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METHANE PRODUCTION FROM HYDRATES. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Drilling, capture and infrastructure
Summary
Currently, there is no industrial production of methane from hydrates anywhere in the world, nevertheless, a significant amount of accumulated experimental data on gas exploration, activation, drilling and extraction, detailed engineering solutions and theoretical models created allow us to form real ideas about future industrial technologies.
Successes of Japanese and Chinese researchers who managed to implement breakthrough technological solutions and ensure consistent production of methane from hydrates in 2017, albeit in a short timeframe, inspire reasoned optimism about the prospects of this technological discipline. However, it will take many additional studies and engineering surveys to bring the processes up to a commercial scale.
Technological processes for extracting methane from hydrates are in many respects similar to traditional ones used in modern natural gas production, but there are a number of significant differences. Methane in the composition of hydrates is in a bound state and, for its extraction, it must first be activated, i.e., transformed into a new energy state in which methane can be released from the crystalline lattice of solidified water. Besides this operation should take place in a controlled and safe mode since the simultaneous release of a significant amount of gas can lead to emergency situations, as well as environmental disruptions. At last, the exploration of hydrated accumulations by traditional methods requires taking into account many additional factors and, in essence, developing special applications.
Most of the recent technical developments in this area are documented in patents published by the leading patent offices worldwide and play an important role in propagating innovative technologies.
The present bulletin reviews patent applications granted by patent offices around the globe in 2015-2017 in the field related to drilling, capture and infrastructure of gas hydrates. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 262 patent documents from 17 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 78 applicants from 9 countries and 202 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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 granted 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 Daqing Dongyou Ruijia Petroleum Tech Co Ltd (China), SWPU Southwest Petroleum University (China), Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (USA), Aker Solutions AS (Norway), Baker Hughes Incorporated (USA), Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology (China), CAS GIEC Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion (China), Landmark Graphics Corporation (USA), Aoyama Chiharu (Japan), China Petroleum University (China). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of documents 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 top prominent single applications.
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 granted patents.
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 gas hydrates.
