Solid-Amine DAC Sorbent Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
- 69.2% concentration at the top. The five most active filers account for 63 of the 91 records in scope — the rest of the field files in a long tail.
- Filing rose 33% from 2021 to 2024. Annual filings climbed from 6 to 8 over that span, the last period the dataset treats as complete given publication lag.
- Separation and catalysis dominate the claims. B01D covers 87.9% of records and B01J another 38.5%, leaving aircraft equipment, microbial and electrolytic routes each under 4%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (8) — 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. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 91 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 91 published patent records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that describe solid-amine sorbents for direct air capture and related ambient CO2 removal systems. The search combines amine-sorbent terminology with direct-air-capture and carbon-dioxide-removal language, capturing both dedicated DAC hardware and adjacent sorbent chemistry claimed for ambient-air conditions rather than flue-gas streams. Families, not raw document counts, are the basis for the assignee ranking, which neutralises continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates.
The earliest wave of activity traces back to aerospace life-support sorbent work from the 1990s, visible today in the most-cited records in this set. Filing activity then built slowly through the 2010s before accelerating as direct air capture drew commercial investment, peaking so far in 2023. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend chart will keep rising as more filings surface.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 91-record set: how filing activity moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims sit in.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Annual filings moved from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 23 in 2023. The tracked growth period, 2021 to 2024, shows a 33% rise from 6 to 8 filings; 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
IPC subclass composition
B01D separation processes appear in 87.9% of the 91 records and B01J catalysis-related classes in 38.5%, confirming that most claims sit on sorbent contacting and regeneration hardware rather than novel chemistry. Smaller classes — C07C, C08J, B64D, C12N, C25B and C02F — each cover under 7% of records and mark narrower, less-crowded claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 91 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 — Solid-Amine Direct-Air-Capture Sorbents Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaMost-cited records in this set
US20120160098A1 — Method and system for carbon dioxide removal
A carbon dioxide removal system uses first and second solid-amine sorbent beds with a heat exchange system and pressure-reduction means. One bed adsorbs CO2 while the other desorbs it under heat, with pressure reduced at the desorbing bed to drive release, and the roles cycle between beds.Filed by Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International; cited 38 times within this corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5876488A | Regenerable solid amine sorbent | 269 |
| 2 | US8361200B2 | Materials, methods and systems for selective capture of CO<sub>2 </sub>at high pressure | 78 |
| 3 | US20120160098A1 | Method and system for carbon dioxide removal | 38 |
| 4 | WO1998017388A1 | Regenerable solid amine sorbent | 37 |
| 5 | WO2014073004A2 | Carbondioxide removal system | 30 |
| 6 | US20240252983A1 | Atmospheric carbon dioxide capture system | 21 |
| 7 | US20110088549A1 | Materials, Methods and Systems for Selective Capture of CO2 at High Pressure | 19 |
| 8 | WO2021177823A1 | Electrochemical device, system and method for electrochemically recovery and/or regeneration of carbon dioxid… | 18 |
| 9 | US20150158013A1 | Metal-organic materials (MOMS) for co2 adsorption and methods of using moms | 16 |
| 10 | US20100228071A1 | Adsorbents for Purification of C2-C3 Olefins | 16 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on the field's vocabulary, not a ranking of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the records are grouped by assignee, class and year.
A small group holds most of the ground
The five most active assignees account for 69.2% of all 91 records in scope, and the top ten extend that to 91.2%. New entrants filing broad sorbent-bed or regeneration claims are filing directly against occupied space; differentiated chemistry or a narrower operating condition is the more defensible route in.
Growth is real but recent years understate it
Annual filings rose from 6 in 2021 to 8 in 2024, a 33% increase over the three-year span the dataset treats as complete. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the visibly lower 2025–2026 counts are an artefact of that lag, not a cooling of interest.
