German fuel situation and what to improve on it, 2.0

[Deleted member 68059]

One can try to make comparison with jet-powered aircraft and their fuel consumption (not that I'm claiming that a methanol-fueled piston engine can match a half-decent ww2 jet in propulsive power and other advantages). Eg. Me 262 carried about 1000-1250L (about 250-300 US gals) of fuel per engine, it was still a fairly short-ranged fighter. Or, the Fw proposal jet conversion of the Fw 190, whose obvious addition was a new fuel tank with almost 900 L of fuel, in order to cater for 1170 L/h fuel consumption (endurance of 1.2 hr).
Methanol is also less flamable than gasoline, something that matters in military operations.

However, main German fossil fuel was coal - perhaps jumping on the steam-powered trucks bandwagon for non-combat transport applications would've released a lot of fuel to the combat units? There was a good deal of coal was also abundant in most of the countries that bordered with Germany, like Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, let alone in Ukraine (far easier to capture than the oil fields of Baku).

Methanol is horrendous in a fire as it burns with no visible flames, you can watch someone burning to death and all you`ll see is them writing about, it would be
horrific for ground crews to handle. You can ignite it no problem with a tiny leak onto a hot exhaust pipe. It is possible to blend it with various things to
make it visible in burning, but you`re still left with the problem of needing to carry vast weights of fuel for the same range due to the incredibly poor
calorific value.

 

[z42]

However, main German fossil fuel was coal - perhaps jumping on the steam-powered trucks bandwagon for non-combat transport applications would've released a lot of fuel to the combat units? There was a good deal of coal was also abundant in most of the countries that bordered with Germany, like Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, let alone in Ukraine (far easier to capture than the oil fields of Baku).

You could use a wood or coal powered gas generator. Over here they were fairly common during the war.

 

[z42]

not in a war its not.

Looking at the wikipedia page for the history of north sea oil exploration (North Sea oil - Wikipedia )

Volatile weather conditions in Europe's North Sea have made drilling particularly hazardous, claiming many lives (see Oil platform). The conditions also make extraction a costly process; by the 1980s, costs for developing new methods and technologies to make the process both efficient and safe far exceeded NASA's budget to land a man on the moon.[15] The exploration of the North Sea has continually pushed the edges of the technology of exploitation (in terms of what can be produced) and later the technologies of discovery and evaluation (2-D seismic, followed by 3-D and 4-D seismic; sub-salt seismic; immersive display and analysis suites and supercomputing to handle the flood of computation required).[9]

Having a comparatively cash-strapped Germany develop all this tech and deploy it in the mid 30'ies (at least 30 years earlier than historically happened), plus what is Germany going to do to prevent the RN to show up with a couple of battleships (with air cover) and blow the oil platforms to smithereens?

 

[Shortround6]

what is Germany going to do to prevent the RN to show up with a couple of battleships gunboats.

fixed it for you

 

[z42]

For the original question, I don't think they had any really good options. Other than not starting the war in the first place. Some random things they might (but in reality, probably not) have done:

• Better preparation for Barbarossa, thus succeeding in knocking out Moscow and capturing (and holding!) the Caspian sea oil fields.
• Go all-in on the North Africa campaign, steamrolling Egypt and continuing to the Persian Gulf oilfields. Though hard to see how they could have the logistical capability to do this. Nor how to get the oil home, considering the RN controls the high seas. From the Persian Gulf through Suez to southern France, then through rivers/canals?
• As mentioned, massively scale up (and disperse!) coal-to-liquids processes (FT, Bergius).
• Petrochemical processes to produce improved fuel. Alkylation (producing branched paraffins like iso-octane) was introduced in the USA and rapidly scaled up to produce a very high value blendstock for Allied aviation fuel. In principle Germany could have done the same. Modern style reformate production (mostly aromatics) was AFAIU mostly a post-WWII affair, though Germany evidently had other methods of producing aromatics considering their aviation fuel already contained a lot of it.
• Run ships on pulverized coal instead of oil, to conserve oil for other uses? Maybe not energy dense and compact enough to be viable for warships? But certainly doable for slower ships, and still, pulverized coal in water tube boilers would be better than guys shoveling coal into fire tube boilers.
• Run the Wehrmacht on diesel rather than gasoline. More fuel efficient, and FT liquids from coal is suitable for diesel engines.
• Bicycle infantry for the Wehrmacht.
• Wood or coal gas for civilian vehicles. And bicycles.
• Did I mention that the bicycle is a fantastic invention? Needs no (fossil) fuel!

