Rare Earth Recovery from Phosphogypsum Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing nearly quadrupled from 2021 to 2024, climbing from 6 to 20 records a year (+233%) before publication lag makes the last two years look artificially quiet.
- Five assignees already hold 54.5% of the field, and the top ten hold 74.2% of all 132 records in scope — this is a concentrated space with a long single-filer tail behind it.
- Metal extraction (C22B) dominates at 75.8% of records, while fertiliser-adjacent classes like C05B and C05F each sit near 12%, pointing to where recovery chemistry has and hasn't been claimed.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (20) — 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 132 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Phosphogypsum and mineral tailings hold rare earth concentrations that are too low for conventional ore processing but high enough to matter as primary supply tightens. This landscape tracks patent activity built specifically around recovering those rare earths from acidic secondary sources — phosphate industry byproducts, coal waste leachate, and legacy tailings — rather than from virgin ore. The scope is defined by claims that combine leaching efficiency, radionuclide handling, acid consumption, selective precipitation, gangue mineral separation or solid-liquid separation with rare earth recovery from these secondary streams.
132 published records sit in scope across a filing window running from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity and should not be read as a slowdown.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 132 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A sharp run-up through 2022, then a lag-distorted tail
Filing rose from 6 records in 2021 to 20 in 2024, a +233% increase over that three-year span, with 2022 standing as the peak year so far at 25 records. Readings for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be treated as a decline.
Extraction and refining claims dominate; fertiliser-adjacent classes lag
C22B (metal extraction & refining) appears in 75.8% of the 132 records, far ahead of C01F (rare-earth compounds) at 38.6%. Waste-handling and fertiliser classes — B09B, C02F, C05B, C05F — each sit between 11% and 17%, showing recovery chemistry claims outnumber downstream waste and fertiliser-integration claims by a wide margin.
Shares are the percentage of the 132 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Rare Earth Recovery from Phosphogypsum and Tailings with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about rare earth recovery from phosphogypsum and tailings and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this space
Low-cost selective precipitation circuit for recovery of rare earth elements from acid leachate of coal waste
The process recovers rare earth elements from acidic media derived from coal and coal byproducts through sequential precipitation followed by selective precipitation, with an optional re-precipitation step to lift rare earth concentrations further and strip out contaminant metals.Filed by University of Kentucky Research Foundation, published 2019-05-09; the most-cited record in this dataset at 34 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20190136344A1 | Low-cost selective precipitation circuit for recovery of rare earth elements from acid leachate of coal waste | 34 |
| 2 | US3540860A | Acid regeneration | 26 |
| 3 | US20180363098A1 | Method of recovering rare earth aluminum and silicon from rare earth-containing aluminum-silicon scraps | 24 |
| 4 | WO2013090817A1 | Rare earth recovery from phosphor | 21 |
| 5 | US20130156660A1 | Rare earth recovery from phosphor | 11 |
| 6 | US20220040707A1 | Compounds, methods, and systems for benefication of rare earth elements by flotation and gravity concentration | 10 |
| 7 | US20210140012A1 | Process for the recovery of rare earths | 8 |
| 8 | AU2016200606A1 | A method for recovering phosphorus and rare earth from rare earth containing phosphorite | 8 |
| 9 | US11155897B2 | Low-cost selective precipitation circuit for recovery of rare earth elements from acid leachate of coal waste | 6 |
| 10 | WO2022173349A1 | Chemical processing of sewage sludge ash | 5 |
Citation counts reflect influence within this searched corpus and skew toward older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and technology-composition figures above.
The field is top-heavy, with a long tail behind it
Five assignees account for 54.5% of all 132 records in scope, and the top ten climb to 74.2%. The leader alone holds 24 records against a fifth-place figure of 8 and a tenth-place figure of 5 — a steep drop-off that leaves a wide single-filing tail below the ranked leaders.
Activity accelerated hard, then the data goes quiet
Filings rose from 6 in 2021 to 20 in 2024, peaking at 25 in 2022. The apparent tail-off after that is a publication-lag artefact, not evidence of cooling interest — 2025 and 2026 filings are still being published.
