PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16096730
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-10
Publication Date: 2019-05
Patent Classification: ["560", "218000"]

Abstract:
The present invention provides methods comprising distilling a reaction mixture of methacrolein and methanol used to make methyl methacrylate (MMA) in the presence of one or more strong or inorganic acids, the mixture comprising an aqueous organic component mixture of all of water, MMA, methacrolein methanol and acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein to remove the acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein to a level of 100 ppm or below, based on the amount of methyl methacrylate. The method reduces the amount of acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein to well below equilibrium levels and eliminates the need for additional downstream distillation to refine the product of the reaction.

Claim (Index 4):
The method as claimed in  claim 1 , wherein the reacting comprises (a) distilling a feed stream of an aqueous organic component mixture containing methyl methacrylate, water, methanol, methacrolein and at least 1 wt. % of acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein, based on the total weight of MMA and acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein in the aqueous organic component mixture, in a distillation column comprising a lower section, a middle section and an upper section by feeding the aqueous organic component mixture to the upper section of the distillation column; (b) feeding the strong or inorganic acid into the middle section or the upper section of the distillation column to react the aqueous organic component mixture with the one or more strong or inorganic acids, and (c) removing from the distillation each of an overhead stream and a bottoms stream comprising methyl methacrylate and 100 ppm or less of acetals or hemiacetals of methacrolein.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 17.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.83871
- Patent Class: 560.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15760030', '15776850', '14917114', '15776847', '15521798']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7420557727183201
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5370557789753023
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7215557733440184
- Mean Citation Score: 277.842984
- Max Citation Score: 298.62653
- Similarity Product: 232.15011569143

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