PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16397441
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2019-04
Publication Date: 2019-08
Patent Classification: ["075", "631000"]

Abstract:
A low-flux converting process for PGM collector alloy. The process includes feed introduction into a molten alloy pool, oxygen injection into the pool, tapping the slag, and tapping the PGM-enriched alloy. The collector alloy contains no less than 0.5 wt % PGM, 40 wt % iron, and 0.5 wt % nickel. If added flux material contains more than 10 wt % silica and 10 wt % CaO/MgO, the feed contains no more than 20 parts by weight added flux per hundred collector alloy. The process can also include using a refractory protectant in the converter; melting partially pre-oxidized collector alloy to form the initial molten alloy pool; magnetic separation of slag; recycling part of the slag to the converter; smelting catalyst material in a primary furnace to produce the collector alloy; and/or smelting the converter slag in a secondary furnace with slag from the primary furnace.

Claim (Index 17):
The process of  claim 16 , wherein the pre-oxidizing in step (I) comprises operating the converter through a cycle of steps (II), (III), (a), (b), (c), (d), and (e) to prepare a partially oxidized starter alloy, wherein the starter alloy preparation cycle comprises:\n melting a previously prepared charge of the partially oxidized starter alloy in the emptied pot to form the alloy pool; periodically or continuously supplying the converter feed to the alloy pool in step (a) concurrently with the injection of the oxygen-containing gas in step (b); continuing the injection of the oxygen-containing gas to partially oxidize the alloy pool, preferably wherein from 10 to 90 percent, more preferably from 25 to 75 percent, of iron in the converter feed is oxidized, based on the weight of iron in the converter feed supplied to the converter alloy pool; tapping the slag from the converter pot, preferably a plurality of times; then recovering and solidifying the partially oxidized alloy pool; and preferably dividing the solidified, partially oxidized collector alloy from the starter alloy preparation cycle into a plurality of starter alloy charges for a like plurality of converter operating cycles and/or starter alloy preparation cycles.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 69.0
- Percentile: 100.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.07692
- Patent Class: 75.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: none
- Component Type: 0
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['12208954', '15197102', '15355971', '13711305', '13130886']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7544465422384158
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5066849359308099
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7296703816076552
- Mean Citation Score: 264.781014
- Max Citation Score: 292.5087
- Similarity Product: 204.55814835265872

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