I am Tang Di, a history buff. Welcome everyone [attention] I, let's talk about the past and the present, and discuss the general trend of the world. Gentleman I, just to learn and make friends!
When we read about the "Hou's Alkali Method" in the textbooks of our middle school years, the kind of worship was overflowing with words! What happened to Hou Debang, who invented the "Hou's Alkali Method"? Let's take a look at it together:
Hou Debang (侯德邦, Hou Debang), courtesy name Zhiben, was born on August 9, 1890 (June 24, 16th year of the Qing Dynasty), a native of Houguan (present-day Fuzhou), Fujian. His father worked as a farmer and his family was poor. He entered the school at the age of seven, helped the family to do some farm work after class, and developed a hard-working, thrifty and simple style from an early age. Two years later, due to the family's financial difficulties, he dropped out of school to help his father farm at home. Later, with the financial support of his aunt who opened a pharmacy, he was admitted to Fuzhou Yinghua Academy in 1904. He was intelligent and studious, with excellent grades, and was particularly interested in the natural sciences. In 1906, he graduated from Yinghua College and entered the Railway School of Shanghai, Fujian and Anhui Provinces, majoring in railway civil engineering.
After graduating in 1909, he was assigned to work in the engineering section of Jijinpu Road in Fuli, Anhui. At that time, the power of the railway was in the hands of the imperialists, and Chinese at their mercy. Under the influence of the social trend of the democratic revolutionary movement, Hou Debang, who has a patriotic heart, is secretly determined to take the road of "saving the country through science." In 1913, he was admitted to the Beijing Tsinghua Preparatory School for Studying in the United States, and the following year he was escorted to the United States with excellent results and entered the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Massachusetts (MIT) Institute of Technology. After graduating in 1917, he entered the Prant College for further study, specializing in tanning, and obtained the tanning chemist certificate. The following year, he was promoted to a graduate student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University.
In 1921, he wrote the thesis "Salt and Iron Tanning Method" and received his doctorate.
At that time, Fan Xudong, general manager of Tianjin Jiuda Salt Industry Company, was opening a Yongli alkali factory in Tanggu, and because he could not master the Suerwei alkali production method controlled by the foreign alkali monopoly group for a long time, there were many difficulties in building the factory, so he sent Chen Tiaofu, one of the organizers of the Yongli alkali plant, to the United States to investigate the alkali industry and look for technical personnel. After Chen arrived in the United States, he became acquainted with Hou Debang through the introduction of Li Guoqin, an exporter of tungsten ore in Hunan. Hou listened to Chen Tiaofu's story about Yongli's difficulties in building the factory, which aroused his long-cherished long-cherished wish of "saving the country through science", and resolutely accepted the employment of Yongli Company and changed from tanning to alkali industry.
He and Xu Yunzhong and others referred to the blueprint of the alkali plant provided by the American engineer W.D. Mount, combined with the actual situation in China, first completed the design of the Wynn alkali plant in the United States, and ordered carbonic compressors and other equipment from the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries, and then returned to China to participate in the installation. Fan Xudong asked him to serve as the chief technician (i.e., chief engineer) and director of the manufacturing department of the Yongli Alkali Plant. Since then, Hou Debang has worked hard for the chemical industry of the motherland with the Yongli Alkali Plant as the base.
After Hou Debang arrived at the Yongli Alkali Factory, he immediately worked without sleeping or eating. Faced with a malfunctioning alkali production equipment that could not function properly, he worked with engineers and technicians to debug various machines day and night, looking for various faults. Explore the causes of the phenomenon of sodium bicarbonate clogging in the carbonate tower or wet alkali scarring in a drying pan. With perseverance, he led the engineers and technicians to improve or redesign many parts of the machine in just two or three years, repeatedly experimented, removed various obstacles, and finally unveiled the secret of the Sulvi alkali method.
The Wynn Alkali Plant was first commissioned in 1923, but the quality was still not passed. After Hou Debang and others continue to work hard to test and improve, product quality continues to improve, Wynn Red Triangle brand soda ash is not only sold well in China, but also broke through the monopoly of the British merchant Bu Nemen Company and exported to Japan. He won the Gold Medal at the Universal Exposition in Philadelphia, USA, in 1926, followed by the International Exposition held on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The success of Yongli alkali production has inspired the ambition of Chinese people and laid the foundation for the development of China's national chemical industry.
After Hou Debang unveiled the secret of the Sur maintenance alkali method, he did a lot of experimental work and data collation in Tanggu, analyzed and studied the chemical problems in all aspects of alkali production in detail, and was determined to contribute his research results to all mankind, so he wrote a book manuscript. In 1931, he went to the United States for research and further studies, and the following year published this scientific monograph in English in New York under the title Manu facture of Soda. He systematically made the alkali making technology public to the world, sensationalized the international chemical industry, and became a pioneer in the world. American chemist E.O. Wilson said: "This is a major contribution made by Chinese chemists to world civilization."
