Solid Desiccant Dehydration Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Solid Desiccant and Molecular Sieve Dehydration Patents
Five filers hold 84.8% of the field. 117 of 138 records in scope sit with the top five assignees, leaving little room for a new entrant to build a broad position without licensing around them. Filings peaked at 20 in 2017, the busiest year in the window, then fell before rebuilding: 2021 to 2024 shows +400% growth (1 to 5 filings). 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent years should not be read as a slowdown.
- 1EXXONMOBIL UPSTREAM RESEARCH COMPANY(US)65
- 2UOP LLC23
- 3ENHANCED ENERGY GRP13
- 4EXXONMOBIL TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING CO8
- 5NUOVO PIGNONE SPA8
See the full solid desiccant and molecular sieve dehydration analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in solid desiccant and molecular sieve dehydration?
Within this 138-record dataset, filing is heavily concentrated: the top five assignees together hold 84.8% of all records, and the single leading assignee accounts for 65 records on its own. By the tenth-ranked assignee, counts have dropped to single digits, and the top ten combined cover 100% of the records in scope. This means nearly all documented activity sits with a small group of companies rather than being spread across many independent filers.
Is patent filing activity in this space growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 20 records and declined afterward, but the most recent complete years show renewed growth: filings rose from 1 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a 400% increase. Figures for 2025 and 2026 appear low but are not yet reliable indicators of a slowdown, since patent publication typically lags filing by about 18 months. Read the last one to two years of any trend chart as incomplete rather than declining.
What technology areas do these patents actually cover?
Most records combine separation process claims (IPC class B01D, 83.3% of records) with fuel-gas conditioning claims (C10L, 54.3%), indicating that dehydration equipment is usually claimed alongside downstream fuel-gas handling rather than in isolation. Smaller but active clusters exist in catalytic and physical processes (B01J, 15.9%) and gas liquefaction (F25J, 13.8%). Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% and should not be summed.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Solid Desiccant and Molecular Sieve Dehydration covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.