Recent Patents on Chemical Engineering - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2009

During the past several decades, significant and considerable research has been carried out on secondary and tertiary recovery of trapped residual oil remaining within the producing formations underground despite the efficient, current primary production strategies and methods. Methods have been sought of increasing oil recovery, while revamping and improving the economic viability and efficiency of operations. One method that has received much attention and intensive study over these past decades is the use of surfactant-based chemical flooding. Initial patents and laboratory tests have shown conclusively that chemical solutions and slugs including surfactants, remove considerable oil from the porous medium normally trapped after initial waterflooding. Oil recovery processes by means of surfactant micellar solutions or microemulsions have included the injection of slugs of varied compositions. Patents on surfactant-based enhanced oil recovery processes (such as dilute surfactant flooding, surfactant/polymer flooding, and alkaline/surfactant/polymer flooding) have been issued, starting from the 1920's and particularly after the 1960's, when the technology was put on a scientific basis. These patents were generally concerned with the chemistry of surfactant-based enhanced oil recovery processes including envisioning the use of chemical solutions (slugs) to decrease the surface tension between oil and the flooding medium, screening of surfactants for oil recovery efficiency, chemical (surfactant) slug designs and formulation to mobilize residual oil, documenting petroleum sulfonates useful in surfactant flooding, and other important factors in the chemistry of surfactant-based chemical flooding processes. Moreover, evaluation and determination of optimum chemical systems (slugs) for the best economics for a specific field application have been disclosed and documented in several large oil companies' patents in the surfactant-polymer area. In this article, a full-fledged review of the patents on different aspects of the chemistry of surfactant-based enhanced oil recovery processes is presented.

Many patents claiming new processes for the conversion of glycerol into valuable-added chemicals are appearing in recent years as a result of glycerol availability since it is the main by-product in the biodiesel production and in other processes concerning biomass as raw material. In a future biorefinery glycerol will remain as a platform molecule. Present review describes a selection of such patents and shows the potential of glycerol as raw material in such future chemical industries (biorefineries).

Urgent demand for light oils and strict laws of environmental protection make it important for refiners to convert heavier oils into lighter and more valuable products efficiently. Hydroprocessing technology is one of the major residue upgrading processes and it is performed with a series of reactors, each with different catalyst for different function. Depending on the residue properties, the reactors in the hydroprocessing unit may be fixed-bed, moving-bed, ebullated-bed, slurry-bed or a combination. The present article discussed the useful patents in the field of heavy oil hydroprocessing technologies. The latest development and application of hydroprocessing technologies were reviewed. Comparison of catalysts used in the processes such as solid powder catalysts and homogeneous dispersed catalysts were also examined. There is not a general rule that can give a solution to all refineries, and the final choice should be made by comprehensive consideration of feed property, product demand and economic benefit.

Colour, odour, taste and texture are considered quality indices and significantly affect organoleptic properties of table olives. A good flavour is a result of the mixture of well odours and good taste attributes. The flavour varies with olive variety, the processing method and by the contribution of embellishments (vinegar, olive oil, herbs and spices). Taste notes are represented in the fruit matrix mostly by phenols (bitter), lactic acid (sour), lipids and inorganic salts (salty). Phenols have a great relevance because of their contribution to the colour, taste and texture of final product. Phenols are also known to have a beneficial role in human health. Recent studies suggest that sensory characteristics and fermentation process of table olives can be also improved by using starter cultures. In addition, attempts to employ table olives inoculated with probiotic microorganisms to prevent intestinal disorders or restore intestinal flora of human beings have been made. In this review, recent patents developed to improve sensory properties and human health benefits of table olives have been presented.

Metal finishing industries produce an important tonnage of metal hydroxide sludge (MHS) during the treatment of their liquid effluents charged with heavy metals. Generally, a small part of these sludge is valorized because of their important metal fickleness. Consequently, the majority of these metal hydroxide sludge is sent to landfill centers. We propose to valorize this sludge by using them as pollutant sorbent in order to retain the polluting species contained in the industrial aqueous effluents. The chosen pollutant for this preliminary study is Chromium (+VI). Starting from an experimental well defined protocol, various parameters have been studied (chemical nature of the sludge, solid/liquid ratio, concentration of the pollutant, particle size) in order to determine the experimental parameters which influence the sorption yield of these sludge and thus to validate the feasibility of an industrial application of this new way of valorisation. First results point out that the sorption yield is more than 95% independently from the experimental conditions. Moreover, experiments highlight that the sludge mass (and so sorbent sites) is THE only real parameter which influences the yield. In this article, a review of the patents on different aspects of the valorisation of polymetallic hydroxide sludge as pollutant trappers is presented.

Nanofiltration (NF) lies between reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration (UF). Nanofiltration membrane carries quite distinctive properties such as pore radius and surface charge density which influences the separation of various solutes. This paper reviews the recent patents available in nanofiltration. In oil processing industry, nanofiltration has been used in recovery of crude oil, where sulfate reduced feed water was introduced. It also leads to the production of useful chemicals. In desalination applications, the nanofiltration has been used as a pretreatment process for reverse osmosis and thermal desalination systems, in former, it removes the biofouling potential components and multivalent ions, which results in increase in product recovery of RO process and in later, it allows to increase the top brine temperature of Multi Effect Distillation (MED) and Multi Stage Flash (MSF), which results in increase in production water and lesser scaling propensity. There is also growing trend that utilization of dual nanofiltration in sea water applications results in reduction in energy and water cost. Utilization of solvent resistant nanofiltration for processing organic solvents under different conditions in petrochemical industries is also discussed. The review also carries the recent patents available in waste water treatment process and food industries.

Recently, remarkable progress has been made in particulate matter (PM) removal using plasma discharge. This review will first introduce PM characteristics and oxidation mechanism of PM in plasma discharge, then summarize the history of PM removal using plasma discharge, finally discuss some typical patents on plasma reactors used for PM removal and the future development of plasma PM removal system.

Due to its inherent advantages, forward osmosis (FO) membrane process was widely recognized as one of promising membrane based separation processes. From the academic and technological points of view, the interest for it has been spurred. In this paper, beginning with a simple introduction of the FO process based on the reverse osmosis membrane process, the innovative works related to FO membrane process mainly appeared in the recent patents, including the membrane preparation and its engineered applications in relevant fields, were reviewed.

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