German synthetic oil and fuels

Site Issues 2006 Archive Room
#1

Interesting article…

I’ve always had a strange, unhealthy obsession with motor oils, fuels, and additives…

:shock: :lol:

From The Role of Synthetic Fuel
In World War II Germany: implications for today?

…
As a highly developed industrial state, Germany was dependent even in peacetime on external sources for an adequate supply of oil. Even though Germany’s 1938 oil consumption of little more than 44 million barrels was considerably less than Great Britain’s 76 million barrels, Russia’s 183 million barrels, and the one billion barrels used by the United States, in wartime Germany’s needs for an adequate supply of liquid fuel would be absolutely essential for successful military operations on the ground and, even more so, in the air.1 For Germany, it was precisely the outbreak of the war in 1939 and the concurrent termination of overseas imports that most endangered its ability to conduct mobile warfare…

In the spring of 1942, the Agency for Generators was established to effectuate the conversion of vehicles from liquid to solid fuels.29 A conversion to such fuels as wood chips, anthracite coal, lignite coal, coke, gas, and peat moss was expected to yield substantial savings in gasoline. During 1942, the saving amounted to 5 million barrels, and in 1943 it reached 8.2 million barrels.30 Thousands of cars and trucks were converted and equipped with devices shaped like water heaters, which graced trunks and truck beds.

…Yet however great the savings were, they were insufficient in themselves to alter the perennial fuel shortage. In the autumn of 1942 there appeared to be only two ways in which fuel production could be enlarged. One was to secure the Russian oil fields, but as we have seen that expectation quickly evaporated; the other was to increase the number and output of hydrogenation plants. Such a plan was devised late in 1942, projecting an annual production of synthetic fuel of 60 million barrels by 1946.31 Yet when the effort was finally made toward the end of 1943, it was decidedly too late for any improvements. The onset of Allied air attacks on the hydrogenation plants in May 1944 foiled all expectations and sounded the death knell For the German war machine…

–Dr. Peter Becker article here.

#2

Yes… very interesting article. I’d like to learn more about German industry before and during the war. Anything to do with where tanks, planes and machine guns etc were built… to the amount of oil/gas Germany used and needed to sustain a long war.
We are too dependent on oil/gasoline… what would happen if we suddenly ran out? I’ve recently started researching on the amount of oil we (Canada) has… particularly in Alberta… (oil sands)

Of interesting note…If America was using 1 billion barrels of oil in 1938… how much are they using now? Thats crazy amounts :!:

Thanks for the article! :smiley:

#3

The Cubans have been doing that for some time- making their own fuel. Hmmm?

#4

I do know the Germans discovered that synthetic motor oil flows at very low temperatures (like at -55 F) by accident, this allowed them to conserve fuel by shutting down their tanks in the Eastern Front, instead of leaving them idling.

I read a US Army cold weather field manual in which they recommend 0W-20 synthetic oil for extreme cold climates. This is also a major advantage today. The only problem is that most companies have stopped producing “true” synthetic oil, and are now “hydrocracking” mineral oil, putting it through an additional refining process to give it synthetic like properties, but it still won’t flow like the real stuff at low temps.

Mobil sued Castrol a few years back, and lost, trying to get them to stop calling Syntec ‘synthetic’ oil, because they were using mineral oil in it. Mobil 1 is supposedly one of the last major name brands to be a ‘true’ synthetic…