Zeolite Catalyst Reactor Design Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled since a 2019 peak of 46 families, with the partial latest year sitting near zero — read that drop against the usual 18-month publication lag, not as a real collapse.
- Refining-adjacent IPC classes dominate the mix, C10G hydrocarbon-oil processing and C07C acyclic-compound chemistry both sit above 40% overlap with the core B01J catalysis class.
- Momentum has stalled across every major assignee, with Saudi Aramco, Chevron Oronite and ExxonMobil Chemical all showing zero filings in the latest tracked year.
Filing growth compares 2021 (19 records) with 2024 (10) — 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 635 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Zeolite catalyst reactor design sits at the intersection of catalysis chemistry and process engineering: claims here cover fixed-bed, fluidized-bed and structured-catalyst reactor configurations built around zeolite or molecular-sieve catalysts, rather than the catalyst compositions alone. The search spans IPC classes B01J8, B01J19 and B01J35 — the reactor-hardware and process-condition classes — cross-referenced against zeolite-specific chemistry terms in the title and abstract.
Filing activity concentrates around refining and petrochemical applications: hydrocarbon-oil processing (C10G) and acyclic-compound synthesis (C07C) both show heavy overlap with the core catalysis class, pointing to alkylation, oligomerization and hydrocracking as the dominant use cases rather than novel catalyst chemistry in isolation.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 635-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A 2019 peak followed by a flat-to-declining run
Filings rose from 25 in 2017 to a peak of 46 in 2019, then settled near the 2022 midpoint of 20 before tailing off. The most recent year is partial and will revise upward as later publications land, but the multi-year trend before that point is already flat rather than growing — this is a mature filing area, not an emerging one.
Refining and petrochemical chemistry dominates the overlap
B01J itself covers 631 of 635 records, essentially the whole set, confirming the search is well-targeted. Beyond that, C07C (344) and C10G (280) show the heaviest secondary overlap, meaning most reactor-design claims are filed alongside specific hydrocarbon-conversion chemistry — alkylation, oligomerization, cracking — rather than as standalone hardware claims. Separation (B01D) and heterocyclic chemistry (C07D) trail well behind, suggesting reactor claims tied to those downstream steps are comparatively rare.
Shares are the percentage of the 635 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Zeolite Catalyst Reactor Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about zeolite catalyst reactor design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe citation heavyweights and a current filing
US20260103646A1 — Lummus Technology LLC
A process and system for producing bio or fossil fuels: mixed hydrocarbon feed enters a fixed-bed reactor system containing a zeolite catalyst for oligomerization of C3-C8 hydrocarbons, with the effluent split into gas, liquid and C3 fractions, partial recycle back to the fixed-bed reactor, and downstream distillation of the liquid fraction into light and heavier cuts.Filed 2026-04-16 — illustrates how current claims combine a fixed-bed zeolite reactor with a specific recycle-and-separation train rather than claiming the reactor hardware alone.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20040138051A1 | Novel zeolite composite, method for making and catalytic application thereof | 216 |
| 2 | US5607888A | Regioselective methylation of toluene to para-xylene | 120 |
| 3 | US5118896A | Aromatic alkylation process using large macropore, small particle size, zeolite catalyst | 119 |
| 4 | EP0847802A1 | Catalytic composition and process for the alkylation and/or transalkylation of aromatic compounds | 106 |
| 5 | US4919896A | Multistage catalytic reactor system for production of heavy hydrocarbons | 104 |
| 6 | US20040140194A1 | Nonthermal plasma air treatment system | 92 |
| 7 | US6916762B2 | Catalyst for fluidized catalytic cracking of heavy hydrocarbon oil and method of fluidized catalytic cracking | 92 |
| 8 | US5498814A | Regioselective methylation of toluene to para-xylene | 89 |
| 9 | US4746762A | Upgrading light olefins in a turbulent fluidized catalyst bed reactor | 76 |
| 10 | US7084087B2 | Zeolite composite, method for making and catalytic application thereof | 69 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current commercial leadership.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns in the data that matter more than the raw counts.
This is a mature, not emerging, filing area
Volume peaked in 2019 and has not recovered since; the partial latest year is expected to understate true activity given the ~18-month publication lag, but the pre-lag trend was already flat. New entrants are filing into a claim space that has already been worked for the better part of a decade.
Reactor claims travel with specific hydrocarbon chemistry
The strong overlap with acyclic-compound (C07C) and hydrocarbon-oil (C10G) classes shows that reactor-design claims are almost always tied to a named conversion process — alkylation, oligomerization, refining — rather than filed as generic hardware. A standalone reactor-configuration claim without a tied chemistry is the exception here.
