E-Waste Hydrometallurgy Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (0) — 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 42 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the e-waste hydrometallurgy patent record shows
E-waste hydrometallurgy covers the acid- and solvent-based recovery of metals from discarded electronics — circuit boards, batteries, phosphor powders — as an alternative to smelting. The 42 records in scope span 2015 through the current data cut-off, and the filing pattern is one of concentration rather than breadth: a small number of assignees, several of them Chinese battery-recycling specialists, account for the bulk of activity, while most other filers appear once. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years in any trend understate real filing activity rather than signalling a slowdown.
The technology composition points to metal extraction and refining (C22B) as the dominant claim territory, with wastewater treatment and catalysis-adjacent processing appearing in a large minority of records — evidence that hydrometallurgical e-waste recovery is being claimed as an integrated recovery-plus-effluent process rather than a single extraction step.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 42 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend: concentrated peak, then reporting lag
Filings were essentially flat through the mid-2010s before rising to a peak of 5 in 2023. The evidence shows a -100% change from 2021 (1 filing) to 2024 (0 filings) — a real three-year drop, but 2025 and 2026 are too recent to read as decline given the publication lag; they will fill in as more records are indexed.
Technology composition: extraction leads, wastewater and catalysis follow
C22B (metal extraction & refining) appears in 50.0% of the 42 records, C02F (water & wastewater treatment) in 38.1%, and B01J (chemical/physical processes & catalysis) in 31.0%. Smaller shares touch compounds of other metals (C01G, 14.3%), batteries (H01M, 9.5%), and separation, sorting and food-adjacent classes (each 7.1%) — since records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 42 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electronic-Waste Recycling: E-Waste Hydrometallurgy Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative claim
Process for recycling individual rare-earth metals from fluorescent-powder e-waste
A process technology for recovering critical rare-earth metals from end-of-life lamp fluorescent powder e-waste, using inexpensive mineral acid for near-quantitative sequential digestion followed by selective liquid-liquid extraction to reach commercially relevant purity for individual rare earths — metals that are otherwise difficult to separate from mixed waste streams.Filed by Paul Scherrer Institut, 2019-10-23.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080237123A1 | Alkaline Regeneration of N-Methyl-D-Glucamine Funtional Resins | 21 |
| 2 | CN102228746A | 用活性氧化铝脱除硫酸锌溶液中氟的方法 | 17 |
| 3 | WO2006110574A1 | Alkaline regeneration of n-methyl-d-glucamine functional resins | 15 |
| 4 | WO2015009204A2 | Process for extraction of nickel, cobalt and other metals from laterite ores | 9 |
| 5 | US7811457B2 | Alkaline regeneration of N-methyl-D-glucamine functional resins | 8 |
| 6 | CN102010995A | 一种湿法炼锌过程提高铜回收率的方法 | 7 |
| 7 | CN113772751A | 一种利用低镍锍直接制备硫酸镍的方法、硫酸镍及其应用 | 5 |
| 8 | WO2023156345A1 | A process for the recycling of neodymium from waste printed circuit boards | 3 |
| 9 | IN202041002562A | Recovery process of metals from printed circuit boards (PCBS) using acidithiobacillus thiooxidans | 2 |
| 10 | IN202041002560A | Recovery process of metals from printed circuit boards (PCBS) using thiobacillus novellus | 2 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of exposure time; treat them as a signal of influence within this searched corpus, not as a ranking of current technical importance. Several of the top-cited entries concern ion-exchange resin regeneration generally, later pulled into e-waste-framed filings rather than written for e-waste from the outset.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three figures from this dataset matter more than the raw count: who holds the filing share, which IPC classes are crowded, and which receiving offices see the most activity.
Filing is concentrated at the top
The leading assignee alone accounts for 14 of the 42 records in scope, and the top 5 combined hold 61.9% of all records. Beyond the top 10 (90.5% combined), the remaining filers each appear once — a long tail of entrants testing the space rather than building a portfolio.
Extraction chemistry is the busiest single claim territory
Half of all records touch C22B. Combined with the 38.1% carrying C02F wastewater treatment, this suggests most filers are claiming recovery and effluent handling together rather than isolating a single extraction step — a pattern worth checking before drafting a narrow extraction-only claim.
China leads receiving offices, but the spread is wide
China (8 filings) leads the receiving-office count, with WIPO/PCT (6), Australia, Europe and Israel (4 each) and India (4) close behind. No single office dominates the way the assignee ranking does — filers are spreading protection across multiple jurisdictions rather than concentrating in one.
The most-cited prior art is not e-waste-specific
The highest-cited records concern alkaline regeneration of ion-exchange resins — chemistry developed for broader industrial separation, later applied to e-waste recovery. This matters for drafting: the foundational prior art a freedom-to-operate search will surface predates and outlasts the e-waste framing itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electronic-waste recycling: e-waste hydrometallurgy patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The figures above describe the field as filed. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going record by record.
Map claim scope against your own process route
Check whether your specific extraction, digestion or separation chemistry falls inside the crowded C22B/C02F overlap or sits in one of the smaller, less-claimed classes.
Explore claim charts in EurekaTrack the concentrated assignees directly
With 61.9% of records held by five assignees, monitoring their subsequent filings is a more efficient signal than watching the field broadly.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaRe-run the citation search on resin regeneration specifically
Since the top-cited prior art predates the e-waste framing, a separate search on ion-exchange resin regeneration chemistry may surface additional blocking art not captured by an e-waste-only query.
Run a deeper search in EurekaQuestions practitioners ask about this landscape
Filing is concentrated: the leading assignee alone accounts for 14 of the 42 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees combined hold 61.9% of all records. The ranked list covers 27 companies in total, and beyond the top 10 (90.5% combined) most filers appear only once. This pattern means a competitive-intelligence effort is better spent monitoring the handful of concentrated filers closely than scanning the full ranking evenly.
Filings peaked at 5 in 2023 and the evidence shows a -100% change from 2021 (1 filing) to 2024 (0 filings) — a genuine three-year drop over that specific window. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline. A clearer trend read will only be possible once those years finish publishing.
Metal extraction and refining (IPC class C22B) appears in 50.0% of the 42 records in scope, making it the single busiest claim territory. Wastewater treatment (C02F) follows at 38.1%, and catalysis-adjacent processing (B01J) at 31.0%. Because records often carry more than one IPC class, many filings combine extraction with effluent handling in a single claim set rather than treating them separately.
EP3556873A1, filed by Paul Scherrer Institut in 2019, covers a process for recovering individual rare-earth metals from fluorescent-powder e-waste using mineral-acid digestion followed by selective liquid-liquid extraction to reach commercial purity levels. It is notable for targeting individually separated rare earths rather than a mixed concentrate, which is the harder and more valuable technical problem. Anyone working on rare-earth recovery from lamp phosphor or similar e-waste streams should review its claim scope before designing a similar acid-digestion route.
The smaller IPC shares — separation processes (B01D, 7.1%), object sorting (B07C, 7.1%) and food-adjacent classes (A23L, 7.1%) — carry far fewer filings than the crowded C22B/C02F overlap, suggesting less-contested claim territory around sorting-integrated or novel separation steps. Battery-specific recovery (H01M, 9.5%) is also comparatively lighter despite batteries being a major e-waste stream, which points to an underexploited area for battery-specific hydrometallurgical claims distinct from the broader metal-extraction filings.
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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.