Adsorption-Based Gas Separation Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- One leader, then a long tail. the top assignee sits at 85 records against a fifth-place figure of 13 and a tenth-place figure of 5, across 28 ranked companies.
- Filing has plateaued, not grown. 2021 to 2024 (the most recent complete year) shows 0% growth, with 2023 the peak year so far at 8 filings.
- Claims cluster in separation, not the surrounding hardware. B01D covers 74.4% of the 199 records in scope, while heat-exchange (F28D) and fuel-gas purification (C10K) sit under 2%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (2) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
What this landscape covers
Adsorption-based gas separation covers pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) units, where cycle time, bed fluidization, adsorbent selectivity and product purity determine whether a unit is viable at a given scale. This landscape draws on 199 published records matching claims and abstracts around these operating parameters, spanning filings from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown. The dataset is built at the record level; where a family view matters more than a raw document count, that distinction is called out in the sections below.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 199 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses those filings actually sit in.
Filing trend: a plateau, not a decline
Filings ran 2021 = 2 to 2024 = 2, a flat 0% over that three-year span, with 2023 the peak year so far at 8. Treat 2025 onward as incomplete rather than falling, since publication has not caught up with recent filing activity.
Where the claims sit
B01D (separation processes) touches 74.4% of the 199 records in scope, and C01B (non-metallic elements and inorganic compounds) touches 32.7% — together these anchor the core adsorption cycle. Life-saving apparatus (A62B, 17.1%) and body-fluid devices (A61M, 12.1%) point to a meaningful medical-oxygen-concentrator branch running alongside the industrial-gas core, while catalysis (B01J), heat exchange (F28D), fuel-gas purification (C10K) and refrigeration (F25B) each sit at 3.0% or below.
Shares are the percentage of the 199 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Adsorption-Based Gas Separation Units with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about adsorption-based gas separation units and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this set
US5084075A — Vacuum swing adsorption process for production of 95+% N2 from ambient air
A method is described for recovering nitrogen from air in a three-bed vacuum swing adsorption technique in which the beds are not rinsed with nitrogen gas before recovering a nitrogen recycle stream and a nitrogen product.Filed by Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., a Delaware corporation, dated 1992-01-28.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6293999B1 | Process for separating propylene from propane | 178 |
| 2 | US6322612B1 | PSA process for removal of bulk carbon dioxide from a wet high-temperature gas | 126 |
| 3 | US4477265A | Argon purification | 119 |
| 4 | US7279029B2 | Weight-optimized portable oxygen concentrator | 110 |
| 5 | US5411578A | Vacuum swing adsorption process with mixed repressurization and provide product depressurization | 101 |
| 6 | US6641645B1 | Vacuum swing adsorption process with controlled waste gas withdrawal | 99 |
| 7 | US5656067A | VSA adsorption process with energy recovery | 90 |
| 8 | US7121276B2 | Personal oxygen concentrator | 89 |
| 9 | US5084075A | Vacuum swing adsorption process for production of 95+% n2 from ambient air | 82 |
| 10 | US4472177A | Control system and method for air fractionation by vacuum swing adsorption | 80 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence, not of current commercial weight.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three findings that shape where a new filing is likely to land clean, and where it walks into dense prior art.
One company dominates the core cycle claims
The leading assignee's record count of 85 dwarfs the fifth-place figure of 13 and the tenth-place figure of 5 among the 28 ranked companies. That gap suggests the foundational PSA/VSA cycle mechanics are claimed deeply by a single incumbent, and new entrants are more likely to find open ground in adjacent applications than in core cycle design.
Filing activity has plateaued
The 2021-to-2024 window, the most recent span that can be treated as complete, shows flat filing volume at 0% growth, with the peak year (2023, 8 filings) not far above the surrounding years. This looks like a maintained field rather than an expanding one — density is being defended, not multiplied.
Separation processes anchor the field, medical uses branch off
B01D touches 74.4% of the 199 records in scope and C01B touches 32.7%, forming the industrial-gas core. A62B (17.1%) and A61M (12.1%) mark a distinct portable/medical oxygen concentrator branch that runs in parallel rather than overlapping heavily with the industrial claims.
