LANDSCAPE OF PATENTS ON GREEN TECHNOLOGY OF BIOMASS TORREFACTION FOCUSING ON ENERGY PRODUCTION

This work aimed to analyse the green/sustainable biomass torrefaction technology for energy purposes in the last 20 years around the world. For the present analysis, patent mapping studies were conducted with the objective of creating a "patent landscape" of torrefaction technology for energy generation, considering the inventions in torrefaction of biomass technologies over the period 1999-2018. It was used a novel dataset, making use of the International Patent Classification (IPC) Green Inventory of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the searches were performed using the PatentInspiration tool. Then, these data were used to examine how patent families and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international patent applications have evolved in this field in recent years. Patents related to biomass torrefaction innovation have first expanded exponentially from 2009 to 2012, both in terms of the total number of patent families and PCT international patent applications in green energy technologies.