 

[Shortround6]

Couple of things.

One.
As pointed out earlier, the reason that Methanol was so popular with race cars and other recorded setting vehicles was that you could shove more BTUs of energy into the engine and burn it using the same amount of air. SO the same size engine, turning the same rpm at the same boost (or no boost) will give you more power.
Now using the perhaps incorrect term, Methanol will act like 114 "octane" gasoline from a knock perspective, which allows for either higher compression in the cylinders or more boost or some of each in the days before 100/130 fuel. So even more power. Then Methanol burns at a lower temperature than gasoline so at a similar or somewhat higher power you actually have an easier cooling problem. and you have the whole latent heat of vaporization thing going so especially with supercharged engines you have a cooler/denser intake charge making even a bit more power.

As Snowygrouch has pointed out, you pay for it with the fuel weight because you need just about twice the weight in methanol to make the same power as gasoline, actually you need to carry over twice the amount of Methanol to have the same amount of stored BTUs in your liquid fuel.


Two.
Benzine (or benzol, same chemical formula/structure) also works real well for setting records at low level. It does have several problems, aside from the toxic problem.
1, BTUs per pound. 17,300. Not a real deal breaker.
2, when running rich it has a PN (performance number) of around 160, when running lean it is about 68. this is not problem and is what makes it attractive.
3. It weighs 7.34lb per US gallon or 22.3% more per gallon.
4. LAST or as far as I am going to go with it. It freezes at 42 degrees F (5.55 degrees C). Kind of makes operation in winter or at high altitudes a bit of problem

There is something called "normal propyl benzine" which has a rather different chemical formula/structure.

Please note that fuel blending was not simple and when used in small amounts you could use all kinds of stuff to improve gasoline. The problem became if you could get some of the stuff cheaply enough and if you didn't need it for something else.

 

[Shortround6]

Methanol is horrendous in a fire as it burns with no visible flames, you can watch someone burning to death and all you`ll see is them writing about, it would be
horrific for ground crews to handle. You can ignite it no problem with a tiny leak onto a hot exhaust pipe. It is possible to blend it with various things to
make it visible in burning, but you`re still left with the problem of needing to carry vast weights of fuel for the same range due to the incredibly poor
calorific value.

I have read one article that claims they changed to Methanol for safety reasons after one bad crash. In a multi car crash with burning gasoline/petrol you get dense black clouds of smoke that obscures vison of the rescue workers and the drivers trying to slow down/get through the accident area. Which lead to more crashes within seconds of the initial accident.
This may have been in pre-helmet radio days when getting everybody stopped was more of a problem?

 

[z42]

Benzine (or benzol, same chemical formula/structure) also works real well for setting records at low level. It does have several problems, aside from the toxic problem.

Not sure if benzol really is pure benzene. Per the previously cited wiki page, it seems it was a trade name for a product produced from coal tar. So probably some kind of liquid containing mostly aromatics, of which likely a fairly high fraction was benzene.

Anyway, current automotive gas regulations typically limits benzene to < 1% due to the toxicity & cancer issue. Aromatics in general, while perhaps a bit offensive to current sensibilities wanting a clean-burning fuel (aromatics tend to produce quite a lot of soot), constitute about 20% of typical auto gas. In current 100LL aviation gasoline I understand toluene is the major aromatic fraction, and it has more aromatics than automotive gas due to the good rich octane rating. Non-benzene aromatics like toluene, (some isomers of) xylenes, and ethylbenzene also have somewhat more agreeable melting points.

 

[Shortround6]

Run the Wehrmacht on diesel rather than gasoline. More fuel efficient, and FT liquids from coal is suitable for diesel engines.

