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The commercial plant at LukOil’s Burgas refinery in Bulgaria started operations in 2015. In addition, an advanced hydrogen management scheme using membranes and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) to minimise hydrogen losses and reduce the number of compressors was incorporated into the design of this plant. This H-Oil unit is designed to process 46 000 b/d of vacuum residue from Urals crude. The design allowed for a staged investment whereby a new VDU and VGO hydrocracking unit would be integrated and added to this existing unit at a later time. In 2016, the unit passed all performance objectives thereby validating the technology advances incorporated into the design. Achieving high conversion on this difficult crude was a major achievement while also attaining high on-stream time with over 96% availability. (Feb 2019, Source).