Ash Mineral Recovery Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (5 records) with 2024 (2) — 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 232 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Ash mineral recovery sits at an unusual junction: some of the most-cited records in this dataset are not about ash at all, but about in situ thermal recovery of hydrocarbon formations — a lineage that shares IPC classes and processing logic with today’s ash-leaching and mineral-extraction filings. That overlap shapes the whole field. A filer entering ash mineral recovery is not just competing with waste-treatment specialists; they are working in claim space long occupied by oil-and-gas engineering groups.
The 232 records in scope span drilling and refining classes alongside water treatment, metal extraction and inorganic-compound chemistry, which means a single ash-processing patent can easily touch four or five IPC subclasses at once. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025-2026 figures in any trend understate real filing activity for those years.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 232 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings rose to a peak of 7 records in 2022, then declined to 2 records in 2024 — a 60% drop from the 5 records filed in 2021. Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete given publication lag rather than as evidence of a continued fall.
IPC subclass composition
E21B (earth and rock drilling) leads at 27.6% of the 232 records, closely followed by C10G (hydrocarbon refining) at 21.1%. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to well over 100% and should be read as overlap, not as a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 232 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Toner recycling method and toner recycling system
A toner recycling method and system uses two personal computers and a display: one manages information on toner collected at a collection site, the other generates recycling information covering the granule manufacturer's toner requirements, and a display at the collection site shows that recycling information. Collected toner is used to manufacture flux by mixing with aluminum dross, aluminum ash and aluminum dregs.Filed by Ricoh, published 2004-01-08 — an early example of ash and dross being routed into a defined downstream material stream rather than disposed of.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160045841A1 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 861 |
| 2 | US20030201098A1 | In situ recovery from a hydrocarbon containing formation using one or more simulations | 310 |
| 3 | US20040020642A1 | In situ recovery from a hydrocarbon containing formation using conductor-in-conduit heat sources with an elec… | 305 |
| 4 | US20030196789A1 | In situ thermal processing of a hydrocarbon containing formation and upgrading of produced fluids prior to fu… | 297 |
| 5 | US20030079877A1 | In situ thermal processing of a relatively impermeable formation in a reducing environment | 297 |
| 6 | US20030146002A1 | Removable heat sources for in situ thermal processing of an oil shale formation | 278 |
| 7 | US20040040715A1 | In situ production of a blending agent from a hydrocarbon containing formation | 237 |
| 8 | US20030080604A1 | In situ thermal processing and inhibiting migration of fluids into or out of an in situ oil shale formation | 227 |
| 9 | US20030155111A1 | In situ thermal processing of a tar sands formation | 220 |
| 10 | WO2014153570A2 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 219 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside a searched corpus; read them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four read-outs from the ranking, the trend and the technology composition, framed around where a new filer would actually sit.
The top of the field is dense, not crowded everywhere
The five most active assignees hold 38.8% of the 232 records in scope, and the top ten push that to 50.4%. That leaves roughly half the field distributed across 90 other ranked filers, many with only one or two records apiece.
Activity has cooled from its 2022 peak
Filings peaked at 7 records in 2022 and fell to 2 by 2024, a 60% decline from the 5 filed in 2021. That is a real pullback in a technology that was already thinly filed, not a mature field settling down.
Oil-and-gas thermal recovery classes dominate the IPC mix
E21B (drilling) and C10G (hydrocarbon refining) together touch roughly half the corpus, ahead of C22B metal extraction at 13.4% and C02F water treatment at 12.1%. Filers focused purely on ash processing are working inside claim space shaped by a much larger industry.
Filing is concentrated in a handful of receiving offices
The United States receives the largest share of filings at 79, ahead of Australia at 43 and China at 25, with WIPO PCT filings at 24. India and Canada trail well behind. That spread points to where enforcement and freedom-to-operate checks matter most.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to resource recovery & urban mining: ash mineral recovery patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a dense top tier, a cooling filing trend, and heavy technical overlap with a much larger adjacent industry. Here is how to act on that.
Map freedom-to-operate against the top ten
With half the field held by ten assignees, a claim chart against those filers' most-cited records is the fastest way to find out whether a planned process step is already blocked.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaWatch the co-assignee clusters
The strongest co-assignee pairs in this dataset point to active joint filing relationships rather than isolated one-off patents, which usually signals a live commercial programme worth tracking.
Track assignee activity in EurekaRe-run the trend once 2025-2026 fills in
The apparent slowdown from 2022 rests partly on years still affected by publication lag. A follow-up pull in 12-18 months will show whether the decline held or reversed.
Set up a monitoring search in EurekaCommon questions on ash mineral recovery patents
The ranking is dominated at the top: the five most active assignees together hold 38.8% of the 232 records in scope, and the top ten hold 50.4%. Several of the leading names come from oil-and-gas engineering rather than dedicated recycling firms, reflecting the overlap between in situ thermal recovery technology and ash-processing chemistry. Beyond the top ten, the remaining roughly 90 ranked entities in the dataset typically hold only one or two records each, so the field has a long tail of narrow, single-purpose filings rather than a broad base of active competitors.
Filing peaked at 7 records in 2022 and dropped to 2 records by 2024, a 60% decline from the 5 records filed in 2021. That is a genuine pullback rather than noise, since 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as complete. The 2025 and 2026 figures in the dataset are still filling in because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so they should not yet be read as confirming or reversing that decline.
IPC class E21B, covering earth and rock drilling, appears in 27.6% of the 232 records, and C10G, covering hydrocarbon oil refining, appears in 21.1% — together these point to a strong lineage from oil-and-gas thermal recovery engineering. Metal extraction (C22B, 13.4%) and water and wastewater treatment (C02F, 12.1%) follow, with mining and quarrying, inorganic compound chemistry, and wet separation of solids each in single digits. Because a single filing can carry several of these classes, the shares add up to more than the total record count and should be read as overlap rather than a strict breakdown.
The United States receives the largest volume of filings at 79, followed by Australia at 43 and China at 25. WIPO's PCT route accounts for 24 filings, which points to applicants seeking multi-jurisdiction protection before choosing national phases, while India and Canada see smaller but still notable volumes at 13 and 9 respectively. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should prioritise the US and Australian registers given their filing volumes here.
The technology composition shows heavy density in drilling, refining and general metal extraction, but comparatively lighter coverage in the water-treatment and inorganic-compound classes (C02F at 12.1% and C01F at 7.8%) relative to how central water chemistry is to real ash-leaching processes. That gap suggests underexplored claim space in process steps that combine ash leaching directly with water treatment or with alkaline-earth and rare-earth compound recovery, rather than treating them as separate downstream steps.
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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.