BIOENERGY. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Biogas
Summary
The production of biogas is one of the most important areas of clean fuel production. It is generated by means of anaerobic digestion (fermentation) with methanogen or anaerobic organisms in a biodigester and consists primarily of methane, carbon dioxide and smaller amounts of hydrogen sulphide. Biogas is a reliable and large-scale renewable energy source. Among the leading countries in biogas production are China, Germany and the USA. Some of the major facilities include Huishan DHCL, China, Güstrow Biogas Park, Germany, and Hometown BioEnergy Le Sueur in the United States. Problems in the production of biogas mainly concern the low efficiency of main processes and product treatment. There are also several environmental and social concerns. To improve the shortcomings of the current production process, scientists and engineers are assiduously patenting new inventions, some of which are presented in this bulletin.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to biogas and includes patents published in 2014-2016. Research methodology is available at the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 715 patent documents. The patents were granted in 33 patent offices around the world. 686 applicants from 36 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 619 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 patents during the period of time under revision was granted by the patent office of China.
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 (patents, applications) includes Jiaxing Vocational Technical College (CN), Pan Lei (CN), Nalco Company (US), Institute for Electrification of Agriculture (VIESH) (RU), Iogen Corporation (CA), Lu Yongzhu (CN), Evonik Fibres Gmbh (AT), Novozymes A/S (DK), UOP LLC (US), Universitatea de Stat din Moldova (MD). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices (and technology indicators) is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
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 biogas production technologies.
