Our history

Donau Carbon GmbH & Co. KG can look back on an eventful history of over 80 years which is closely linked with that of the renowned industrial plant engineering contractor Lurgi and its parent, Metallgesellschaft AG. As far back as in 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 dedusting, gas desulphurization and the removal/recovery of other readily decomposable solvents.
Our activities in the fields of drinking water purification and water and waste water treatment as well have their origins in the 1920ties.

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 – our 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 our 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 we have founded our US subsidiary Donau Carbon Corp. based in Springfield, New Jersey and acquired the Italian Siri S.p.A., our plant engineering affiliate operating globally under the name of Donau Carbon S.p.A. with the focus on the Mediterranean markets.

Since 2002 we have been operating our second reactivation facility at Donau Chemie-Werk Pischelsdorf (Austria) as well as our own activated carbon production plant, producing impregnated activated carbon for special applications.