Chapter 54

Chapter 54: < Soap and Glass. >

After meeting with Kim Kiwoo.

The nobles of the East Sea began to move busily.

First, they settled on the islands around the waters where the sargassum was coming from.

It was inefficient to transport the seaweed to the mainland and burn it into ash.

Of course, there were natives living on most of the islands, but this problem was peacefully resolved.

The nobles promised to pay a certain price in exchange for living in one area of the island.

They only needed a small piece of land to burn the seaweed anyway.

Thus, countless ships sailed along the Caribbean coast, gathering seaweed.

Sargassum had air pockets that made it float on the water, so it was relatively easy to collect.

Every day, a large amount of sargassum was transported to each island, where it was burned into ash.

Of course, even if a lot of sargassum was burned, the amount of ash was only a handful, but since they burned so much sargassum, there was a lot of ash produced.

“Wow. We’ve already collected this much ash.”

“We can load it on the ship soon.”

The ships filled with ash were first transported to the capital, where they were piled up in a laboratory in the palace.

Kim Kiwoo had set up a laboratory in one corner of the palace to conduct various experiments himself.

Many basic experiments were planned to be carried out here in the future.

And right now, experiments on the production of soap and glass were being conducted here.

The first experiment that Kim Kiwoo conducted was soap.

“All the ingredients are ready.”

“Really? Then let’s go right away.”

At the words of his aide, Kim Kiwoo finished organizing his documents and got up from his seat.

And he headed straight to the laboratory.

“Your Majesty, you have arrived.”

“Yes. You are all working hard.”

Kim Kiwoo looked around the laboratory.

‘Perfect.’

Kim Kiwoo nodded his head with a satisfied smile.

The ingredients and experimental tools were all properly prepared.

“Let’s start.”

“Yes!”

As soon as Kim Kiwoo finished speaking,

The craftsmen moved swiftly.

They had already learned the experimental process and assigned their roles, so there was no hesitation in their actions.

‘First, we need to make fat.’

To make fat, they needed to refine adipose tissue.

Kim Kiwoo headed to one of the pots.

There was already beef fat in the pot.

As Kim Kiwoo looked closely at the shape of the fat,

“Water coming!”

A craftsman shouted.

And then,

Splash!

He poured water into the pot without hesitation.

How much water did he put in?

“Stop.”

When the amount of water and fat became similar, Kim Kiwoo said softly.

Then, the craftsman stopped his action immediately.

“Now let’s light it up.”

“Yes.”

Whoosh!

Soon, firewood caught fire.

How much time had passed?

Bubble bubble.

The water began to boil.

“The fat floats on the water!”

Then, as Kim Kiwoo expected, fat began to float on the water.

The cell membrane burst and melted fat inside the cell rose to the surface of the water.

It was a phenomenon that occurred because fat did not dissolve in water and had a lower specific gravity than water.

How much time had passed?

“That should be enough. Now let’s collect the fat.”

“Yes!”

Then, the craftsmen extinguished the firewood and began to collect the fat that floated on the water.

When they left this collected fat at room temperature, it solidified as expected.

Animal saturated fat solidified at room temperature.

‘I think I’m done with the preparations?’

I had all the ingredients ready.

Now it was time to make soap through a saponification reaction.

Kim Ki-woo prepared two new cauldrons.

He then divided the ash water and the solidified fat that he had made beforehand into each cauldron.

“I’m going to light the fire!”

The craftsman shouted as he lit the firewood under each cauldron.

But the heat applied to the two cauldrons was very weak compared to before.

‘I can’t heat the cauldrons until they boil.’

Ash water. 

That is, an alkaline solution and fat should not be heated at too high a temperature.

But if they are not heated, the fat will not melt and soap cannot be made.

The ash water also had to be adjusted to a similar temperature as the fat, so that when they were mixed, the temperature would not drop.

If the temperature drops, there is a risk of the fat solidifying.

Therefore, it was ideal to adjust it to about 50 degrees Celsius.

‘It would be nice if I had a thermometer.’

That was only possible after glass was sufficiently produced and the glass molding level was high enough to make a thermometer.

Now he could only measure the water temperature roughly with human skin.

“This seems about right.”

It was the craftsman’s words as he put his hands in the melted fat and ash water to gauge the temperature.

“Then pour the ash water into the fat little by little.”

“Okay.”

Following Kim Ki-woo’s instructions, the craftsman scooped up some ash water in a bowl and poured it into the liquid fat.

Chwaaak.

Because their temperatures were similar, fortunately, there was no precipitation of liquid fat.

“You have to keep stirring the mixture while maintaining the temperature. If you’re tired, switch with someone else.”

Kim Ki-woo told the craftsmen.

If they are not mixed properly, the fat will not saponify and clump together.

Now as time passed, the fat and alkaline solution would meet and cause a saponification reaction.

But it took quite a while for it to become sticky enough.

Kim Ki-woo visited the laboratory from time to time while doing his work.

After a while.

‘This should be enough?’

It looked like saponification had already progressed considerably by eye.

Then it was time to move on to the next step.

‘I can’t let it harden like this.’

There is both soap and glycerol in the cauldron right now.

But soap with a lot of glycerol in it is very soft.

Of course, due to the large amount of glycerol, the feeling of skin tightening would disappear a lot, but there was a disadvantage that soap would be consumed too quickly.

So Kim Ki-woo wanted to separate soap and glycerol.

“Put some salt in.”

As soon as Kim Ki-woo’s order fell, the craftsmen sprinkled salt into the cauldron.

