Soil Remediation Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing has peaked and turned down. Annual filings rose from 26 in 2017 to a peak of 125 in 2021, then fell toward 9 in 2026 (partial year) — the field looks post-peak, not emergent.
- Leadership is concentrated but not locked. The top 5 assignees hold 16.8% of all 934 records and the top 10 hold 24.2% — real concentration, but three-quarters of filings sit outside the ranked leaders.
- Thermal desorption dominates the cited prior art. The most-cited records in the corpus are all in situ thermal desorption heater patents, meaning new heater-element claims face the densest citation history in the field.
What this landscape covers
This landscape draws on 934 published records filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine soil remediation search terms with technical anchors — thermal desorption, chemical oxidation, phytoremediation, verification sampling and cost-per-cubic-metre language — restricted to B09C1, C02F1 and A62D3 classification codes. That combination filters out general environmental filings and keeps the set focused on remediation-specific technical claims rather than broad water-treatment or waste-disposal art.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent year in the trend line understates actual filing activity. The receiving-office split shows China accounting for the large majority of records, with the United States, Canada, WIPO/PCT, Australia and Europe making up the remaining international filings.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 934 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A peak-and-decline filing curve
Filings climbed from 26 in 2017 to a peak of 125 in 2021, held near the midpoint at 76 in 2022, and have since declined toward 9 in 2026 — a partial year that will revise upward as publications catch up, but the multi-year direction is down from peak.
Concentrated in soil reclamation, thin elsewhere
B09C (soil and contaminated land reclamation) covers 98.8% of all 934 records, confirming this is a tightly scoped soil-remediation set rather than broad environmental art. Supporting technology areas are comparatively thin: separation processes (B01D) appear in 9.6% of records, crushing and grinding (B02C) in 4.9%, solid waste disposal (B09B) in 4.6%, drilling (E21B) in 4.1%, water treatment (C02F) in 3.9%, incineration (F23G) in 3.3% and electric heating circuits (H05B) in 3.2% — each class can co-occur with others, so shares add to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 934 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Soil Remediation Technology with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about soil remediation technology and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this field
Hot air circulation type indirect thermal desorption-based soil remediation system and method
A hot air circulation type indirect thermal desorption-based soil remediation system and method, belonging to the technical field of soil remediation. The system includes a thermal desorption reactor, a dust remover, a hot air circulating fan, a hot air heater, an air preheater, a combustion fan and a combustion device. By using thermal desorption gas generated by soil being heated and volatilized as a heat transfer medium and by a circular heating manner, hot air efficiently transfers heat to the soil by contact, and the high-temperature fume is kept from direct contact with the soil, so the system has the advantages of high treatment capacity, small equipment scale and the like.Filed by CSSC Nanjing Luzhou Environment Protection Co., Ltd., published 2023-07-11 as US11697142B2.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6485232B1 | Low cost, self regulating heater for use in an in situ thermal desorption soil remediation system | 373 |
| 2 | US20020018697A1 | Heater element for use in an in situ thermal desorption soil remediation system | 245 |
| 3 | US6632047B2 | Heater element for use in an in situ thermal desorption soil remediation system | 187 |
| 4 | US6854929B2 | Isolation of soil with a low temperature barrier prior to conductive thermal treatment of the soil | 175 |
| 5 | CN101947539A | 一种处理重金属污染物的土壤修复方法 | 113 |
| 6 | US5967230A | In situ water and soil remediation method and system | 87 |
| 7 | US6824328B1 | Vapor collection and treatment of off-gas from an in-situ thermal desorption soil remediation | 83 |
| 8 | US20080207981A1 | Soil remediation method and composition | 68 |
| 9 | US8206062B2 | Soil remediation method and composition | 55 |
| 10 | US7976241B2 | Soil remediation method and composition | 54 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings — treat them as a signal of technical foundation, not of what is currently active.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once volume, timing and citation weight are put side by side.
The field has passed its filing peak
Annual filings rose steadily from 26 in 2017 to 125 in 2021, held near 76 at the 2022 midpoint, and have declined since. Even allowing for an 18-month publication lag understating 2025–2026, the multi-year trajectory is downward from a clear peak rather than accelerating.
Leadership is real but leaves most filings open
The top 5 assignees combine for 16.8% of all 934 records and the top 10 for 24.2%. That is enough concentration to matter for freedom-to-operate checks against the leaders, but roughly three-quarters of the corpus sits with entrants outside the ranked group.