Co-filing is narrow and personal
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest ones link a single company to named individual inventors repeatedly rather than to other companies. That pattern points to inventor-led filing programmes rather than joint-venture or cross-licensing activity.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to adsorption-based gas separation units, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the room is
The ranked leaders sit well ahead of a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants, while several technically adjacent sub-areas carry little claim density at all.
The scale leader in industrial gas separation
The top-ranked assignee's 85 records put it far ahead of the field, consistent with a company that has built PSA/VSA units as a core product line for decades rather than filed opportunistically.
A concentrated cluster around portable concentrators
The fifth-place figure of 13 sits inside a cluster of co-filing entities and named inventors tied to portable oxygen concentrator design, distinct from the industrial-scale incumbents above them.
A wide field of smaller filers
By tenth place the count has fallen to 5, and the ranking runs to 28 companies in total — evidence of a field with one dominant player, a mid-tier of specialist filers, and many entities with only a handful of records each.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. | 0 | — |
| VBOX INC | 0 | — |
| CarbonCapture Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| VAN BRUNT NICHOLAS P | 0 | — |
| LONNES PERRY B | 0 | — |
| KIVISTO JOHN A | 0 | — |
| JAGGER THEODORE W | 0 | — |
| BOC Group, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The landscape points to a mature, concentrated core and a handful of thinner branches worth a closer technical read.
Map the portable-concentrator cluster in detail
The co-assignee pairs and fifth-place cluster suggest a distinct sub-field around portable oxygen concentrators worth tracing inventor-by-inventor rather than by company alone.
Explore this cluster in EurekaCheck freedom-to-operate against the cited core patents
The most-cited records span propylene/propane separation, bulk CO2 removal and argon purification — any new industrial-scale design should be checked against these before drafting claims.
Run a freedom-to-operate check in EurekaWatch the under-claimed hardware branches
Heat-exchange integration and fuel-gas purification overlap sit under 2% of records each, which may reflect either genuine white space or claims routed through other IPC classes entirely.
Investigate white space in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
This dataset ranks 28 companies by record count, with the leading assignee holding 85 records against a fifth-place figure of 13 and a tenth-place figure of 5. That gap between first and fifth place indicates one incumbent with deep, long-standing coverage of the core PSA/VSA cycle, while the remaining ranked companies compete for narrower niches such as portable oxygen concentrators. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should treat the leader's portfolio as the first thing to clear, not just the most-cited individual patents.
Filing volume was flat between 2021 and 2024, the most recent three-year span that can be treated as complete, at 0% growth. The peak year so far is 2023 with 8 filings, not dramatically above the surrounding years. Figures from 2025 onward will look lower simply because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so they should not be read as an actual drop in activity yet.
US5084075A describes a three-bed vacuum swing adsorption process for producing 95%-plus nitrogen from ambient air, notable for not rinsing the beds with nitrogen gas before recovering the recycle stream, filed by Air Products and Chemicals. It is a specific process-sequence claim rather than a claim over VSA nitrogen production in general, so designs using different bed-rinse sequencing or different repressurization steps may sit outside its scope. Any freedom-to-operate review should read the claim language directly rather than relying on the abstract, since the rinse-step limitation is doing most of the work.
The IPC composition shows heavy concentration in separation processes (B01D, 74.4% of the 199 records) and inorganic compounds (C01B, 32.7%), with heat-exchange integration, fuel-gas purification, catalytic regeneration and refrigeration-hybrid cycles each under 3%. That thin coverage suggests hardware-integration angles — combining the adsorption cycle with heat recovery or catalytic bed regeneration, for instance — carry less claim density than the core separation chemistry itself. It is not proof the ground is empty, since some of that work may be classified elsewhere, but it is a reasonable place to start a deeper search.
B01D (separation processes) and C01B (non-metallic elements and inorganic compounds) anchor the industrial-gas side of this field, covering 74.4% and 32.7% of the 199 records respectively. A62B (rescue and life-saving apparatus, 17.1%) and A61M (devices for body fluids, 12.1%) mark a separate portable and medical oxygen concentrator branch. A record can carry multiple classes, so these figures overlap rather than summing to a whole, but together they show the field splitting into an industrial core and a medical-device branch.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
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Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.