US Patent Issued to THE TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SYSTEM, LTEOIL on July 1 for "Process for partial upgrading of heavy oil" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,344,802, issued on July 1, was assigned to THE TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SYSTEM (College Station, Texas) and LTEOIL LLC (Houston).

"Process for partial upgrading of heavy oil" was invented by Howard Jemison (Houston), David Staack (College Station, Texas) and Kunpeng Wang (College Station, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A process for continuously upgrading heavy oil to produce light hydrocarbon gases which are recycled in the process as a carrier gas used in spark-discharge hydrocarbon cracking within the process. The process also produces light hydrocarbon liquids which are used to upgrade the heavy oil. An apparatus for continuously up...