Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Treatment and Refinement
Summary
The gradual decline in conventional oil reserves, together with rising energy demand, have led to growing importance of unconventional oil resources such as heavy and extra heavy oil, oil shale, oil sands or bitumen. Compared to conventional oil resources, the development and production of unconventional oil present significant technological and economic challenges, not least to the treatment and refinement process. The problematic components, such as metal-bearing compounds, resins and asphaltenes, naphthenic acids, etc., and their identification and separation, make the unconventional oil refinement procedure one of enormous complexity. Also, the high amount of unwanted components is caused by the special techniques involved in the unconventional oil production, for example the use of solvents, soluble polymers and surfactants. In addition, the environmental requirements continue to become increasingly tough creating new stringent regulations. Therefore, the development of new refinement and treatment methods of unconventional oil becomes crucial for its economical production. The present paper gives an overview on the latest patent applications in this area presenting the main statistical indicators on technical developments and solutions.
A selection of patent applications related to Treatment and refinement in Unconventional Oil 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 1160 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 32 countries and registered in 33 patent offices. The patent documents mention 311 applicants and 1086 IPC subgroups.
Key Highlights
Statistical information presented in the bulletin includes distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), and data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The largest number of applications during the period of time under revision was registered by the patent office of the USA.
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.
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: Ecolab (USA), Xyleco Inc. (USA), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Arabia), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (USA), Cidra Corporate Services Inc (USA), Lubrizol Corporation (USA), Epic Oil Extractors LLC (USA), ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (USA), General Electric (USA), and Magotteaux International S.A. (Belgium).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent documents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being part a of patent family.
A list 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 is provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
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 unconventional oil production technologies.
