Flowrence®

7
HIG H-THROUG H P UT
R ES EARCH

Stand-alone 16 channel
Catalyst research - 1
Refining - 2
Syngas - 3

high-throughput fixed
Corrosion - 4
Selective oxidation - 5
Formulation - 6
Stand-alone system - 7
bed system
Accelerate your formulated product development. | Will the system be suitable
to run my chemistry? | Are reactions isothermal? | Are results easily translated into
real plant conditions? | How can I guarantee equal flow distribution? | What are the
process conditions? | Can temperature and pressure be varied? | How is sampling performed?
| How can you handle the large quantities of data generated? | Does the unit come with analytic
and modelling software? | How many FTE’s does a system like this take to operate? | What are
the lab specifications for installing a unit like this?

Unique features
• Small scale
• Low quantities
• Isothermic reactions
• Real commercial reaction conditions
• Gas-liquid and trickle flow
• 4 blocks of 4 reactors each individual temperature control
• Temperature up till 850 ˚C
• Pressure up till 200 bar

Fast and scalable R&D

About Avantium
Since its foundation in 2000, Avantium has been
providing research services and systems to many
of the world’s largest global (petro) chemical and
refining companies (e.g. BP, Sasol, Shell, and Chevron).
Flowrence® is a state-of-the art compact stand-alone fixed bed reactor
system. The technology of the Flowrence® is derived from our proven
in-house parallel flow reactor systems. The Flowrence® consists of
16 isothermal fixed bed micro flow reactors (2 mm diameter) that run
in parallel. This allows you to conduct 16 experiments simultaneously
while optimizing the process conditions. The system is designed to
screen heterogeneous catalysts under real commercial plant conditions.
The Flowrence® is adjusted to your requirements, pre-tested for your
chemistry and will be delivered to your lab ready to go. The Flowrence®
comes with software and analytics.

The company’s dedicated Chemicals team has acquired

an extensive track record in assisting companies in search
of new products and process optimization. In numerous
customer service projects Avantium has developed broad
expertise in the use of high-throughput technologies to
increase customers’ catalysis, formulation and corrosion
research success rates. Next to its Services and Systems
business, Avantium develops and commercializes Furanics,
a next generation of biobased fuels and plastics.
Values
Background
In 2006, Avantium upon request from its customers, decided to
expand its own proprietary flow technology into a stand-alone system.
This stand-alone unit was named ‘Flowrence®’ and brings together
the successful features that were developed whilst providing research
services to world’s leading companies in the (petro) chemical and
refining industry in the laboratories of Avantium. The Flowrence® has
successfully demonstrated it’s capability to efficiently and reproducibly
handle heterogeneous catalysts under real commercial plant conditions.
Unique are its feed distribution system, pressure regulation, reactor
sealing, gas-liquid separation, automatic liquid sampling, and online
analytical and user friendly automation. The Flowrence® can be used
for gas, liquid and trickle phase operations.

• Highest change to find best catalyst and improve

process How does it work?
• Less than 20 - 1 mL catalyst Each Flowrence® is customized and pre-tested for your application,
allowing you to study key reaction variables such as temperature,
• Comprehensive tailored catalyst screen in days till
pressure, feed, catalyst (de)composition and to perform regeneration
weeks
studies immediately after installation. The Flowrence® delivers the
following key features:
• Efficiency: Easy to run up to 16 reactions
• Modularity and endurance: The 4 temperature blocks of the
Flowrence® can be operated at different temperatures for months
without interruption.
 7
high-throughput
research
Catalyst research - 1
Refining - 2
Syngas - 3
Corrosion - 4
Selective oxidation - 5
Formulation - 6
Stand-alone system - 7

• Scalability: You will benefit from plug flow conditions, no catalyst

bypassing, mass transfer limitations and wall effects under real
commercial reaction conditions
• Operational flexibility: Feed can be either gas, liquid or trickle flow
• Small Scale: Minimum consumption of precious starting materials,
less waste and increased operational safety

The unit has been used for catalyst screening, ranking, optimization
research, lifetime testing and poisoning studies. The equipment has
been used in a wide variety of applications, including:

• Selective oxidations
• Hydro cracking
• Metathesis
• Hydrotreating (e.g. HDS, HDA)
• Selective hydrogenations
• GTL and GTP
• Aldol condensations
• Fischer-Tropsch
• Isomerization
• Kinetics

Technical key features

The Flowrence® platform can be deployed to execute up to 16 reactions in parallel.
• Each block of 4 reactors has separate temperature control
• The temperature range 50 ˚C - 500 ˚C, with option to go to 850 ˚C
• Stainless steel or glass reactors 2 mm (2.6 mm) diameter
• Reactor length; 15 cm (50 cm); 5 cm (15 cm) isothermic
• Working pressure 10-100 Bar, with option to increase to 200 Bar
• Feeding 2 gases and 1 liquid, with option to increase to 5 gases and 2 liquids
• Real or crushed catalyst extrudates
• Catalyst volume 25 to 1000 μL
• Heated reactor effluent handler
• No downstream capillaries for liquid gas separation
• Automatic Sampling System

Results
Please visit for more information: Avantium will provide online analytical capabilities and simple data
www.avantium.com management software, which will allow you to conduct thousands
of data points and have these studied within a week.

Avantium

Zekeringstraat 29, 1014 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel. +31 (0)20 586 80 80
info@avantium.com

s t e p s a h e a d