PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16043324
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-07
Publication Date: 2019-02
Patent Classification: ["564", "458000"]

Abstract:
Disclosed is a process for recovering formic acid from a formate ester of a C 3  to C 4  alcohol. Disclosed is also a process for producing formic acid by carbonylating a C 3  to C 4  alcohol, hydrolyzing the formate ester of the alcohol, and recovering a formic acid product. The alcohol may be dried and returned to the reactor. The process enables a more energy efficient production of formic acid than the carbonylation of methanol to produce methyl formate.

Claim (Index 18):
A process for producing formic acid, wherein the process comprises,\n a) feeding methanol, a dry alcohol stream, and a catalyst recycle to a dehydrogenative coupling (DHC) zone, wherein the dry alcohol stream comprises an alcohol and less than 1 wt. % water, performing a DHC reaction of methanol with the alcohol to produce a formate ester of the alcohol, and removing a DHC effluent comprising the formate ester of the alcohol and a homogeneous catalyst; b) feeding the DHC effluent to a catalyst separation zone and removing the catalyst recycle and a formate ester mixture, wherein the catalyst recycle comprises the homogeneous catalyst and the formate ester mixture comprises the formate ester of the alcohol; c) feeding the formate ester mixture, a hydrolysis recycle and water to a hydrolysis zone, hydrolyzing the formate ester of the alcohol, and removing a hydrolysis effluent comprising the formate ester of the alcohol, formic acid, and the alcohol; d) feeding the hydrolysis effluent to a distillation zone and removing a formic acid product and a wet alcohol mixture, wherein the formic acid product comprises greater than 75 wt. % formic acid and the wet alcohol mixture comprises the alcohol, water, the formate ester of the alcohol, and less than 0.5 wt. % formic acid; and e) feeding the wet alcohol mixture to an alcohol recovery zone and removing the dry alcohol stream and the hydrolysis recycle stream, wherein the hydrolysis recycle stream comprises water, the formate ester of the alcohol, and/or the alcohol, wherein the alcohol is selected from the group consisting of iso-propanol, 2-butanol, and tert-butanol.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 50.0
- Percentile: 95.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.02326
- Patent Class: 564.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['16043329', '16332853', '10536689', '13473126', '10894307']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6631854863882313
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.6423861096600945
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6611055487154176
- Mean Citation Score: 337.267374
- Max Citation Score: 549.3318
- Similarity Product: 534.1511586014985

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

Dataset: test