from China and Japan in Asia). In 1944, he received the honorary science medal from Columbia University in New York, USA. Doctoral degree, he was awarded the title of 50-year honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1973.
After the founding of New China in 1949, Hou Debang was elected president of the Chinese Chemical Society, chairman of the China Chemical Industry Society, academician of the Department of Technology and Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, and deputy minister of the Ministry of Chemical Industry.
Hou Debang is the author of "Soda Ash Manufacturing" (English version published in the United States in 1933, revised and republished in 1942, and Russian version published in 1948), "Soda Ash Manufacturing Engineering (Volume 1 and 2)" (1959-1960) Published in China), he is also the author of popular science books "Acids and Bases" (co-authored with Hu Xiangeng) and "Atomic Energy from a Chemist's Perspective".
On August 26, 1974, Hou Debang died in Beijing of leukemia and cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 84.
A statue of Hou Debang was erected in front of the library of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, leaving it to future chemical engineers to admire (Figure 4-1).