In 1932, Hou Debang returned from a visit to the United States and designed and presided over the construction of a new caustic soda plant and a machinery factory for Wynn. Caustic soda uses soda ash and limestone from Wynn as raw materials, and the product quality is not good due to lack of experience at the beginning; He worked with several technicians day and night to study the improvement, and the result was that the products produced were very popular in the domestic market. During this period, Hou Debang taught part-time at Tianjin Beiyang University.
In March 1934, Wynn and Jiuda expanded to establish the Wynn Chemical Industry Company and decided to build a palladium sulfate plant in Nanjing. To this end, Hou Debang and six other people went to the United States in April. He repeatedly discussed the design plan of the sulfuric acid plant with the American Ammonia Engineering Company, purchased and transported equipment and equipment, arranged personnel internship training, and personally visited the sulfuric acid plumenium plants in various parts of the United States, working eleven or two hours a day.
When negotiating and designing contracts, All harsh conditions that undermine autonomy are rejected by Hou Debang, and strive for autonomy in technical equipment and academic independence; When purchasing machinery and equipment, for domestic self-made machinery are not ordered, must be bought, then carefully compare, choose its excellent texture and suitable for domestic needs to buy; Where secret patents are necessary for the project, they are bought at a high price. This task was not completed until March 1936. He was praised by his colleagues at Wynn Company as an engineer's "sacrificial wine". When the Chinese Society of Engineers met in Nanning, Guangxi in 1935, it decided to award him an honorary gold medal; The following year, the Society awarded him the Gold Medal for Engineering.
After Hou Debang returned to China, he was full-time responsible for the command of the construction of the Nanjing Pluium Sulfate Plant, and the project was extremely tense, and he organized domestic and foreign engineering and technical personnel to work day and night to personally inspect the installed machines one by one. At the end of 1936, the main project was successfully completed, and the commissioning began in February of the following year, with a daily output of 200 tons of rhenium sulfate (ammonium sulfate) and 40 tons of nitric acid. The completion of the largest first-class modern joint chemical enterprise in the East is of great significance to the development and growth of China's national chemical industry.
Less than half a year after the start of construction of the Nanjing Sulfate Plant, the "July 7" incident broke out, and Japanese imperialism launched an all-out war of aggression against our country. In the winter of 1937, the factory was bombed three times by Japanese aircraft at low altitudes. At that time, the Jinling Arsenal in Nanjing was in urgent need of ammonium nitrate to make explosives, and Hou Debang immediately solved the technical problem and converted the production of ammonium nitrate for the anti-war military supplies. He often risked his life to enter the factory when the enemy aircraft air raid siren was not lifted, and immediately after the factory was bombed, he immediately directed the employees to carry out emergency repairs and insist on production. After the fall of Shanghai, Nanjing was in a hurry, and he organized technicians to transport drawings and materials and important instruments, small equipment and equipment to the mainland, and buried the blueprints of the factory under tuanshan Mountain in the factory. It was not until the eve of the fall of Nanjing that he left the factory with a reluctant mood and withdrew to Sichuan.
At the beginning of 1938, Hou Debang, with the support of Fan Xudong, prepared new chemical bases in Wutongqiao, Sichuan and other places. Under the difficult conditions of manpower, material resources and financial resources in wartime, he began a new journey with difficult steps. In Sichuan, the raw material for salt production is brine, which is many times higher than the seawater in Tanggu, and if you follow the Sulvi alkali method, the cost is too high. In order to find a new alkali-making process and improve the utilization rate of salt, he and several engineers accompanied Fan Xudong to Germany first to investigate, and then went to the United States.
In the United States, he conducted experiments and research on the combination of the synthetic ammonia industry and the alkali industry, first from the experimental hands, according to the main points of the German Cha'an Law, one by one, reviewed its data, and carried out new explorations. In 1939, he sent someone to set up a laboratory in Hong Kong to work, and he was still immersed in research in New York. After more than 500 repeated experiments, more than 2,000 samples were analyzed, and a new process of this combined alkali production technology was roughly determined; The following year, expansion experiments were conducted in the New York and Shanghai concessions.
In 1941, the research work of the joint alkali production technology was finally completed, and then the American Ammonia Engineering Company (N.E.C) was hired to design the workshop for the synthesis of ammonia and ammonia processing in sichuan factory, and the factory was built in Wutongqiao, Sichuan. Together with engineers in New York, he did a lot of design, procurement, etc. In order to expand his knowledge, he also went to the night school of the American Mechanical Engineering Society (A.S.M.E) to study mechanical, electrical and structural engineering.
