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SYNTHETIC FUELS. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Fischer-Tropsch catalysts
Summary
Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is a process commonly used to convert syngas (H2 and CO) derived from natural gas, coal or biomass into synthetic liquid fuels and chemicals. The reaction is a polymerization process that was originally developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1922 to produce liquid fuels for transportation from coal. It employs catalysts with highly diverse formulations which depend on the desired quality of the final product as well as the required olefin to paraffin ratio. Fe, Co, Ni and Ru are thought to be the best catalytic materials for use in FT synthesis. Ru has proved to be one of the most active catalysts for FTS; however, it is an expensive as well as a scarce resource and therefore not suitable for large-scale production. Nickel has a high hydrogenation activity and undesired high selectivity to methane production. Therefore, Co and Fe are the most frequently applied catalysts in industrial-scale FTS processes. Co-based catalysts, however, are prone to deactivation due to various reasons such as poisoning, re-oxidation of active sites, surface reconstruction, sintering of cobalt crystallites, etc. The patents presented in this bulletin try to find a solution to some of the aforementioned issues.
A selection of patents related to Fischer-Tropsch catalysts and published by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 182 patents, prepared by applicants from 13 countries and registered in 14 patent offices. The patent documents mention 125 applicants and 228 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: CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US), KIPO (KR), Rospatent (RU), EPO, INPI (FR), CIPC (ZA), IP Australia (AU), JPO (JP), CIPO (CA).
From the analysis of texts of patents 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 patents 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 patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of China and France prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Siluria Technologies Inc (US), Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Engineering (CN), Sinopec China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (CN), Velocys Inc (US), IFP (École Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs) (FR), Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (FR), Wuhan Kaidi Technology R&D Institute Co. Ltd (CN), China Petroleum & Chemical Company (CN), Total France SA (FR), Université de Strasbourg (FR).
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patents with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and the shortest patent pending time.
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 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 synthetic fuel production technologies.
