Modular & Containerized Reverse Osmosis Patent Landscape
The modular and containerized reverse osmosis space is a concentrated, growth-stage field with 59 patent families on record, where the top five filers account for half of the hundred largest filers’ combined output. Fluence Water Israel Ltd and Desalitech hold commanding positions, while a cohort of smaller specialists and new entrants continues to broaden the competitive field.
A concentrated field led by two Israeli water-tech specialists
Fluence Water Israel Ltd leads the ranking with 16 patent records, followed closely by Desalitech with 15. Together these two Israeli desalination specialists account for more than half of the top tier’s output, signaling that the deepest technical expertise is concentrated in a narrow group.
The top five filers — Fluence Water Israel Ltd, Desalitech, Katz Water Tech LLC, Murtech Inc, and Pure H2O — collectively represent 50% of the hundred largest filers’ combined total, confirming a pronounced concentration gap between the leading cluster and the long tail of single- or dual-record applicants.
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fluence Water Israel Ltd | 16 | |
| 2 | Desalitech | 15 | |
| 3 | Katz Water Tech LLC | 8 | |
| 4 | Murtech Inc. | 7 | |
| 5 | Pure H2O | 5 | |
| 6 | Riad A. Al Samadi | 3 | |
| 7 | NCH Corporation | 3 | |
| 8 | Eureka Resources LLC | 3 | |
| 9 | Adachi Svipegreen Pte Ltd | 2 | |
| 10 | Trilogy Environmental Systems | 2 |
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Jiangxi Baihui Environmental Protection Engineering Equipment Co., Ltd. | 2 | |
| 12 | H2O Reclamation Technologies | 2 | |
| 13 | Stanadyne Automotive Corporation | 2 | |
| 14 | Nanjing Wondux Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. | 2 | |
| 15 | Wuhan Jingwei Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | |
| 16 | Advanced Industrial Water | 1 | |
| 17 | Shanghai Tongjie Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | |
| 18 | Jingdezhen Heyi Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | |
| 19 | Zhongshui Zhipei (Sichuan) Smart Water Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | |
| 20 | Greenwaterzone New Water Co., Ltd. | 1 |
The leaders’ positions imply well-developed IP fences around core containerized-RO system architectures, particularly continuous closed-circuit desalination and high-recovery process configurations. Challengers entering this space must either design around established claims or carve out differentiated sub-system niches.
The most recent 18–24 months of data are subject to publication lag and likely understate actual filing activity; trend reads for 2024–2025 should be treated as provisional. Longer-window growth, applicant concentration, and technology-route coverage are therefore more reliable signals than the latest-year bar alone.
Multi-year growth with a dominant water-treatment core and sparse adjacent branches
The annual filing chart and IPC composition map together reveal a field that is expanding on a multi-year basis while remaining technically narrow, with virtually all activity anchored in two IPC classes.
Annual filing trend
Filing activity peaked sharply in 2017 at 17 patent records, then contracted before recovering strongly from 2021 onward, reaching 12 records in 2023. The three-year recent window sits 118% above the prior three-year window, confirming genuine multi-year growth even though annual volume has eased from the 2017 peak. Counts for 2024 and 2025 are provisional due to publication lag.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaTechnology composition
C02F (water and wastewater treatment) dominates with 102 patent records, and B01D (separation processes, including filtration and membrane technology) accounts for 59. All remaining IPC classes — including E21B (earth and rock drilling/wells), C01D (alkali-metal compounds), E02B (hydraulic engineering), and E03B (water supply and distribution) — collectively represent a small fraction, indicating that the field’s IP core is tightly anchored in membrane-separation and water-treatment chemistry.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaHighly cited patent families surfaced by the query
Citation-heavy patent families returned by the query. Use this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents.
