Countercurrent operation of trickle-bed hydrogenation reactors has advantages over the commonly used co-current operation mode in some specific cases. The advantages evolve from one of the basic practices applied in chemical engineering, i.e. the countercurrent operation utilizes the available mass transfer driving force between gas and liquid phases to its maximum and thus drives the conversion to its limit. In reactors thIS lso provides the means to strip light components from the liquid phase. These light compounds might inhibit the reaction or poison the catalyst. The modelling of hydrogenation processes IS challenging task not only because of the various hydrodynamic aspects involved but also in respect of the mass transfer processes between liquid and vapour, liquid and catalyst and sometimes even inside the catalyst particles. Countercurrent operation is mathematically complex. The solution IS n iterative process and setting boundary values can be a problem whereas co-current operation can be solved easily as a group of partial differential equations with known initial values. In this paper we utilize the so-called rate-based approach to countercurrent hydrogenation reactors and show some of its features. Comparison with co-current process has been done additionally and the efficiency of countercurrent operation in removing of light compounds has been shown.