Extraction chemistry crowds the claim space
Three in four records in scope touch C22B metal extraction and refining, while fertiliser-integration classes C05B and C05F each sit near 12%. Claim space around downstream fertiliser co-processing and waste stream reuse is comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to rare earth recovery from phosphogypsum and tailings, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the collaboration is
The ranked leaders span mining majors, university research foundations and national research bodies rather than a single industry type — a sign that this technology is still being proven out across multiple institutional paths at once.
A single assignee holds the most filings by a wide margin
The leading assignee's 24 records sit well above the fifth-place count of 8, making this one of the more concentrated corners of rare earth recovery IP.
Co-filing is rare and clusters around a few institutions
Only three co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest linking an Indian technology institute with a Singapore-based recovery firm at 5 shared records — most other activity is filed solo.
The US, Australia and the PCT route carry the most volume
The United States leads receiving offices with 39 filings, followed by Australia and WIPO's PCT route at 14 each, and India at 10 — a spread that tracks where phosphate and mineral tailings processing capacity already sits.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Arafura Resources Limited | 0 | — |
| EasyMining Sweden AB | 0 | — |
| Grirem Advanced Materials Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Tecnicas Reunidas SA | 0 | -100% |
| Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur | 0 | — |
| University of Kentucky Research Foundation | 0 | — |
| Colorado School of Mines | 0 | -100% |
| His Majesty the King in Right of Canada as represented by the Minister of Natural Resources | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The figures above show concentration and composition; turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claims and specific assignees.
Map the white space claim by claim
Fertiliser co-processing and radionuclide handling show thin filing density relative to core extraction chemistry — worth checking whether that reflects open space or simply harder-to-search claim language.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the leading assignees' recent activity
A single assignee holds 24 of 132 records; watching their most recent filings and any co-assignee shifts is a faster read on where the field moves next than the aggregate trend line.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape scopes in patents that recover rare earth elements from secondary acidic sources — phosphate industry byproducts like phosphogypsum, coal waste leachate, and legacy mineral tailings — rather than from freshly mined ore. The claims typically combine a recovery step with leaching efficiency, acid consumption, selective precipitation, radionuclide handling, gangue mineral separation, or solid-liquid separation. Records that only describe primary ore processing without a secondary-source or byproduct angle fall outside this scope.
Patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so records filed in 2025 and 2026 are still working their way through publication and are undercounted in this dataset. The real peak so far is 2022 at 25 records, and growth from 2021 to 2024 was +233%, rising from 6 to 20 records. Treat the last one to two years of any trend chart as incomplete rather than as a genuine decline.
Both, depending on where you look. The top 5 assignees hold 54.5% of all 132 records in scope and the top 10 hold 74.2%, which is a meaningfully concentrated core — but that still leaves a long tail of single-filing entrants below the ranked leaders. Concentration is heaviest in core extraction chemistry (C22B), while fertiliser-integration and waste-handling classes show comparatively thinner filing density.
US20190136344A1, filed by University of Kentucky Research Foundation and published 2019-05-09, is the most-cited record in this dataset at 34 citations and covers a selective precipitation circuit for recovering rare earth elements from acid leachate of coal waste. It's a strong starting point for freedom-to-operate review specifically because of its citation weight within this corpus, though citation counts favour older filings and should be checked against more recent claims too. Reviewing its claim scope alongside the other high-citation records in the same table gives a reasonable first pass on where selective precipitation claim space is already occupied.
Fertiliser co-processing integration (C05B, C05F) and waste-stream classes (B09B, C02F) each sit between roughly 11% and 17% of the 132 records in scope, well below the 75.8% carried by core metal extraction and refining claims (C22B). That gap suggests recovery chemistry itself is heavily claimed while downstream integration with fertiliser production and wastewater compliance is comparatively thin. High density in core extraction claims doesn't mean the underlying technology is mature — it means that particular claim space is occupied, which is a different thing.
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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.