Containerized desalination system
A water desalination system includes a first set of ultrafiltration membranes, a second set of ultrafiltration membranes, a first backwashing system configured to treat at least one of the first set of ultrafiltration membranes or the second set of ultrafiltration membranes with brine generated by a reverse osmosis process, and a second backwashing system… (excerpt from the patent abstract)
| # | Patent | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Method for treatment of circulating cooling water | 83 |
| 2 | Continuous Closed-Circuit Desalination Apparatus W… | 43 |
| 3 | Submersible reverse osmosis desalination apparatus… | 40 |
| 4 | Apparatus system and method to separate brine from… | 39 |
| 5 | Engine collant recycling apparatus and process | 39 |
| 6 | Apparatus, Method and System for Desalinating Water | 36 |
| 7 | Multi-use high water recovery process | 24 |
| 8 | Hybrid desalination system | 20 |
Ranked by total forward citations. Citation counts favour older and broadly cited patent families, and broad or adjacent patents may appear when they match the search scope. Treat this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents. Some patent titles may be shown in their original, non-English language where an accurate translation could not be guaranteed.
What the competitive structure means for R&D investment decisions
Four structural observations — on maturity, concentration, collaboration, and geography — define the risk-and-opportunity profile for any new entrant or incumbent expanding into this space.
Growth stage, past its early peak
The field carries a Growth lifecycle designation: the recent three-year filing window is 118% above the prior three-year window, confirming continued expansion on a multi-year basis. However, annual volume has eased from the 2017 peak of 17 patent records, and the most recent years are further understated by publication lag. The technology is neither nascent nor mature — core architectures are established, but system-level differentiation is still actively being claimed.
Growth stageTop-heavy, with a long tail of niche specialists
The top five filers hold 50% of the hundred largest filers’ combined patent records, and the top two alone (Fluence Water Israel Ltd at 16 records, Desalitech at 15) account for the dominant share of that total. Below the top five, the field fragments into a long tail of entities with one to eight records each, many of them small companies, individual inventors, or regional players — suggesting that adjacent system niches remain contestable.
High concentrationNo co-applicant activity detected
The collaboration evidence is pending — no co-applicant filings were identified in the current corpus. This absence may reflect the field’s composition of small independent innovators and tightly held specialist firms that protect their IP individually rather than through joint development agreements. It also suggests that cross-sector or university-industry consortia have not yet produced patented outputs in this specific modular-RO framing.
No co-filing detectedUS-led, with meaningful China and EPO coverage
The United States leads with 32 patent records, followed by China with 24 and Europe (EPO) with 11. Australia, WIPO (PCT), and Canada each carry notable coverage, consistent with deployment markets in water-stressed regions. Israel (4 records) reflects the home jurisdiction of the two largest applicants. The broad geographic spread of PCT and multi-jurisdiction filings indicates that leading applicants are protecting commercial deployment rights across key export markets.
US + CN + EPO coreGo beyond the landscape: Eureka’s TRIZ Solution agent breaks down an R&D problem and returns patented concept solutions, each with a technical approach and cited patent & literature evidence.
Co-filing pairs, ranked by the number of jointly-filed patent families.
Fluence Water Israel and Desalitech anchor the field; Katz Water Tech is a new entrant to watch
The two leaders share a focus on water-treatment and membrane-separation IPC classes but pursue distinct technical sub-strategies, while new entrants are beginning to stake claims in adjacent application areas.
Fluence Water Israel Ltd
Fluence Water Israel Ltd holds 16 patent records, the largest portfolio in this corpus. Its filings concentrate in C02F 1 (water and wastewater treatment core processes), B01D 65 (membrane maintenance and filtration), and C02F 103 (treatment of specific water types), reflecting a broad system-level approach to containerized desalination. No specific momentum trend is provided in the evidence for this applicant, but its accumulated position represents the deepest single-applicant IP fence in the field.
patent records: 16Katz Water Tech LLC
Katz Water Tech LLC holds 8 patent records and is flagged as a new entrant in the recent filing window, with 2 recent-period records signaling active portfolio building. Its technical emphasis spans B01D 61 (pressure-driven membrane processes), B01D 63 (membrane module configurations), and C02F 1 — a combination that suggests focus on modular membrane system architecture rather than end-to-end plant design. Its new-entrant status and oilfield-adjacent E21B filings (via associated inventor Gary P. Katz) indicate a potential bridging position between produced-water treatment and conventional RO deployment.
patent records: 8| Applicant | Recent (3 yrs) | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Katz Water Tech LLC | 2 | ▲ new entrant |
| NCH Corporation | 3 | ▲ new entrant |
Under-served branches adjacent to the dominant water-treatment core
Several IPC classes appear at the margins of the modular/containerized RO corpus with low patent-record counts, representing areas where technical adjacency is plausible but dedicated IP is sparse. These are observations of relative sparsity; they warrant further validation before being treated as investment priorities.
