It has also made large technological leaps into methanation, CO2 into methanol, process technologies over the last several decades.
Many of these core technologies, have expired some as far back as 30 years ago.
Take for instance, US Patent 3,850,850A, expired 1991, assigned to Imperial Chemical Industries (better known for ICI paint products, now owned by AkzoNobel N.V), detailing the prime catalyst for methanol synthesis. Or US Patent 4,011,275A, expired 1994, assigned to ExxonMobil, this patent is notable since it discloses the catalyst, and the plant process parameters to achieve product synthesis, and, more importantly, this is one of the “grandfather” expired patent to almost all of ExxonMobil’s modern day refineries in existence, today.
Any lawyer working for a fossil energy firm will know how to articulate this correctly; these patents are obsolete and based on old and less efficient technology that are no longer possible due to the stringent environmental regulations that demand higher performance and quality fuels that consumers deserve. Ah…expired automatically means obsolete, like milk in a supermarket.
The reality is that because crude oil and natural gas production quality does vary depending on where it’s rigged up, especially sulfur, continuous improvements will have to be made to reduce or eliminate catalyst poisoning, or other mundane technical improvements such as designing less dramatic pressure drop within specific fixed bed or slurry column reactors used in these refineries.
A perfectly honorable and very sensible way to “refresh” and update intellectual property associated with these capital intensive, high barrier to entry businesses, 20 years at a time that is… (it’s easy to read and see the tell-tale signs in these patent applications at the time of publication, and quite remarkable how some patent drafting professionals have the inventive skill to skirt around even the most seasoned PCT preliminary examiner…)
I do not know of any renewable energy derived hydrogen project that contains so much sulfur or chloride contaminants that renders use of these public domain Fischer-Tropsch catalysts and processes impossible or non-usable. a possible explosive growth in carbon neutral, non-fossil, hydrogen-driven energy complex, just like what had happened to 3D printing since 2013?
The same goes for renewable energy, where core patents for photovoltaic, wind, concentrated solar, geothermal and even (dare I say) chemical redox flow energy storage have all expired and in the public domain.
Have you found your Kawasaki Mouse today?
#patents #patent #oil #energy
