Associated Petroleum Gas. Preparation, Injection, Conversion. Patent Database. Aenert. October 2021
Summary
Associated Petroleum Gas (APG) is a form of natural gas dissolved in hydrocarbon liquids or present in free form in oil fields. For a long time APG was treated like an unwanted by-product and simply burnt in the field of oil production, causing the emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere and loss of valuable energy source.
At present, in connection with the growth of the culture of oil production and the increase in environmental norms and standards, new technologies are emerging that allow not only to reduce the volume of flaring to the limit, but also to ensure the economically beneficial utilization of associated gas. Among the possible ways of APG utilization is its re-injection into the oil reservoir or using it as a power source for internal needs of oil production site. Since transportation of associated gas for processing is not always possible, on-site gas conversion technologies are of great interest.
The most innovative ways of utilization of associated petroleum gas are its processing into liquid hydrocarbons, conversion to petrochemical industry feedstock, dry stripped gas and stable gasoline. The wider development and implementation of these still expensive technologies will help to reduce the number of pollutants emitted and to ensure effective use of valuable raw material for further processing.
Associated gas utilization is an intensively developing process, which is annually improved with a large number of scientific research and patent solutions.
Key Highlights
The present database contains patents and patent applications granted or registered by patent offices around the globe in 1991–2021 in the field related to associated petroleum gas production and conversion. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website – www.aenert.com. The database contains 8232 patent documents registered in patent offices around the world since 1991 that were published in publicly-available patent databases, found in the result of a deliberate patent search, and processed in accordance with the methodology by the date of compilation of this database (October, 2021).
A free demo version of this database can be downloaded here:
The demo version presents the first hundred patent documents, as well as some of the statistical information. In most cases, statistical diagrams and tables are limited to the first positions, the rest are hidden by symbols ###. In the full version the statistical information is presented in full and the diagrams are calculated automatically.
Each patent document in this database contains a list of conventional bibliographical indicators, including original title, English version of title, family size, application date, publication date, patenting office, names of inventors and applicants, document kind (patent or application), number of claims, number of citing, IPC indices, and core document number.
Also, all documents are provided with additional markers – unified indicators that include: technology categories (indicate the applicability of technical solutions to one of the energy industry sectors, as stated by the authors of the inventions); technology elements (indicators with a specific level of detailing for the production process in a particular energy industry sector); problems (technical, economical, ecological and other problems declared by the authors in a patent document); type of technical solution (device, method, composition).
The database contains a number of derived indicators, including applicant statuses, residence of applicants, Unified Indicator Group. Indicators such as patent pending period, prominent patents, applicant's share in the aggregate intellectual property register can be calculated based on the available data.
Additional marking of patent documents represented in the database makes it possible to form exclusive lists of patent documents having any remarkable characteristics, such as top prominent documents by rating, top prominent documents by number of IPC sections, top prominent single applications, etc.
The database also includes statistical analysis for major parameters of patent documents published during the 20-year period between 2001-2020. In particular, the statistical analysis includes a breakdown of documents by publication dates, by patent families, by patent offices, by residents and non-residents, and by applicant countries.
Statistical analysis includes:
Inventions: 8046
Offices: 51
Countries: 39
Applicants: 1903
Individual IPC subgroups: 2387
Total IPC subgroups assigned: 27494
The main body of the patent documents were registered between 2013 and 2017 with a peak of patenting activity in 2016. With rare exceptions, USPTO (US) patent office annually was the leader by the number of granted patents.
The highest activity in patenting their inventions was demonstrated by the residents of the United States with a share of more than 47% of the total number of patents granted during 2001-2020. Among other countries whose residents were granted at least 100 patents were Russia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, China, and Japan.
The most popular IPC subgroup with a share of almost 3.2 % was C10G 2/00 - Production of liquid hydrocarbon mixtures of undefined composition from oxides of carbon. Different methods as a type of technical solution were mentioned in almost 56% of patents, different devices – in almost 37%, while different compositions – in 7%. In a considerable part of the inventions two or more types of technical solutions were mentioned simultaneously.
A separate portion of the statistical analysis is dedicated to applicants of patent documents. It includes the lists of applicants separately for patents and applications, breakdown of applicants' patent documents by offices, by types of technical solution, by problems, by technology categories, by IPC sections. The list of top 10 most productive applicants by the number of patents includes:
Velocys Inc (US)
ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US)
CompactGTL (GB)
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (US)
Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL)
Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA)
General Electric (US)
Johnson Matthey Plc (GB)
Siluria Technologies Inc (US)
Haldor Topsoe A/S (DK)
The concluding part of the analysis includes calculated data that allow the resulting patenting trends to be exposed and main conclusions to be drawn. Such diagrams as relationship of number of applicants to number of patents by year, relationship of number of single applications to total number by year, new applicants by year, top new IPC subgroups, and others, are presented here.
Who needs this database?
The proposed patent database allows the existing trends in the intellectual property market of the specified industrial sector to be timely traced, as well as provides the possibility of acquiring a carefully selected list of patent documents fully corresponding to the specified subject. The database is targeted at inventors, engineers, researchers, managers and business administrators involved in the development of Associated Petroleum Gas production technologies.
Disclaimer
The present database was prepared by EnerTechUp company and its partners. The database includes patent documents that were carefully collected from the publicly available sources and, according to the authors, to the greatest degree represent the latest innovations in the particular energy industry as of the date of the database preparation. Detailed information on the methodology of search and processing of patent documents is available at Advanced Energy Technologies website (aenert.com). Considering the difficulties related to the compilation of lists of international patent documents, including those related to time frames, national and terminological barriers, as well as taking into consideration high labour intensity of collecting the required analytical information and performing its qualitative interpretation, the authors of the database cannot guarantee absolute completeness and accuracy of the represented materials and disclaim any responsibility for the use thereof. EnerTechUp company represents this material “as is” and rejects any claims and liabilities arising from the use of data published therein, including, but not limited to: compensation for any type of financial damage, lost profit or compensation for moral injury. These stipulations also refer to employees, shareholders, agents and data suppliers of EnerTechUp company.
