Artificial Oil?

I was told in the history forum that Germany made synthetic oil during the Second World War. How was this possible?

Roman Soldier said:

I was told in the history forum that Germany made synthetic oil during the Second World War. How was this possible?

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My experance is to stay away from synthetic oil. I bought a car about 30 years ago, and the previous owner told me he only used synthetic oil in that car. I had to tear the heads off and have them reground and rebuilt at about 55,000 miles. So ever sense then I stay away from synthetic oil.

Check out biodiesel on wikipedia, and veggie van (just for the name) or http://www.biodiesel.com/.

I don't know if this was available during WW II or not. But alchohol can be used to fuel cars, and that was one of the competitors for the early cars. Perhaps that's what you were looking for?

www.oil4kids.com

hmmm.

i always thought it went better in cars.

Synthetic oil is better for cars. It is also more expensive

I saw something a while back where this guy was using Canola oil in his car....
Anyone know how that worked out?

See the veggie van link.
Works in desiels, with a bunch of enviromental benefits.
That, or the most elaborate scam I've ever seen.

Douglaangu said:

That, or the most elaborate scam I've ever seen.

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The University of British Columbia has moved all of their lawnmowers (a very efficient way of distributing oil and gas into the air) to biodiesel and I've heard they are in the process of moving their maintenance car fleet as well.

It sounds like a great alternative to oil, but I don't know if there's enough arable land to feed our cars at our current rate.

I recall a story of one guy topping his car up with vegtable oil. It does work quite well (I think it was a mixture of that and diesel though) and saved him alot of money. however it made the fumes smell funny and eventually he was done for tax evasion. heh.

I could tell you about synthetic oil. Being a distributor, and have taken several courses on filtration, lubrication, additives, testing etc...

The Germans did invent Synthetic oil. Back when everyone cut Hitler off of all incoming supplies, he knew if he did not come up with an alternative for oil it was gonna be a very short war. So his scientist came up with a way to make oil out of coal. This was called carbon based synthetic. There are now 7 different bases in which to make synthetic oil out of.

By the way, John R7,
The synthetic oil that probably blew up your car was some snake oil fake stuff. Back when synthetic oil was first being used in cars, the snake oil salesmen appeared on the scene also. One other problem with the first batches of synthetic oil was they were not compatible with petroleum oil. If you added petroleum oil to it, it would turn into a tar like substance. Asphalt don't work to well in a motor. Did you add a different oil to it John?

But today, all those problems solved except the snake oil salesmen. They go under different names such as, slick 50, Dura lube, motor up, stp etc... They make your car run better, at the expense of increased engine wear through chemical wear. The main ingredient of most oil additives is a chlorinated paraphin(spelling). Some have as much as 50% of this stuff in their product. Chlorine is the precursor to hydrochloric acid. Just add water. Everytime you shut off your engine and it cools down, the inside sweats like a cold glass of tea. Most is burnt off the next time you crank your engine. But mix it with this water and you now have chemical wear on top of frictional wear. This can be seen when you tear down the motor and see a pitted cam shaft etc... These oil additive companies have all been fined by the Federal Trade Commision for fraud. What's funny, is they can continue to sell their product, they just have to change their claims. Ever wonder why those info commercials stopped? That's why. You can look it up on the FTC site at FTC.gov.

Synthetic oil has come along way though. All jet engines have synthetic oil. A lot of new cars come with synthetic oil installed from the factory. Either in the engine, or the drive components. With the introduction of the dual turbo charged calloway(spelling) Corvette, came one of the first cars factory filled with synthetic oil. It was required to be in the car or it would void your warranty.

Europe now requires synthetic oil in all their cars. Why? less emissions. Synthetic oil does not evaporate as easy as petroleum oil, and does not slip passed the rings to burn in the combustion chamber as much. Europe also has a law that only synthetic 2 cycle oil can be used on their water ways. It pollutes the water alot less, there's even a smokeless 2 cycle oil.
I could go on. But, you can get the picture.

that was an excellent post ikester, now excuse me while I pick up my jaw, it just fell to the floor somewhere in disbelief

One point to bear in mind though, is that while we can make synthetic oil, is that it costs energy to make it.

That energy has to come from somewhere. Currently, the vast majority of the energy would have to come from burning more oil.

We need to spend money developing new sources that are renewable.

I have to wonder just how much progress we could make towards that goal if the US devoted even 10% of it's military budget towards developing these new sources (currently, R&D on energy sources is a bit less than 1% of the military budget).

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

SanDiegoAtheist said:

One point to bear in mind though, is that while we can make synthetic oil, is that it costs energy to make it.

That energy has to come from somewhere. Currently, the vast majority of the energy would have to come from burning more oil.

We need to spend money developing new sources that are renewable.

I have to wonder just how much progress we could make towards that goal if the US devoted even 10% of it's military budget towards developing these new sources (currently, R&D on energy sources is a bit less than 1% of the military budget).

