Lead Smelting and Recycling Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- 42.8% of all 138 records sit with just five assignees, so a freedom-to-operate check starts narrow, not broad.
- 81.2% of records touch C22B (metal extraction & refining), while furnace hardware and waste-handling classes each stay under 16%.
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 14 and the most recent full year shows fewer filings — expected given publication lag, not necessarily a slowdown.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 138 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 138 published records filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine lead smelting or lead battery recycling process claims with a downstream treatment step — paste desulfurization, antimony removal, slag fuming, emission control, reductant selection or bullion refining. The scope is deliberately process-level: a record needs both a smelting/recycling route and one of these treatment steps to be in scope, which keeps the set focused on operable metallurgical routes rather than general battery chemistry.
Because a single record can span several IPC subclasses, the technology composition below sums to more than the record total — that overlap is itself informative, since it shows how tightly extraction chemistry (C22B) is bundled with furnace design and waste handling in the same filings.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 138 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 14 in 2022. The most recent year (2026) shows 0, which reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual stop in activity — recent-year figures should be read as understated, not final.
IPC subclass composition
C22B (metal extraction & refining) appears in 81.2% of the 138 records, confirming this is fundamentally an extraction-chemistry field. Furnace detail claims (F27D, 15.2%) and solid-waste handling (B09B, 13.0%) are the next-most common but sit well below C22B, and separation processes (B01D, 8.7%), electrolytic production (C25C, 4.3%) and catalysis (B01J, 2.9%) are each claimed by a minority of filers.
Shares are the percentage of the 138 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Lead Smelting and Recycling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about lead smelting and recycling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
CA2881600A1 — Recovery of zinc from lead slag
A method for recovering zinc from slag derived from lead smelting comprises subjecting the slag to a leaching step under conditions in which zinc is dissolved into solution and silica present in the slag dissolves and re-precipitates in a form that is readily separable from liquid, and recovering zinc from the solution. The slag may be subjected to leaching in at least two stages, with a first stage removing only part of the zinc and a second stage forming a pregnant leaching solution. The method may also be used to remove SO2 from a gas stream using the SO2-containing gas stream.Filed by Glencore Queensland Limited, this is the landscape's clearest example of a slag-valorisation claim that ties zinc recovery to SO2 abatement in one process.
View full filing| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160045841A1 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 857 |
| 2 | WO2014153570A2 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 219 |
| 3 | US4741770A | Zinc smelting process using oxidation zone and reduction zone | 33 |
| 4 | US20140008238A1 | Process for Recovering Valuable Metals from Precious metal Smelting Slag | 29 |
| 5 | JP2006030801A | Fixing member | 27 |
| 6 | US5616168A | Hydrometallurgical processing of impurity streams generated during the pyrometallurgy of copper | 23 |
| 7 | GB2196649A | Smelting complex sulphidic materials containing lead, zinc and optionally copper | 19 |
| 8 | US3847595A | Lead smelting process | 15 |
| 9 | US20200208238A1 | Method for comprehensively processing noble lead | 14 |
| 10 | WO2014153570A9 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 14 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read them as a signal of influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once concentration, composition and momentum are read together.
Filing sits with a narrow group, not the whole field
The top five assignees combined account for 42.8% of all 138 records in scope, and the top ten reach 68.1%. A ranking of 41 companies total means most of the remaining filers appear once or twice — a long tail rather than a second tier of scaled competitors.
Extraction chemistry dominates, hardware claims are secondary
C22B claims appear in more than four out of five records, while furnace design (F27D) and waste handling (B09B) each sit under 16%. That gap suggests process chemistry is where the claim density is thickest, and equipment-level claims have comparatively more room.
Activity has not been steadily rising
Filings climbed from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 14 in 2022, without a clean upward growth curve across the period. The zero recorded for 2026 reflects publication lag rather than a stop, but the absence of a clear post-2022 acceleration is itself notable for a field with active recycling-policy tailwinds.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to lead smelting and recycling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and what is still open
The ranked leaders cluster around metallurgical engineering houses and integrated miners; specific downstream sub-steps remain thinly claimed by comparison.
