microreactors analyzed in patentinspiration
TRANSCRIPT
USER CASE
MICROREACTORS
WHAT ARE MICROREACTORS?
When most people think of reactors, they think of the large vessels used in chemical and refinery plants. These industrial reactors are well known for their large size. However, chemical engineers are finding that a new, smaller type of reactor can be useful in areas the traditional reactors cannot. These reactors are called microreactors.
Microreactors are constructed from a network of miniaturized reaction channels. Unlike the large traditional reactors, microreactors house chemical reactions to the scale of 5 – 100 ml, and are only a few centimeters in size.
INTRODUCTION
WHY ARE MICROREACTORS USEFUL?
Even though microreactors are small, units can tolerate temperatures and pressures as high as 650° C and 25 bars. This allows microreactors to carry out, on a small scale, reactions that are too exothermic or explosive to run at large scale.
Likewise, certain hazardous material can be safely handled in only very small quantities and cannot be used in large-scale processes. A microreactor would be an ideal reaction vessel for this case.In addition, microreactors require minimal amounts of reagents and sample to perform tests, since the overall volume in the reactor is low. The small volumes can also result in getting test results faster. These advantages, among others, explain why many different research groups are using microreactors to miniaturize medical diagnostic assays.
CREATING A FILTER TO GET INSIGHT IN A TECHNOLOGY“FIND PATENTS WHOSE CORE CONTENT IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE TECHNOLOGY”
Best way to do this is by finding appropriate classification codes.Type the technology in the Search code box and check the wanted codes.
This filter gathers all patents that are describing microreactors in detail, ie design features of microreactors are described in detail.
Remark: Check the tree icon ( ) next to the code to include all the children codes.
See the filter results in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/feca17481aD3/filter/patents
CREATING A FILTER TO FIND APPLICATIONS OF A TECHNOLOGY“FIND PATENTS FROM OTHER DOMAINS THAT MENTION THE USE OF THE TECHNOLOGY”
Search by doing text search in title, abstract, claims and description.To make a firm distinction with manufacturers patents, you can exclude the group as described in previous slide.
This filter gathers all patents that are describing industries that make use of microreactors to fulfill their needs.
See the filter results in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/e5F97F6a0786/filter/patents
This graph is created by doing an activity analysis on the two patent pools for microreactors, the first patent pool containing core technology and the other one containing applications thereof.
The activity analysis has been exported to Excel, normalized with the total amount of patents in each patent pool in order to get relative data.
This graph clearly shows that patents of the core technology are stagnating, meaning that the innovation on micro reactors is quite saturated so it should be readily available on the market. On the other hand, the applications curve clearly shows that the possible applications are still increasing.
COMPARING ACTIVITY DATA BY EXPORTING TO EXCEL
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Applications
Core technology
Remark: ignore the drop in the last year (2013) because the data was taken in September 2013
Do a text analysis on the patent pool for applications of micro reactors by searching noun groups containing the word reaction*. You find the possible chemical reactions that can be executed with micro reactors.
FINDING POSSIBLE REACTIONS USING TEXT ANALYSIS
See analysis in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/e5F97F6a0786/analysis/0498fc340Aa7
FIND DOMAINS ON WHICH THE MAIN PLAYERS ARE WORKING
Do an overlay analysis on the patent pool for applications of micro reactors by doing an overlay of Subclass Code (= Domain) over Applicants.
We can conclude that there are 2 types of applicants. The biggest group is working on the domains A61K (Preparations for medical, dental or toilet purposes) and C07D (Heterocyclic compounds) and are almost all pharmaceutical companies.
The other group are oil companies which are working on the domains B01J (Chemical or physical processes, e.g. catalysis, colloid chemistry) AND C10G (Cracking hydrocarbon oils).
We can see that the oil companies are using micro reactors to make use of green technology (Domain Y02E)
The combined domain is C07C (Acyclic and carboncyclic compounds)
Also notice that the University of California makes an exception on this rule, namely it is doing research on almost all the domains.
See analysis in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/e5F97F6a0786/analysis/Fee790e37AA9
FIND THE CURRENT PLAYERS AND EARLY ADOPTERS
Do an overlay analysis on the patent pool for applications of micro reactors by doing an overlay of Applicants over Activity.
We can conclude that Mobil Oil, Shell and UOP are the first ones that were using micro reactors, so it was first the oil industry that made use of micro reactors almost 10 years before the pharmaceutical sector.
Glaxo group, Hoffman La Roche, Merck & co and Smithline Beecham are the early adopters in the pharmaceutical sector.
See analysis in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/e5F97F6a0786/analysis/6846dfb84C47
FIND THE PROBLEMS THAT ARE HANDLED
Do a text analysis on the patent pool for applications of micro reactors by searching on problems in all the text fields.
Changing the visualization to the cluster view ( ) you can see which problems are handled in the same patents.
We see that metallurgy problem is handled together with corrosion problem and lifetime problem. Another problem, health is handled together with nervous-system problems and containment problems. Digestion problem is linked to mass transport problem.
See analysis in PatentInspirationhttps://app.patentinspiration.com/#/report/e5F97F6a0786/analysis/CdB89a72DeaB
•To get insight in technologies•Identify applications of technologies•Identify main players•Identify competitors•Identify domains•Discover early adopters of a technology•Discover problems handled in the patents•…
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