Thin Film Evaporation Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 10 families, then eased back toward the 2022 midpoint of zero — this is a mature, cyclical filing pattern rather than a technology in early growth.
- B01D separation claims dominate at 119 of 120 records, but the downstream chemistry riding on that hardware — C07C, C10G, C12P, C07D, C11B — is where the differentiation actually happens.
- Europe leads receiving offices with 27 filings, the US follows with 20, and China sits at just 7 — a filing footprint that looks thin relative to where thin film evaporation equipment is actually manufactured and deployed.
What this landscape covers
Thin film and wiped film evaporation covers a family of vacuum-driven separation techniques — thin film evaporation, wiped film evaporation and short path distillation — used to isolate heat-sensitive compounds under low residence time and controlled vacuum. The corpus here spans 120 patent families filed between 2017 and 2026, concentrated almost entirely under IPC subclass B01D, the separation-process classification, with secondary claim activity spilling into organic chemistry, refining, fermentation and polymer processing subclasses.
The pattern is not one of a young field expanding outward. Filing rose gradually to a 2021 peak of 10 families a year, then contracted. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years of the trend will fill in further as pending applications publish, but the shape through the observed peak already points to a technology whose core hardware claims are largely staked out, with newer activity clustering around specific feed chemistries rather than the evaporator design itself.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 120-family dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing activity, 2017–2026
Filings climbed from a single family in 2017 to a peak of 10 in 2021, dropped to zero at the 2022 midpoint, and the most recent year is partial — treat the tail end of this trend as understated rather than as a genuine collapse in interest.
IPC subclass distribution
B01D (separation processes) anchors nearly every record at 119 of 120, confirming this is fundamentally an equipment and process-conditions dataset. The next tier — C07C, C10G, C12P, C07D and C11B — shows where that equipment gets applied: petrochemical and hydrocarbon streams, fermentation broths, heterocyclic intermediates and fatty oil processing each account for a meaningful but secondary slice of claim language.
Shares are the percentage of the 120 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thin Film and Wiped Film Evaporation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thin film and wiped film evaporation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents everyone else cites
US9040730B2 — Purification of triglyceride oil from microbial sources using short path distillation
Filed by DuPont US Holding and published 2015-05-26, this patent describes reducing sterol content in a microbial oil composition by distilling the sterol-containing oil under short path distillation conditions, separating a sterol-rich distillate from a triacylglycerol-rich fraction with reduced sterol content.Representative of a broader pattern: short path distillation claimed specifically for microbial-oil purification rather than for the evaporator hardware itself.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3644179A | Method and apparatus for continuous fractionation of tall oil and similar mixtures of organic substances with… | 98 |
| 2 | US3695327A | Wiped thin film evaporation and treatment apparatus | 59 |
| 3 | WO2010037843A1 | Method for purifying an alcohol from a fermentation broth using a falling film, a wiped film, a thin film or … | 37 |
| 4 | US5628901A | Vessel for treating liquids | 33 |
| 5 | WO1997044335A1 | Purification of glycidyl esters by thin film evaporation | 29 |
| 6 | US3349828A | Rotary wiped film evaporator with annular ring for process material flow control | 27 |
| 7 | US9040730B2 | Purification of triglyceride oil from microbial sources using short path distillation | 26 |
| 8 | WO2014152665A1 | Process and systems for obtaining 1,4-butanediol from fermentation broths | 25 |
| 9 | CN102125770A | 刮膜式薄膜蒸发器用于处理热敏性物料的连续精馏装置和方法 | 25 |
| 10 | EP0579330A1 | Process for the distillation of Fischer-Tropsch products | 21 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this searched corpus — read them as markers of foundational influence, not as a ranking of current relevance.
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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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say
Reading the filing trend, the IPC spread and the receiving-office footprint together points to a technology where the core apparatus claims are settled and the open ground is in application-specific process conditions.
Activity has already crested
Filings rose from a single family in 2017 to a peak of 10 in 2021, then fell back to zero at the 2022 midpoint. That is not the shape of an emerging field; it is the shape of a technology whose foundational claims were staked out and is now being worked in narrower increments.
Almost all claims sit in one subclass
119 of 120 records classify under B01D, separation processes. New filers are not proposing new evaporator architectures so much as new process conditions, feedstocks or downstream chemistry layered on the same separation mechanics.
Filing activity is Europe- and US-weighted
Europe leads with 27 filings and the US follows with 20; Australia and Canada each sit in double digits. China, at 7, is a comparatively thin filing base given the scale of chemical processing manufacturing there — a gap worth checking against freedom-to-operate needs in that jurisdiction.
