Chapter 1144 I Suddenly Had an Inspiration

Although the Industrial Construction Commission has completely separated itself from the military organization, it was reorganized from the old team of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission after all. The middle and grassroots cadres were only partially transferred within the ministry, and the original operating structure was basically maintained.

Therefore, when the document requiring centralized reporting of research results was issued, the subordinate units responded quite quickly.

In just half a month, hundreds of relatively qualified projects were reported.

Even if some fake and empty projects that were obviously made up to cheat subsidies were excluded, there were nearly 200 projects with real development prospects.

However, when Chang Haonan was invited by Li Zhongyi to the Industrial Construction Commission meeting room again and checked the application content one by one, he still felt a little headache-

Anyone who has really done research knows that in most cases, a project "promising" and "can be implemented" are two different things.

From the concept of a technology to its final user-oriented, the research topics involved range from hundreds to thousands, and even countless.

Among them, there may be only a few or a dozen that can really play a driving role and can be called the core.

As for the rest, they are like the change you take out when buying a house.

You certainly can't say they are useless.

But they can only be regarded as icing on the cake.

When the basics are already in place, they can indeed play some auxiliary effects.

But it is impossible to achieve anything with these things alone.

Professor Chen Zuyu, another consultant of the Construction Commission, was the first to break the silence:

"In my opinion, the most useful technologies for those Arab countries are these ones related to seawater desalination..."

"Before I came here today, I checked the information. Not only the UAE, but also Saudi Arabia, Oman, Libya and other countries in West Asia and North Africa, there is no permanent natural river in the country, and the conditions are relatively rich. The demand for seawater desalination technology can be said to be the highest in the world..."

"..."

Hearing this, the other people in the conference room showed surprise.

It's not because there is anything wrong with the content.

But the person who said it is wrong.

The problem of water shortage is not only in the Middle East countries.

China also exists.

It is just that it is manifested in the form of uneven distribution of water resources.

Therefore, for a long time in the past, the ideas for solving the water shortage problem in northern China were divided into two camps: South-to-North Water Diversion and seawater desalination.

The former is a long-term project that has been tried and demonstrated since the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. If it is to be carried out on a large scale, the amount of work is unimaginable, and it is bound to cause large-scale migration.

The latter is a technology that was developed later. The capital investment and technical risks are large, but it is a research hotspot. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was also a seawater desalination campaign, and some pilot projects have been carried out in several coastal cities such as Tianjin.

As a water conservancy, hydropower and civil engineering expert who was only one step away from being elected as an academician last year, Chen Zuyu has always been a strong promoter of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

It is really a blessing to hear him support the seawater desalination project.

Chen Zuyu probably saw what everyone was thinking, so he smiled inscrutablely:

"I am not a pedantic person... The reason why I had a problem with desalination in the past was mainly to solve the problem of water shortage in the north, not because I had a prejudice against the technology itself... Now that there are big families in the Middle East who want to use it, it can be regarded as an opportunity for past research to be put to good use, haha..."

After saying that, he looked in the direction of Chang Haonan with some deep meaning.

This somewhat abrupt look made the latter, who had not had time to speak, stunned. He thought that he and Professor Chen should have never had any entanglement, and thought that the other party wanted to hint at him, so he looked back along the line of sight.

Then he noticed Academician Gao Congjie sitting next to him.

Suddenly he realized it.

As the saying goes, enemies will always meet.

Academician Gao Congjie happened to be an expert in comprehensive utilization of seawater and membrane separation, and one of the bigwigs who previously promoted the desalination route.

In fact, with the review and approval of the "Overall Plan for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project" a year and a half ago, the dispute between the two sides ended with the South-to-North Water Diversion Project winning comprehensively.

As for Chen Zuyu, who has already secured victory, he certainly doesn't mind showing some goodwill on such occasions.

It can also eliminate some resistance for himself in the next academician selection.

Otherwise, if the two sides continue to confront each other like this, he may have to wait until the completion of the first phase of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project before he can accumulate enough hard contributions.

But the cycle of such a large project is often counted in decades...

The torment of waiting is secondary.

The key is that we may not even be able to wait for that day...

"Come on, Lao Chen, our family knows our own business..."

Gao Congjie smiled and waved his hand:

"When we proposed to desalinate seawater, we were prepared to rely on the large number of coal-fired power stations in my country's coastal areas and the planned nuclear power plants to use waste heat for energy. It is impossible to burn coal in the Middle East, and my country is not good at the relevant technologies of oil and gas boilers..."

"Unless you can convince those oil-producing countries to build nuclear power plants in large quantities, otherwise even they cannot provide the energy for desalination..."

Although he said ungrateful words, Chang Haonan, who was sitting nearby, could see that his expression had eased a lot compared to before.

It seems that these two do not have any personal grudges.

"Academician Gao, is it possible to transform the other party's existing power facilities..."

The opinions just raised by the former are obviously recognized by many people.

For example, Li Zhongyi, who was sitting in the first seat, asked quickly.

"It's difficult."

This time, Gao Congjie's response was very decisive:

"The desalination of seawater in the power plant needs to be considered from the early stage of design, and the boiler also needs to be adapted in a targeted manner... The amount of work for the transformation of the old power plant is almost the same as that for the construction of a new one, and we can't expect Siemens or General Electric to cooperate with us in this regard."

But Li Zhongyi still didn't give up:

"In recent years, Academician Chang and his team have made some achievements in the field of gas turbines for power generation. Do you two think it's possible to cooperate..."