A single leader, then a fast drop-off
The top-ranked assignee holds 14 records against a fifth-place figure of 8 and a tenth-place figure of 5 — concentration falls off quickly outside the top few names.
Co-filing is limited and mostly bilateral
Only 8 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest linking a research organisation with a specialist services partner at 4 shared records — most filers here work alone rather than through joint ventures.
Filing is split across several offices, not one home market
The United States (26) and Australia (23) lead receiving offices, ahead of EPO (15), WIPO/PCT (14), Canada (13) and Japan (10) — a spread consistent with a globally traded commodity rather than a single-jurisdiction industry.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Glencore Technology Pty Ltd | 0 | — |
| Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) | 0 | — |
| China ENFI Engineering Corporation | 0 | — |
| Glencore Queensland Limited | 0 | — |
| Yanggu Xiangguang Copper Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| STEEL DYNAMICS INVESTMENTS LLC | 0 | — |
| STANNUM GROUP | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to next steps rather than final answers — each of these narrows the question a reader actually has.
Check the leader's full claim scope
A 14-record leader position can mean either broad coverage of the core process or narrow repeated claims on one step — worth pulling the full family before assuming either.
Explore assignee filingsTest the under-claimed branches directly
Low record counts in electrolytic refining or catalytic off-gas treatment could mean genuine white space or simply that this search string doesn't capture adjacent filings under different terms.
Run a targeted searchTrack the most-cited prior art
The highest-cited records in this set are decades old in places — confirm whether their claims have lapsed before treating them as live blocking art.
Review citation chainsCommon questions on lead smelting and recycling patents
The ranking covers 41 companies, with the top-ranked assignee holding 14 of the 138 records in scope and the top five combined accounting for 42.8% of all records. That leaves a long tail of single- or double-filing entrants, so a competitive check should look at both the concentrated top group and the specific players active in the sub-area of interest, since the tail includes specialist engineering and research organisations rather than only large miners. Because families are the fairer comparison unit than raw document counts, checking family size behind any given assignee's record count is a useful next step.
C22B, metal extraction and refining, appears in 81.2% of the 138 records in scope, making it by far the dominant IPC subclass. Furnace details (F27D, 15.2%) and solid waste disposal (B09B, 13.0%) are the next most common but sit well below C22B, with separation processes, electrolytic production and catalysis each appearing in single-digit percentages. This pattern indicates that most filing activity centres on the extraction chemistry itself rather than on furnace hardware or downstream waste handling, which is where comparatively more claim space remains open.
Filings rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 14 in 2022, but the record count is too short to state a reliable growth rate once publication lag is accounted for. The most recent year in the dataset shows zero filings, which reflects the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication rather than an actual halt in activity. A reader should treat the last one to two years of any filing trend as understated and revisit the trend once more recent publications land.
CA2881600A1, assigned to Glencore Queensland Limited, claims a method for recovering zinc from lead smelting slag through a leaching process that also allows silica to re-precipitate in an easily separable form, with an optional second leaching stage and an option to use the process to remove SO2 from a gas stream. It matters because it ties zinc recovery directly to sulfur dioxide abatement within a single process, which is a more integrated claim than either step filed alone. Anyone developing a slag-valorisation or SO2-scrubbing process in this space should review its claim scope closely before finalising a process design.
Based on the IPC composition, branches like electrolytic bullion refining (C25C, 4.3% of records) and catalytic or physical-process treatment (B01J, 2.9% of records) carry far fewer filings than the dominant C22B extraction chemistry. This does not guarantee the space is legally open — it may reflect that filers use different search terms or that some methods are held as trade secrets rather than patented — but it does mark these branches as worth a targeted search before assuming they are occupied. Antimony removal reagent selection and paste desulfurization additive chemistry are similarly specific sub-steps worth checking independently of the broader smelting claims.
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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.