Hydrogen

Aenert news. Invention analysis
Previously, in our articles on recent patenting trends we covered several aspects of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) technology, including aromatic and heterocyclic LOHC compounds (29.09.2023, 08.09.2023), hydrogenation and dehydrogenation (17.10.2023, 30.10.2023), LOHC catalysts in general and noble metal catalysts in particular (20.11.2023, 22.12.2023).
Here, we will take a quick look at the ecological aspects of employing LOHC technology to hydrogen storage and transportation. This technology already solves some of the major ecological issues of conventional H₂ storage and transport approaches, but novel techniques sometimes also have their own disadvantages, such as producing harmful emissions, involving toxic materials, wasting energy, or posing safety risks when used.

Below is a brief review of recent patents disclosing inventions on Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier technologies aimed at solving ecology-related problems. The documents selected for this review are considered applicable to ecology-related problems when the authors mention relevant problems in the object of invention, as drawbacks of the prior-art solutions, or in other similar cases. When an invention is aimed at solving several differing ecological problems, the case is counted only once in the statistics. Naturally, such inventions may also be aimed at solving other kinds of problems, such as poor efficiency, high cost, etc.

Below is a list of the top applicants by patenting share in the pool of recent patents aimed at solving ecology-related problems.

Applicants share in the intellectual property market, %. Patents, 2019-2023



Value: Market involvement ratio*; Y axis: Ownership ratio; Bubble size: Volume ratio.
*(Market involvement ratio = volume ratio multiplied by ownership ratio, where Volume ratio - share of applicant documents in total number of documents, Ownership ratio - applicant's participation share in total number of documents)

In the revised set of documents, Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies GmbH (DE), affiliated organizations of Sinopec China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (CN), Chiyoda Corporation (JP), Energystoredge Ltd (IL), and Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ltd (IL) are leading by the number of patents obtained in the past five years.

In the collection of documents under consideration, the largest patent family comprises 31 patent documents and is represented by core document AU2020269473A1 (Core document is a base document for which a complete description of the invention is available in generally-accessible patent databases). It is followed by two patent families each comprising 20 documents (US20210269305A1 and US10450194B2):

Organic hydrogen storage raw material dehydrogenation catalyst, carrier of the catalyst, hydrogen storage alloy, and method for providing high-purity hydrogen / A: AU2020269473A1 / IPC: C22C19/03, C01B3/56, C22C14/00, C22C23/06, C22C30/00 / Lin Wei; Yang Xue; Song Haitao; et al. / Sinopec RIPP Research Institute of Petroleum Processing (CN); Sinopec China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (CN) / Appl. date: 06.05.2020; Publ. date: 12.11.2020 / IP Australia / Core document: AU2020269473A1 / Technology categories: OAC, OHC / Technology elements: Hdh, Hct / Problems: EC, HCHD, LEHD / Technical solution types: M, C / Claims: 16 / Rating: 13; the most recent documents in this family were published on 15.11.2022 (CN111892016B) and 21.10.2022 (CN111893360B);
Hydrogen carrier compounds / A: US20210269305A1 / IPC: C01B3/06, C01B3/00, C08G77/12, C08L83/04 / Burcher Benjamin, Lome Vincent, Benoit Remy / HySiLabs SAS (FR) / Appl. date: 30.04.2019; Publ. date: 02.09.2021 / United States Patent and Trademark Office / Core document: US20210269305A1 / Technology categories: OOt / Technology elements: ODD / Problems: EC, HCG, LEG / Technical solution types: M, C / Claims: 21 / Rating: 12; the most recent documents in this family were published on 26.10.2022 (ZA202006383B) and 29.09.2021 (ZA202006165B);
Liquid compounds and method for the use thereof as hydrogen stores / P: US10450194B2 / IPC: C01B3/38, C01B3/26, B01J19/24, C01B3/00, B60K15/03 / Boesmann Andreas; Wasserscheid Peter; Brueckner Nicole; Teichmann Daniel; Dungs Jennifer / Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (DE) / Appl. date: 27.05.2015; Publ. date: 22.10.2019 / United States Patent and Trademark Office / Core document: US10450194B2 / Technology categories: OAC / Technology elements: Hdh / Problems: EC, LEHD / Technical solution types: M / Claims: 11 / Rating: 16; the most recent documents in this family were published on 11.01.2022 (BR112015012183B1) and 08.09.2020 (CA2892228C).

The following abbreviations are used in the documents hereinbefore: C - Composition; M - Method; OAC - Arene/Aromatic compound; OHC - Heterocyclic; OOt - Other unspecified or unidentified composition; Hct - Catalyst; Hdh - Dehydrogenation; ODD - Organic carrier; EC - Ecological problems; HCG - High cost in general; HCHD - High cost of hydrogenation or dehydrogenation; LEG - Low efficiency in general; LEHD - Low efficiency of hydrogenation or dehydrogenation.

Besides ecology-related problems to which all the revised documents are attributed, the most commonly-encountered problems in this collection of recent patents are Low efficiency of hydrogenation or dehydrogenation, High cost of hydrogenation or dehydrogenation, and High cost in general.

Generally, technical solutions provided by the authors were represented in the form of methods. Devices and compositions are encountered in virtually the same number of cases, roughly almost two times less often than methods.

As in our earlier articles on LOHCs, here we will consider recently patented solutions for inventions that are aimed at solving ecology-related problems in cases where toluene is the proposed LOHC material, alone, in combination with other materials, or as one of the options proposed by the authors.

Following are top IPC indices that were assigned to these inventions:
 

According to the International Patent Classification, the IPC indices above have the following definitions: C01B3/00 - Hydrogen; Gaseous mixtures containing hydrogen; Separation of hydrogen from mixtures containing it; Purification of hydrogen; C22C30/00 - Alloys containing less than 50% by weight of each constituent; C01B3/22 - by decomposition of gaseous or liquid organic compounds; C01B3/56 - by contacting with solids; Regeneration of used solids; C22C1/02 - by melting; C01B32/50 - Carbon dioxide; C07C15/06 - Toluene; C22F1/02 - in inert or controlled atmosphere or vacuum; C22F1/18 - High-melting or refractory metals or alloys based thereon; F17C11/00 - Use of gas-solvents or gas-sorbents in vessels.

CNIPA (CN) is a strong leader by the number of patents granted for such inventions (about 47%), followed by the EPO and IPO (GB) patent offices.

Additionally, we made a more comprehensive analysis of how different ecology-related problems encountered in the toluene LOHC inventions can be grouped. Here, the most popular ecology-related problem groups were Safety risks (26 patents), Harmful emissions (7 patents), and Energy waste (5 patents).

Image from: US20220073344A1

By the Editorial Board