Company history at a glance

Donau Carbon can look back on an eventful history of over 100 years which is closely linked with that of the renowned industrial plant engineering contractor Lurgi and its parent, Metallgesellschaft AG. As far back as 1915, Metallgesellschaft AG built Europe’s first activated carbon production plant. Lurgi marketed the activated carbon products and even back then, operated its own Adsorption Technology Laboratory.

In 1922, Metallgesellschaft AG formed Lurgi-Gesellschaft für Wärmetechnik which also had an activated carbon department – the forebear of our company.

The twenties saw the construction of the first solvent recovery plant using activated carbon as the adsorbent. In the years to follow, activated carbon was to gain great importance in the fields of gasoline recovery from natural gas, in the removal of fine and sub-micron particulates from synthesis gas and the recovery of low-boilers in conjunction with the coal-to-gasoline synthesis process.

After World War II, the activated carbon technology activities were extended to include fine gas de-dusting, gas de-sulphurization and the removal/recovery of other readily decomposable solvents.

The activities in the fields of drinking water purification and waste water treatment also have their origins in the 1920's.

From 1928 until the end of World War II, Metallgesellschaft AG was a member of the so-called Carbon-Norit-Union founded together with other activated carbon producers like Bayer, Degussa, Norit, Ceca and Aussiger Verein. In the wake of this cooperation, Lurgi marketed activated carbon on behalf of Bayer and Degussa from 1948, which at the beginning of the fifties led to the so-called “Triple Joint Venture Partnership” existing until 1990.

In 1992, Lurgi Aktivkohle GmbH – its direct legal predecessor – was established as a subsidiary of Lurgi. With this move, the activated carbon technology activities in the plant engineering sector were complemented by an application-oriented activated carbon sales business and an in-house reactivation facility as well as a dedicated research and development laboratory. In the course of the restructuring of the Lurgi group in the late nineties, all activated carbon activities – in both the product business and the plant engineering sector were pooled in Lurgi Aktivkohle GmbH which was divested in 1999 to the current parent company Donau Chemie AG based in Vienna.

Following the renaming to Donau Carbon GmbH & Co. KG in 2000, Donau Carbon took on its current shape. Since then it had its US subsidiary Donau Carbon Corporation based in Springfield, New Jersey and acquired the Italian Siri S.p.A., our (meanwhile former) plant engineering affiliate, now operating globally under the name of Donau Carbon Technologies s.r.l. with the focus on the Mediterranean markets.

Since 2002 Donau Carbon GmbH & Co. KG has been operating its second reactivation facility at Donau Chemie-Werk Pischelsdorf (Austria) as well as its own activated carbon production plant, producing impregnated activated carbon for special applications.

In 2011, we have opened our first production facility outside Europe, our own production plant in the Philippines.

As of October 1st, 2015, and as a result of some corporate restructuring, the German Company was remaned to Donau Carbon GmbH.

Donau Carbon Corporation, operating in the US, Canadian and Caribbean markets, providing the full spectrum
of Donau Carbon activated carbons and services, supported by the Corporate R&D facilities based in Germany and Austria, has announced its merger with Standard Purification, an independent producer of activated carbon products, in July 2016.
The merged companies operate as ‘Donau Carbon US LLC’ at the Standard Purification facilities in Dunnellon, FL.