WILLIAM A. HORNE – "GERMAN AVIATION FUEL QUALITY"

W. A.  Horne. Well, I was unfortunate in being unable to find the report that we wrote on it, but apparently it has not come over from London as yet. When last heard of, it was being worked on in the Ministry of Fuel and Power office. However, as a result of four different interviews with German technologists, we have been able to obtain curves for the various fuels which had been developed over a period of years, and I learned what processes were used and what combinations of processes, and why. I thought I would have that report to draw a little information on, at least to compare it with our notes on aviation fuel, but as I say, that report isn’t here, so I believe I’m not qualified right now to report on it.

H. Schindler. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Newman was nice enough to make me a report on the same subject, which I have previously been unable to get out of Washington, if I may just go over this and follow whatever I had. We obtained this information at Leuna:

The composition of aviation gasoline which they initially used, included 20 percent alkylate and 4-1/2 cc. of tetraethyl lead per gallon. No blending was done at the plants. All the blending was done at the various SIFO blending stations. It was my understanding that this was the actual fighter gasoline – C-3 fuel – according to the German terminology. For less strenuous requirements, they used their hydrogenation gasoline as such less strenuous requirements, they used their hydrogenation gasoline as such with about the same amount of lead. The testing was done on B & W engines under the conditions which I think should be given in the microfilms, or in the reports, and I don’t see much point in reading those off right now. As everyone knows, the Germans only used solid injection engines. There were no carburetor engines at all, and they got quite amazing performances out of their engines up to 24 h.p. The fuels were all rated according to performance.

It was found that for their type of engine iso-octane would have been the ideal fuel, but that was for obvious reasons not feasible to use. Another question we asked specifically was if that type of fuel which they were using was actually necessary for the engines, and they said yes they did not have very much leeway, they had to use this kind of highly aromatic fuel. After all, in order to make this they had to subject a hydrogenation gasoline to hydroforming operation in order to bring the aromatic content in the final gasoline up to about 40 percent. They intended to operate a hydrogenation gasoline without hydroforming, using that in conjunction with methanol water injection and in addition 2 percent methylaniline and 7-1/2 cc. of tetraethyl lead per gallon. There was some difference of opinion between the B & W and the Junkers people, and the Junkers people said they could get greater engine power out of the engine with this kind of fuel, whereas, B & W and the other concerns stated the contrary. This kind of wholesome competition seems to have gone to the whole German war effort.

P. K. Kuhne. Dr. Schindler, what became of the light fraction of the high ethyl gasoline which was re-run?

H. Schindler. That was finally blended back into the gasoline. By the way, you may have noticed they were not using any isopentane as a blending agent.

W. C. Schroeder. The next three papers deal with the Fischer-Tropsch process. The first is on the "Operation of Plants Using Cobalt Catalyst."