The June 2023 issue of the magazine Tecnologia&Innovazione talks about how patent information can guide investments in the Circular Economy sector.
For at least a decade there has been a strong and growing interest in the Western world towards the topic of the Circular Economy. A production and consumption model attentive to reducing waste of raw materials and designed to be able to self-regenerate its resources. A radical paradigm shift that brings with it the urgency and need to generate innovation.
In this context, there is an often underestimated tool that can simplify the work of company management, helping them to effectively direct investments in “green” technology: patent analysis.
Modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Text Mining techniques enable the massive extraction of information from patent databases, currently made up of hundreds of millions of documents, their classification based on the technological field of interest, even niche ones, and their interpretation from the perspective of specific company needs.
An example of how patent analysis carried out with Text Mining and Artificial Intelligence technology can be put at the service of the Circular Economy comes from SPICE, a project focused on the study of lithium battery recycling processes.
In the SPICE project, the Text Mining algorithms developed by Erre Quadro made it possible to identify the map of the main technical problems faced for the recycling and recovery of components from exhausted lithium batteries or for their regeneration. At the same time, the main technologies used were identified, the level of maturity of which was assessed, and the main materials that can be recovered from batteries.