It has been the endeavour of EIL to continuously improve the quality of its services by value addition and leveraging technological advances. It is with this objective and to foster the spirit of innovation and creativity in the organization that the Research & Development activities were started in EIL as early as 1970.

The methodology adopted initially for enhancing R&D competencies has been based on conceptualising and execution of collaborative R&D projects and building up knowledge network supportive to company's requirements of business. Such networks have been based both at industrial level R&D needs as well as user level R&D needs. Subsequently, EIL's own R&D Centre was set up at Gurgaon in 1988. R&D activities at EIL primarily relate to upgradation of acquired technologies and their optimization / integration and betterment of open art technologies as well as developing new technologies primarily through colloboration with other R&D institutes / organisations.

The facilities set up at EIL's R&D Centre have enhanced our capabilities for process design engineering, heat & mass transfer equipment designs, integrated system evaluation, etc. in the fields of Refineries, Petrochemicals, Gas processing, Metallurgy, etc.

The development activities at R&D have significantly contributed towards a number of technologies that have been commercialized. Some of these have received National Level Awards. Today our R&D Division has become one of India's leading applied research organizations. The Division has applied for 34 patents, some of these have been granted including a US patent.