So, while the nitrogly produ tio ramp up, I started the beginning phases for chemically pulping paper. I have a general idea of what is involved and how to do it, but as with many processes I've fotten the exact details. The beginning stage is simple in that we start with wood chips that are steam treated, simir to the meical paper process. After that, however, the processes diverge. Further, without any new produ lines, we should be able to produce the chemically pulped paper. The only parts that would require new produ lines would be for the bleag process to make the paper lighter, which is unnecessary for use in dynamite.

  As a result, I've been trating on figuring out the chemical pulping process, and making goress. The gist of the situation is that I'm trying to selectively break dowain materials in wood while leaving cellulose alone. The two chemicals that I know I need for this are sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide. The sodium sulfide requires some steps to make, but I've been doing it by ralizing sodium hydroxide with sulfuric acid to make sodium sulfate. Because of how violent that rea is, I'm limited to using very dilute solutions in rger bulk to produce useable quantities of the sodium sulfate. After that, I reduce it by carbothermic redu with charcoal to get the sodium sulfide.

  There is a better way of produg sodium sulfate via heating sulfuric acid and sodium chloride to make hydrogen chloride gas and sodium sulfate, but until I've got a ballpark estimate of how much I need, I don't want to build a facility to produce it that way, even if the process is retively straightforward. For now with my b work, produg it the other way doesn't require any additional stru other than some new beakers every so often, which doesn't require assistance from stru teams.

  Over the three months I've been doing research, I've roughly narrowed down what I need for the first stage. I was actually quite a bit off in my initial estimates, but I've gotten to the point of making fairly high quality paper by hand now. The process I've settled on is a batch process where, after I steam the wood chips, I cook them under pressure at about 330 degrees in a rge vat of a little over 1 mor sodium hydroxide and about 0.3 mor sodium sulfide mixture. They cook for a few hours. Afterwards, I'm left with a solid wood pulp, and a bck gooey substance full of everything else.

  The pulp has to be washed a few times, removing the rest of the bck goo before it be filtered to remove any ks left over and then made into paper. The goo is quite toxid a bit too dangerous to just dump into the o. I have a few ideas on how to recover leftover sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide from the mix, and we'll likely burn off the rest of it. Normally, that waste heat would be recovered and used to create the heat necessary for some of the stages of the process. However, reguting that is actually somewhat hard, and we have an abundant supply of heat in the form of fluorite crystals which be fiuo maintain specific temperatures more easily than a burning sludge.

  I'm sure there are some trapped useful materials in that sludge other than the initial reats that we could e back to recover ter, but right now I'm more worried about killing off all our fish, so I'd just as well burn it off and make it at least somewhat less toxibsp; After we unch the barge in a few weeks, I pn on w on the sodium sulfate produ process, the recovery process for the sludge and, time permitting, start w on a design for a paper mae that makes a long, tinuous roll of paper.

  This will probably be the st time I oversee stru of the barge directly, and moving forward I'll only make the trip to watch the actual barge und result. Things went smoothly overall. We were, once again, caught a little off guard by the explosiohe barge was attacked. This time, some kind of very rge mouthed fish with bony ptes around it's mouth cut the barge in two, which obviously deto. It's jaw was immediately torn off, and as it rolled to the side it was clear that the skull had received too muternal damage, and likely the brain had been scrambled.

  The thing that caught us off guard was that the barge wasn't that far from the bay when this happened. It was a little farther than the crab attack, but sidering the fish didn't have legs, it was ing how close it actually was to the shoreline. The bst was borderline deafening given how close it was. Also, many of the demons around ehat they'd gained between 1 and 10 levels. Higher prestige demons like myself or many of the hobgoblins, did not notice such a ge. Perhaps, these leviathans have so much experiehat even at such a distance many levels are gained. I haven't noted my progress in some time, so I'll list it here.

  Level: 54HP: 5469/5469MP: 2482/2482Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipution, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial SleepMagic: Improved Stone Shaping, Teise, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize, Thermal Regution

  I almost wish they hadn't procimed this so openly, because Elora had returo watce again, and her eyebrow twitched when she heard the ents. I myself pn to take advantage of this moving forward by having us gather at a much closer point to the shore beyond the bay while wearing hearing prote. There may be a small amount of danger presented if a leviathan goes berserk, but it could also invaluably catapult hundreds of individuals many levels ahead of where they currently are.

  The unch should be in about three months as even more nitrogly lines are pleted. So I'll be returning to work on paper produ for a time to match the need for paper to make dynamite.

  I ran out of time to work on a paper making mae, but I was able to design a sodium sulfate produ lihat produces batches of the stuff at about twice my pnned ption rate. It involves a rge kiln using acid washed lightstoo resist the sulfuric acid, along with heat fluorite to provide the necessary temperature. Stirring rods mix the solid salt with the sulfuric acid to help react it, and the hydrogen chloride gas is gathered and made into spare hydrochloric acid or veo atmosphere.

  The pnned amount of paper to produce daily is 5 tons per day at maximum capacity. By my rough estimates that would end up ing about 100 acres of forest in a year, or about one-sixth of a square mile. By my estimates, our isnd supports tropical forest on about 35 square miles of it's area, and temperate forests for about twice that. While I haven't seen their full life cycle, some of the forests we'd pnted for wood harvesting iure seem to indicate that the tropical trees take about 30 years to reach harvestable maturity, meaning this paper mill would require about six square miles of nd to grow trees for paper.

  Of course, that's only if it's running at full power. We could, just as easily, run it far below that, only processing och a day, rather than 12. That would lower the total required nd to about a half a square mile. Having the option to run at a much higher volume opens up the opportunity to more easily utilize the wood that we get from clearing forests for stru. Previously, we made most of it into charcoal, and that charcoal would be stored and used for cooking. Now, we've drastically cut the amount used for cooking by utilizing magical ovens usi fluorite meaning having a new sink for that resource is doubly useful.

  I've started doing resear the bck sludge to try to recover what I from it, but I'm still in the early stages. Fraal distiltion works to a point until a resin like substaarts to build up on the surfabsp; At that point, I've had to periodically remove that substance for any distiltion to tinue. I'll have to do more testing to e up with a method for recovery, as what material I was able to distill was actually quite ri sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite still, meaning recyg this material is going to be important for efficy, let alohe enviroal s.