US filing dominates, PCT and EPO trail
United States receiving-office filings outnumber the next jurisdiction (EPO) by close to three to one, with WIPO/PCT, Canada, Singapore and India each a distant tier below. Freedom-to-operate work outside the US should not assume the same density of prior art.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to zeolite catalyst reactor design, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Chevron Oronite S.A. | Chevron Oronite Company LLC | 27 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | 20 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 19 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | Saudi Aramco Services Company | 7 |
| King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | Saudi Aramco Services Company | 5 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | JGC Catalysts and Chemicals Ltd. | 4 |
| ExxonMobil Chemical Patents Inc. | KAY ROBERT ELLIS | 3 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | Japan Cooperation Center for the Petroleum Industry (JCCP) | 2 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest links — a Chevron Oronite entity pairing and two Saudi Aramco university partnerships — point to joint reactor-scale-up work rather than broad industry-wide collaboration.
Who has filed, and where the field is thinning out
Every major assignee tracked in this dataset shows zero filings in the latest year, which reads less as retreat and more as the publication lag catching up with a slowdown that had already started by the 2022 midpoint.
No assignee is currently accelerating
Saudi Aramco, ABB Lummus Global, ExxonMobil Chemical, King Fahd University, and both Chevron Oronite entities all show zero filings in the latest tracked year, several with a -100% YoY reading. Given the publication lag this likely understates real activity, but it confirms none of the incumbents are visibly ramping right now.
Corporate-entity pairings outweigh cross-company alliances
The single strongest co-assignee link (27 shared families) is between two Chevron Oronite corporate entities, an internal filing pattern rather than a partnership. The next-strongest pairs involve Saudi Aramco filing jointly with two different universities, suggesting research-collaboration filings rather than joint-venture commercialisation.
Older alkylation and composite-zeolite art still anchors the field
The most-cited records date back to zeolite composite and aromatic alkylation work rather than recent filings, meaning the technical foundations any new filer must design around were largely set well before the 2019 filing peak.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | 0 | -100% |
| ABB Lummus Global Inc. | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Chemical Patents Inc. | 0 | — |
| King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 0 | -100% |
| Chevron Oronite S.A. | 0 | — |
| Chevron Oronite Company LLC | 0 | — |
| Mobil Oil Corporation | 0 | — |
| Asahi Kasei Chemicals Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a mature, refining-centric claim space with a small number of active corporate and academic pairings. Two directions are worth pursuing next.
Map claim scope inside the citation heavyweights
The five most-cited records anchor most of the downstream art. Reading their independent claims in detail — not just the abstracts — clarifies exactly how much of the fixed-bed and alkylation reactor space they occupy.
Explore citation trees in EurekaTrack the under-claimed reactor niches as filings resume
Structured-catalyst internals and recycle-loop integration show thin coverage today. Watching filing activity in these niches over the next few publication cycles will show whether the slowdown is a lag artifact or a genuine pause.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on zeolite catalyst reactor design patents
The dataset shows filing concentrated among refining majors and their university research partners, rather than a single dominant holder. Saudi Aramco, Chevron Oronite entities, ABB Lummus Global and ExxonMobil Chemical all appear among the more active assignees, but every one of them shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, so current-year leadership is genuinely unsettled. Co-assignee data also shows Saudi Aramco filing jointly with two different universities, which spreads some of its output across academic partnerships rather than sole ownership.
No — filing peaked at 46 families in 2019 and had already fallen to 20 by the 2022 midpoint, before the partial latest year. Because patent publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the very last year in any dataset like this will always look artificially low, so some of the apparent decline will correct upward. Even allowing for that lag, though, the multi-year trend before the most recent year was flat or declining, not growing, which marks this as a mature rather than expanding filing area.
The core class is B01J, covering chemical and physical processes and catalysis generally, which appears in nearly the entire dataset. Reactor-design claims in this space are heavily cross-filed with C07C (acyclic and carbocyclic compound chemistry) and C10G (hydrocarbon oil refining), reflecting that most claims tie a reactor configuration to a specific conversion process like alkylation or oligomerization. Smaller overlaps appear with C01B inorganic compounds, C07B organic chemistry methods, and B01D separation processes.
The technology composition data points toward structured-catalyst monolith internals, recycle-loop integration for oligomerization effluent, and fluidized-bed regeneration control as comparatively thin relative to the dense alkylation and hydrocracking art. These are inferred from lower overlap counts in adjacent IPC classes such as C07D and B01D rather than from a dedicated white-space count, so any filing strategy built on them should be validated with a fuller claims read before committing. The core B01J8/B01J19/B01J35 reactor-hardware classes themselves remain heavily filed, so novelty is more likely to sit in the process integration around the reactor than in the vessel design itself.
This 2026 Lummus Technology filing claims a fixed-bed zeolite reactor for oligomerizing C3-C8 hydrocarbons combined with a specific downstream separation and recycle train, not a fixed-bed zeolite reactor in isolation. That distinction matters: the fixed-bed hardware and the base oligomerization chemistry both sit on older, heavily cited prior art, so this filing's defensible scope is likely narrower than the abstract suggests. Companies working on similar oligomerization routes should focus freedom-to-operate review on the specific recycle and fractionation sequence claimed, rather than assuming the whole reactor concept is blocked.
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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.