Chang Haonan, who was suddenly cueed, quickly dispelled the other party's bold idea:

"On the one hand, the models we are currently putting into production are all Light power generation engines used in oil fields or natural gas fields cannot meet the needs of large and medium-sized power plants... On the other hand, there are great differences between gas turbines and boilers in terms of energy recovery and utilization, and it is impossible to directly move the technology of Academician Gao and others here..."

"Compared to this, it is better to hope that the international environment will change or our country's nuclear energy utilization technology will make a breakthrough. When the time comes, we can build nuclear power plants in Middle Eastern countries, and then seawater desalination technology will be a piece of cake..."

The gas power plant itself will have another set of waste heat boilers-steam turbines as a supplement, and even if it is a rich family, it is impossible to rely entirely on gas turbines to supply urban electricity.

In the end, Gao Congjie took the initiative to change the topic to prevent Li Zhongyi from continuing to consider this unsuitable direction:

"If you ask me, Director Li, your old profession is more suitable..."

Such a sentence really took the latter's attention away in an instant.

Seeing this, Gao Congjie simply continued:

"For so many years, the Gulf countries have always been mainly exporting crude oil, and even finished oil is rare, let alone more complex oil industry products."

"But even if they have an oil field that cannot be mined for a century, it is impossible for them to continue like this... I saw that report also talked about the demand for deep processing of oil..."

The report he mentioned was naturally the one that Chang Haonan had seen half a month ago.

It did mention investment in the chemical industry in a large section.

The only problem is that big chemical industry looks simple, but the inherent technical difficulty is not low at all.

Even China's own petrochemical industry, technology, equipment and funds are heavily dependent on foreign countries, and there are not many fields that can be used for foreign export projects.

Of course, there is a good thing about the chemical industry, that is, the product categories are extremely rich.

So the crowd did not immediately pour cold water on it, but each found a few related research directions from the list and began to compare and analyze the feasibility.

Atmospheric and vacuum pressure reduction, light hydrocarbon recovery, high propylene catalytic cracking, carbon two recovery, full-density polyethylene, ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol...

Because of his research on computational materials science, Chang Haonan is slightly familiar with the molecular properties of these basic organic compounds, but after all, he is not an expert in the field of chemical engineering.

So he didn't think about getting involved in anything too in-depth, just a cursory look.

It mainly includes the basis for topic selection, research status, and technical routes.

Just read the story.

But even Chang Haonan himself didn't expect that he could really see something out of it.

"The carboxyl group can form a strong chemical bond with the inorganic salt ions on the surface of the base layer..."

"The double bond structure of the vinyl group in the molecule makes the molecule more polar, making it easier to form hydrogen bonds with water molecules, showing hydrophilic characteristics, while the fatty acid group at the other end shows strong hydrophobicity..."

"..."

This paragraph is just mentioned casually as research background in the application. The real focus is the process part at the back, claiming that it can reduce energy consumption by 45% compared with existing technologies.

It is the kind of project that doesn't look very reliable at first glance.

But the above paragraph gave Chang Haonan a flash of inspiration -

Since the end of 2000, he has gathered several related research groups and started to conduct relevant research on desert modification in the western part of Meng Province.

Now four years have passed, and it cannot be said that there is no progress, but it is indeed still a long way from practical use.

The greatest value may be that it allows Professor Zhuang Bingchang to stay in Jilin Province, and he did not die accidentally at the hands of two gangsters like in his previous life.

But other achievements are indeed a bit lackluster.

Mainly in the very beginning of the theory, it is clear that a curing agent with sufficiently special properties is needed to introduce the initial "universal binding constraint" to the discrete sand particles, and then transform it into a consolidation constraint that can recover autonomously through the action of the plant root system.

But anything related to agronomy is inevitably affected by the weather.

At the latitude of Meng Province, planting can only be carried out twice a year at most, and not many groups of comparative experiments can be done in four years.

Therefore, the efficiency of screening curing agents like finding a needle in a haystack is very slow.

But if you open your mind and actively design a polymer molecule so that it can have a long chain or cyclic hydrophobic structure as the main chain, and at the same time have more hydrophilic groups and active groups at the end of the branch chain, It can wrap and cross-link with the surface of soil particles to strengthen the soil...

As for this technology, let’s not talk about other things.

For those countries that are almost entirely in the desert, it is obviously attractive.

And there is obviously no shortage of investment in technologies that interest oilmen...

Thinking of this, Chang Haonan immediately put down the application form in his hand:

"Director Li, I don't think the feasibility of these applied projects is very high...but I personally have an idea."

In an instant, more than a dozen eyes focused on him.

"Perhaps some comrades have heard that I have a research project on desert soilization in Mongolia Province?"

This time, it was Luan Wenjie, the deputy director, who reacted first:

"I have the impression..."

"When the Shenzhou 2 and Shenzhou 4 missions were launched, it seems that three batches of seeds were specially brought to space for you?"

At first, Zhuang Bingchang was forced to do space breeding, so Chang Haonan approached Luan Wenjie for help.

It was also at that time that he took over the task of designing the screening algorithm for Ocean One, thus beginning to indirectly get involved in the aerospace field.

It can be considered an old thing.

When Luan Wenjie mentioned this, Li Zhongyi also nodded:

"But I remember that there was never much investment in that project. In theory, it seems that it is still in the feasibility study stage..."

But Luan Wenjie's eyes lit up.

He knew very well that it was not uncommon for Chang Haonan to do everything in detail before officially establishing a project.

At least that was the algorithm of Ocean One back then.

"So...you've made some progress there?"

"Not yet."

Chang Haonan quickly waved his hand:

"It's just that I suddenly had an inspiration, so I wanted to take a short break to verify it..."