u/EarthMantle00

My understanding of Chinese history in the "century of humiliation" is that starting in 1839 they repeatedly lose wars against what are essentially expeditionary forces from powers which are thousands of kilometers away, and mostly avoided colonization through sheer size, and colonizers keeping eachother in check (though it to this day lost massive amounts of territory to the russians).

And at the same time, my understanding of European technology in the 1800s is that while it was more effective than anywhere else in the world, it wasn't a "cheat code" - for example the British lost a battle against a largely spear-wielding Zulu army at Isandlwana.

My understanding: in 1901, the Boxer rebellion is put down, almost every battle being a Western victory. In 1905, the russo-Japanese war is fought over Manchuria and Korea, without the Qing being able to affect the result.

7 years later the Qing collapse, the ROC is established, the president declares himself emperor, the ROC collapses, and China is divided between warlords. As soon as the warlord situation seems to be a bit under control, Chiang Kai-shek kills thousands of communists in Shangai and plunges the country in a civil war that would only pause when the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion in 1937.

Said Japanese are only, like, a fifth as many as the Chinese; they had technology which compared to the 1800s was very much a "cheat code", both militarily (tanks and planes and machine guns) and industrially. They were fighting on their doorstep, and they manage to conquer the more resource-rich Northern China early on in the war.

Now the Communists primarily waged guerrilla warfare, which makes sense to me. But as I understand the Nationalists were fighting a conventional war, and managed to hang onto most of the South for seven years. Was the country at the time much more modernized than we give them credit for? When did they even have the time to develop their economy? Was the Communist guerrilla THAT effective?

I got curious about this and I looked it up. Figured I'd share it so it's easier to find a short explanation and you don't have to read a paper for it. This is a combination of wikipedia and a paper from 2009 (M. Ezcurra, Itxaso Velasco, Juan M. G. Góngora, Itxaso Maguregui, Rosa M Alonso; shoutout to Spain) from someone who does NOT habitually read chemistry papers and is just going off of high school chem from like before covid* so it's probably wrong in places.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284700418_Analysis_of_bic_crystal_medium_ballpoint_pen_inks

Blue seems to be "a mix of triarylmethane dyes" and specifically:

• Tetramethyl pararosanilin - can't find anything about this. However it is labelled as a violet, and I could find Pararosaniline on wikipedia which "is the free base form of pararosaniline hydrochloride, [(H2NC6H4)3C]+Cl−, a magenta solid with a variety of uses as a dye". Notably neither of these has 4 methyl groups. Which I assume is what "Tetramethyl" references. Still, assuming it's related, it "is prepared by the condensation of aniline and p-aminobenzaldehyde".
• Methyl violet - Seems to be 6B from figure 2, even tho that's about black ink. If both 2B and 6B were relevant i assume they'd be mentioned. I found instructions on the production of 6B on wikipedia (from now on assume every instruction is from there), tl;dr: oxydize DMA (N,N-dimethylaniline) with copper sulfate as a catalyst, everything diluted in a "salty" phenol.
• Crystal violet - also known as Methyl violet 10B; two ways of producing it apparently. Either make DMA react with phosgene to make "Michler's ketone", which reacts with additional DMA in the presence of phosphoryl chloride and hydrochloric acid (HCl); or react formaldehyde with DMA to make a leuco dye and then oxydize that either with HCl and oxygen or with manganese dioxide.
• Victoria blue - which apparently is also the name of a brown butterfly. Also a Triarylmethane dye, so I assume its synthesis involves DMA and is pretty similar to the previous two.

Black has 3 violet dyes and 1 yellow ones. Specifically:

• Methyl violet 6B
• Crystal violet
• Pararosaniline
• An unidentified yellow dye which "had at least 1 methyl group, and formed adduct with sodium". I assume this is a tightly guarded company secret, largely synthetized with the blood of the innocent.

Now I'll look at how the components of these are made. I'll start with the weird ones. catalysts at the bottom:

• Aniline - hydrogenation of nitrobenzene (typically at 200-300 °C) in the presence of metal catalysts.
• DMA - alkylation of aniline with methanol in the presence of an acid catalyst
• P-aminobenzaldehyde - shoutout to Portugal. And it being a romance language because I don't actually speak Portuguese. Reaction of 4-Nitrotoluene with Sodium sulfide and sulfur in a watery solution of Sodium hydroxide (lye) and ethanol.
• Phosgene - Shoutout to chemical warfare, it killed 85000 people in world war I. I'm on a list and now so are you. Carbon monoxide and chlorine, as catalyst activated carbon.
• Formaldehyde - produced industrially by the catalytic oxidation of methanol. Metallic catalysts, I think.
• Phenol - the communist Cumene process accounts for 95% of production. Tl; Dr: benzene and propylene in presence of Phosphoric acid*.*
• Phosphoryl chloride - the commercial method involves oxidation of phosphorus trichloride with oxygen

Then the simpler ones:

• Sulfur - I really feel like this should be spelled Sulphur. Found naturally but primarily produced through sulfur-rich fossil resources through the Claus process. Mostly in China, USA, Canada (Athabasca Oil Sands), saudi, russia, Kazakhstan
• Copper sulfate - Copper and sulfuric acid.
• Hydrochloric acid - The large-scale production of hydrochloric acid is almost always integrated with the industrial scale production of other chemicals. I won't go to deep into it because it's just a catalyst anyway, but I'll talk about the Chloralkali process in the Chlorine section.
• Manganese dioxide - found naturally and purified in a variety of ways. South Africa, Gabon and Australia are the main producers. Brazil and China also have big reserves. Shoutout to ourworldindata mineral explorer.

