In this work, a pellet string reactor was characterized with respect to hydrodynamics and mass transfer. The catalyst packing consists of a cylindrical channel with a diameter of 1.41mm, which was filled with spherical catalyst particles, having an outer diameter of 0.8mm. Under reaction conditions (liquid phase hydrogenation of a-methylstyrene) overall (gas-liquid-solid) volumetric mass transfer coefficients for hydrogen between 0.8 and 5.5s(-1) were computed. Due to high mass transfer rates and simple reactor geometry, pellet string reactors can be applied in industry as highly efficient reaction units.