A review of patent publications from the last half of 2011 and early 2012 indicates that research may be starting to coalesce around several types of biofuel materials and precursors. In fact, many of the patent publications reviewed herein focus on increasing efficiency of the production process and producing better versions of starter materials. Some of the most significant areas of development are attempts to commercialize and scale-up algae production and the production and modification of fermenters.
For a general perspective on patents and patent publications, it is important to note that there are two types of published patent applications: those that have issued, and those that have published but are still pending and under examination. This article will primarily focus on patent publications, which are indicative of more recent research and development in the area of biofuels. In fact, the patent applications being published at present were first filed between March 2010 and July 2010.
An issued patent has a fixed set of claims at the end that define the invention; this is separate from what is included in the detailed description section. Anyone who reviews issued patents to determine the actual invention should turn to the claims section first. The detailed description section should primarily be used to provide context of the claims and/or definitions of some of the terms and phrases in the claims. Issued patents are in force 20 years from the filing date and they give the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, and/or selling the claimed invention in the country in which the patent was issued. Published patent applications are useful to provide the general public and competitors with notice of potential future patents and their scope. Between the filing (or priority) date of the application and the publication date the patent application is not published and, therefore, not readily available to the public for review.
Inventors use pending patent publications to put likely competitors on notice that the inventor may have enforceable patent rights at some point in the future, while competitors use patent publications to scope out the technology landscape. It is important to note, however, that the existence of a patent publication does not necessarily mean that a patent will issue from that application or that the final issued set of claims will be the same as or resemble the claims in the publication. In many instances, examination of these publications by the United States Patent & Trademark Office has either just started or has not yet begun. Therefore, these publications should primarily be used for notice and information purposes.
In the area of biofuels, patent applications filed prior to 2009 focused mainly on biofuel starter materials, along with new and streamlined processes. Publications that emerged in 2011 and early 2012 appear to be shifting in the direction of describing work with known biofuel materials and improving the process, material, or both. There are also groups of publications focused on fuel optimization by adding components or improving engine design. This article does not aim to advocate for or determine the patentability of any particular technology. It is intended to provide an objective summary of a selection of biofuel-related patents, and will touch on three categories of biofuel and biofuel-related patents and publications that cover the following topics: increasing the efficiency of the biofuel production process; optimizing biofuel starter materials; and other biofuels-related applications.
Process Efficiency
This category regularly makes up the largest class of patents, patent publications, and journal articles, primarily because it is often easier to optimize the production of existing and known biofuels than to develop and test potential new biofuels.
US Patent Publication 2012/0022299, Combined first and second generation biofuels process
(inventor: Dennis A. Vauk; assignee: Air Liquide Large Industries U.S. LP; January 26, 2012), teaches a “process to integrate a first biofuels process and a second generation cellulosic biofuels process” in order to make both processes more efficient. According to the application, there is a pyrolysis component that produces a char stream and a bioliquid stream, a low pressure hydrotreating component that produces a hydrocarbon stream, a high pressure hydrotreating component that produces a steam stream and a bioliquid stream, and a distillation component that produces a “green gasoline” stream and a “green diesel” stream from the bioliquid stream. There is also a hydrogen production unit described.
US Patent Publication 2012/002148, Electromechanical lysing of algae cells
(inventors: Robert E. Hebner, et al.; assignee: Board of Regents, The University of Texas System; January 26, 2012), discloses methods of electrical treatment of algal cell cultures in order to facilitate the release of lipids and proteins that can be utilized to form biofuels. Contemplated devices and methods are relatively low-energy, according to the inventors, and can be used to treat both flocculated and unflocculated algal cell cultures. The broadest independent claim in the application states: “A method for electrical treatment of one or more biological cells comprising the steps of: providing the one or more biological cells suspended or surrounded by a lysing medium comprising a fresh water, a salt water, a brackish water, a growth medium, a culture medium or combinations thereof, wherein an electrical conductivity of the lysing medium is different from the electrical conductivity of a cell membrane and the cytoplasm of the one or more biological cells; applying a time varying electromagnetic field to the one or more biological cells using one or more electrode pairs placed within or externally to the lysing medium, wherein the electromagnetic field applies a mechanical force on a cell membrane comprising a force stress; and applying and rapidly switching off one or more voltage pulses to the one or more biological cells resulting in lysis of the one or more biological cells.”
US Patent Publication 2012/0015427, Ethanol production in microorganisms
(inventors: Brian Green, et al.; assignee: Joule Unlimited Technologies, Inc.; January 19, 2012), describes engineered photoautotrophic organisms that convert carbon dioxide and light into fatty acid esters and biofuels. These engineered microbes comprise a recombinant pyruvate decarboxylase gene and at least one recombinant alcohol dehydrogenase gene “wherein said recombinant pyruvate decarboxylase gene and at least one recombinant alcohol dehydrogenase gene belong to distinct operons, and wherein the copy number of said at least one recombinant alcohol dehydrogenase gene in said engineered photosynthetic microbe is greater than the copy number of said recombinant pyruvate decarboxylase gene in said microbe." The inventors state, with respect to the problem to be solved, that “existing photoautotrophic organisms (i.e., plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria) are poorly suited for industrial bioprocessing and have therefore not demonstrated commercial viability for this purpose. Such organisms have slow doubling time (3-72 hrs) compared to industrialized heterotrophic organisms such as Escherichia coli (20 minutes), reflective of low total productivities. In addition, techniques for genetic manipulation (knockout, over-expression of transgenes via integration or episomic plasmid propagation) are inefficient, time-consuming, laborious, or non-existent.”
