SYNTHETIC FUELS. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Integrated gasification combined cycle
Summary
Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants generate electrical power in a combined cycle by burning synthesis gas in gas turbines and superheated steam in steam turbines. For the production of synthesis gas, oxygen or air blown fluidized bed gasifiers or entrained flow gasifiers with pulverized feed are used. Using an entrained flow makes it possible to produce synthesis gas with minimal solid waste, but it needs significantly higher process temperatures. Oxygen blowing is more efficient in terms of synthesis gas quality, but requires higher energy use and special oxygen production. An important technological operation is cooling and subsequent cleaning of synthesis gas, which in turn occurs at relatively low temperatures requiring the use of large heat exchangers. On the other hand, the efficiency of the gas turbine directly depends on the temperature of the incoming gas. These contradictory requirements are just a few of the problems restricting the development of this energy sector. This bulletin contains a selection of recent patents on this topic, aimed, among other things, at solving these problems.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to the subject of Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technologies in the field of synthetic fuels and includes patents published in 2016-2018. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent buhlletin includes 207 patent documents. The patents were granted in 14 patent offices around the world. 62 applicants from 10 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 341 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 patents 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 documents by problems, IPC sections and patent offices. Representatives of Japan and the USA prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time. These leaders include: General Electric (USA), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd (Japan), Toshiba Corporation (Japan), Chinook End-Stage Recycling Limited (United Kingdom), Korea Western Power Co. Ltd. (South Korea), Lumenion AG (Switzerland), RV LIZENZ AG (Switzerland), CAS IET Institute of Engineering Thermophysics (China), and Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute (China).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections and 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 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 fuels production technologies.
