PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16173683
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-10
Publication Date: 2019-05
Patent Classification: ["549", "489000"]

Abstract:
Implementations of the disclosed subject matter provide a process for converting biomass into furfural. The process may include subjecting a pentosan-containing biomass material to an acid catalyzed digestion process in a digestion vessel to produce a digested product stream comprising C5-carbohydrates and solids comprising cellulose. The digested product stream may be separated into a liquid product stream and a solid product stream comprising lignin and cellulose. The solids product stream may be contacted with water and an organic solvent, thereby converting at least part of the lignin to a phenolic solvent. The C5-carbohydrate in the liquid product stream may be subjected to a dehydration reaction in the presence of an acid catalyst and a biphasic mixture comprising an aqueous phase and a water-immiscible organic phase, wherein the water-immiscible organic phase includes at least a portion of the phenolic solvent, to produce furfural or a furan derivative.

Claim (Index 1):
A process for converting biomass into furfural, the process comprising the steps of:\n (a) providing a pentosan-containing biomass material; (b) subjecting the pentosan-containing biomass material to an acid catalyzed digestion process in a digestion vessel at a temperature greater than about 100\u00b0 C. for a period of time sufficient to produce a digested product stream comprising C5-carbohydrates and solids comprising cellulose; (c) separating the digested product stream into a liquid product stream and a solid product stream wherein:\n (i) the liquid product stream comprises carbohydrate compounds, of which at least 50 wt % of the carbohydrate compounds are C5-carbohydrate compounds, based on the weight of carbohydrate compounds in the liquid product stream, \n (ii) the solid product stream comprises solids comprising lignin and cellulose; \n (d) contacting the solid product stream with an organic solvent, thereby converting at least part of the lignin to a phenolic solvent, to produce solids and a solvent product stream comprising the phenolic solvent; (e) subjecting the C5-carbohydrate in the liquid product stream to a dehydration reaction in a reaction vessel at a temperature in the range of from about 100\u00b0 C. to about 250\u00b0 C. in the presence of an acid catalyst and a biphasic mixture comprising an aqueous phase and a water-immiscible organic phase, which comprises at least a portion of the phenolic solvent produced in step (d), for a period of time sufficient to produce furfural or a furan derivative; (f) retrieving from the reaction vessel a dehydration product stream comprising water, organic solvent and furfural, and separating the dehydration product stream into an aqueous recycle stream and an organic product stream comprising furfural; (g) recovering the furfural from the organic product stream by at least one separation process; and (h) recycling the organic product stream from step (g) back to the reaction vessel in step (e).

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 20.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.2
- Patent Class: 549.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15502808', '15502845', '15502897', '15502828', '15502870']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7506446672879461
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5146109339190656
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.727041293951058
- Mean Citation Score: 314.565646
- Max Citation Score: 332.41153
- Similarity Product: 320.9825813541407

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

Dataset: test