Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (Allentown, Pa.), the world’s largest supplier of hydrogen, today announced that it has expanded the hydrogenation capabilities of its state-of-the-art Chemicals and Refinery Process Lab located at its Global Corporate Headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“The recent enhancements at our Chemicals and Refinery Process Lab enable Air Products to be a one-stop shop and true collaborator with our customers, helping them to efficiently test hydrogenation processes to find solutions to maximize production while ensuring product quality,” said Ranajit Ghosh, Air Products’ Director of Advanced Technology – Merchant Research and Development.
Air Products’ Chemicals and Refinery Processing Lab, also known as the Hydrogen Reaction Lab, provides customers with access to a state-of-the-art lab offering continuous flow hydrogenation, catalyst evaluation and screening, as well as process discovery and improvement for the refining, chemicals, pharmaceutical, and flavors and fragrances industries.
The lab includes three continuous downflow fixed-bed reactors, as well as cold-phase and hot-phase high-pressure separators. This setup allows customers to run continuous hydrogenation reactions and evaluate real-world performance — including product quality — enabling customers to better predict yield, purity, and scale-up behavior before commercial deployment.
Each reactor can be customized to use a customer’s specific catalyst for trials. This allows the customer to run multiple sequential reaction steps with varied catalysts at high pressure and different temperatures. Customers also have the opportunity to collaborate with Air Products’ experienced scientists to deliver safe and confidential solutions to improve their processes.
The Air Products Chemicals and Refinery Processing Lab was established in 2015 and moved to its current location in 2021 when Air Products opened its new Global Corporate Headquarters. The lab is designed to help customers in the hydrogen and hydrogenation space adapt and introduce new feedstocks, catalysts, and other operational parameters to optimize the hydrogenation component of their facility. Specifically, the lab aims to help customers optimize operating conditions to achieve greater product yield and throughput while attaining a long cycle length to minimize downtime, maintain product specifications, and minimize total cost. Unlike a standalone lab, Air Products’ lab combines process development, hydrogen supply, safety, and scale-up expertise, which helps to seamlessly transition customers from testing to commercial operation.