The technology known as Iodine Autogenous Fusion (IAF), developed at the University of Santiago in Chile, has been granted a patent in Japan, adding to the patent already obtained in Chile and the patent application filed in the United States.
This innovation is led by Dr. Ricardo Vega Viveros, an academic and researcher at the Faculty of Engineering (FING), and emerged as a solution to the problems of the iodine refining process in our country, which is notorious for being discontinuous, complex, costly, and environmentally hazardous.
The patent application was supported by the Technology Management Department at Usach. Its director, Rodrigo Morgado Contardo, emphasizes that “this is a key step, which not only protects the intellectual property of the invention that arises from the research, but also facilitates its technology transfer to the domestic and foreign markets, opening up opportunities to generate agreements with companies interested in implementing IAF.”
Potential impact in Japan
“I am delighted to hear the news that the patent has been granted in Japan. In general, it is challenging to obtain patents in Asia, so this is a very important milestone,” emphasizes Dr. Ricardo Vega.
The researcher highlights that Chile and Japan lead the world in iodine production, which is in high demand by industries such as pharmaceuticals, technology, and food. However, the high costs associated with its extraction and production are some of the main obstacles that production companies have to deal with.
“In Chile, iodine is extracted from caliche, while in Japan it is obtained from oil wells, into which water is injected. These wells eventually collapse, making production costs higher than ours,” notes the academic. In this context, ‘the patent could have a significant impact on reducing these costs, particularly during the mineral refining stage,’ he says.
The technology also offers other advantages, he adds, such as “lower investment and operating costs, more consistent product quality, and minimal loss due to reduced exposure to iodine, which prevents sublimation and makes the process less polluting.”
Industrial scaling
IAF has now been developed as an industrial prototype that has been successfully tested in a real environment, thanks to collaboration between Usach and Autoterm, an engineering and assembly company specializing in process automation.
“We have high expectations for this pilot as a production unit,” says Dr. Ricardo Vega. If its transfer to the market is scaled up, in Chile alone it could ‘produce more than 10% of the national production of iodine,’ the academic points out.