No single assignee is currently pushing volume
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum — including Genomatica, Metabolic Explorer, Crown Iron Works, and ExxonMobil Chemical Patents — shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. Combined with the 2022 dip, this points to a field in a filing lull rather than one led by an active frontrunner.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thin film and wiped film evaporation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims
No assignee in this dataset is filing at volume in the latest tracked year, and co-assignee activity is sparse — 10 co-assignee pairs total, each appearing once. That points to a field of individually-filing entrants rather than a small set of dominant players coordinating patent strategy.
A broad but shallow assignee base
With 120 families and no assignee currently filing at volume, ownership of this space is distributed. Metabolic Explorer's co-filing pattern with individual named inventors (Rousux Pascal, Ollivier Frederic, Cellier Clement) suggests small, team-specific filings rather than a centralized patent strategy.
Foundational patents predate the modern filing wave
The two most-cited records in the corpus, on continuous fractionation and wiped thin film treatment apparatus, are decades-old foundational filings. Later entrants build process-specific claims around, rather than replacing, this base apparatus art.
Filers are hedging across EPO, US and PCT routes
Filing spreads across EPO, USPTO, Australia, Canada, WIPO/PCT and China rather than concentrating in one office, consistent with assignees pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection for process-specific applications rather than betting on a single home market.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Genomatica, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Metabolic Explorer | 0 | — |
| Crown Iron Works Company | 0 | — |
| Anson Regeneration Company | 0 | — |
| Jusheng (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Chemical Patents Inc. | 0 | — |
| Shell International Research Maatschappij B.V. | 0 | — |
| E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (USA) | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white space identification, or tracking a specific assignee.
Check freedom-to-operate against the two foundational patents
US3644179A and US3695327A anchor the citation graph for continuous fractionation and wiped-film apparatus. Any new equipment design should be checked against their claim scope before committing to a build.
Explore prior art in EurekaMap the under-claimed process-condition branches
Fouling-resistant geometries, residence-time control for fermentation feedstocks, and vacuum-staging for microbial oils show thinner coverage than the core apparatus claims. These are candidates for a first-to-file position.
Run a white space search in EurekaWatch for the publication lag to close
The most recent one to two filing years are understated because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months. Re-check the trend in six to twelve months before concluding the field has gone quiet.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions
Thin film evaporation spreads liquid across a heated surface to promote fast evaporation under vacuum, typically relying on gravity or centrifugal force to form the film. Wiped film evaporation adds mechanical wiper blades that actively spread and renew the liquid film on the heated wall, which shortens residence time further and reduces thermal exposure for heat-sensitive materials. In this patent dataset both terms appear alongside short path distillation, and claims frequently combine elements of more than one technique within a single process description, so the boundary between the terms in practice is often about degree of mechanical assistance rather than a hard technical line.
The dataset does not show a single dominant current filer: every tracked assignee, including Genomatica, Metabolic Explorer, Crown Iron Works and ExxonMobil Chemical Patents, recorded zero filings in the latest tracked year. The most historically influential patents by citation count come from older foundational filings on continuous fractionation apparatus and wiped-film treatment equipment, which newer assignees build process-specific claims around rather than replace. This is a field of distributed, individually-filing entrants rather than one led by a clear frontrunner.
Filing activity in this corpus rose steadily from a single family in 2017 to a peak of 10 families in 2021, then fell back sharply, reaching zero at the 2022 midpoint. This pattern is consistent with a technology whose foundational apparatus claims had already been staked out by the early 2020s, after which filing activity naturally narrows to smaller, application-specific increments. It is also worth noting that publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will understate true filing activity until those applications publish.
US9040730B2, assigned to DuPont US Holding and published in 2015, claims a process for reducing sterol content in a microbial oil composition by subjecting it to short path distillation, which separates a sterol-rich distillate fraction from a triacylglycerol-rich fraction with reduced sterol content. The claim is process-specific to microbial-source triglyceride oils and sterol reduction, not to short path distillation equipment generally. Anyone purifying microbial oils by short path distillation for sterol removal should review this patent's specific claim language before finalizing a process design, since it constrains that particular application rather than the underlying separation technique.
The strongest under-claimed areas in this dataset sit at the intersection of the dominant B01D separation-process claims and specific feed chemistries: fouling-resistant wiper blade geometries, residence-time control tuned to heat-sensitive fermentation broths, vacuum-level staging for microbial oil purification, short path distillation applied to heterocyclic intermediates, and integration of falling-film stages with wiped-film equipment. These branches show thinner coverage relative to the core apparatus claims that dominate the corpus, making them reasonable candidates for a first claim rather than areas already occupied by dense prior art.
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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.