US Patent Issued to University of Southern California on Dec. 16 for "Efficient conversion of methane to methanesulfonic acid via trifluoroacetylsulfuric acid" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,497,354, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to University of Southern California (Los Angeles).

"Efficient conversion of methane to methanesulfonic acid via trifluoroacetylsulfuric acid" was invented by Kyung Woon Jung (Fullerton, Calif.), Sungah Kim (Los Angeles), Jen-Chieh Wang (Los Angeles) and Joo Ho Lee (Los Angeles).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "For methane activation, various sulfonation systems using SO3 or H2SO4 have been well studied, however, sulfur dioxide (SO2), a preliminary source of SO3 and H2SO4, has not been used successfully. Herein, we report a novel methane sulfonation method to produce methanesulfonic acid (MSA) utiliz...