Archive
BIOENERGY. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Biomass-to-liquids (Fischer-Tropsch)
Summary
Biomass-to-liquids (BTL) is one of the most promising thermochemical processes to convert biomass into synthetic fuels. Before production can begin, the feedstock has to undergo pre-treatment in order to enable efficient feeding into a gasifier, but also to reduce transportation costs by densification. After gasification, the gas is purified to remove, for example, tars and particulates, as well as the ratio of the required gases adjusted to prepare them for the catalytic stage, such as the Fischer-Tropsch process. During FT-synthesis, polymers with a different carbon chain length are produced, including n-olefins, n-paraffins, and branched chain hydrocarbons. In order to receive a more selective and also valuable product, the reaction has to be fine-tuned with regard to reaction parameters such as temperature, pressure, and type of catalyst. Another method for BTL conversion is the Mobil Process, where LINK methanol is generated, which is then converted into hydrocarbons of varying chain length using a zeolite catalyst. One of the main challenges of BTL production is that sometimes the quality of the final product does not live up to required standards, which is why it is blended with petrol and diesel. Also, biomass production is not a carbon-zero process as certain feedstocks can contain harmful substances, such as methane in animal waste, or wood-like materials can emit pollutants including nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere during production. Moreover, biomass production may lead to deforestation, which impacts biodiversity. Finally, constructing biomass plants can be quite expensive and the cost of harvesting, transportation and storage are high. The applications presented in this bulletin try to resolve some of the aforementioned issues.
A selection of patent applications related to biomass-to-liquids production technologies 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 on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 197 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 15 countries and registered in 19 patent offices. The patent documents mention 76 applicants and 308 IPC subgroups.
Key Highlights
The bulletin provides general statistical figures, including the overall 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 most popular patent offices among the applicants were: USPTO (US), EPO, CNIPA (CN), INPI (BR), JPO (JP), WIPO.
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.
The following information can be found for the top 10 applicants: breakdown of applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices, technological indicators, as well as the estimation of their share in the established intellectual property market. The 10 leading applicants by the number of patent documents were: Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL), Sabic Global Technologies B.V (NL), Shell Oil Company (US), IHI Environment Co., Ltd (JP), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (FI), Wuhan Kaidi Engineering Technology Research General Institute Co., Ltd. (CN), Petroleum Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa Ltd (ZA), Air Liquide (FR), Greyrock Energy Inc. (US), Novomer Inc. (US).
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 patent bulletin also includes a list of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by patent offices and indicated by 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 biofuel production technologies.
