Kędzierzyn-Koźle is a city in southern Poland, the administrative center of Kędzierzyn-Koźle County. With 58,899 inhabitants as of 2021, it is the second most-populous city in the Opole Voivodeship.
Wettin is a small town belonging to the municipality of Wettin-Löbejün in the Saale District of Saxony-Anhalt (Saxony-Ascania), Germany. It is situated on the River Saale, just north of Halle. It is known for Wettin Castle, the ancestral seat of the House of Wettin, the former ruling dynasty of Saxony, Poland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Bulgaria. The town and its name are of Slavic origin.
The Fischer–Tropsch process (FT) is a collection of chemical reactions that converts a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, known as syngas, into liquid hydrocarbons. These reactions occur in the presence of metal catalysts, typically at temperatures of 150–300 °C (302–572 °F) and pressures of one to several tens of atmospheres. The Fischer–Tropsch process is an important reaction in both coal liquefaction and gas to liquids technology for producing liquid hydrocarbons.
Sasol Limited is an integrated energy and chemical company based in Sandton, South Africa. The company was formed in 1950 in Sasolburg, South Africa, and built on processes that German chemists and engineers first developed in the early 1900s. Today, Sasol develops and commercializes technologies, including synthetic fuel technologies, and produces different liquid fuels, chemicals, coal tar, and electricity.
A synthetic rubber is an artificial elastomer. They are polymers synthesized from petroleum byproducts. About 32 million metric tons of rubbers are produced annually in the United States, and of that amount two thirds are synthetic. Synthetic rubber, just like natural rubber, has many uses in the automotive industry for tires, door and window profiles, seals such as O-rings and gaskets, hoses, belts, matting, and flooring. They offer a different range of physical and chemical properties which can improve the reliability of a given product or application. Synthetic rubbers are superior to natural rubbers in two major respects: thermal stability, and resistance to oils and related compounds. They are more resistant to oxidizing agents, such as oxygen and ozone which can reduce the life of products like tires.
Coal liquefaction is a process of converting coal into liquid hydrocarbons: liquid fuels and petrochemicals. This process is often known as "Coal to X" or "Carbon to X", where X can be many different hydrocarbon-based products. However, the most common process chain is "Coal to Liquid Fuels" (CTL).
Synthetic fuel or synfuel is a liquid fuel, or sometimes gaseous fuel, obtained from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, in which the syngas was derived from gasification of solid feedstocks such as coal or biomass or by reforming of natural gas.
Biomass to liquid is a multi-step process of producing synthetic hydrocarbon fuels made from biomass via a thermochemical route.
The Bergius process is a method of production of liquid hydrocarbons for use as synthetic fuel by hydrogenation of high-volatile bituminous coal at high temperature and pressure. It was first developed by Friedrich Bergius in 1913. In 1931 Bergius was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of high-pressure chemistry.
The Karrick process is a low-temperature carbonization (LTC) and pyrolysis process of carbonaceous materials. Although primarily meant for coal carbonization, it also could be used for processing of oil shale, lignite or any carbonaceous materials. These are heated at 450 °C (800 °F) to 700 °C (1,300 °F) in the absence of air to distill out synthetic fuels–unconventional oil and syngas. It could be used for a coal liquefaction as also for a semi-coke production. The process was the work of oil shale technologist Lewis Cass Karrick at the United States Bureau of Mines in the 1920s.
Monowitz was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (Arbeitslager) run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existence, Monowitz was a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp; from November 1943 it and other Nazi subcamps in the area were jointly known as "Auschwitz III-subcamps". In November 1944 the Germans renamed it Monowitz concentration camp, after the village of Monowice where it was built, in the annexed portion of Poland. SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Heinrich Schwarz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945.
Stalag VIII-B was most recently a German Army administered POW camp during World War II, later renumbered Stalag-344, located near the village of Lamsdorf in Silesia. The camp contained barracks built to house British and French World War I POWs. The site had housed POWs of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II. Another term was Zwangsarbeitslager.
The Allied oil campaign of World War II was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the RAF and the USAAF against facilities supplying Nazi Germany with petroleum, oil, and lubrication (POL) products. It formed part of the immense Allied strategic bombing effort during the war. The targets in Germany and in Axis-controlled Europe included refineries, synthetic-fuel factories, storage depots and other POL-infrastructure.
Allied bombing of the oil campaign targets of World War II included attacks on Nazi Germany oil refineries, synthetic oil plants, storage depots, and other chemical works. Natural oil was available in Northwestern Germany at Nienhagen, Rietberg (20%—300,000), and Heide (300,000) and refineries were mainly at Hamburg and Hannover. Refineries in France, Holland, and Italy (54)—mainly coastal plants for ocean-shipped crude—were within Allied bombing range and generally unused by Germany. Even before the war, Germany was dependent on foreign sources for an adequate supply of oil. The annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland ; the "campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France…and imports from the Soviet Union provided significant wartime petroleum imports to Nazi Germany. Firms that operated oil facilities included Deutsche Erdöl-Aktiengesellschaft, Brabag, Fanto, and I.G. Farbenindustrie.
The oil campaign chronology of World War II lists bombing missions and related events regarding the petroleum/oil/lubrication (POL) facilities that supplied Nazi Germany or those Germany tried to capture in Operation Edelweiss.
The Blechhammer area was the location of Greater German Reich chemical plants, prisoner of war camps, and forced labor camps. Labor camp prisoners began arriving as early as June 17, 1942, and in July 1944, 400–500 men were transferred from the Terezin family camp to Blechhammer. The mobile "pocket furnace" crematorium was at Sławięcice.) and Bau und Arbeits Battalion 21 was a mile from the Blechhammer oil plants and was not far from Kattowitz and Breslau. Blechhammer synthetic oil production began April 1, 1944 with 4000 prisoners, with the slave labor camp holding these prisoners during April 1944, becoming a satellite camp of the dreaded Auschwitz extermination camp, as Arbeitslager Blechhammer.
Edmund Geilenberg was a German official of World War II who headed an emergency 1944 decentralization program, the Geilenbergstab or Geilenbergprogramm, to disperse Nazi Germany oil production. The program included the Cuckoo project for an underground oil plant to be "carved out of the Himmelsburg" North of the Mittelwerk, as well as plans for an oil facility at Ebensee. "Geilenberg used as many as 350,000 men for the repair, rebuilding, and dispersal of the bombed plants and for new underground construction [which] were incomplete when the war ended".
Brabag was a German firm, planned in 1933, and operating from 1934 until 1945, that distilled synthetic aviation fuel, diesel fuel, gasoline, lubricants, and paraffin wax from lignite. It was an industrial cartel firm closely supervised by the Nazi regime; while it operated, it produced commodities vital to the German military forces before and during World War II. After substantial damage from strategic bombing, the firm and its remaining assets were dissolved at the end of the war.
Worldwide commercial synthetic fuels plant capacity is over 240,000 barrels per day (38,000 m3/d), including indirect conversion Fischer–Tropsch plants in South Africa, Qatar, and Malaysia, and a Mobil process plant in New Zealand.
Map distinguishing Cosel, Heydebreck, & Blechhammer 