The HAW Hamburg has developed an innovative reactive distillation technique, called READiTM process, in cooperation with the partner company Nexxoil. This process, a combination of non-catalytic thermal cracking and deoxygenation, of-fers the chance to convert a wide range of waste based raw materials into bio-oils. Characteristics of these bio-oils are low viscosity and low oxygen content. Due to that,
they can be processed into liquid hydrocarbons as a basis for drop-in fuel production with comparatively little effort by hydrotreating. In the current READ-iTM-PtL project such a two-step approach of READiTM process (1st step) and hy-drotreating (2nd step) is applied to use cooking oil (UCO). In this case, the inter-mediate bio-oil is called CVO (Cracked Vegetable Oil); the final hydrotreated product is called HCVO (Hydrotreated Cracked Vegetable Oil). Within this project a technical prototype plant with a capacity of 2 tons per week is to be built and operated.