• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.375-388
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• 2017

Wastewater treatment (WWT) technology has been developing from simple pollutant treatment to energy and resource-saving advanced technology, and various technologies combined with IT and BT are developed to minimize the amount of pollutant and toxic substance discharge to the public water areas and to improve operational efficiency. To examine the development trend of domestic wastewater treatment technology, the registered patent technologies were surveyed, classified and analyzed by year and sector. This paper considers the status of patent registration related to WWT from 2010.1 to 2017.5 in terms of the number of specific technical areas, and the trends are analyzed based on the 10 categorization field such as biological and physicochemical treatment process, equipment and device, material, sludge treatment, membrane, process control and 42 specific technical areas. A total of 3,356 patents have been registered since 2010, and the number of patents has been decreasing since the peak at 2013 and maintains 3~400 per year. The total number of patents has not yet been less than other countries, but the number of patents of more advanced technologies, which can lead the global market, such as process monitoring, new concept processing and equipment technologies is still insufficient compared to developed countries.