US Patent Publication 2012/0015417, Methods of increasing dihydroxy acid dehydratase activity to improve production of fuels, chemicals, and amino acids
(inventors: Catherine Asleson Dundon, et al.; Gevo, Inc.; January 19, 2012), discloses another recombinant microorganism, but in this application, the microorganism comprises one or more dihydroxyacid dehydratase or DHAD-requiring biosynthetic pathways. Methods of using these recombinant microorganisms are also described in the application. According to the inventors, “the recombinant microorganisms may be microorganisms of the Saccharomyces clade, Crabtree-negative yeast microorganisms, Crabtree-positive yeast microorganisms, post-WGD (whole genome duplication) yeast microorganisms, pre-WGD (whole genome duplication) yeast microorganisms, and non-fermenting yeast microorganisms.” In the background of the application, the inventors outline the problem to be solved: “DHAD is an essential enzyme…and hence, it is desirable that recombinant microorganisms engineered to produce the [above-]mentioned compounds exhibit optimal DHAD activity. The optimal level of DHAD activity will typically have to be at levels that are significantly higher than those found in non-engineered microorganisms in order to sustain commercially viable productivities, yields, and titers. The present application addresses this need by engineering recombinant microorganisms to improve their DHAD activity.”
Improvements in Current Starter Materials
Despite the fact that there are several biofuel starter materials that are viable, mature, non-food based, and widely-studied, new potential biofuel materials and/or modified mature biofuel materials are being studied. Many of these biofuel starter materials are being developed because of a particular type of regional crop or a need to produce biofuels that can be utilized near the crop source. Many of the new publications are focusing on altering the structure of conventional materials in order to make them easier and/or less costly to process, increase biofuel yield, or a combination thereof.
US Patent Publication 2012/0011620, Algae strain for biodiesel fuel production
(inventors: Andrew S. Gordon, et al.; assignee: Old Dominion University; January 12, 2012), teaches an algae strain that is improved compared to conventional strains and may increase biofuel yields. In this application, the algae strain is a Desmodesmus strain “characterized as having a fatty acid methyl ester content of 2.6% as determined by NMR, a nitrogen content of 11.3% and a carbon content of 46.3%,” according to claim 1 and the specification. The inventors state that the genus Desmodesmus was selected for growing under high nutrient conditions and can be maintained in open cultivation ponds.
Biofuels-Related Applications
US Patent Publication 2012/0023000, Wholecrop biofuel production (WCBP)
(inventor: James S. Rhodes, III; January 26, 2012), discloses a computerized method of determining carbon flows and regulatory values for biofuels in an effort, for example, to address and quantify many of the fuel characteristics and effects of biofuels and greenhouse gases. An interesting aspect of this patent application is the effort to improve the carbon intensity (CI) measurement, which is a measure of net greenhouse gas emissions across the fuel lifecycle (generally referred to as lifecycle analysis or LCA). From the description, it appears that the inventors contemplate the use of the computer models and analyses to lead to the production of new or improved biofuels, co-products, and/or tradeable credits.
US Patent Publication 2012/0006745, Methods and systems for producing granules of biomass in the treatment of wastewater
(inventors: Scott Kaley, et al.; assignee: BP Corporation North America Inc.; January 12, 2012), teaches a method and corresponding system for removing organic matter from wastewater and using that sludge to form a granulated biomass. The systems utilize aerobic and anaerobic zones to move sludge and form biomass. The inventors state, in part, that “…some prior systems have attempted to dispose of the waste activated sludge by transferring it to the anaerobic zone. However, such prior systems have found it necessary to treat the waste activated sludge before feeding to the anaerobic zone. For example, some prior art systems have used mechanical destruction of the aerobic cells. These types of treatment processes add to the cost of the process. A liability of the anaerobic process in previous systems has been in loss of biomass in the anaerobic reactors, particularly those that are structured to use granulated biomass. A particularly well suited anaerobic reactor is known as an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor (UASB), which utilizes fluidized biomass granules in an upflowing configuration. Prior USAB reactors have shown a tendency to lose granule inventory over time, as the effluent from the anaerobic reactor flows into the aerobic reactor. The lost granules must be replaced with an outside source of granules which adds cost to the process and risks upset to the system. Furthermore, another problem in the existing anaerobic reactors is that they tend to have a significant build-up of heavy metals over time.”
US Patent Publication 2012/0004755, Controlling the cooling of fermenters of a biofuel production plant
(inventors: Patrick D. Noll, et al.; assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies, Inc.; January 5, 2012), discloses a cooling system in a biofuel production plant in which the flow rate of the cooling water and the chiller water to the plurality of parallel-operated fermenters is controlled based on the temperatures of fermentation products of the fermenters. The inventors state that, in general, “existing methods of controlling cooling in a biofuel production plant suffer from disadvantages that may result in decreased ethanol production and inefficient use of yeast” by not providing sufficient cooling water to provide maximum cooling to all fermenters simultaneously.
Conclusions
During the last two years, a majority of the biofuel-related patent applications have largely been directed to new production processes or to making the current, conventional processes more efficient and/or productive. Several patent applications have been directed at the use of what would otherwise be waste materials produced in some processes and utilizing them in a manner that reduces the footprint of land-to-wheels or water-to-wheels biofuels production. There has been no apparent decrease in the number of biofuels-related patent applications in the last two years, and it is highly likely that this trend with continue well into 2012 and 2013.