This sort of depends on your feed stock.
I think the Romanian oil was pretty good stuff??

In the US the oil varies from 38-40 octane to a bit over 70 octane as you go from east to west (Texas is somewhere in the middle) this was for straight run distillation.
You need to 'doctor' the east coast fuel a lot more to fuel that is good for much more than the Model T

Likewise you get different amounts of diesel out a barrel of crude depending on where it is from. You can 'tilt' the production per barrel a little when in simple production but you can't turn a large percentage of gasoline into diesel without some serious tweaking.

One (just one) on the refining plants they built to make Alkylation products (if I have that right) took the equivalent of the steel for 15 destroyer hulls. Destroyers used higher grade steel than liberty ships. That might have been equal to 45 U boat hulls? Maybe not but even the US had to balance the steel production between refinery/factory needs and actual war production (ships, trucks, tanks etc)

 

[z42]

I have read one article that claims they changed to Methanol for safety reasons after one bad crash.

I think many American racing series switched to methanol after the 1964 Indy 500 crash. Motivation was, in addition to the visibility, higher flashpoint and that you can use water to put out a methanol fire. Pure hydrocarbons float on top of the water, which is why one needs foams to put out hydrocarbon fuel fires.

Outside of dragsters and such, I don't think methanol ever became much used in racing outside the USA?

 

[EwenS]

For the original question, I don't think they had any really good options. Other than not starting the war in the first place. Some random things they might (but in reality, probably not) have done:

• Better preparation for Barbarossa, thus succeeding in knocking out Moscow and capturing (and holding!) the Caspian sea oil fields.
• Go all-in on the North Africa campaign, steamrolling Egypt and continuing to the Persian Gulf oilfields. Though hard to see how they could have the logistical capability to do this. Nor how to get the oil home, considering the RN controls the high seas. From the Persian Gulf through Suez to southern France, then through rivers/canals?

There were refineries in the port cities of Haifa, Palestine and Tripoli, Lebanon. These were connected by pipelines back to the oil fields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Take Egypt, then Palestine and you eliminate the RN in the eastern Med. The nearest RN bases are then at Malta 1,200 miles to the west and Gibraltar 1,000 miles beyond that.

 

[Shortround6]

Not sure if benzol really is pure benzene. Per the previously cited wiki page, it seems it was a trade name for a product produced from coal tar. So probably some kind of liquid containing mostly aromatics, of which likely a fairly high fraction was benzene.

Anyway, current automotive gas regulations typically limits benzene to < 1% due to the toxicity & cancer issue. Aromatics in general, while perhaps a bit offensive to current sensibilities wanting a clean-burning fuel (aromatics tend to produce quite a lot of soot), constitute about 20% of typical auto gas. In current 100LL aviation gasoline I understand toluene is the major aromatic fraction, and it has more aromatics than automotive gas due to the good rich octane rating. Non-benzene aromatics like toluene, (some isomers of) xylenes, and ethylbenzene also have somewhat more agreeable melting points.

I am going by this.

which while not exhaustive does list about 70+ compounds/chemicals in a table in the back, Book is 145 pages and was prepared by the Ethyl corporation. This is a reprint/enlarged edition of book put out in WW II (this one is from 1951). I believe Sam Heron was involved with the initial edition ( he retired in 1946). Mr Heron, in his career helped develop the sodium cooled exhaust valve, went to the Ethyl corporation in 1934. He is responsible for the Performance Number scale (PN) which is linear and and measures knock rating over 100.

Now modern usage of Benzene may have changed. This book group the two names together in the list of chemicals. What a company may have used in a commercial product may have been different.

 

[Snautzer01]

Looking at the wikipedia page for the history of north sea oil exploration (North Sea oil - Wikipedia )



Having a comparatively cash-strapped Germany develop all this tech and deploy it in the mid 30'ies (at least 30 years earlier than historically happened), plus what is Germany going to do to prevent the RN to show up with a couple of battleships (with air cover) and blow the oil platforms to smithereens?

