Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Treatment and Refinement
Summary
Due to the looming shortage of light crude oil, the attention of refiners and researchers has shifted to making unconventional oil economically attractive. Compared with traditional technologies, processing of unconventional stocks, including heavy oil, bitumen, oil shale, etc. requires significant modifications of both the technological process and equipment. This particularly applies to the treatment and refinement phases, first of all because of the high amounts of harmful impurities and contaminants presented in alternative oils, for example heavy metals, sulfur, asphaltenes and resins. The processes for their removal, including the separation of water and associated gas, are complex and costly. The right technology solutions can help overcome processing challenges and improve economics, allowing higher rates of unconventional oil production. The present patent statistical bulletin gives an overview of recent patent applications on this subject, providing the latest engineering solutions and technical developments.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to the subject of treatment and refinement in unconventional oil and includes patent applications published in 2017-2019. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 808 patent documents. The applications were registered in 30 patent offices around the world. 186 applicants from 22 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 798 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
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 United States.
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, applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices. Representatives of the USA prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time. These leaders include: Ecolab (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Cidra Corporate Services Inc (US), Cabot Corporation (US), Xyleco Inc. (US), Kuraray Co., Ltd. (JP), BASF, SE (DE), Syncrude Canada Limited (CA), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Magotteaux International S.A. (BE).
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 statistics bulletin under examination serves as one of the variants to monitor advanced technical achievements in the specified industrial sector. The statistical data, rating evaluations and carefully selected patent documents provided in the bulletin can be of interest for inventors, students and educators, engineers, as well as for businessmen and investors, who in one way or another are concerned with the problems of the development of unconventional oil production technologies.
