Motor Oil Info

Experimentation with synthetic lubrication dates back as far as 1877, when the prominent chemist team of Charles Friedel and James Mason Crafts successfully used aluminum trichloride as a catalyst, creating the first known synthesized hydrocarbons. It wasn’t until 1929 that Standard Oil Company of Indiana commercialized the process, but the endeavor was unsuccessful due to lack of demand.

The Zurich Aviation Congress became interested in the development of ester-based lubricants in 1937. The Germans, frustrated by the failure of petroleum lubricants during the cold weather of the Battle of Stalingrad, prepared and evaluated more than 3,500 esters between 1938 and 1944. Meanwhile, in the United States, the first diester base stocks (a compound using two ester groupings) were in development at the Naval Research Laboratory.

By 1947, Great Britain had discovered the benefits of using diesters as lubricants in turboprop aircraft. Later, with the advent of highly sophisticated jet engines, reseach and development in the area of synthetic lubricants really took off, and various synthetic formulations were developed to meet the demands of the new engines.