Abstract
In recent years, many CO2 capture technologies have been developed due to growing awareness about the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, publications from the last decade addressing this topic were analyzed, paying special attention to patent status to provide useful information for policymakers, industry, and businesses and to help determine the direction of future research. To show the most current patent activity related to carbon capture using membrane technology, we collected 2749 patent documents and 572 scientific papers. The results demonstrated that membranes are a developing field, with the number of applications growing at a steady pace, exceeding 100 applications per year in 2013 and 2014. North American assignees were the main contributors, with the greatest number of patents owned by companies such as UOP LLC, Kilimanjaro Energy Inc., and Membrane Technology and Research Inc., making up 26% of the total number of published patents. Asian countries (China, Japan, and Korea) and international offices were also important knowledge sources, providing 29% and 24% of the documents, respectively. Furthermore, this paper highlights 10 more valuable patents regarding their degree of innovation and citations, classified as Y02C 10/10 according to the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) criteria.
Highlights
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been growing uninterrupted since the beginning of fossil fuel use, and they are expected to grow by approximately 30% by 2040 from 2016 levels, mainly due to contributions from industrial activity [1]
The main sources utilized were the Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI), a very complete database containing more than 28 million patent families from approximately 50 patent offices, created by Thomson Reuters; PatBase, the most used patent database developed by Minesoft and RNS Group which provides a tool offering very complete results; Patentscope, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)’s database; Espacenet, providing access to more than 80 million patent documents; and Web of Science, an online service for scientific information
Scientific literature from the decade studied was analyzed due to the parallelism shown by patent activity
Summary
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been growing uninterrupted since the beginning of fossil fuel use, and they are expected to grow by approximately 30% by 2040 from 2016 levels, mainly due to contributions from industrial activity [1]. Carbon dioxide is the major causative agent of global climate change and currently reaches atmospheric concentrations above 400 ppm, which is an alarming and substantially higher value compared to the preindustrial period when the concentration was approximately 280 ppm [2,3]. As awareness of global warming grows, certain strategies are being studied in order to mitigate the consequences. Owing to the intrinsic GHG emissions of some industries and the fact that hydrocarbons are expected to be used as fuels for a long time yet, CCS techniques have become essential. According to the International Energy Agency, 95% of coal-fired plants and 40% of gas-fired plants are required to be equipped with CCS systems in order
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