Would you like to wash yourself with Merzol?
Ammoniakwerke Leuna Merseburg GmbH - manufacturer of synthetic detergents
This is another branch of German chemical technologies that used paraffins synthesized in the Fischer-Tropsch process as raw material. These paraffins were used to make not only synthetic edible fat, but also a synthetic detergent. It was called Mersol (short for Merseburg + Oleo). In Russian, it sounds somewhat ambiguous - "mersol".
This is also written about very little, literally in the order of mention. But the topic clearly deserves some expanded details.
Unexpectedly good cleaning properties
In German consumption of oils and fats, about 225 thousand tons, or 11%, went to the manufacture of soap. All detergents for personal hygiene and for technical use were made on the basis of soap produced from natural fats. But there was a shortage of fats in Germany, so chemists looked for ways to replace soap made from natural fats with something more affordable.
The first example of a synthetic detergent was created in 1917 by chemist Fritz Gunther, who worked at BASF. It was commonly called Nekal A and was made from isopropyl alcohol using sulfuric acid and naphthalene, in the form of a washing powder. After the end of World War I, there was no longer a need for it, but IG Farben had a plant and produced this detergent in small quantities, for example, in 1939 - 1000 tons.
In 1933, the same Fritz Günther, then working for IG Farben, worked his magic in his lab and created sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate, better known by its abbreviation ABS, also known in Russian as sulfonol. It is still the main component of hand washing powders today. The raw materials for it were benzene and paraffin.
But German chemists were unhappy because the production of these substances was multi-stage, very complex and therefore expensive. But in 1936 they got lucky. American chemists Cortez Reed and Charles Horn described the sulfochlorination reaction in their patent. A mixture of sulfur dioxide and chlorine in gaseous form reacts with paraffin under the influence of ultraviolet radiation, forming new compounds - aliphatic sulfonic acids. German chemists repeated this, and then took the next step - neutralized these compounds with an alkaline solution, for example, caustic soda. And a substance with unexpectedly good cleaning properties was obtained.
Right away - a big plant
However, what was done well in the laboratory had to be done at the plant. A very aggressive mixture of gases is used here, which causes rapid corrosion of any metal. It is also necessary to somehow supply ultraviolet radiation to the reaction apparatus. In the laboratory, the flask could be placed in sunlight, but at the plant it will not be enough.
At the Ammoniakwerk Leuna Merseburg GmbH plant, a laboratory was created to develop the technology, which managed to build an experimental apparatus quite quickly. It was a glass container for 15 liters of liquid paraffin, into which a mixture of sulfur dioxide and chlorine was fed through a tube. The container was illuminated by a powerful mercury lamp, and the paraffin and gas were mixed with a special mechanical stirrer.
Numerous experiments were conducted on this installation, including those aimed at selecting the most suitable raw material. It turned out to be the so-called "Kogasin II" - paraffin with a boiling point of 230 to 370 degrees, obtained in the Fischer-Tropsch process, used to obtain lubricating oils.
By the beginning of the war, the technical details had been worked out, and construction of an industrial plant with a capacity of 20 tons per year had begun at the Ammoniakwerk Leuna Merseburg GmbH plant. However, in December 1939, Karl Krauch, the Commissioner for Special Issues of Chemical Production, on behalf of Hermann Göring, the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, ordered that the capacity be doubled, to 40 tons per year.
For the sake of haste, they decided to abandon the trial installation with a capacity of 1-2 tons per day and immediately build an installation with a capacity of about 110 tons per day. Construction began in January 1940, and by April 15, 1940, the installation was already operational.
The reactor contained 3,7 cubic meters of raw material and was illuminated by 16 kilowatt lamps, the light of which penetrated through special windows. The gas mixture was supplied from below, passed through the oily raw material. It worked the first time, but not quite: 6% of the raw material reacted in 50 hours of processing.
The setup and process were then reworked several times and in the final version they were folded into a reactor 4 meters high and 2 meters in diameter, in which 16 windows were made for 96 lamps of 75 watts each. Heated paraffin was poured into the reactor, and a gas mixture was supplied from below under a pressure of 2,2 atmospheres. The reaction proceeded with the release of heat, so the reactor had water cooling, maintaining a temperature of 25 to 35 degrees.
The process was periodic. Mersol H was obtained by processing for 15 hours with a volume of gas mixture at 65 cubic meters per hour. In this case, 50% of the paraffin was converted into sulfonic acids. Mersol D was obtained with 30% conversion of paraffin into sulfonic acids by processing for 16 hours at 35 cubic meters of gas mixture per hour.
The sulfonic acids were then treated with an alkaline solution, and after saponification, a granulated washing powder was obtained.
When there is nothing to wash with
When the industrial process had more or less succeeded, Karl Krauch started a big deal and set the goal of providing 82 million people in the Reich and 33 million people in the occupied eastern territories with the new detergent. According to rough estimates, the need for detergents for sanitary and technical purposes amounted to about 100 thousand tons of fatty acids, of which 100% of detergents and 30% of soap could be replaced by "mersol", for which it had to be produced in a volume of at least 80 thousand tons per year.
Here Krauch had strong competitors. Henkel, which had been producing and selling Persil washing powder based on sodium perborate and silicate since 1907, tested Merzol and declared that it was half as effective as soap in washing. IG Farben, of course, received different data.
Advertisement for Persil washing powder by Henkel
But still, "Merzol" had one indisputable drawback - the low ability of the detergent to retain dirt in solution. When washing, dirt was easily removed from the fabric, but then partially settled on the washed item. Therefore, fabrics that were washed many times with "Merzol" gradually turned gray. They tried to solve this problem.
While the chemists were arguing, the situation with fats in Germany had deteriorated sharply, so that at the end of 1940 the department for the supply of technical oils and fats - die Reichsstelle für industrielle Fettversorgung - ordered a reduction in the content of fatty acids (meaning sodium salts of fatty acids, but in the economic sense, the consumption of fatty acids for the production of detergents was calculated) in washing powder from 20% to 10%.
It was a serious matter - the Wehrmacht needed soap.
Therefore, at the beginning of 1941, the Reich Ministry of Economics approved the construction of a plant for 80 thousand tons of "merzol" per year. Krauch had plans to increase its production to 155 thousand tons per year. But in reality, by the autumn of 1944, the following were in operation: the Ammoniakwerke Leuna plant for 60 thousand tons, in Wolfen - 20 thousand tons, as well as a plant for the production of synthetic fatty acids in Witten - 40 thousand tons, where it also produced food grade synthetic fat.
The importance of "merzol" was constantly increasing, as technical fat became less and less. The content of fatty acids dropped to 1942% in early 7, and to 1944% in mid-5. The decline in the cleaning qualities of washing powder was compensated by soda, until this substance was no longer sufficient, and then by liquid glass. Soap and washing powder almost lost their cleaning qualities. Under these conditions, "merzol" with its shortcomings became quite acceptable.
True, in the autumn of 1944, the Ammoniakwerke Leuna plant, which had been subjected to numerous air raids (21 raids from May 1944 until the end of the war), was already a pile of ruins. By the beginning of 1945, 70% of the destruction had occurred, and the production of "Mersol" ceased. Accordingly, for about the last six months of the war, people in Germany hardly washed or did laundry due to the almost complete lack of soap and detergents.
The remains of the plant at the Ammoniakwerke Leuna plant were dismantled and taken to the USSR. The plant in Wolfen remained intact, and SVAG decided to resume production. This detergent was produced for some time after the end of World War II, but soon gave way to other, more advanced types.
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