Archive
SYNTHETIC FUELS. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Coal-to-liquids
Summary
Coal-to-Liquid technologies have become widespread in countries with abundant coal resources, but limited reserves of other fossil fuels - primarily China and South Africa. Indonesia and India have shown great interest in the development of this technology. Most often, the production of liquid fuels involves the gasification of coal and the subsequent synthesis of hydrocarbons from syngas (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis). The processing of coal into liquid hydrocarbons is a high-tech process that requires significant energy consumption, careful preparation of feedstock, strict adherence to temperature regimes, deep purification of gases, and the use of high-quality catalysts. A very painful problem with Coal-to-Liquid technology is the need for large quantities of fresh water, especially in arid regions. In addition, purification of recycled water is a very costly process, further increasing operating costs and making this type of production less competitive in comparison with the production technologies of traditional oil commodities. Strict technical and environmental requirements, high capital and operating costs – these are some of the problems that researchers and engineers are trying to solve. However, it should also be emphasized that the high quality of final products, in combination with a rich resource base, allows us to place reasonable hopes on the further development of this area. A systematic overview of coal-to-liquid patent applications can be found in the patent bulletin, which can be an additional source of information to track trends and industry leaders.
A selection of patent applications related to synthetic fuels and coal-to-liquid and published by patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found at Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 1411 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 28 countries and registered in 31 patent offices. The patent documents mention 507 applicants and 862 IPC subgroups.
Key Highlights
The bulletin contains statistical data on the distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The top three patent offices that registered the largest number of patent applications were CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US), and WIPO.
For each of the patent documents selected for the examination in the present bulletin the characteristics of unified indicators were preliminary defined, they include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging to one or other technological segment. This allows the internal content for each of the indicators in the aggregate array of documents to be visualized, for instance, to define the sequence and proportional correlation of technical problems the inventive solutions disclosed in the texts aim to solve. A list of the top 10 groups consisting of patent documents with identical unified indicators contains ID numbers and applicant names of respective documents; the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents.
A list of the top 10 applicants by the number of patent documents includes China Petroleum & Chemical Company (China), Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (the Netherlands), Shenhua Group Co Ltd (China), Xinjiang Guoliheng Clean Energy Technology Co. Ltd (China), ENN Science & Technology Development Co Ltd (China), National Institute of Clean and Low Carbon Energy (NICE) (China), Sabic Global Technologies B.V (the Netherlands), Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd (Japan), THU Tsinghua University (China), and Zhongwei (Shanghai) Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (China). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patent applications with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being a part of patent family.
The conclusive part of the bulletin represents the lists of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators and by patent offices with the indication of the ID numbers of the registered patent applications.
Who needs this bulletin?
The statistics bulletin under examination serves as one of the variants to monitor advanced technical achievements in the specified industrial sector. The statistical data, rating evaluations and carefully selected patent documents provided in the bulletin can be of interest for inventors, students and educators, engineers, as well as for businessmen and investors, who in one way or another are concerned with the problems of the development of synthetic fuels.
