The Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) is one of the four Institutes of Centre of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) which is overseen by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT). CPERI is a non-profit organization with the goal of establishing a centre of excellence, serving the needs of Greek and European Chemical and Pertochemical Industry.
The Laboratory of Environmental Fuels and Hydrocarbons (LEFH), one of the CPERI laboratories, undertakes applied research in the area of hydrocarbons and it is in a position to provide technical services to the petroleum industry. LEFH focuses on developing petroleum refinery technology applications for various petroleum and hydrocarbon processes and especially on Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC), Hydrodesulfurisation (HDS), Alkylation, Natural Gas conversion and bio-oil upgrading. Moreover, it deals with environmental processes which are related with the fuels (DeSOx, DeNox) and it develops technology in the are of environmental fuels. The laboratory has a staff of 30 scientists and technicians and it is headed by Dr. Angelos Lappas.
Since its establishment in 1985 LEFH has participated in numerous competitive Greek, European and structural research programs and it has developed technology in catalyst evaluation for two very important refinery processes:FCC and HDS. The state-of-the-art equipment of the laboratory has been acquired mainly through the assistance of GSRT.
It is well known that currently the scale of small refineries does not permit each one of them to have a separate research and technology development department. For this reason the laboratory since 1985 until today has made a considerable effort to evolve to a technology support centre for independent refiners. By continuously supporting the view that research must have specific targets, LEFH is in position today to offer technical support in catalytic cracking while developing infrastructure and know-how in hydrogen processing and quality control of refinery products.
Petrocat aims at providing services to the petroleum refineries. The objective is to offer solutions to existing refinery problems.