Yes they can. You know in peace time you can do stuff.and perhaps if other countries are getting dependend on of (sound familiar? ) the RN is not to be send in. Not all oil or gas is deep. Perhaps the should take Holland earlier for the Groninger gas. Or de wadden isle.can protect that with guns. All the arguments of not existing tech or cash is invalid. The Germans never did well on accounting but if the had known oil was that close... well (pun intended)

 

[Deleted member 68059]

I have read one article that claims they changed to Methanol for safety reasons after one bad crash. In a multi car crash with burning gasoline/petrol you get dense black clouds of smoke that obscures vison of the rescue workers and the drivers trying to slow down/get through the accident area. Which lead to more crashes within seconds of the initial accident.
This may have been in pre-helmet radio days when getting everybody stopped was more of a problem?

I`m still going with the "its quite dangerous" conclusion >


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7TdLeEGsQ&t=19s

 

[BarnOwlLover]

The fact that it doesn't produce a ton of smoke and can be put out with about anything doesn't help much if you can't/can barely see flames. I believe that ethanol (at least what Indy Car uses now) does produce some smoke and flame when it burns (though it can still be put out with water).

That and methanol in general seemed to just be nasty stuff to be around because of fumes and irritation from breathing fumes/eye irritation as well.

 

[MIflyer]

I believe that in the book "The Jet Race" the author asserts that the Germans never really had a shortage of jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel. They just had a shortage of machines that could use that fuel. They had no trouble filling up U-boats right up to the last day of the war. VW bugs were modified to start on gasoline and then run on kerosene. German tanks were not diesel; Soviet tanks were. They could have switched their tanks over to diesel early in the war and and freed up high octane gasoline for the Luftwaffe. Of course, jet aircraft could have used the kerosene but their shortage of high temperature engine materials was even worse than the fuel shortage. Jet engines with an MTBF of around 25 hours was about the best they could do.

Of course, one of their greatest propulsion achievements, the rocket engine for the V-2, used alcohol, for obvious reasons. But even in that case they had to use a relatively cold reaction and employed H2O2 to drive the turbopump. Employing a gas generator and burning some of the fuel and oxidizer to run the turbine - as we have done since 1960 - would have been better but would have required more high temperature materials. Of course, today the Russians still use that approach with their Soyuz booster, so it is workable.

 

[Shortround6]

I`m still going with the "its quite dangerous" conclusion

I am not going to argue with you, and I was a firefighter for 33 years.

I think they reacted to a certain situation and may have created more situations as a result.

 

[Shortround6]

They could have switched their tanks over to diesel early in the war and and freed up high octane gasoline for the Luftwaffe.

Depends on what you call "High octane".

The Americans used 80 octane in most of the WW II tanks. It was only "high octane" in comparison to the 70-75 octane fuel used in the cars, trucks and half-tracks.
You might be able to put truck gas in an L-3 Piper but it probably wasn't a good idea on a regular basis.
The German tanks didn't use superchargers and most of the time their compression was under 7.0 to 1. The Tiger and Panther may have had overheating problems but using high octane gas to try to solve that in 1943-44 means that they had screwed up the cooling system in the design stage.

 

[special ed]

Just to add info to the general fuel discussion, Methanol flame is visible in darkened areas as a faint blue flame but in daylight becomes invisible. Model airplane engines, non diesel, use a fuel mixture of 75 to 80 percent Methanol with castor oil or a synthetic/castor blend lubricant. These are mostly 2 cycle engines although 4 cycle model engines use a similar mix. In the US, 10% or more Nitromethane is in the mix mostly as an ignitor and for smooth combustion. Nitromethane in Europe is not used or is 5% due to cost. Model airplane/boat/car engines are technically semi-diesels or "Otto cycle" engines using a glow plug to begin combustion with the heat of combustion keeping the plug coil hot without battery assist. Benzene was popular as a racing fuel for drag racing and dirt track until outlawed in the 60s. Benzine is absorbed through the skin and will kill one's liver.

