Chapter 82 Lin Mo's Comfort

The night was as dark as ink.

There were no streetlights on the Gobi Desert; only a few temporary floodlights beside the Pilot-scale production device in the distance swayed slightly in the wind.

Lin Mo's headlights pierced the darkness, kicking up yellow sand as he pulled up in front of the Prefabricated Building. He jumped out of the car and, without entering the building, walked straight toward the device.

Captain Zhou came up to meet him. "Professor Lin, why are you back again? Didn't you say you were returning to the base tonight?"

"I finished up, but I was worried, so I came back to take another look." Lin Mo asked as he walked, "Where is Teacher Chen?"

Captain Zhou pointed toward the device. "He's still there. He hasn't moved from that spot since this afternoon. We tried to convince him to eat, but he said he wasn't hungry. Li Xiao brought him water, but he only took a sip, his eyes still fixed on that pipe."

Lin Mo didn't say anything and quickened his pace.

Circling around the reaction kettle, he saw Chen Xueming squatting beside the ruptured pipe, holding a flashlight with the beam fixed on the deformed spot. Li Xiao stood behind him, clutching a tablet, looking as if she wanted to say something but held back.

"Teacher Chen." Lin Mo walked over.

Chen Xueming didn't turn around, his voice hoarse. "Why are you here again? Didn't you say you had business at the base?"

"I finished it." Lin Mo squatted down next to him. "Did you find anything?"

Chen Xueming was silent for a few seconds, then pointed to the deformed part of the pipe. "Plastic deformation caused by thermal stress—I realized that this morning. But I've been wondering, why did it overheat right here? The heat exchanger was designed with a redundant heat load; theoretically, it shouldn't have exceeded the material limits."

Lin Mo picked up the flashlight and shone it along the inside of the pipe.

"Perhaps it's not the heat exchanger's fault," he said. "Maybe there's a problem elsewhere that's causing an abnormal local heat flux."

Chen Xueming paused, startled, and turned his head to look at him.

Lin Mo stood up and looked at the deformed pipe. "We need to go inside and take a look."

"Go inside?" Chen Xueming stood up as well. "Inside where?"

"The reaction kettle." Lin Mo pointed to the third-stage reactor nearby. "The problem might be internal. You can only see the results from the outside; the cause is inside."

Chen Xueming hesitated. "Now? The temperature inside hasn't fully dropped yet..."

"It's dropped enough." Lin Mo reached out and touched the outer wall of the reaction kettle. "It's warm; it's safe to enter."

He turned to Li Xiao and said, "Find two sets of protective suits, flashlights, and a recorder."

Li Xiao acknowledged and ran to the Prefabricated Building.

Chen Xueming looked at Lin Mo, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something, but he swallowed the words back.

A few minutes later, the two of them put on protective suits, donned headlamps, and crawled through the manhole into the third-stage reactor.

The space inside was cramped, with a diameter of only a little over a meter; it was difficult for two people to turn around inside. A thin layer of white crystalline material adhered to the inner wall—salt deposits left behind after the seawater simulation fluid evaporated.

Lin Mo shone his flashlight on the inner wall, examining it inch by inch.

The interior structure of the reactor was complex, with flow baffles, distributors, and heating coils. The heat exchange medium flowed through the coils, transferring heat to the seawater. Theoretically, the surface temperature of the coils should be uniform, and local overheating shouldn't occur.

But the beam of Lin Mo's flashlight stopped at the connection point between the coil and the vessel wall.

There was a valve there.

It wasn't the main valve of the heat exchange system, but a small drain valve used to empty the liquid inside the reactor during maintenance. The valve body itself was small, only a few centimeters in diameter, connected to a short bypass pipe.

Lin Mo leaned in to get a closer look.

There were obvious signs of corrosion on the inner wall of the valve—dense, tiny pits, as if something had gnawed at it. Some of the pits had already penetrated the valve body, forming microscopic channels invisible to the naked eye.

"Teacher Chen, look here."

Chen Xueming squeezed over and looked where the flashlight beam was pointed. A few seconds later, his breathing suddenly quickened.

"This is... pitting corrosion?"

Lin Mo nodded. "It should be. High-temperature seawater, high concentrations of chloride ions, combined with changes in flow velocity, formed local electrochemical corrosion. The valve wall thinned, its strength decreased, and then under high temperature and pressure, it deformed and ruptured, causing the heat exchange medium to leak, leading to local overheating of the coil—"

"Wait." Chen Xueming interrupted him. "This valve should be 316L stainless steel, which is resistant to seawater corrosion. It sat in the laboratory for months without issues, so how could it—"

He stopped halfway through his sentence.

The laboratory used static immersion with constant temperature and zero flow velocity. But under actual operating conditions, high temperature, high flow velocity, erosion, and stress concentration—all these factors combined meant the corrosion rate could be several orders of magnitude higher than in the laboratory.

"I... I didn't think of that." Chen Xueming's voice dropped. "When selecting the material, I only looked at the corrosion resistance data; I didn't consider the accelerating effects under dynamic operating conditions..."

