Carvão vegetal: desenvolvimento de indicadores tecnológicos a partir da análise de documentos de patentes

Abstract

Charcoal is an important renewable source of energy and feedstock for several applications. Its consumption, production and utilization are known by human kind for many years and have been increasing over time. The constant increasing of global demand for the establishment of sustainable development puts charcoal in a prominent position, which makes it important to monitor technological advances in the area as an input to the planning and decision making. In the present study, the mapping of the technological advances into charcoal was carried out by the development of indicators based on the patents documents analysis. The patenting evolution was concentrated in the period from 2001 to 2010 with major involvement of Japan, South Korea, China, USA and Germany. The main technological domains related to charcoal were Chemistry Materials and Industrial Procedures with emphasis shown by the subdomains Basic Chemistry, Family Consumption, Technical Procedures and Materials Metallurgy. The main assignees of the documents are companies from North America, Europe and, especially from Asia. The Brazilian technological development into charcoal was substantially inferior when compared to the major assignees countries, even though Brazil is the main charcoal producer and consumer. In the case of the subdomain Materials Metallurgy, Japan, South Korea and China are the most prominent countries and most of the documents are concentrated in 10 subject areas. For this subdomain, the main assignees are Japanese and South Korean companies. The results showed that a significant amount of the patents documents on charcoal are related to apparatus, device, equipment and machine, and for this categorization there is also the Japanese, South Korean and Chinese prominence as well as the concentration of the documents in 10 subject areas. Among the patents related to equipment and so on, only a very few amount are triadic, in other words, were filed in US, EPO and Japan. These triadic patents are related to carbonization systems, methods and equipment for charcoal and activated charcoal production and waste and garbage treatment.