SYNTHETIC LUBRICANTS AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE ...

Introduction
The publication of the second edition of Synthetic Lubricants and High-Performance Functional
Fluids comes at a milestone in the way we have chosen to record and order historical events. Very
shortly we shall enter a new millennium in our accounting system—a time that seems appropriate
to reflect on the past and prognosticate on the future. When we do this, we realize that we live
in a time like no other. At no time in our history has change and real improvement in the human
condition come at so rapid a pace. Even a subject as seemingly mundane as lubrication has shared
in and significantly contributed to the exhilarating pace of progress.
In the most fundamental sense, a lubricant may be defined as a substance that has the ability
to reduce friction between two solid surfaces rubbed against each other. The use of natural
products to achieve this effect dates to antiquity. Art decorations on the inner wall of the
Egyptian tomb of Tehuti-Hetep (ca. 1650 B.C.) indicate that olive oil on wooden planks was
used to facilitate the sliding of large stones, statues, and building materials. Egyptian chariots
dating to 1400 B.C. have been uncovered that have small amounts of greasy materials, presumed
to be either beef or mutton tallow, on the axles. In addition to animal fat and vegetable oil, petroleum
products have been used for lubrication in a primitive fashion for more than a millennium.
In fact, Herodotus (484–424 B.C.) described methods of producing bitumen and a lighter oil
from petroleum.
The first synthetic hydrocarbon oils were produced by the prominent chemists Charles
Friedel and James Mason Crafts in 1877. Standard Oil Company of Indiana commercialized a
synthetic hydrocarbon oil in 1929, but it was unsuccessful because of a lack of demand. However,
the onset of World War II, and the subsequent shortages of petroleum feedstocks in Germany,
France, and Japan, revitalized interest in synthetic lubricants. Moreover, the German disaster at
the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 demonstrated the inadequacy of petroleum products in extremely
cold weather. Because the lubricants used in tanks, aircraft, and other military vehicles gelled,
the engines used in the vehicles could not be started. An intense German research effort to find
alternative lubricants ensued, which led to the first manufacture of synthetic products by olefin
polymerization.
Interest in ester-based lubricants appears to date back to the Zurich Aviation Congress in
1937. Triesters were later synthesized from fatty acids and trimethanolethane. These materials
performed so well that more than 3500 esters were prepared and evaluated in Germany between
1938 and 1944. Meanwhile, the first diester base stocks were developed in the United States at
the Naval Research Laboratory between 1942 and 1945. The British began using esters in 1947
as lubricants for turboprop aircraft, in which conventional mineral oils failed to give satisfactory
performance at high temperatures. With the introduction of jet engines, the problem became even
more complex because of the need for lubrication at very low temperatures to the front of the
engine and at very high temperatures to the rear. The need for fire-resistant hydraulic fluids in
aircraft further spurred the development of synthetics.
Copyright © 1999 Marcel Dekker, Inc.
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