Lin Mo patted his shoulder. "Don't be so quick to blame yourself. Who could have thought of that from the beginning? The laboratory can never simulate real operating conditions. Now that we've discovered it, we can just fix it."

Chen Xueming remained silent, staring at the corroded valve without moving.

Lin Mo knew what he was thinking.

This project was too rushed, the timeline too tight, and every step was a race against time. Chen Xueming wanted to shoulder everything himself; whenever a problem arose, his first reaction was to blame himself.

"Teacher Chen." Lin Mo's voice sounded steady in the cramped space. "What kind of scientific research doesn't have failures? We'll investigate together and solve it together—that's what a team is."

Chen Xueming raised his head, the beam of his headlamp sweeping across Lin Mo's face. On that face, there was no blame, no disappointment, only calm trust.

He opened his mouth, his voice hoarse. "If only I had thought more about it back then, if I had checked more references..."

"Then you'd still be checking references now, without the chance to make mistakes firsthand." Lin Mo smiled. "Let's go, let's get out, and then we'll take this valve off and analyze it carefully."

The two crawled out through the manhole and took off their protective suits. Li Xiao immediately came up to them. "How is it?"

Lin Mo briefly explained the situation.

After listening, Li Xiao frowned and said, "I remember literature mentioning pitting corrosion in 316L; in high-temperature, high-chloride environments, especially under flow conditions, the corrosion rate can increase by more than tenfold..."

"See, even Li Xiao knows." Lin Mo looked at Chen Xueming. "This isn't just your blind spot; it's a problem the entire industry tends to overlook. It's just that we were unlucky to run into it during the first trial run."

Chen Xueming shook his head and gave a bitter smile. "Unlucky? We're actually lucky. Discovering it now means we can still fix it. If we had waited until the sea trials to discover it, that would have been the end."

He turned and looked at the valve; the self-reproach in his eyes was slowly replaced by something else—something called "solution."

"Li Xiao, check the inventory for Hastelloy C-276 and the lead time for titanium," he said as he walked toward the Prefabricated Building. "Where is Zhang Zhe? Have him contact the manufacturer and ask if they have any off-the-shelf corrosion-resistant valves that match our pressure rating and port size."

Li Xiao followed behind, jotting things down rapidly.

Lin Mo stood where he was, watching Chen Xueming's determined retreating figure, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

This man had truly stood back up.

Captain Zhou walked over and lowered his voice. "Professor Lin, that SUV appeared again this afternoon. It stopped on the sand ridge for about twenty minutes, and then they watched this way with binoculars for a long time."

Lin Mo's eyes narrowed. "Could you see who it was?"

"It was too far; I couldn't see clearly. But I'm sure it wasn't one of our people." Captain Zhou said. "Should we strengthen security?"

Lin Mo thought for a moment. "Keep observing, but don't alert them. If they want to watch, let them. It's perfect for letting the people behind them know that we're still struggling, still failing, and that our progress isn't that fast."

Captain Zhou paused, then nodded. "Understood."

In the distance, lights turned on in the Prefabricated Building. Chen Xueming's voice drifted out: "Li Xiao, take this valve off and send it to Beijing first thing tomorrow morning for electron microscopy analysis. I need to know the exact mechanism of the corrosion..."

Lin Mo withdrew his gaze and looked up at the sky.

The Gobi Desert night sky was cloudless, the stars shining brightly like countless eyes.

He suddenly remembered the line of text that appeared on the screen the day the system was activated: "From today on, every step you take is creating history."

History has never been smooth sailing.

But as long as you can stand back up and keep walking, you will definitely reach the place you want to go.

He took a deep breath and walked toward the Prefabricated Building.

The door pushed open; Chen Xueming was hunched over the table drawing a sketch, Li Xiao was checking references nearby, and Zhang Zhe was on the phone. The three of them were busy with their own tasks, and no one looked up at him.

Lin Mo pulled up a chair, sat down, and poured himself a glass of water.

"Teacher Chen, how do you plan to change the new design?"

Chen Xueming didn't even look up. "Change the valve to titanium, or Hastelloy would work too, depending on the lead time. Install redundant protection for the heat exchange system, with two valves in parallel; if one has a problem, the other can take over. Also, I plan to install corrosion monitoring probes at key locations to provide real-time data."

Lin Mo nodded. "How many research points will you need to exchange for the simulation?"

Chen Xueming finally looked up and stared at him. "Aren't your research points supposed to be saved?"

"When it needs to be used, it must be used." Lin Mo said. "No matter how much we save, we cannot cut corners on safety."

Chen Xueming was silent for two seconds, then nodded firmly.

Outside the window, the wind of the Gobi Desert rose again.

Yellow sand hit the glass with a rustling sound.

But inside the Prefabricated Building, the lights were bright; the three of them gathered around a simple table, fingers tracing over blueprints, pen tips touching paper.

That sound was much more pleasant than the wind and sand.