 

[marathag]

The only sensible solution is to have made more FT and Bergius plants, and to listen to advice they had early on from Professor Steinmann at Berlin University (and ignored) to build a more distributed system, instead of making one huge plant right next to each coal deposit. Later in the war they began building underground hydrogenation plants, which were not completed but were feasible despite significant ventilation engineering challenges.

The most efficient, not best, and Perfect is the enemy of Good enough, is to use more of that Coal, as Coal.

Save on not needing those expensive Synth Fuel conversion plants.

Rather than taking the hit of 6+ tons of Coal to one ton of Liquid fuel, just use the existing Coal distribution network to power civilian and rear are Heer needs for moving things around.

They were using Horses, that was even more inefficient than Coal.

Let's compare Fuels
Diesel Engine efficiency is 38% for 1940s, Gasoline 26% for stuff that is roadbound.

Boilers and double acting cylinders like the Stanley Steamer or Sentinel Road Waggon, 9%

External Combustion just isn't that efficient. but is low tech, 1890s stuff.

Diesel has roughly 40% more BTU/lbs than Coal, depending on the grade, but it takes 4-8 tons of Coal to make 1 ton of synthetic oil, depending on the type of Coal, so you lose on using Synth plants, and not just of the fuel input stage.

Germany devoted over 4 million tons of Steel for the various Bergius hydrogenation or the Fischer-Tropsch process plants, and around 70,000 Workers at the start of operations at the start of the War.
From the USSBS

Bombing hurts.



The number of workers engaged in operating and maintaining the oil plants was 34,000 in June, 1938. The Karin Hall plan called for 6,600 additional operating personnel in mid-1939, to be increased to 66,000 by the second half of 1942.
In September, 1944, according to a statement by the Economic Group of the Fuel Industry, 20,000 persons were employed in crude production, 14,500 in crude refining, 89,200 in the synthetic industry, and 13,100 in coal tar distillation a total of 136,800. This estimate did not include miners, and probably omitted construction workers. Hence, some 200,000 workers were probably engaged in the production of oil in Germany. In the United States, about 270,000 persons were employed in drilling, producing, and refining oil in 1939, but this country's production then was more than twenty times the peak of 8,000,000 tons per year which the Germans attained shortly before the strategic bombers began to smash up their plants.


So lets avoid Synth Plants as much as possible

But lump Coal, isn't very efficient to store on vehicles, or to feed into the Boiler. So you can take the efficiency hit, and have a full time job of moving Coal into the Boiler.
This is fine for Civilian and Rear Area Army usage.

Buyt besides working the Coal thru Synthetic Plant, there is another way, but a bit more Technology than a Guy with a Shovel.

Grind it very finely, and add water.

Bingo- Coal Slurry. It can be pumped to a burner easily for Steam Engines

Coal Slurry looks like a poor Diesel, but the process is far simpler than hydrocracking Coal for Bergius process, that had pulverization as part of the process anyway.

I'm not saying Coal Slurry is awesome, but in areas where you don't need high speed diesels, you aren't wasting 4-8 tons of Coal to make one of Diesel of very pure nature(and you want some sulfur as to not wear out your mechanical injectors and pump)

Smoke is the sign of incomplete combustion, in Coal fired, or for that matter, Diesel applications. Coal slurry has much less problem in ash and incomplete combustion that solid Coal, so you gain back in efficiency what is lost in using water for the slurry

Now Actual Diesel Engines are more complex than a Boiler using a Coal Slurry Burner, in going thru mechanical injectors to each cylinder, and firing at the right moment, and the Slurry is more abrasive than 'Real' Diesel or Synthetic Diesel, so will be more wear.


Still could work for Trucks and Panzers.
The history of Aero-Diesel engines is not a happy one, so little relief for the Luftwaffe

There is a ray of sunshine in that cloud, Coal Slurry in Turbines. They already had low times before rebuild, so no change there

This is a move from the Coal Dust that they tried OTL to Slurry

USA during the Malaise Era coming out for other fuels, given the Shadow of the Arab Oil Embargo, did do research on Coal Slurry for vehicles stationary plants, and abandoned, as that threat receded.