I had an interesting question near the end of the semester as to why we need mercaptan to cap chain lengths, based on what I was talking about while showing a separations demonstration to produce medium length hydrocarbons, then partially reducing them. That showed that it does seem like my lectures on hydrocarbons and polymers have been making sense, at least on some level with students. After all, it isn't obvious why we'd actually want to have shorter polymer chains.

The idea is pretty straightforward, polymer chains show different properties the longer they get as they interact with each other. Exceptionally long chains interact with both themselves and other chains as they loop and bend, leading to more rigid structures. Very short chains are often more fluid. For example, polyethylene is essentially just a hydrocarbon of a very long length. However, a polyethylene chain of length 6 is just 1,5-hexadiene, a liquid with a low boiling point. Of course, that's a whole other discussion to explain different hydrocarbons, but it proves the point that chain length matters for properties.

As for why mercaptans are used, it's just because they do what they need to. They readily react with the growing polymer, and the remnant acts as a new radical to start a new polymer chain. Any chemical could work if it fulfills that purpose, but producing thiols is a bit simpler, since we really only need to take the olefins and react them with hydrogen sulfide. Normally, you'd want specific olefins that only have one double bond, to reduce cross linking, but we aren't going to have that luxury, meaning our product might end up a bit more rubbery before vulcanization rather than afterwards, making it harder to work to whatever shape we want.

Essentially, if 1 in 1000 molecules in the initial mixture are a mercaptan, you'd expect the average polymer chain to be 1000 molecules long, capped off by a mercaptan molecule. By adjusting the amount of mercaptan and radicals added, you can tune the length of the chains. The radicals are just there to initiate chain growth, since they'll leave a monomer electrically unbalanced after reacting with it. They initiate the chain growth, but too much makes for more randomized chain lengths. The mercaptan caps off a chain, and releases a new radical to start a new chain.

I also showed them the process by which I was making potassium persulfate, which is fairly straightforward. I start with potash, dissolve it in water, filter off the solids, then react it with sulfuric acid. After removing precipitates, I then electrolyze the solution, producing potassium persulfate. It's an incredibly powerful oxidizer, posing a very strong explosive risk. We only need a small amount of it at a time to produce mercaptan and to initiate polymerization, so we shouldn't need to store large amounts of it.

What I found not much later was that, in fact, it is far too strong of an oxidizer to use for producing mercaptan. It simply reacts directly with hydrogen sulfide to produce water and elemental sulfur, completely bypassing the olefins entirely. However, I did find that we don't actually need a catalyst, or at least, under the right conditions we don't need one. High heat seemed sufficient to promote mercaptan production from hydrogen sulfide and our olefins. In theory, adding direct zinc doped fluorite might also help, since the UV produced might promote more HS radicals to be produced.

There is a part of me that is a little concerned about showing all of this to students who could show the northern alliance, but another part of me is fairly certain that it would take them quite a bit of time to produce all the equipment necessary for the process. After all, we have decades of experience with making distillation towers, and while they aren't the most complicated thing in the world, it isn't like I've been teaching students how to make them, only how to operate them. Further, the chemistry might be fairly straightforward for what we're doing here, but I haven't shown students how to make many of the chemicals we use like sulfuric acid.

This semester I also got news that the first arc furnace smelting facility has been completed. Since we're so close to the summer break, we're waiting to start it up until I can look everything over once.

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The arc furnace facility is really quite impressive. It should not only improve how much steel we can make, but might also open up certain other metal refining processes that would be difficult previously. For example, though it wouldn't actually be the same direct process, this scale of electrical process puts us on the precipice of aluminum production. We already can sort of isolate aluminum oxide, we can produce hydrofluoric acid and sodium hydroxide, and with this sort of electrical power, we could electrolyze aluminum metal.

That would go just about as far for aircraft production as artificial rubber will. It's definitely on my todo list having seen this facility in action. Even more-so considering it should actually be easier to find students capable of learning and expanding a metal oriented process compared to carbon based chemistry.

We do technically have everything we should need to make styrene-butadiene rubber now, save for the actual facility itself and the refining towers necessary. The adjustable tower is being used to test and optimize different production parameters for the various stages we'd need for the facility while some of the other parts of the construction are being built. I had requested a lab space along with some other facilities be built for housing. We have the radio station already on the island with some basic housing, so we can take advantage of that to expand facilities further to support more people living on that island.

I'll be doing some basic styrene-butadiene tests during this upcoming semester. By the end of the semester, all the initial testing and design work should be done so that parameters can be handed off to Zeb for facility construction. We've decided to install a large mana crystal on that island next as well. We're far enough away from our first capital ship being completed that it shouldn't interfere at all.

In fact, I was informed that we finished some interesting negotiations with Kao related to mana crystals. On the mainland, occasionally the dwarves mine out a mountain that has mana crystals in it. Historically, when that happens, the crystals are used to speed up the mining process, but then when the mountain is emptied as far as it can be, the mana crystals are left in the abandoned mine. There aren't that many mines that fit this category, as often the mana crystals are moved underground to the next mountain through a deep tunnel.

Sometimes though, due to either groundwater levels or no valuables being found in neighboring mountains, those crystals are just left behind. In either case, we've negotiated with Kao for a 25/75 split in our favor of grown crystals produced from these leftover crystals they have. To recover these crystals as effectively as possible, some stoneshaping demons will be transported around with containers that will function as vacuum containers. They'll be filled with mana crystals underground, the demon will use stoneshaping to remove gases, then the container will be transported back to our island.

Those containers will have the trapped argon and crystal material, which should drastically speed up our production process since it can supplement our argon production, alongside the crystal solids.

Initial attempts at making styrene-butadiene rubber materials were less than ideal. As it would turn out, a very important part is having fairly high purity of starting materials. In retrospect, I really should have assumed that to be the case, since random other chemicals could cap chains off or start polymerization, leading to more variance in product than I'd like. Often in the first tests, I'd end up with a goopy mess as the result, runny liquids with gel-like bits.

After applying some of the resultant batches from tests that other researchers were doing to make higher purity inputs, I started to get more predictable results to the degree that the material properties could at least be semi-reliably reproduced. The more styrene there is, the more solid the resultant polymer is, where as the more butadiene, the more rubbery the result was. I did a bit of vulcanization testing, which hardened the results as well.

There are still a few months until winter break, but I believe this result was good enough for me to be done with it. Obviously, other researchers are still fine-tuning things, and they're welcome to ask for my input on things. However, I want to move on to trying to produce aluminum. We're still a few years out from the airstrip being completed, so if we could at the very least have aluminum skin on our aircraft rather than steel, that should drastically improve their performance.

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