Scientific Innovation of Bioremediation Technologies

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the major research and development (R&D) trends of bioremediation technologies, as well as to build the core technology category framework through the collection of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) patent information. The Patent Co-citation Analysis (PCA) method and the factor analysis technique were applied to categorize the patents of bioremediation and to identify the main technology trends behind it. The result revealed that the major R&D trends comprise the fields of anaerobic degradation, aerobic degradation, anaerobic reductive dechlorination, bioaugmentation, and bioventing. Next, we further applied the fuzzy Delphi method, following former study results, which were chiefly derived from the aforementioned PCA, in order to investigate and decide upon the most appropriate bioremediation technologies for the case studied country of Taiwan, which had had emergent needs for the benefits of developing novel bioremediation technologies in particular.