Electrochemical pH-Swing DAC Patents: Who Leads, White Space 2026
- One institution dominates the ranking. the leading assignee holds 9 of the records in a 10-company ranking, well ahead of a fifth-place assignee at 2.
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 12 records before tapering — a pattern to read against the roughly 18-month publication lag rather than as a real slowdown.
- Separation and water-treatment classes dominate the claim space. B01D and C02F each cover 68.2% of the 22 records, leaving electrolytic production (C25B, 22.7%) and nanotech applications (B82Y, 13.6%) comparatively open.
What this landscape covers
Electrochemical pH-swing capture uses a voltage-driven change in acidity or alkalinity — often across a bipolar membrane — to bind and then release CO2 from air or seawater, replacing the thermal regeneration step used in amine-based direct air capture. This dataset tracks 22 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine electrochemical or bipolar-membrane pH-swing claims with direct air capture, ambient CO2 capture, or carbon dioxide removal language.
The field is small and young enough that a handful of research-institution filings still set the technical baseline, while receiving-office activity across the United States, WIPO, Europe and Canada shows applicants are already thinking about multi-jurisdiction protection despite the low volume.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 22-record dataset: filings by year, and where those records sit across IPC subclasses.
Filings rose sharply into 2022, then eased
Filing activity was effectively zero in 2017 and climbed to a peak of 12 records in 2022, the busiest year on record so far. Counts in 2025 and 2026 look lower, but publication lag of roughly 18 months means the most recent years are understated rather than genuinely quiet.
Separation and water treatment classes carry most of the claim weight
B01D (separation processes) and C02F (water and wastewater treatment) each appear in 68.2% of the 22 records, reflecting how closely pH-swing capture is tied to membrane and liquid-handling equipment. C25B (electrolytic production of compounds) sits at 22.7%, B82Y (nanotechnology applications) at 13.6%, and B01J, C01F and C22B each cover 9.1% — these adjacent classes carry far fewer filings than the core separation and water-treatment art.
Shares are the percentage of the 22 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Direct Air Capture — Electrochemical pH-Swing Air Capture Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Systems and methods for power generation or direct air capture
The filing describes a process that transfers heat from a fluid to air, where at least a portion of the air moves from a lower to a higher elevation through an air conduit, with airflow adjusted by an airflow control element.Filed by Innovator Energy LLC, published 2026-07-30 — the most recent record in this dataset.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20240182340A1 | System and Method for Dual-Pathway System for Carbon Dioxide Capture from Ocean Water | 4 |
| 2 | WO2024118103A1 | System and method for dual-pathway system for carbon dioxide capture from ocean water | 2 |
| 3 | WO2022178125A1 | Electrochemical conversion to carbonate-containing compounds and related methods | 2 |
| 4 | WO2022178119A1 | Electrochemical removal of carbon dioxide and related methods | 2 |
| 5 | CA3242789A1 | System and method for dual-pathway system for carbon dioxide capture from ocean water | 1 |
| 6 | EP4626587A1 | System and method for dual-pathway system for carbon dioxide capture from ocean water | 1 |
| 7 | US20240300833A1 | Electrochemical conversion to carbonate-containing compounds and related methods | 1 |
| 8 | US20240132381A1 | Electrochemical removal of carbon dioxide and related methods | 1 |
Citation counts inside this corpus skew toward older filings and should be read as a signal of influence, not of current commercial importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the records are grouped by assignee, class and year.
One institution set the technical baseline
A single academic assignee holds 9 records in a 10-company ranking, with the next entrant far behind at 2. That leaves a long tail of single- or double-filing entrants working around, rather than on top of, the foundational claims.
2022 was the high-water mark so far
Filing rose from effectively nothing in 2017 to a peak of 12 records in 2022. The apparent drop-off since then is partly an artefact of the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not necessarily a real pullback in R&D.
Separation and water treatment carry the claim load
Both B01D and C02F reach 68.2% of the 22 records, confirming that most pH-swing DAC claims are built around membrane separation and liquid-handling steps rather than pure electrochemistry.
