Chapter 179: Purification and use of potassium salts

With disappointment, Marin and his team left Cologne and returned to Texel Island. Along the way, little girl Angela saw Marin unhappy and kept comforting. Even, singing and dancing to relieve Marin, this makes Marin feel better.
When I returned to Dengbao, Marin found that spring plowing on the five large islands had been fully launched. Of course, the first step is to start-cultivated land ...
Marlin owns most of the horses—except for warhorses and pregnant mares, who have pulled down to the farmland. In addition to these horses, a lot of cattle were added to the island, nose loops were put on, and the farmland was pulled down.
After cultivating the land, it is time to apply fertilizer. In fact, the feces from which the nitrate soil has been extracted from the septic tank are mixed with plant ash and fish bones, fish scraps and dead fish, etc., and scattered into the field. Then, in a few days, seeding is ready.
In fact, after the excrement of nitrate soil in the feces, the nitrogen content is reduced, which affects the fertility. This is not a problem, however, as long as you apply more points, you can also compensate for the decline in nitrogen content.
The population of the island is so large now that it has raised many horses and started to raise sheep on a large scale. Therefore, there is no shortage of manure on the island. Because of the large scale of fishing in the Wadden Islands, there is no shortage of fish bones, killing scraps and dead fish. Therefore, it can be said that nitrogen fertilizer and phosphorus fertilizer in the three major fertilizers are not lacking.
However, the potassium fertilizer in the three fertilizers is not enough. This is because there are fewer plants on the archipelago, and there are not many plants and ash. Moreover, plant ash has a slightly lower potassium content. Although it is said that the potassium salt component in plant ash is potassium carbonate, which is the best potassium fertilizer, stronger than chloro-chemical-potassium or something. Under the same potassium content, the fertilizer effect of plant ash is stronger than that of special potassium fertilizer.
However, the amount of plant ash in the Wadden Islands is limited. The plant ash mainly comes from residents cooking. Comalin promoted coal burning on the island, which reduced the production of plant ash. In addition, there are few grasses on the islands, and they are not enough to burn. So Marin felt that there was a lack of potassium fertilizer ...
Just so, good news came from Kohler ...
It turned out that Marin had asked Kohler to send people to the Harz Mountains to buy bitter salt mines. So Kohler hired a Jewish merchant to follow the instructions of Marin, and went to the Harz Mountains to find bitter salt mines ...
After a long exploration, the Jewish merchants hired by Kohler's men finally found the bitter salt mine. However, the first time a bitter salt sample was sent back, Marin found that it was not potassium salt after a flame reaction test. (Potassium salt flame reaction is purple)
Then, after a simple experiment, Marin found that the bitter salt was thenardite (a sodium hydrate hydrate), not the potassium sulfate he needed.
As a result, Kohler once again sent people to find another bitter salt mine ...
马 While Marin was worried that there was not enough vegetation, a new batch of bitter salt samples was returned. After the flame reaction test, Marin found that it was potassium.
However, this potassium salt seems to have a lot of impurities. Because when this potassium salt reacts in the flame color, the lavender cannot be seen clearly, and it is disturbed by the yellow of sodium. Fortunately, the last time Marin brought back many stained glass from Venice, one of which was specifically used to filter yellow blue cobalt glass. Through cobalt glass, Marin saw the long-awaited purple flame ...
It can be confirmed at this time that this bitter salt contains a lot of potassium, but it is also doped with a lot of sodium. Because it is bitter salt, there must be many sulfate ions in it. However, Marin suspected that there might also be a lot of chloride ions ...
Marin just wants to use this bitter salt as potassium fertilizer. So, both sodium and chloride ions are unnecessary. Therefore, he began to think of ways to separate the sodium and chloride ions as much as possible to increase the content of potassium.
Therefore, Marin brought in a few cauldrons and a few workers who cooked salt, and began to use the principle of different solubility of salt to separate sodium and chloride ...
The solubility of sodium chloride is relatively stable, with little change with temperature. However, the solubility of potassium salts varies greatly with temperature. Marin used this principle to start a simple separation.