This process of adding salt is called salting out.

It means precipitating soap with salt.

The principle is simple.

Salt. 

That is, sodium chloride is an electrolyte.

It becomes polar when dissolved in water.

But salt is more polar than soap molecules.

In this way, unsalted soap molecules clump together and precipitate.

Sure enough.

As time passed, the effect of this became clear.

“It’s floating!”

The clumped soap floated up.

There must be glycerol underneath it.

‘Glycerol can also come in handy.’

Glycerol is a natural moisturizer.

After washing your body with soap, applying glycerol can prevent skin problems.

Also, if you add some medicinal ingredients, it becomes a natural ointment.

While he was thinking about this and that, the craftsmen filtered out the soap precipitates and put them in molds.

The soap that was put in would slowly harden.

Kim Ki-woo waited quietly until the soap was completely hardened.

Time passed and

Finally, the first soap prototype was completed.

“Here it is.”

“Thank you.”

Kim Kiwoo looked around the soap that he had made.

‘It’s quite hard.’

The soap was not as soft as he had expected, probably because he had separated the glycerol by crystallization.

He then carefully smelled it.

Sniff sniff.

‘Hmm… not very pleasant.’

He thought that he would need to add some fragrance if he wanted to sell it to the public.

That would make the soap more popular.

He then wet his hand and rubbed the soap vigorously on his palm.

‘It doesn’t foam as much as I thought.’

The quality of the soap was much lower than the modern ones.

But this was the best he could do in the current situation.

Kim Kiwoo was satisfied with his work.

He thought that this would be enough for the imperial citizens to use.

***

While the soap was being made, a kiln for melting glass was also prepared in one corner of the laboratory.

The glass kiln did not need as high a temperature as the iron smelting process.

The method of making glass was quite simple.

First of all, the most needed thing was sand, of course.

He could make glass by melting high-quality silica from the sand.

But sand was not easy to melt.

He had to raise the temperature above 1,700 degrees to make it liquid.

So he mixed some limestone and soda ash with the sand to make glass.

This way, he could make glass with only about 900 degrees.

This was called soda-lime glass, and this was what Kim Kiwoo wanted to make.

Kim Kiwoo started to pay attention to the glass after he finished his experiment with the soap.

He put pure silica in the kiln first, and then added some limestone and soda ash.

And he started to heat up the kiln.

“Whoo! Whoo!”

Whoosh! Whoosh!

As the craftsman blew air into the kiln, the temperature rose.

He could not use a water wheel in the palace, so he had to rely on human power for blowing air.

As the temperature continued to rise,

“The sand is melting!”

Sure enough, the mixture in the kiln gradually liquefied.

‘If I add some glass pieces, it would speed up the vitrification process.’

Adding glass pieces would accelerate the vitrification process.

The silica around the added glass pieces would vitrify one by one.

But he could only do that from the second experiment on.

As time passed, the vitrification was finally completed.

Then Kim Kiwoo did many experiments with the glass he had made.

He poured some molten glass into a ladle and let it harden, and he also wrapped some glass around a long and narrow iron pipe and blew air into it.

“Wow. It’s really transparent.”

“Wow, I can see my hand clearly!”

The craftsmen looked at the glass they had made and exclaimed in admiration.

Of course, Kim Kiwoo could not be as satisfied as they were.

The quality of the glass was not very good, since it was his first experiment.

It was too cloudy to compare with modern glass, and the shape was also distorted because there were no skilled glass craftsmen.

This was inevitable for a first attempt.

‘I’ll be able to make high-quality glass products over time.’

He decided to be content with making glass itself for now.

***

Time passed by.

When soda ash was supplied smoothly to the mainland, he finished his rough experiments with soap and glass.

Immediately after that, soap factories and glass factories were built in the industrial district of Black Sky.

Especially, the soap factory did not proceed by hand one by one like Kim Kiwoo and the craftsmen did in their experiment.

It adopted a similar method as iron decarburization process.

He used a water wheel to rotate a mobile-shaped wheel, and connected it to a paddle that carried out saponification reaction.

Thanks to this, he could replace the hardest stirring work with water power.

‘Hmm. Not bad.’

Kim Kiwoo nodded his head as he read a report on soap consumption of imperial citizens.

He had enough raw materials, and soap production was also increasing rapidly.

Of course, since it had not been long since he built soap factories, supply was still insufficient. 

But this was a problem that time would solve.

Soap was now spreading widely throughout the empire.

‘It seems that the demand for laundry purposes is higher than for washing hands.’

The empire had a lot of cotton.

Therefore, most of the clothes were made of cotton fabric.

But until now, it was very hard to wash these cotton fabrics cleanly. They could only rinse them in water.

In this situation, when soap was distributed, they could easily remove the stains from their clothes.

‘There’s no need to rush.’

It was not too late to think about the culture of washing hands and keeping the whole body clean after the water supply system worked smoothly.

While soap was widely distributed to the public, glass was not yet widely available.

It was hard to make it by hand one by one, and he had to do more experiments to increase the transparency.

Glass was only distributed to Kim Kiwoo’s laboratory and the university.

But Kim Kiwoo was more interested in glass than soap.

Glass was the masterpiece that would open the era of real chemistry.

‘Now I can do various chemical experiments with glass.’

Then he would be able to acquire the technology level to produce acid.

Kim Kiwoo imagined the world that would change rapidly by chemistry and smiled deeply.

< Soap and Glass. > The End