ILS was chosen for this project because of our vast experience in fixed-bed reactor design and our willingness to design both the hardware and process-control system for this company to their local site standards. The client has a large bio-refinery and needed to have a pilot unit that operated at as small a scale as possible but still large enough to allow for continuous atmospheric and vacuum product fractination to allow for a full-product workup and analysis. This data could then be implemented in complex ASPEN simulations to predict the impact that different catalysts will have on the refinery production.

The unit is capable of operating the two fixed-bed reactors either in parallel or in series, when hydrotreating followed by hydrocracking is desired. The fully-integrated atmospheric and vacuum distillation columns mean that products formed can immediately be fractionated into sufficient quantities to make complete characterization of the fuels formed possible. ILS managed to split the unit into explosion proof zones to maximize the safety of operating with the unit.