PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15866071
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-05
Patent Classification: ["426", "601000"]

Abstract:
The present invention relates to a method for treating vegetable oils and/or animal fats comprising a vacuum steam stripping operation, condensing the neutral oils from vapour phase at an elevated temperature, retaining and sending back to the stripping column, allowing steam, volatile fatty acids, micronutrients together with other volatiles to pass to a cold condensation zone, and condensing the volatile fatty acids, micronutrients together with other volatiles in the cold condensation zone, producing a condensate and a stream of steam, non-condensable gases along with traces of fatty acids and other lighter hydrocarbons vapours. The invention may include a distillation step, either between the high and low temperature condensation zones or following the cold condensation zone.

Claim (Index 11):
A method for treating vegetable oils and/or animal fats comprising:\n (i) feeding an oily feed stream to a vacuum steam stripping column operating at a vacuum level of at least 1 mbar, said oily feed stream comprising volatile fatty acids, micronutrients and neutral oils, and stripping off a first stream comprising volatile fatty acids, micronutrients and neutral oils; (ii) feeding the first stream to a high temperature condensing zone, and condensing the neutral oils from vapour phase at an elevated temperature of at least 150\u00b0 C. to obtain a first condensate comprising neutral oils, and obtaining a second stream comprising steam, volatile fatty acids, and micronutrients; and (iii) feeding the second stream into a cold condensation zone that is operated at a temperature of at least 25\u00b0 C., and obtaining a second condensate comprising volatile fatty acids and micronutrients and a third stream comprising steam, non-condensable gases, traces of fatty acids and other lighter hydrocarbons vapours, wherein the second stream is optionally fed into a distillation column prior to the cold condensation zone; and (iv) distilling comprising step (a) or (b):\n (a) feeding the second condensate comprising volatile fatty acids and micronutrients obtained from the cold condensation zone to a distilling column, distilling in a vacuum of at least 0.001 mbar and obtaining a fatty acid product stream and a micronutrients product stream from said distilling column; or \n (b) feeding the second stream comprising steam, volatile fatty acids, and micronutrients into a distillation column prior to the cold condensation zone, and feeding the second condensate comprising volatile fatty acids and micronutrients obtained from the cold condensation zone to the same distillation column and conducting a reflux of condensate to obtain a micronutrients product stream from the distillation column and to obtain a fatty acid product stream from the cold condensation zone; \n feeding a portion of said first condensate comprising neutral oils obtained from the high temperature condensing zone into the feed point of the vacuum steam stripping column, and collecting a neutral oils product stream from said vacuum steam stripping column.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 27.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.76389
- Patent Class: 426.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['14406286', '14783348', '13869468', '14111398', '13583112']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7697430323716187
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.6006525544010005
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7528339845745569
- Mean Citation Score: 386.84442
- Max Citation Score: 561.85114
- Similarity Product: 461.31108684438817

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 0
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test