Cryogenic Stage Recovery Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (900 records) with 2024 (653) — 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 48,404 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset gathers 48,404 published records matched against cryogenic stage recovery terminology, spanning 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. The search string ties together documents that treat cryogenic handling, staged separation and recovery together, which pulls in filings from launch-vehicle propellant systems as well as adjacent industrial gas, refining and separation technology that shares the same underlying thermal and phase-separation engineering.
Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Read the 2025 and 2026 bars as provisional, not as a genuine drop-off.
Filing trend and technology mix
Two views matter here: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density. Both are read against the full 48,404-record set, not against the ranked assignee list.
Filing trend: rise, peak, cool-down
Annual filings climbed from 732 in 2017 to a peak of 1,017 in 2022, then eased to 653 by 2024 — a -27% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
Where the claims sit
F25J (gas liquefaction & separation) covers 10.1% of the 48,404 records, ahead of B01D separation processes at 8.5% and C01B inorganic compounds at 7.4%. Smaller footholds in C07C, C10G, A61K, E21B and B01J show the field's spillover into refining, drilling and even medicinal-preparation classifications, a reminder that the search string catches broader cryogenic and separation engineering, not launch hardware alone.
Shares are the percentage of the 48,404 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Try EurekaA representative recent filing
US20260048362A1 — Simultaneous carbon dioxide and hydrogen recovery from the tail gas stream of a sulfur recovery unit
Processes and systems are provided for treating the tail gas stream of a sulfur recovery plant. The process comprises treating the compressed tail gas stream in a pre-treatment unit to remove impurities; separating the dry stream in a first-stage membrane unit selective to carbon dioxide and hydrogen; reducing the temperature of the cryogenic feed in a cryogenic cooler to produce a cryogenic stream; separating the cryogenic feed in a knock-drum to produce liquid carbon dioxide and a membrane feed; and separating the membrane feed in a second-stage membrane unit to produce a rubbery membrane permeate and retentate.Filed by Saudi Arabian Oil Company, published 2026-02-19.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US9099863B2 | Surgical generator and related method for mitigating overcurrent conditions | 1,555 |
| 2 | US20050130173A1 | Methods of amplifying and sequencing nucleic acids | 1,459 |
| 3 | US7323305B2 | Methods of amplifying and sequencing nucleic acids | 1,372 |
| 4 | US20010051766A1 | Endoscopic smart probe and method | 1,285 |
| 5 | US20140163664A1 | Integrated system for the ballistic and nonballistic infixion and retrieval of implants with or without drug … | 967 |
| 6 | US20160045841A1 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 860 |
| 7 | US5733280A | Cryogenic epicardial mapping and ablation | 802 |
| 8 | US6232352B1 | Methanol plant retrofit for acetic acid manufacture | 724 |
| 9 | US20100210745A1 | Molecular Healing of Polymeric Materials, Coatings, Plastics, Elastomers, Composites, Laminates, Adhesives, a… | 718 |
| 10 | US5334181A | Cryosurgical system for destroying tumors by freezing | 669 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within this searched corpus — treat them as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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The composition and concentration figures point to a field that is dense in a few core classes but still open at its edges.
A lead, not a lock
5,011 of 48,404 records sit with the five leading assignees, and the top 10 combined reach 17.1% (8,263 records). That leaves the large majority of filing activity spread across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
Cooling, not collapsing
Annual filings fell from 900 in 2021 to 653 in 2024. That is the last year the data treats as complete; 2025 and 2026 numbers will rise as publication catches up, so this should not be read as an accelerating decline.
Gas liquefaction is the densest class
F25J (gas liquefaction & separation) is the single largest IPC subclass by record share, ahead of B01D separation processes and C01B inorganic compounds. Filing density here signals occupied claim space, not settled or mature technology.
US and EPO carry the bulk of filings
The United States receiving office accounts for the largest single share of records, with Europe (EPO), WIPO/PCT and Canada following. Filing strategy in this field still runs primarily through US and European offices before broader PCT coverage.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to reusable launch vehicles: cryogenic stage recovery patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The figures here describe the shape of the field. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going claim by claim against the specific process route in question.
Map a specific process route against the leaders' claims
Pick the sub-process — membrane staging, knock-drum separation, cryogenic cooling — and check it directly against the leading assignees' active claim sets rather than the aggregate trend.
Explore this topic in EurekaTrack the 2025–2026 filings as they publish
Because of the publication lag, the real trajectory of the -27% cooling will only be confirmed as 2025 and 2026 records continue to post over the next 12–18 months.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The search string combines documents that reference cryogenic handling, staged process separation and recovery together, so the corpus captures both launch-vehicle propellant recovery concepts and adjacent industrial applications such as gas liquefaction, refining tail-gas treatment and separation engineering. This is why the technology composition shows heavy weight in classes like F25J and B01D alongside smaller shares in fields like drilling and medicinal preparations. A reader focused narrowly on aerospace hardware should treat the IPC breakdown as a guide to where to narrow further, not as an aerospace-only picture.
Filings rose from 732 in 2017 to a peak of 1,017 in 2022, then fell to 653 by 2024, a -27% move over that three-year span, and 2024 is the last year the dataset treats as complete. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the lower figures shown for 2025 and 2026 are not evidence of a further decline — they will rise as more filings post. On the evidence available, the honest description is a cooling from a 2022 peak, not a collapse.
The five leading assignees together hold 5,011 of the 48,404 records in scope, or 10.4%, and the top 10 combined reach 17.1% (8,263 records). That leaves the large majority of the field distributed across a long tail of smaller filers, so a newcomer is not automatically boxed out by a handful of dominant portfolios. The ranked list itself covers 100 companies total, and it is the full ranking returned by the data, not a curated top-50 or top-100 selection.
The dense claim space sits in gas liquefaction and separation (F25J), general separation processes (B01D) and inorganic compound handling (C01B), which together carry the highest record shares in the dataset. Branches that combine membrane-based separation with cryogenic cooling stages, or that address co-recovery of multiple gas streams from a single process train, show comparatively thinner coverage. Those adjacent, less-crowded branches are the more promising places to look for a defensible first claim.
Not much, based on the data: only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the ranked assignee set, and even the strongest pairing accounts for 109 shared records against a field of 48,404. Most filing here happens under a single assignee rather than through joint ventures or co-development filings. Anyone assessing competitive risk should therefore focus on individual assignees' portfolios rather than expecting to find a web of alliances to map.
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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.