Now for the components of these:

• Nitrobenzene - Nitration of benzene with a mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid, water, and nitric acid. Wikipedia helpfully tells us "world capacity for nitrobenzene in 1985 was about 1,700,000 tonnes". This might be the single least useful piece of correct information on the site. Also apparently it's very exothermic, don't do it at home. I mean, don't do any of this at home.
• Benzene - I would love to stick a finger into the hole at the middle. Anyway it's made from mixing a blend of hydrocarbons, exposing it to a platinum or rhenium chloride catalyst, and then extracting the aromatics (including 😎enzene with diethylene glycol or sulfolane.
• Sulfuric acid - Sulfur, Oxygen, Water.
• Carbon monoxide - mostly combustion in oxygen-poor environments. Largely using coke.
• Methanol - Carbon monoxide and hydrogen react over a catalyst of metal oxides supported on alumina (idk if the alumina is necessary).
• 4-Nitrotoluene - Toluene nitrated with titanium(IV) nitrate.
• Sodium sulfide - carbothermic reduction of sodium sulfate often using coal.
• Chlorine - Chloralkali process! A lot of electricity (though you can burn the produced hydrogen and that helps) and concentrated sodium chloride. You're allowed to piss your pants.
• Sodium hydroxide - Chloralkali process.
• Ethanol - "Naturally" produced, largely from sugarcane (Brazil) and corn (USA). Indonesia also produces significant amounts - I assume from sugarcane? A disgusting amount of fertile land is actually used to produce biofuel.
• ---
• Activated Carbon - Carbon primarily from coal (I think), treated in various ways.
• Propylene - Steam cracking propane.
• Phosphorus trichloride - Chlorine and white phosphorus in a solution of Phosphorus trichloride itself. I assume if we run out, we're shit out of luck /j.
• Copper - found naturally. Most of the reserves are in Chile, Peru and Australia, but production is more widespread and dominated by Chile, the DRC, Peru, China, Indonesia, USA. Not the 7th producer, but Poland makes some which is fun.
• Phosphoric acid - Wet process is dominant. Hydroxyapatite or Fluorapatite combine with Sulfuric acid.

And for the components of those:

• Nitric acid - Haber and Ostwald processes; finely divided iron metal as a catalyst of a reaction between methane-produced hydrogen (nickel catalyst) and atmospheric nitrogen to produce ammonia, then burn it, oxydize it and dissolve it in water.
• Hydrocarbons/coke/coal - I'll keep how those are made a secret.
• Toluene - Byproduct in the production of gasoline and coke.
• Titanium(IV) nitrate - I do not feel like explaining this. It would roughly double the length of this post and I thought this would take like 20 minutes, not several hours.
• Sodium sulfate - mostly produced from mirabilite, which naturally occurs primarily in Mexico and Spain, then russia, USA, Canada.
• Sodium chloride - produced in enormous quantities through evaporation of salt water, in China, USA, then India, Germany, then Australia, Canada, Chile, then Turkey, Mexico.
• Platinum chloride - dissolving platinum in a nitric and hydrocloric acid mix, then heating it in air. Oh, and there's a lot of rhenium chlorides and wiki doesn't specify, so I'm ignoring it.
• Diethylene glycol - Oxidize ethylene (gained by steam cracking hydrocarbons) in argon. Add water.
• Sulfolane - Butadiene (byproduct of ethylene production) and Sulfur dioxide (sulphur, heat); add hydrogen with a nickel catalyst.
• Alumina - produced from bauxite. Overwhelmingly in China, then Australia and Brazil. Shoutout to Guinea for having a quarter of the world's bauxite and keeping it in the ground.
• Propane - hydrocarbon byproduct
• White phosphorus - Phosphorite, carbon, silica.
• Hydroxyapatite or Fluorapatite - also insanely complicated.
• Platinum: South Africa. And to a lesser extent Zimbabwe.

So TL;DR: most of the ink in your bic crystal is likely made mostly of DMA (->aniline and methanol), either phosgene or formaldehyde, aniline and p-aminobenzaldehyde.

Those are made of nitrobenzene, methanol, (carbon monoxide and chlorine) or (methanol), 4-Nitrotoluene, Sodium sulfide, sulfur, lye, ethanol.

Those are made of benzene, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, (hydrocarbons and salt) or (carbon monoxide and hydrogen), Toluene, titanium(IV) nitrate, sodium sulfate, coal, salt, sugar and corn.

Those are made of hydrocarbons, sulfur, methane, hydrocarbons, hydrocarbons and maybe salt, bullshit, mirabilite, coal, salt, sugar and corn.

TL;DR of the TL;DR: your pen ink is made from water, hydrocarbons, sulfur (coal/hydrocarbon byproduct), titanium(IV) nitrate, a rock with a sci-fi name found in countries that speak spanish, salt, coal, Brazilian sugar, and/or American corn.

And it's probably in a solution of... Water ig? It's usually water, some oil or ethanol and pen ink isn't oily and it doesn't smell of alcohol.

*The only thing I really remember is a variety of ways to synthetize ethanol which I totally want to try at some point. I'll probably dye doing it...