Archive
SYNTHETIC FUELS. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Gas-to-Liquids
Summary
The technology of liquid hydrocarbon production from synthesis gas via Fischer-Tropsch method (GTL) is known for almost one hundred years and received deserved recognition. During this time several variants of commercial purpose industrial-scale reactors were developed, for instance: fixed-bed reactor, slurry reactor, fluidized-bed reactor, etc.; industrial production of environmentally clean liquid hydrocarbons was established; completely new directions to use the mainstays of the process were developed, including microchannel technologies. However, GTL technologies have still not reached extensive proliferation. The total capacities of GTL facilities around the world do not exceed 400 000 bpd, and on top of that the majority are concentrated in Qatar and the Republic of South Africa with two more large facilities, one in Malaysia and one in Nigeria. Several small-scale pilot projects were also launched, for instance, in the USA, Brazil, Italy, and Japan. Methanol to gasoline production facilities are spread even less. Among other reasons, this is due to the complexity of the GTL technological process, both on the stage of synthesis gas production and of the Fischer-Tropsch process, and high capital and operating costs. The accumulation of the critical amount of engineering solutions, including patents of invention, can become the prime impetus for resolving these problems.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to Gas-to-liquids and includes patents published in 2014-2016. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 838 patent documents. The patents were granted in 20 patent offices around the world. 565 applicants from 27 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 662 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
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 patents were USPTO (US), CNIPA (CN) and JPO (JP).
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.
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 the USA and Japan prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: INPEX Corporation (JP), JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation (JP), Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Ltd., Velocys Inc (US), Cosmo Oil Co., Ltd (JP), Nippon Steel Engineering Co Ltd (JP), Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering Co Ltd (JP), Sasol Technology (Pty) Ltd. (ZA), Haldor Topsoe A/S (DK).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, the shortest patent pending time. 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 data provided in the proposed bulletin is a timely reflection of the transformations that take place in the intellectual property sector of the industrial direction concerned. A thoroughly edited selection of patent documents can become a good complement to your library of available technical solutions. The bulletin is targeted at inventors, engineers, researchers, managers and business administrators involved in the development of synthetic fuel production technologies.
