Archive
BIOENERGY. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Biomass-to-liquids (Fischer-Tropsch)
Summary
One of the most common methods of producing synthetic liquid fuels is the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, which transforms syngas usually derived from fossil sources into useful products. This process, however, can also be applied to syngas produced from biomass. The quality of the biomass-derived fuel is usually equal to those derived from fossil fuels so that it can be used in commercial engines. During the Fischer-Tropsch process, chemical reactions occur which polymerise a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. Usually, metal catalysts and temperatures of 150–300°C are employed. The main advantage of these types of liquid fuels is that they are considered a clean as well as a carbon-neutral energy source due to their low content of sulphur, nitrogen and mineral matter. There are, however, several problems involved in spreading the use of liquid biofuels in transportation which primarily concern the low efficiency of the main production process in general, as purity requirements for the syngas used in the Fischer-Tropsch process are relatively high. Also, the high cost of production and environmental concerns form a major obstacle to increasing the application of biomass-derived fuels. The applications presented in this bulletin try to address some of these problems.
A selection of patent applications related to biomass-to-liquids production methods and published by patent offices around the globe in 2015-2017 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 320 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 19 countries and registered in 25 patent offices. The patent documents mention 113 applicants and 347 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 USPTO (US), EPO and CNIPA (CN).
From the analysis of texts of applications presented in this bulletin, detailed information is extracted for each of the unified indicators, which include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging of a patent document to one or other technological segment. The results of the statistical processing of this data for the entire array of the applications examined are summarized in the correspondingly-named diagrams and tables. In addition to that, a list of the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators is provided, where the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents and include ID numbers and applicant names of the documents.
Data is provided for each of the top 10 applicants, leading in terms of the number of published patent documents among the ones examined in the bulletin, illustrating their share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of the United States and the Netherlands prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL), Shell Oil Company (US), Wuhan Kaidi Engineering Technology Research General Institute Co., Ltd. (CN), Sabic Global Technologies B.V (NL), Axens (FR), BIONEXT (FR), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (FR), IHI Environment Co., Ltd (JP), Total Raffinage Chimie (FR), IFP (École Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs) (FR).
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top 10 patent applications having the highest bibliographical rating, the largest number 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 proposed patent statistics bulletin allows the existing trends in the intellectual property market of the specified industrial sector to be timely traced, as well as the possibility of acquiring a carefully selected list of patent documents fully corresponding to the specified subject. The bulletin can be useful for inventors, engineers, scientific workers, and business representatives, who are focused on the development of biomass-to-liquids production technologies.
