BIOGAS: Feedstock, Production, Treatment: Patent Database

Summary

Biogas is a reliable and large-scale renewable energy source, and 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. Production of biogas is an eco-friendly strategy for energy extraction from biomass as even its residue can be used as a soil conditioner.

Often special energy crops, biomass and agricultural waste, food and brewery waste as well as sewage water are used as feedstock. The availability of feedstock determines the choice of technology. For example, in South-Asian countries the most important feedstock for biogas production is palm oil, in China and India animal manure is often used, and in Germany biomass and agricultural waste are primarily fermented. More than 70% of net biogas production is concentrated in Europe. Germany is the undisputed leader in biogas fuel production where there are more than 10,000 biogas plants.

Among the most common shortcomings of the current systems of biogas production, low efficiency of the main processes, low efficiency of product treatment as well as negative environmental impact are frequently mentioned. The inventions presented in this database try to overcome some of these problems.

Key Highlights

• The present database contains patents and patent applications granted or registered by patent offices around the globe in 1995 - 2021 in the field related to biogas production. 10536 patent documents from 69 patent offices around the world are represented in the database. In total, 3568 applicants from 58 countries and 35325 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
• 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: 10345
• Offices: 69
• Countries: 58
• Applicants: 3522
• Individual IPC subgroups: 2450
• Total IPC subgroups assigned: 34558

The main body of the patent documents were registered between 2015 and 2019 with a peak of patenting activity in 2017. With rare exceptions, USPTO (US), and CNIPA (CN) patent offices annually were the leader by the number of granted patents. However, in the last years maximum number of patent applications were registered mostly in CNIPA (CN).

The highest activity in patenting their inventions was demonstrated by the residents of Germany with a share of more than 18% of the total number of patents granted during 2001-2020. 
Among other countries whose residents were granted at least 100 patents were China, United States, South Korea, France, Japan, Canada, Austria, and Denmark.

The most popular IPC subgroup with a share of almost 7% was C12M 1/107 - Apparatus for enzymology or microbiology with means for collecting fermentation gases, e.g. methane. Different methods as a type of technical solution were mentioned in almost 70% of inventions, different devices - in almost 60%, while different compositions - in almost 20%. 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:

• DSM IP Assets B.V. (NL)
• Evonik Fibres Gmbh (AT)
• BASF, SE (DE)
• BEKON Energy Technologies GmbH & Co. KG (DE)
• Nalco Company (US)
• UOP LLC (US)
• Jiaxing Vocational Technical College (CN)
• Osaka Gas Corporation (JP)
• Evonik Degussa GmbH (DE)
• Iogen Corporation (CA)

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 biogas production technologies.