Is it true that in the second world war, Germany, after her unsuccessful attempt to get to the oil reserves in the middle east, used her scientists (who were ingenious and resourceful guys, although helped commit the worst crimes in history) to create “synthetic petrol”. If so wouldn’t this solve all our problems nowadays with fuel crisis’ and such? Are we scared of the reaction of the middle east if we switched overnight? Or was it never real?
I’ve always wondered if Middle East oil would have been that big a deal in WW2 - aftyer all it wasn’t even DISCOVERED until 1908 in persia, and 1938 in Saudi Arabia. Would it have been that heavily developed? Did they even KNOW what they were siting on in 1938?
Weren’t the Romanian Oil Fields the primary source for Germany?
The Germans did indeed synthesize oil from coal. Here is an interesting google answer on the subject. At the moment I would imagine that the process is not economically viable. The Germans were forced down the synthesis route because of supply problems caused by the war. It is conceivable that oil synthesized from coal may becomic economic in the future as natural oil supplies are exhausted.
The ever-clever Nazis did squeeze oil out of coal and whatnot, but it wasn’t very efficient.
Read all about ‘The Role of Synthetic Fuel In World War II Germany’
The romanian oil fields were indeed Germany’s main supply of oil but they were insufficant for germany’s needs. With the failure of operation “Barbarossa” Russias oil reserves were out of reach as well. And when Montgomery (bad spelling) stopped Romel in Egypt, the middle east was out of bounds as well, ergo the creation of “synthetic” petrol, or not?
Yes, during WWII, the Germans did in fact make petrol out of coal. So did the South Africans during Aparthied. It is pretty basic chemistry, known since at least the 1920’s, to turn any sort of hydrocarbon, into an other form. The reason you don’t see more of it today is that making synthetic oil has been more expensive than pumping it out of the ground, and it has taken more energy input than you get out of the fuel.
New techniques, and rising oil costs are changing this now - Thermal Depolymerization is a new method that can convert almost any sort of hydrocarbon source, from lawn clippings to sewage, to agricultural waste, into fuel. Right now there is a test plant in Carthage Missouri that is producing a couple hundred barrels of fuel oil every day, using the turkey guts from the nearby Butterball plant. Right now, they are getting positive energy output - for every 15 barrels of fuel energy input, they get 85 barrels of energy output.
As for using this to replace oil from foriegn sources, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations in another thread, and the cost would be in the 400 billion dollars or more range to replace the oil currently used by the US. Still, spreading that out by say spending $20-$30 billion a year for 2 decades wouldn’t be too bad, but then there is the problem of getting enough cheap feedstock material.
Finely powdered coal, mixed with water into slurry, and be burned in IC engines. GM built an experimental car running on powdered coal, back in the 1980’s (sorry, don’t have a cite). I think that bio-engineered plants are the solution…if we can gnetically modify pine trees to produce large amounts of turpenes (chemically similar to gasoline), then we are home free!