PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15935433
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-03
Publication Date: 2018-10
Patent Classification: ["203", "026000"]

Abstract:
A system and method for producing substantially anhydrous ethanol, methanol or other volatile chemicals includes: (a) a first distillation stripping column or column set with overhead vapors compressed using mechanical vapor recompression to strip off a weak ethanol overheads; (b) a second distillation rectifying column having a higher operating temperature than the stripping column; (c) a dehydration means in fluid communication with the rectifying column; (d) reboiler for the stripping column which partially condenses the vapor from the mechanical vapor recompression, (e) a trim condenser which completes the condensing of the vapor/liquid mix of the reboiler, (f) a heat recovery circuit which condenses the rectifying column overheads and molecular sieve dry ethanol condenser and (g) a heat exchange to transfer the recovered heat of (f) to the first distillation stripping column reboiler feed.

Claim (Index 15):
A method for energy efficient distillation of feed steams of weak of volatile components while limiting the pressure loss in the system by parallel flow of vapor in the distillation operation comprising the steps of:\n (a) providing a feed stream of weak volatile components to a series of distillation stripping columns, the first distillation stripping column in the series receiving the feed stream of weak volatile components, each of the other distillation stripping columns in the series in succession receiving the bottom stream from the prior distillation stripping column in the series, and each distillation stripping column in the series having a reboiler which partially condenses compressed overhead vapor from the series of distillation stripping columns, the reboilers each partially vaporizing a weak volatile stream from the final distillation stripping column in the series or using an intermediate process water feed as well as sequentially reducing the weak volatile components of the feed stream while vapor from each of the reboilers flows to the associated distillation stripping column in the series; (b) distilling the feed stream of weak volatile components in the series of distillation stripping columns to form a higher strength overhead product vapor stream which flows at the same overhead pressure directly supplying a vapor compression means raising the lower pressure of the overhead vapor to produce a higher pressure vapor at an operating pressure of a heated side of the reboilers; (c) partially condensing the higher pressure vapor in the reboilers, partially vaporizing a bottom liquid product from the series of distillation stripping columns and providing a bottom vapor stream to the associated distillation stripping columns to strip volatile compounds or chemicals from the weak feed stream; (d) completing in a trim condenser the condensing of the higher pressure vapor which has been partially condensed in the reboilers to recover a higher strength condensed overhead stream which is the condensed higher strength overhead product vapor stream of the series of distillation stripping columns; (e) distilling the higher strength condensed overhead product stream in a second higher pressure distillation column to produce a high strength product stream in the second higher pressure distillation column overheads; and (f) recovering heat from an external source to add to the reboilers.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 17.0
- Percentile: 90.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.93827
- Patent Class: 203.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['10546846', '13370062', '12229802', '12674808', '13507124']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6951357791701669
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5305881585885943
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6786810171120097
- Mean Citation Score: 325.08652399999994
- Max Citation Score: 344.74304
- Similarity Product: 284.4673130113984

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