First, Marin first took out the salt and prepared saturated saline. Then he asked the workers to heat the cauldron with saturated saline.
I waited for the saturated salt water to boil, and Marin began to add bitter salt ...
As soon as he started adding bitter salt, a lot of crystals precipitated. Marin can conclude that these are sodium chloride-because sodium chloride is saturated in this solution ...
Marin allows workers to filter out the crystals that have precipitated in the beginning, that is, excess sodium chloride. Then, presumably almost saturated, Marin stopped adding bitter salt and filtered off the excess sodium chloride crystals.
Next, Marin withdrew the flames and allowed the brine to cool to room temperature. At this time, a large amount of salt precipitated out of the pot ...
Tamarin knows that this precipitated salt is probably a mixture of potassium sulfate and sodium sulfate. However, Marin had no way to separate the sodium sulfate. It would be easy to separate it with a mixture of sodium chloride. But the solubility of potassium sulfate and sodium sulfate is too similar, it is difficult to separate.
Moreover, even if sodium ions are mixed in potassium sulfate, it has no effect. Anyway, this is only used as agricultural fertilizer, not for chemical experiments, it is not so strict.
After purifying, Marin again carried out the flame reaction. After observation, Marin found that the yellow flame was much dim, and the purple flame was more obvious. Therefore, Marin can conclude that the potassium ion content is now much higher and can be used as a higher potassium fertilizer than grass ash.
I happen to be, this time Kohler transported a lot of bitter salt, about a dozen tons. Marin simply separated using this method. Then, about a dozen tons of bitter salt, about seven or eight tons of a mixture of potassium sulfate and sodium sulfate was extracted.
The Marlins sent all the mixture in sacks. After that, he arranged for another group of uninformed people to pour the mixture of seven or eight tons of potassium sulfate and sodium sulfate into each septic tank while it was dark ... except for a few people, no one knew ...
But Marin knew that this time, due to the addition of phosphorus-containing fish scraps and potassium-containing bitter salt and plant ash, during the autumn harvest, because the three major fertilizers are complete, the rye production will definitely increase ...
I dare not say that the production of thousands of pounds per mu like the later generations, but the yield of four to five hundred pounds per mu can still be achieved. This is mainly because the fertilizer effect of these soil-fertilizer mixtures cannot catch up with purified fertilizers. Moreover, the seed varieties of this era are really bad ~ EbookFREE.me ~ So, it is not bad to have a yield of 400-500 kilograms per mu. This is because Marin promoted the selection method of salt soaking and chose excellent seed sowing.
Although a lot of potassium fertilizer was added this time, Marin was also very dissatisfied. Because he had no way to separate potassium sulfate from sodium sulfate.
So, Marin ordered Kohler, let him send someone to find non-bitter mineral salts (without sulfate ions), and brought them back for inspection by flame reaction. If there is a purple flame, then it is a chloride-potassium-containing one. And because the salt is not bitter, there must be no sulfate ions. Solubility method for separation and sodium chloride is very simple and high purity ...
Of course, this is the last word. Now, Marin also has a potassium salt mine with low purity. Marin still ordered people to buy this bitter salt mine and use it as potash fertilizer.
Because the bitter salt mine is hesitant, and the price is not high. The non-bitter potassium salt mine that does not contain sulfate ions, because chloride-potassium can actually replace sodium chloride as table salt. Therefore, the cost of buying such a salt mine is too high and it is not cost-effective. It is better to use this bitter salt mine first. Marin has heard that the price of this bitter salt mine is basically the price of cabbage. Before, there were only black-hearted traitors who used this bitter salt as imitation salt and sold it to consumers. Other than that, this bitter salt has no other uses. Even if the unscrupulous businessmen used it to pretend to be salt, it didn't sell well. Because consumers are cheated once, it is impossible to buy this bitter salt next time. Therefore, this bitter salt mine is useless, so the selling price is very low. Marin can take it for a small amount of money, why not do it ~ EbookFREE.me ~ Welcome the book readers to read, the latest, fastest and hottest serial works are all in ~ www.mtlnovel .com ~ mobile users please read.