E21B · Oilfield and produced-water applications
E21B (earth and rock drilling, including wells) carries 8 patent records — the largest of the sparse adjacent branches — reflecting a real but underdeveloped connection between containerized RO and produced-water or brackish groundwater treatment in oilfield contexts. The associated inventor Gary P. Katz already bridges E21B and B01D in this corpus, confirming technical plausibility. An entrant with oilfield-water expertise could develop containerized RO configurations specifically engineered for high-TDS, high-silica, or hydrocarbon-contaminated feed streams, where standard municipal RO modules are not optimized.
Search this in Eureka →E03B · Distributed water supply and off-grid distribution
E03B (water supply and distribution systems) appears with only 2 patent records in this corpus, despite the logical fit between modular RO units and decentralized or off-grid water supply infrastructure. This sparse coverage suggests that system-level integration of containerized RO into distribution network design — including pressure management, storage coupling, and remote monitoring for last-mile supply — has not been substantively claimed. Entrants with expertise in rural or disaster-relief water infrastructure could find differentiated IP space here, provided claims are anchored in the RO-system interface rather than generic distribution hardware.
Search this in Eureka →How leading applicants differ across technology routes
Route coverage across the main technology branches in the current evidence set.
| Player | C02F 1 · Water & wastewater treatment | B01D 61 · Separation processes (filtration etc.) | C02F 103 · Water & wastewater treatment | C02F 9 · Water & wastewater treatment | B01D 65 · Separation processes (filtration etc.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fluence Water Israel Ltd | Strong · 13 | Strong · 7 | Strong · 11 | Absent | Strong · 12 |
| Seawater Desalination Technology Co., Ltd. | Strong · 8 | Strong · 5 | Strong · 5 | Absent | Absent |
| Murtech Inc. | Strong · 4 | Strong · 7 | Moderate · 2 | Absent | Moderate · 2 |
| Pure H2O | Strong · 5 | Absent | Absent | Strong · 5 | Absent |
| Katz Water Tech LLC | Strong · 4 | Strong · 4 | Moderate · 2 | Absent | Absent |
Frequently asked questions
The current corpus contains 59 patent families in scope. Patent records across jurisdictions and IPC classes can exceed this total because a single family may be filed in multiple countries and classified under multiple codes.
Fluence Water Israel Ltd leads with 16 patent records, followed by Desalitech with 15. These two Israeli water-technology specialists together dominate the top tier of the ranking.
The United States leads with 32 patent records, followed by China with 24 and Europe (EPO) with 11. Australia, WIPO (PCT), and Canada each carry meaningful coverage, reflecting the global deployment ambitions of the leading applicants.
The field is in a Growth lifecycle stage. The recent three-year filing window sits 118% above the prior three-year window, confirming multi-year expansion. Annual volume has eased from the 2017 peak of 17 patent records, and 2024–2025 counts are understated by publication lag, so the recent apparent softening should not be read as a real decline.
The most-cited work covers a method for treatment of circulating cooling water (83 citations), a continuous closed-circuit desalination apparatus (43 citations), a submersible reverse osmosis desalination apparatus (40 citations), and an apparatus and method to separate brine from water (39 citations). These documents define the technical foundations around which newer filings must differentiate.
The sparsest adjacent branches in the corpus are E21B (oilfield and produced-water applications, 8 patent records), C01D (alkali-metal compound recovery, 3 records), E02B (hydraulic and waterway engineering, 2 records), E03B (distributed water supply, 2 records), and F01P (engine cooling-water reuse, 2 records). E21B and E03B have the clearest technical entry paths — oilfield produced-water treatment and off-grid distribution integration, respectively — though all represent observations of sparsity rather than validated commercial opportunities.
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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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