In the State Key Laboratory of pulping and papermaking of South China University of technology, a square steel machine is running. Looking through the round glass on the machine, several yellowish and old ancient books are opened and placed neatly on the shelf. "This is a batch and intelligent processing device for strengthening the deacidification of ancient books. The ancient books are separated, pre vacuum, atomization, vacuum drying and other steps to achieve the effect of deacidification and reinforcement." Fan Huiming, director of the ancient books protection and utilization research center of South China University of technology and Guangzhou Lingnan literature protection and Research Center, introduced that this machine can process up to 16 books at the same time. The staff can see various data on the operation screen to facilitate the control of the repair process. The deacidification enhancement of ancient books is to neutralize the acidic substances in the paper with chemicals to prolong the life of the paper. Fan Huiming introduced that the intelligent processing device uses a combination of machinery and air flow to page the books, and then vacuum drying through negative pressure to press out the acid and water in the pages, and evenly spray the agent by ultrasonic atomization to effectively prevent the adverse impact on the ancient books during the repair process. "The current capacity of the machine we developed is 16 books, but it can repair multiple books at the same time. The repair time of a batch of books is about two hours, which is nearly two days faster than the manual repair of a book." Said Ren Junli, deputy director of Guangzhou Lingnan literature protection and research center. Fan Huiming's affinity with the study of ancient book protection stems from a special working experience. In 2006, fan Huiming's team received the task of developing durable paper for the literature series "Guangzhou Dadian". During this period, the team found that some important historical documents were seriously damaged. With the support of Guangzhou municipal government and other units, fan Huiming began to embark on the road of ancient book restoration. "Not only is it difficult to restore ancient books, but also the preservation of modern and contemporary documents is not optimistic." According to fan Huiming, most of the modern literature uses machine-made paper with strong acidity. "In order to produce paper efficiently and at low cost, the manufacturer uses miscellaneous raw materials and adds many chemicals, and does not consider the preservation resistance of the paper." In view of the difficulties in the protection and restoration of paper documents, Guangzhou Lingnan document protection research center was established in 2020. At present, there are 12 professors, associate professors and more than 30 graduate students in the research center, all of whom have been dealing with paper and ink for many years. Through the innovation of methods and the development of chemicals and intelligent equipment, the research team has made phased achievements in the whole book's batch deacidification and reinforcement, preservation resistant painting and calligraphy and document paper. "The team's scientific research background covers pulp and paper, materials, chemicals, printing, automatic control and other directions." In order to improve the repair efficiency, fan Huiming's team also invited senior engineers of automatic control and equipment research and development to join in and independently develop equipment, hoping to make the repair faster and better. "The restoration and protection of ancient books and modern paper documents has a long way to go. For most of the paper documents with low damage, we will take the road of intelligent and batch restoration to catch up with and in time." Fan Huiming said. (news agency)