Separation hardware is the crowded class
B01D separation processes appear in 87.9% of the 91 records and B01J catalysis-related classes in 38.5%. Filers targeting sorbent-bed contactor design or regeneration cycling are entering the densest part of the field; classes like C25B, C12N and B64D each sit under 4% and carry visibly lighter prior art.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to direct air capture — solid-amine direct-air-capture sorbents patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | University of South Florida | 8 |
| ZAWOROTKO MICHAEL J | SHEKHAH OSAMA | 4 |
| ZAWOROTKO MICHAEL J | NUGENT PATRICK | 4 |
| ZAWOROTKO MICHAEL J | EDDAOUDI MOHAMED | 4 |
| ZAWOROTKO MICHAEL J | BURD STEPHEN | 4 |
| ZAWOROTKO MICHAEL J | BELMABKHOUT YOUSSEF | 4 |
| SHEKHAH OSAMA | NUGENT PATRICK | 4 |
| SHEKHAH OSAMA | EDDAOUDI MOHAMED | 4 |
The strongest co-assignee pairing in this dataset links King Abdullah University of Science and Technology with the University of South Florida across 8 shared records, alongside repeated inventor pairings on metal-organic-framework sorbent work — evidence of an active academic research partnership rather than a corporate joint-filing strategy.
Who is filing, and where the openings sit
The ranked assignee list spans aerospace primes, energy majors, universities and a handful of engineering firms, with filing volumes dropping sharply outside the leading group.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The leading assignee holds 25 records against a fifth-place figure of 6, a gap wide enough that its portfolio effectively sets the baseline claim scope for solid-amine sorbent bed and regeneration design that others must design around.
A cluster forms behind the leader
Filings from fifth to tenth place run from 6 down to 3 records apiece, a group that includes aerospace and industrial names alongside university programmes. None shows growth in the latest tracked year, consistent with the wider dataset's publication-lag effect rather than a real pullback.
University partnerships drive some of the deepest filing
The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and University of South Florida pairing anchors 8 shared records, with recurring inventor-level co-filing patterns suggesting a sustained joint research programme on framework-based sorbent chemistry rather than isolated one-off filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Siemens Energy Global GmbH & Co. KG | 0 | -100% |
| King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | 0 | — |
| Robert Bosch GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) | 0 | — |
| University of South Florida | 0 | — |
| INDIAN PETROCHEMICALS CORPORATION LIMITED | 0 | — |
| AIREF ENGINEERS PVT | 0 | — |
| Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The landscape points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single verdict.
Map claim scope against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 25 of 91 records, a freedom-to-operate review should start by pulling that portfolio's independent claims on sorbent bed cycling and regeneration before drafting new filings in the same space.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches
Classes such as C25B, C12N and B64D each sit under 4% of records, suggesting lighter prior art for electrolytic regeneration or aircraft-integrated sorbent systems. A targeted claims search would confirm how open these branches really are.
Run a white-space search in EurekaTrack the 2025–2026 filing catch-up
Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the most recent two years in this dataset will keep filling in. Re-running the trend query in a future quarter will reveal whether the 2021–2024 growth rate held.
Set a filing alert in EurekaCommon questions on solid-amine DAC sorbent patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 25 of the 91 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 6. The top five assignees combined hold 69.2% of all records, and the top ten extend that to 91.2%, so the field is heavily concentrated at the top with a long tail of smaller filers below rank ten. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should treat the leader's portfolio as the baseline prior art to clear first.
Filing activity rose from 6 records in 2021 to 8 in 2024, a 33% increase over that three-year span, and the dataset's peak filing year so far is 2023 at 23 records. The apparent drop in 2025 and 2026 is not a real decline — publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so recent-year counts are still incomplete. Judged on the last complete years, the field was still expanding rather than contracting.
B01D, the separation-processes IPC subclass, appears in 87.9% of the 91 records in scope, and B01J, covering catalysis and related chemical processes, appears in 38.5%. That means most claims concern sorbent bed contacting, cycling and regeneration hardware rather than the underlying amine chemistry itself. Filers looking for lighter prior art should look toward classes like C25B, C12N or B64D, each under 4% of records.
US20120160098A1, assigned to Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International, describes a two-bed solid-amine CO2 removal system where one bed adsorbs while the other desorbs under heat and reduced pressure, with the roles cycling between beds. It is cited 38 times within this corpus, making it one of the most referenced records in the dataset and a common prior-art anchor for temperature- and pressure-swing sorbent bed designs. Anyone patenting a cyclic dual-bed amine sorbent system should review its claims closely.
The lightest-claimed IPC classes in this dataset are C02F at 1.1% of records, followed by B64D and C25B at 3.3% each, and C12N also at 3.3%. These map to aircraft-integrated scrubbing, electrolytic sorbent regeneration and microbial or genetically engineered sorbent approaches, all filed far less often than the dominant separation and catalysis classes. These branches are plausible areas for a first-mover claim, though light filing volume should be checked against non-patent literature before relying on it as a sign of open space.
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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.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
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.