Thermal desorption heater claims carry the deepest prior art
The most-cited records in this corpus are in situ thermal desorption heater-element patents, one drawing 373 citations. New filings on heater design or heat-transfer configuration will need to differentiate against this specific citation cluster rather than the field broadly.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to soil remediation technology, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The leader holds 43 records against a fifth-place figure of 20 and a tenth-place figure of 12 — a steep drop-off after the top few names, then a long tail across the rest of the 100-company ranking. Co-assignee activity is concentrated among a small cluster of Nanjing-based filers who repeatedly appear together, suggesting a regional research-industry collaboration rather than a single dominant corporate program.
A single leader well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 43 records, more than double the fifth-place figure of 20, indicating a sustained, focused filing program rather than opportunistic filing.
Fragmented ownership beyond the top ten
The ranking runs across 100 companies with counts dropping to 12 by tenth place, pointing to a fragmented competitive set where no single filer controls the space.
Regional research clusters file jointly
The strongest co-assignee pairing shares 27 filings, and the next two strongest pairs each share 22 — all involving the same small group of Nanjing-linked research and engineering entities.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. | 0 | — |
| CSSC Nanjing Luzhou Environment Protection Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China | 0 | — |
| Nanjing Tech University | 0 | — |
| Shell Canada Limited | 0 | — |
| Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Beijing Construction Engineering Environmental Remediation Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| INNOVA SOIL TECH | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to specific next checks rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate against the heater-patent cluster
Any new thermal desorption heater or heat-transfer design should be checked against the specific highly-cited heater-element records in this corpus before drafting claims.
Explore thermal desorption prior artAssess the declining filing trend before committing budget
A post-peak filing curve can mean either a maturing, well-covered technology or a shift toward trade secrecy — worth confirming with a claim-scope read of recent filings.
Review recent filing activityLook at the under-claimed adjacent branches
Electric heating circuit integration, drilling-coupled remediation and incineration off-gas handling each show low overlap with the core B09C class, which may leave room for differentiated claims.
Map white space in EurekaCommon questions on soil remediation patents
Within this 934-record dataset, one assignee leads with 43 records, well ahead of the fifth-place figure of 20 and tenth-place figure of 12. The top 5 assignees together account for 16.8% of all 934 records and the top 10 for 24.2%, so while there is a clear leader, the majority of filings sit with a long tail of 100 ranked companies rather than a handful of dominant players. Anyone assessing competitive risk should look at both the leader's portfolio and the broader tail, since most activity happens outside the top names.
No — filings rose from 26 in 2017 to a peak of 125 in 2021, held near 76 at the 2022 midpoint, and have declined since, with 2026 (a partial year) showing 9 filings so far. Publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the most recent one to two years will revise upward as more records publish. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year trend points down from a 2021 peak rather than continued growth.
This dataset is filtered to B09C1 (soil and contaminated land reclamation), C02F1 (water and wastewater treatment) and A62D3 (destroying or modifying harmful chemical substances), and B09C dominates the resulting records at 98.8% of the 934 total. Supporting classes include separation processes (B01D, 9.6%), crushing and grinding (B02C, 4.9%), solid waste disposal (B09B, 4.6%), drilling (E21B, 4.1%), water treatment (C02F, 3.9%), incineration (F23G, 3.3%) and electric heating circuits (H05B, 3.2%). Because a single record can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to more than 100%.
US11697142B2, filed by CSSC Nanjing Luzhou Environment Protection and published 2023-07-11, claims a hot air circulation indirect thermal desorption system that uses thermal desorption gas itself as the heat transfer medium in a circulating loop, keeping high-temperature combustion fumes from directly contacting the soil. The claimed system architecture — reactor, dust remover, circulating fan, air heater, preheater and combustion device working together — is aimed at higher treatment capacity with a smaller equipment footprint than direct-fume designs. Anyone designing an indirect thermal desorption system should review this claim set closely, particularly the heat-transfer-medium and fume-isolation elements.
The clearest gaps sit in branches with low overlap against the dominant B09C classification: electric heating circuit integration (H05B, 3.2% of records), drilling-coupled remediation wellhead design (E21B, 4.1%), and incineration off-gas treatment coupling (F23G, 3.3%) are all thinly represented relative to the core soil-reclamation class. Verification-sampling automation is another area implied by the search scope but not showing up as a distinct dense cluster in the classification data. These are not proof of an empty field, but they are areas where claim density is materially lower than in the core thermal desorption and heater-element space.
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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.