The joint alkali production technology invented and pioneered by Hou Debang is to synthesize the synthetic ammonia industry and the alkali industry into one, change the intermittent production to continuous production, shorten the process flow, improve the utilization rate of raw materials, can produce soda ash and ammonium chloride at the same time, reduce the production cost, is a major invention of the world chemical industry, so that the Sulvi method and the Cha'an method are dwarfed. In March 1943, the Wynn Plant Council decided to name this joint alkali making technology "Hou's Alkali Making Method". In June of the same year, Columbia University awarded him the title of Honorary Member. He has since been awarded honorary fellowships of the Royal Society, honorary members of the American Society of Chemical Engineering, and lifetime honorary members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. In 1944, the Brazilian government hired him to direct the construction of the alkali plant, and then the Indian Tata Company alkali plant also hired him to solve major technical problems. He also surveyed and designed a soda ash plant in South Africa.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in August 1945, Hou Debang rushed to Nanjing to inspect the sulfuric acid plant, and then went to the Tanggu alkali plant to inspect. Faced with the devastation of the factories of the Japanese invaders, he was determined to redouble his efforts to restore and rebuild our chemical industry. In October, Fan Xudong, the general manager of Yongli Chemical Industry Company, died of illness in Chongqing, and he took over as the company's general manager and chairman.
The following year, as a result of the all-out civil war launched by chiang kai-shek of the Kuomintang, the entire social economy had not yet recovered and fell into a war situation. Hou Debang led the Wynn employees to operate dismally, prepared for hardships, and it took two years for the factories to start production one after another, but the output failed to reach the pre-war level. After he and deputy general manager Li Zhanchen repeatedly urged the Nationalist government, the Nanjing Factory demanded from the Japanese side the complete set of equipment that had been stolen to Kyushu; However, due to the shortage of coke and electricity, the output was only half of the original design, and in this difficult situation, he still tried to realize Fan Xudong's last wish to establish ten major chemical plants.
In March 1946, he went to the United States again, seeking loans from the Export-Import Bank of the United States and designing and purchasing new ten major chemical plants such as Zhuzhou in Hunan Province. Due to the deliberate difficulties of the US side on loans and technical equipment, his travel in the United States has had little effect.
After losing hopes for the capital, technology, materials and equipment of the United States, Hou Debang was determined to restore and develop Wynn's cause based on his own strength. In July 1948, he returned to China and carried out a series of innovations in the enterprise with the "Jiuda Yongli Huanghai Yongyu Association" initiated by Li Zhanchen and others at the beginning of the year as the hub; Expanded the chemical laboratory in Nanjing Ya Factory and established the Zhiben Chemical Hall to strengthen the research on science and technology; Establish a management committee for affairs in the General Management Office to strengthen the operation and management of enterprises; Enrich the equipment and technology of enterprises in Tanggu, Changsha, Qingdao, Nanjing and other places.
At the end of August, he went to Sichuan to guide the production and deep well project of the Sichuan factory, and placed his hopes on the deep well project of Qianwei, thinking that as long as a few more wells were drilled and the imported machines arrived, they could use the Hou's alkali method to make great strides forward. He said: "If there is still a branch to be stalked in China today, it is advisable to bury one's head in hard work, so as to survive in case it is necessary to help ourselves and su sheng." However, due to the kuomintang Chiang Kai-shek government's implementation of the "method of sorting out the finances and strengthening economic control" in August 1948, issuing gold yuan coupons, and openly looting the funds of the people throughout the country, which accelerated the general collapse of the social economy and put the national industry in a state of destruction, Hou Debang's desire to "help himself to su sheng" was also disappointed. He "looked to the future, and for a long time this army was constantly fighting, inflation was infinite, what industry could there be?" If you want the country to be strong and the people's livelihood to be abundant, you are especially interested in asking for fish."
In the spring of 1949, At the invitation of the Indian Tata Company, Hou Debang again went to India to guide alkali production technology. When he learned the news of the liberation of Nanjing, he felt extremely excited and joyful, and in June, the CPC Central Committee Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai sent special personnel to summon him, and he immediately set off from India to return to China, despite all kinds of difficulties, and detoured through South Korea through Hong Kong to Beijing, where he was warmly received by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Hou Debang actively participated in the work of socialist construction and continued to make great contributions to China's chemical industry. In 1958, he wrote a huge work of more than 800,000 words, "Alkali Making Engineering", and contributed his lifelong experience in alkali making to the people. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1957.
He successively served as a member of the Financial and Economic Committee of the Central People's Government, a technical adviser to the Ministry of Heavy Industry, and a vice minister of the Ministry of Chemical Industry. Elected as a deputy to the First and Second National People's Congresses; He also served as a member of the first national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a member of the second and third standing committees. He has also served as vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Natural Science Specialized Societies, chairman of the Chinese Chemical Industry Society, member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice chairman of the National Science Association, and standing committee member of the Democratic Construction Association.
On August 26, 1974, Hou Debang died of illness in Beijing.
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