BPCL's R-D centre bags 80 patents in 20 years, over 50 more pending

State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has bagged as many as 80 national and international patents in the past two decades, and approvals for 53 more filings are pending, for various innovations including the world's cheapest and the fastest crude oil assaying tool BP Marrk.

Its research and development (R&D) centre, located at a 68-acre sprawling campus at Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, has won 18 patents in the past 12 months alone.

BPCL has an annual budget of Rs 80-100 crore for R&D.

"Over the past two decades, we have won as many as 80 patents, and 53 more are pending for approvals. Between July last year and now, we have secured 18 patents," Arun Kumar Singh, director (refineries and marketing) at BPCL, told PTI on Sunday.

One of the most notable patented innovations of the centre is BPMarrk, which is an intelligent tool for advanced assaying of crude oil that characterises and evaluates the crude at a fraction of the time taken by traditional assaying methods that take a month at least.

Its latest patent filing is for an LPG stove (four patent applications and four design registrations at the Indian Patent Office), which offers six per cent more thermal efficiency than the existing stoves which offer 68 per cent, helping a family consume one cylinder less a year, Singh said.

The high-efficiency LPG stove, called 'Bharat Hi-Star', was launched on Sunday to mark the 20th anniversary of the R&D centre.

The stove offers high thermal efficiency of 74 per cent as its burner top provides optimised flame orientation, the enhanced mixing tube ensures better air-fuel mixing and help prevents heat loss, he said.

If this stove is made available to all households, it can save 1.7 million tonne of LPG consumption annually, which will translate into savings of Rs 7,000 crore per annum, Singh said.

He said the LPG consumption is around 28 million tonnes annually and the demand is growing at an average of six per cent and is likely to touch 30 million tonnes soon.

Its patents and advanced research are in areas such as crude oil evaluation, oil refining catalyst development, eco-friendly lubricants, process simulation and modelling, anti-corrosion research, and bitumen-related areas.

They also include novel energy-efficient technologies, alternative energy, biofuels, niche polymers and petrochemicals, and product development.

BPMarrk can drastically slashes the time required to generate results — from three-four weeks to merely one hour. This is patented in India, the US, Europe and Africa.

Another patented innovation is the K-Model, which is a software for quick and accurate prediction of crude oils'' blend compatibility and blend optimisation which are generated within minutes from a traditional process that takes several weeks.

The K Model is getting completed for commercial deployment at a private refinery and is being contract-manufactured by a Baroda-based company.

Bharat GSR CAT is a high-performance catalyst for reduction of sulphur in gasoline. This is the world's first catalyst prepared from fluid catalytic cracking unit spent catalyst. The novel catalyst is only one-third the cost of imported alternatives.