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

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Currently there is a synthetic oil company that makes oil that can last 35,000 miles. You see the technology has always been out there, but the petroleum guys are stuck on selling volume, and keeping those oil tankers crusing across our oceans.
This same company has a filtration system that filters down to 1/10th of a micron. This filtration will even remove water from your oil. How fine is 1/10th of a micron? The oil molecules themselves practically get polished. And guess what? With this filtration you can extend your oil drain interval to over 100,000 miles.
I could explain the basics on how this works, but I am so tired and about to fall out of my chair, I'll finish tomarrow if you like. For now, I go to bed.

Jet Black said:

that was an excellent post ikester, now excuse me while I pick up my jaw, it just fell to the floor somewhere in disbelief

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I may be not as knowledgable in some things. But this issue, you could say I'm almost an expert. And what I don't know right off the top of my head, I can probably find in one of my class books, where I went to school for this.

Also, building race cars, and owning a few of my own. Taking 3 years of diesel mechanics. etc... But was not interested in diesel engines as much, so became a regular mechanic, then got into the lubrication field of it.

ikester7579 said:

I could tell you about synthetic oil. Being a distributor, and have taken several courses on filtration, lubrication, additives, testing etc...

The Germans did invent Synthetic oil. Back when everyone cut Hitler off of all incoming supplies, he knew if he did not come up with an alternative for oil it was gonna be a very short war. So his scientist came up with a way to make oil out of coal. This was called carbon based synthetic. There are now 7 different bases in which to make synthetic oil out of.

By the way, John R7,
The synthetic oil that probably blew up your car was some snake oil fake stuff. Back when synthetic oil was first being used in cars, the snake oil salesmen appeared on the scene also. One other problem with the first batches of synthetic oil was they were not compatible with petroleum oil. If you added petroleum oil to it, it would turn into a tar like substance. Asphalt don't work to well in a motor. Did you add a different oil to it John?

But today, all those problems solved except the snake oil salesmen. They go under different names such as, slick 50, Dura lube, motor up, stp etc... They make your car run better, at the expense of increased engine wear through chemical wear. The main ingredient of most oil additives is a chlorinated paraphin(spelling). Some have as much as 50% of this stuff in their product. Chlorine is the precursor to hydrochloric acid. Just add water. Everytime you shut off your engine and it cools down, the inside sweats like a cold glass of tea. Most is burnt off the next time you crank your engine. But mix it with this water and you now have chemical wear on top of frictional wear. This can be seen when you tear down the motor and see a pitted cam shaft etc... These oil additive companies have all been fined by the Federal Trade Commision for fraud. What's funny, is they can continue to sell their product, they just have to change their claims. Ever wonder why those info commercials stopped? That's why. You can look it up on the FTC site at FTC.gov.

Synthetic oil has come along way though. All jet engines have synthetic oil. A lot of new cars come with synthetic oil installed from the factory. Either in the engine, or the drive components. With the introduction of the dual turbo charged calloway(spelling) Corvette, came one of the first cars factory filled with synthetic oil. It was required to be in the car or it would void your warranty.

Europe now requires synthetic oil in all their cars. Why? less emissions. Synthetic oil does not evaporate as easy as petroleum oil, and does not slip passed the rings to burn in the combustion chamber as much. Europe also has a law that only synthetic 2 cycle oil can be used on their water ways. It pollutes the water alot less, there's even a smokeless 2 cycle oil.
I could go on. But, you can get the picture.

Click to expand...

Jet Black said:

that was an excellent post ikester, now excuse me while I pick up my jaw, it just fell to the floor somewhere in disbelief

Click to expand...

Yah.. that was diffrent.. I now suddenly envision Ikster as Hank hill from king of the hill

ikester7579 said:

By the way, John R7,
The synthetic oil that probably blew up your car was some snake oil fake stuff.

Click to expand...

Actually, it was Quaker State Oil. It was a pretty big brand name back then. That is all the guy ever put in the car. So that was all I put in it. But after I had to pull the head off of it and have it machined and rebuilt, I have never uses synthetic oil sense then.

I knew a girl who use to change her oil maybe every 15,000 miles. She had three cars in a row that the engine had to be rebuilt between 50 & 60,000 miles. So I helped her to buy a chevy with a toyota engine, and she did not have any problems after that. Maybe she changed the oil more often.

ikester7579 said:

This same company has a filtration system that filters down to 1/10th of a micron. This filtration will even remove water from your oil. How fine is 1/10th of a micron? The oil molecules themselves practically get polished. And guess what? With this filtration you can extend your oil drain interval to over 100,000 miles.

Click to expand...

My dad is the VP of production for a small company (now growing quickly) that does this for big industrial machines. It significantly extends the lifetime of oil and replaces oil without having to shut down the whole machine.