Chapter 258: Grasping with Both Hands, Success with Both Hands!

Gretel regretted it within half an hour.

Why did he buy so many?

How much water has gone into his brain to buy a whole cart of oranges?

Obviously buying ten or eight pounds is enough for him to make. If not, it’s not like he won’t be able to sell it on the market!

In addition to oranges, he also bought lemons, cabbage, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, peas, radishes...

"Aunt Susan! Aunt Susan!" Gretel had to go and apologize to the cook:

"Can you do me a favor? Peel what needs to be peeled, slice what needs to be sliced, and deseed what needs to be done. Just treat it to the way it looks before you prepare to cook. No need to do more, just a few things. Add it all up and handle just one pound!”

"Okay, Master Gretel." The cook agreed without saying a word. Soon, the sound of the chopping board was heard in the kitchen, and the cook's aunt sighed:

"Young man..."

Grete shrugged. It must be admitted that the cook did these tasks much more efficiently than them. In the blink of an eye, a plate of fruit and vegetable slices was brought out. Grete smiled at the cook and shouted:

"Aurora! Come here and help me!"

Aurora rushed over. According to Gretel's request, he diligently threw ice spells on the lemons, cabbage, and cauliflower to quickly freeze them. Until all the fruits and vegetables were frozen solid, he then directed Aurora to put the fruits and vegetables into a thick-walled iron bottle and desperately suck out the air.

As the air pressure decreases, the moisture in the fruit and vegetable slices begins to sublimate rapidly. Those fruits and vegetables still retain their fresh and bright colors, but they have become dry and brittle, and they break when touched.

"Okay! Aurora, thank you! Give this to the cook to grind it into powder, mix it thoroughly, and get a bottle to put it in!"

Freeze-dried comprehensive fruit and vegetable slices!

Grind it!

Seven or eight kinds of fruits and vegetables are fully mixed!

Grete tried throwing an identification spell, but the information displayed was too confusing and there was no feedback. Aurora also lost one, but still failed to get a result. Not bad, not bad. I'll take it to Babel Tower tomorrow and ask a master appraiser to identify it...

Anti-scurvy potion, primary version, completed! If even the appraisal master can’t recognize it, then it’s time to hand it over to the task!

With the guarantee in hand, Grete made up his mind and began to fight with vitamin tablets. There is no need to think about chemical synthesis. Extracting vitamins from natural products is still possible...

"Dong, dong, dong——"

Bernard was like a big rabbit, holding a stone pestle as high as half a man and pounding it down hard. The huge stone pestle was as light as nothing in his hand. A stream of juice shot out from under the stone pestle, swirled, and then sank to the bottom of the stone mortar. After a while, Bernard leaned the stone pestle on the edge, picked up the stone mortar, and tipped it out.

Amid the sound of gurgling water, a pot was filled with freshly squeezed orange juice.

extract.

Twist it hard with gauze, filter, filter, filter again. Get a clear—or at least, clear-looking liquid. The barbarian's mission is over. Next, is Gretel's own battle!

"Boss, okay! Is there anything else you can help with?"

The barbarian shook his hands stained with orange juice and grinned. Gretel waved to him: "No more! Thank you for your hard work! By the way, eat less oranges these days, your hands are all yellow!"

Then, how to make solid vitamin C...

Grete glanced at the manuscript paper on the side. Before the hands-on experiment, he wrote down several technical routes in advance: evaporation method, cooling method, vacuum cooling method, salting out method, and reaction crystallization method. Next, let’s try them one by one...

Take 100 ml, heat and evaporate the water.

Take the dried residue of orange juice, redissolve it, and use starch indicator and iodine solution - thanks to the fact that he made iodine when he was messing with bacterial stains before - to measure the vitamin C content. It's a pity that the remainder after heating, the vitamin C content...

It was too tragic to watch.

Grete scratched his head and suddenly remembered that vitamin C would quickly oxidize and lose its effectiveness when heated. Okay, eliminate it by evaporation.

Cooling method...

Obviously, the concentration of vitamin C in orange juice is insufficient, and it does not become solid until it is frozen into a popsicle.

Vacuum cooling method...

Same result as above.

Salting out method...

I added a bunch of sodium chloride and kept adding it until the liquid was saturated. What finally separated out was table salt...

fail.

Reaction crystallization method...

The fundamental of the reaction crystallization method is to add reactants to the solution to produce new substances. When the solubility of the new substance exceeds the saturated solubility, crystals will precipitate. So, what do vitamins react with to produce insoluble substances?

calcium?

Potassium?

sodium?

Gretel jumped up suddenly. Yes, that’s it, sodium ascorbate! It also has the effect of treating scurvy, but sodium ascorbate is a more stable compound than vitamin C!

It is also a common drug in clinical practice!

He should have remembered it long ago!

Gretel held his breath, diluted one milliliter of sodium hydroxide solution, and added it drop by drop to the citrus juice. Stir the glass rod in your left hand continuously, drop one drop, stir twice, and use litmus paper to test the pH. Drip again, stir again...

When the pink color of the litmus paper was almost invisible, Grete finally stopped. Filter again, heat, evaporate and crystallize. Then, dissolve the crystals again and test...

fail.

Not made.

Grete kept up his efforts. Anyway, the barbarian has squeezed enough orange juice, so he can toss it slowly. If sodium hydroxide doesn't work, use baking soda!

Baking soda doesn’t work either, just replace it with sodium carbonate…

Time passed by minute by minute. Weighing, dissolving, titrating, heating, crystallizing. Redissolve, react, measure. Record the mass of the reactants, record the reaction temperature, record the reaction time——

Failed once, failed again, failed again. From noon to evening, from evening to late night. The experiment notebook was turned over one page after another, and one cup after another of the large pot of orange juice was consumed. Aurora was always by his side, helping with weighing, heating, recording, and doing this and that. However, as Grete announced his failure, he gradually fell silent and no longer had the intention of joking.

Gretel's face remained calm.

What does this mean? What does this failure mean?

Basic research is always a lonely and difficult road. To prepare the same product, raw materials, concentration, temperature, reaction time, catalyst, endless ratios need to be tried.

There are tens of thousands of possibilities, and sometimes the difference is just 0.1 degrees Celsius, and it may not work out.

Even if he is only doing the simplest experiments, taking a path that has been paved by his predecessors, and not falling over one hundred and eighty times, is that still called research?

This time, the crystallization solution fell drop by drop, and the blue solution produced by the reaction of iodine and starch faded visibly to the naked eye!

"yeah!!!"

Grete raised his hands and waved vigorously.

Success!

Sodium ascorbate - even sodium ascorbate with a lot of impurities, he made it!

*****

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