A bit of history and on to the Rest of the Story.
Franz Fisher and Hans Tropsch developed a catalyst (the Fischer-Tropsch catalyst or FT) in 1925 that converted coal gas into petroleum products. Germany was deficient in oil resources, but had major coal reserves, and by 1941 had converted coal gas to 740,000 tons of petroleum.
FT is based on a complex series of reactions that reduce carbon monoxide to CH2 groups linked to form hydrocarbons. Thus, Shell was not the first to use this process! So the FT process (in a nutshell) converts gasses to liquid petroleums.
From the paper above, the Ethylene-alpha-Olefin-Polymer, or EOP, is a created by a polymerization process using the Zeigler-Natta (metallocene) catalysts only after the basic raw materials, are in place, visa vis, the monomers of ethylene, propylene, and butene.
"By utilizing the SSC, the authors have developed an innovative technology that directly polymerizes inexpensive and abundant monomers including ethylene, propylene, and butene. (Heilman, et. al., (2000)). The polymerization reaction typically occurs at 50 C and 2 atm [30 psi] and with high monomer conversion. Reaction products have demonstrated to exhibit comparable physical and chemical properties to PAO's."
So in my view, and Penzoil/Quaker State Chemists, and the University of Amherst Chemists, and various organgic chemistry texts dispute your definition of synthetics which do not follow the literature's definition of what is a true synthetic.
Edit: Cleaned up typos and added references.
1. Lubrication Engineering, June 2002, pp. 29-33, by Wei Song, et. al.,"New High Performance Synthetic Hydrocarbon Base Stocks."
2. Bodner, Pardue, "Chemistry: An experimental Science," Chapter 24, The Organic Chemistry of Carbon.
3. Morrison and Boyd, "Organic Chemistry," Sixth Edition, Chapter 31, Macromolecules: Polymers and Polymerization.
[ December 21, 2002, 05:32 PM: Message edited by: MolaKule ]