Co-filing clusters around one lab
The strongest co-assignee pairs all involve the same academic institution paired with named inventors, suggesting the core intellectual property is still concentrated inside one research group's collaborator network rather than spread across independent labs.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to direct air capture — electrochemical ph-swing air capture patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the room to move sits
The ranked list is short and top-heavy, which changes how a newcomer should think about freedom to operate.
The academic incumbent
The top-ranked assignee holds 9 of the records in this ranking, more than four times the count of the fifth-place entrant. Its filings anchor the co-assignee network and set the prior art that later entrants have to design around.
A new commercial entrant
Innovator Energy LLC is the only assignee in this dataset with activity in the latest year, and its representative filing addresses power generation paired with direct air capture rather than the membrane chemistry the academic incumbents focus on.
Single-filing entrants
Several assignees in the ranking hold just one or two records each, indicating the field still has room for new applicants to establish a position without displacing an incumbent's core claims.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Innovator Energy LLC | 1 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 0 | -100% |
| California Institute of Technology (Caltech) | 0 | — |
| Verdox LP | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University | 0 | -100% |
| VARANASI KRIPA K | 0 | — |
| LAKE JOHN | 0 | — |
| KIM SEONI | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to a field with a dominant academic core, a thin but real commercial entrant, and several IPC branches still open for a first-mover claim.
Map the incumbent's claim boundaries
Before filing near the pH-swing core, work through what the leading assignee's granted claims actually cover versus what is still described only in abstracts or pending applications.
Explore the claim set in EurekaTrack the commercial entrant's next moves
Innovator Energy LLC's 2026 filing signals a shift toward power-integrated systems; watching its follow-on filings will show whether it expands into the membrane chemistry itself.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
It is a method of pulling CO2 out of air or seawater by using an applied voltage, often across a bipolar membrane, to shift the pH of a capture fluid rather than heating it. Acidifying the fluid releases bound CO2 for collection, and reversing the voltage restores the fluid's alkalinity so it can bind more CO2. The appeal is that electricity can come from renewable sources and the process avoids the high-temperature regeneration step used in amine-based direct air capture. In this dataset the approach is closely tied to separation and water-treatment engineering, since most filings sit in the B01D and C02F IPC classes alongside the electrochemistry itself.
The ranking in this dataset covers 10 companies and research institutions, and one academic assignee leads clearly with 9 records, well ahead of the fifth-place entrant at 2. That gap means the foundational IP is concentrated with a single research group and its named collaborators rather than spread across competing commercial labs. A newer commercial entrant appears only in the most recent year with a single filing, so the field currently has one dominant technical originator and a long tail of small filers. This is a 10-entity ranking, not a top-50 or top-100 list, so absence from it does not mean an organisation has no activity in the broader field.
Filing activity in this dataset rose from essentially nothing in 2017 to a peak of 12 records in 2022, the highest of any year tracked. The apparent decline in the years since is likely overstated: patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts will keep rising as more applications clear examination and publish. Readers should treat the most recent one to two years as incomplete rather than as evidence of a real slowdown in research activity. The underlying trend through 2022 does show real growth in interest in this specific capture route.
Relative to the dominant B01D and C02F separation and water-treatment classes, which each cover 68.2% of the 22 records, several adjacent branches carry only one or two filings apiece: nanostructured capture media (B82Y, 13.6%), catalytic process variants (B01J, 9.1%), alkaline-earth compound pathways (C01F, 9.1%), and metal-extraction co-processing (C22B, 9.1%). These lower-density classes suggest room for a first mover to establish claims without directly overlapping the incumbent's core separation art. That said, low filing density in a class this dataset's size can also reflect that the sub-area is simply less explored technically, not that it is commercially proven.
It is the most recent record in the dataset, published 2026-07-30, and describes a system combining power generation with direct air capture through elevation-based airflow control rather than the bipolar-membrane chemistry that dominates the rest of the field. It is notable mainly because it is the only filing from any assignee in the latest year covered by this data, while the previously dominant academic assignees show zero filings and a -100% year-on-year change. One filing is not enough to call a trend, but it does mark the first sign of a commercial systems-engineering angle entering a landscape that has so far been led by university research groups.
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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.