Air Products expands hydrogenation capabilities

Air Products has expanded the hydrogenation capabilities of its Chemicals & Refinery Process Lab. Located at the firm’s headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and also known as the Hydrogen Reaction Lab, this offers continuous flow hydrogenation, catalyst evaluation and screening, and process discovery and improvement to the refining, chemicals, pharmaceutical, and flavours and fragrances industries

The lab includes three continuous down flow fixed bed reactors, plus cold- and hot-phase high-pressure separators. According to the company, the set-up allows customers to run continuous hydrogenation reactions and evaluate real-world performance, including product, enabling then to better predict yield, purity and scale-up behaviour before commercial deployment. Each reactor can be customised to use a specific catalyst for trials, making it possible to run multiple sequential reaction steps with varied catalysts at high pressure and different temperatures.