The company has erected a DHDT Reactor 211-R-01, the heaviest of all equipment on its Manali premises at a cost of Rs 50 crore and the reactor was designed and fabricated by Larson and Toubro at their Hazira facility in Surat.

As per the auto fuel policy of the Central government, all 13 major cities including Chennai and Bangalore would have to move towards Euro IV specification and rest of the country would make the shift towards Euro III benchmark.

CPCL would use this DHDT Reactor to separate the harmful sulphur content from petrol and diesel. ‘The new reactor will have the capacity to reduce 85 per cent and 66 per cent sulphur from diesel and petrol respectively,’ said K Balachandran, managing director of CPCL.

Further, he said the state-of-art reactor would be operationalised in one or two months to produce eco-friendly fuel meeting Euro III and IV standards. He also said the residue of sulphur would be used to produce fertilisers and this process was a step towards reducing pollution and manufacturing clean fuel.

The company officials had undertaken a herculean effort to transport the Diesel Hydrotreating (DHDT) unit from the place of manufacture in Surat to the Manali complex.

They have unloaded the unit at Chennai Port and used a 42 metre tall x 5.8 metre dia vehicle with 420 wheels to transport the giant facility to Manali by road.

‘The people of Chennai were awe struck with the mammoth size of the reactor being transported on road,’ said Balachandran. He also thanked the authorities from the railways, Chennai port, PWD department, Corporation, traffic police and other local agencies for their timely cooperation in erecting the DHDT unit.