Continuing this series, let us take a look at the motivation to create synthetic motor oil and how it is made.
How is synthetic motor oil made?
Let us start by saying that synthetic motor oil was born out of necessity, but more on this later.
The reason why this type of oil is called ‘synthetic’ is because it was synthesised in the lab, to offer the best lubrication properties, while minimising or eliminating the drawbacks of petroleum based oils altogether.
It is because crude oil (as we mentioned previously) consists of many different ‘parts.’ These elements and molecules cannot be removed entirely through distillation and some of them can cause engine wear or harm.
The process used to make synthetic oil solves this problem by removing contaminants. Formulators start with a crude-oil fraction. Amsoil describes the fractions as a pile of LEGO . Different chemical processes are utilised to “crack” the blocks into individual LEGO bricks, deconstructing each larger molecule into its constituent parts. They’re left with different molecules, like LEGO bricks spread out on a table.
The formulators then select only the pure, uniform materials best suited for lubricating an engine, which is typically ethylene when manufacturing synthetic lubricants. Using organic synthesis, chemists use ethylene to build larger molecules, called alphaolefins. Then they use alphaolefins to build polyalphaolephins (PAO) – “poly” meaning “many.” The final product is a PAO synthetic base oil used to make synthetic motor oil.
Wait, hang on, that PAO is not the finished product as it is just the base oil. Additives are then added to it to produce the final product that we buy. The base oil can also be mixed with mineral base oil to produce a semi-synthetic base oil.
Trial by fire
Then World War II erupted in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
As we mentioned in Part 1, the first synthetic oil was produced way back in 1877, which paved the way for further research for decades to come. However, the oil did not find widespread use as many still trusted the good old dinosaur juice.
The pivotal moment was when oil embargoes were enacted on Germany and Japan (for their aggression in China, prior to the Pacific).
Then in 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and attacked the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht (German Army) had made huge gains in the initial invasion in the summer and fall of that year but the assault came to a grinding halt during the terrible Russian winter. Men, pack animals, weapons, vehicles froze. The mineral oils in these vehicles froze solid due to the high wax content.
Come August 1942, the German 6th Army became bogged down and was besieged in the city of Stalingrad. Then Russia’s brutal winter set in again. This was the point when Stalin deployed his Siberian troops after being transported from that region. Still, Hitler refused to pull his troops back and regroup, and instead told the men to fight to the last bullet and last man.
Adding to the troops’ misery, the army’s tanks, aircraft and other military vehicles refused to start due to petroleum oil solidifying in the bitter cold. The German troops named the battle of Stalingrad ‘Rattenkrieg’ (rat war) as opposed to their fearsome ‘Blitzkrieg’ (lightning war).
On 2nd February 1943, seeing that they were encircled and cut off, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered himself and the remaining 91,000 troops of the 6th Army to the Soviet Red Army.
What Operation Barbarossa taught the Germans
The Stalingrad disaster coupled with lack of crude oil forced Nazi Germany to undertake an intense effort to find alternatives to petroleum oil. Zorn and his colleagues investigated a wide range of synthetic base-fluid chemistries, many originating from coal and other bio-based sources. Germany evaluated more than 3,500 synthetic esters (plant base oil) between 1938 and 1944, a key development in the history of synthetic oil. Their superior performance made them the focus of Germany’s synthetic-lubricant technology during the closing years of the war.
In America, meanwhile, W.A. Zinsman led a more limited research program into synthetic motor oil at the Naval Research Laboratory between 1942 and 1945. The result was the development of the first diester synthetic base oils, a notable contribution to synthetic oil history.
End of Part 2
We shall cover the developments of synthetic motor oil post WWII and to the modern day.