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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/air-source-heat-pump-two-phase-flow-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape BriefAir Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patents: Who Files, What They Claim
A data-backed view of air source heat pump two-phase flow patents: filing trends, leading assignees, technology composition and open claim space through 2026.
81
Published Records
12%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+67%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
CN
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth = 2021 (3 records) → 2024 (5); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 81 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This brief tracks 81 published records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off that combine air source heat pump systems with two-phase flow — the boiling and condensing behaviour inside the refrigerant loop that governs heat-exchanger sizing and compressor duty. The scope is narrow by design: it isolates two-phase flow claims within air source heat pump architectures, not the broader heat pump or refrigeration literature. Patent families, not raw filing counts, are the fairer unit for judging concentration, because families neutralise aggressive continuation and multi-jurisdiction filing behaviour.
Filing activity is spread thin across assignees and concentrated heavily in one filing jurisdiction, which matters for anyone deciding where to search prior art or where to expect enforcement. The technology composition also skews strongly toward core refrigeration classification, with several adjacent classes appearing only a handful of times.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 81 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings peaked early at 8 in 2017 and have not returned to that level since; 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. The clearer recent signal is the 2021-to-2024 climb from 3 to 5 filings, a 67% increase, which points to renewed rather than fading interest.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
IPC subclass composition
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) covers 95.1% of the 81 records, confirming this is fundamentally refrigeration-cycle subject matter. F24F (air conditioning and ventilation) at 21.0% and F24H (fluid heaters and water heaters) at 13.6% are the largest adjacent classes; F04C and F24S each appear in only 2.5% of records, marking them as thin, under-explored branches rather than dead ends.
Shares are the percentage of the 81 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Representative filing and most-cited prior art
Representative Record
CN207395236U — Closed river-water source heat pump system using a spiral-tube heat exchanger
上海工程技术大学
Filed by Shanghai University of Engineering Science, this utility model describes a closed-loop river-water source heat pump system built around a spiral-tube heat exchanger submerged in a river, paired with a heat pump unit, air-conditioning terminal, and a monitoring rig that tracks temperature, flow rate and three-phase power at the inlet and outlet of the cooling and chilled-water pipes. The claimed advantage set is erosion avoidance, zero discharge, and comprehensive real-time monitoring of both indoor/outdoor and river-depth temperatures.Utility model — construction and monitoring claims, not a refrigerant-cycle control method.
Most-cited records in this landscape
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5816065A | Desiccant assisted air conditioning system | 100 |
| 2 | US4086072A | Air source heat pump with multiple slide rotary screw compressor/expander | 44 |
| 3 | CN205619611U | 一种采用蒸发式冷凝的风冷模块热泵机组 | 30 |
| 4 | CN2720355Y | 地源热泵集中空调装置 | 23 |
| 5 | CN106705489A | 结合空气源热泵热水的变制冷剂流量系统及其控制方法 | 17 |
| 6 | CN201715775U | 一种空气源热泵空调器 | 17 |
| 7 | KR1020100066847A | Dehumidified dryer for heat pump | 16 |
| 8 | US20060168973A1 | Cold climate air-source heat pump | 10 |
| 9 | CN203742947U | 空压机余热回收利用装置 | 9 |
| 10 | CN202813760U | 一种雾化冷凝水空气源热泵热水器 | 9 |
Citation counts are drawn from a corpus of prior art that skews toward older filings, so read them as a signal of influence, not of current commercial 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.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Four read-outs from the ranking, the trend and the classification data that matter for deciding where to file or watch.
Concentration
12.3%
of 81 records held by the top 5 assignees
No dominant player has locked up the field
The top 5 assignees combined account for 12.3% of all 81 records in scope, and the top 10 only reach 24.7%. With a leader holding just 2 records, this is a fragmented field rather than one gated by a handful of blocking portfolios.
Ranking covers 80 companies, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
Growth
+67%
filing growth, 2021 to 2024
Renewed filing momentum after the 2017 peak
Filings peaked at 8 in 2017 and cooled afterward, but the 2021-to-2024 window shows a 3-to-5 climb, a 67% increase. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years understate true activity rather than showing a real slowdown.
2025–2026 figures are still filling in.
Geography
60 of 81
records filed via China's receiving office
Filing venue is heavily skewed to one jurisdiction
China accounts for 60 of the 81 records, versus 11 in South Korea, 4 in Japan and 4 in the United States. Prior-art searches and freedom-to-operate work that skip Chinese-language filings will miss most of the field.
Receiving office counts, not applicant nationality.
Classification
2.5%
of records touch F04C or F24S
Thin classes mark the open branches
F25B carries 95.1% of records and F24F 21.0%, but F04C (rotary-piston pumps) and F24S (solar heat collectors) each sit at just 2.5%. That thinness is a signal of low claim density in those integration paths, not of technical irrelevance.
Classes overlap; shares sum to more than 100% of the 81 records.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to air source heat pump two-phase flow patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a fragmented ownership structure and a small set of under-claimed adjacent branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is defensive clearance or offensive filing.
Map claim scope against the thin classes
F04C and F24S each cover only 2.5% of the 81 records. Before filing there, pull the exact claim language in those subclasses to confirm the space is genuinely open rather than simply under-classified.
Explore white space in Eureka →Track the post-2024 filing signal as it fills in
The 2021-to-2024 growth of 67% is the most reliable recent trend; 2025 and 2026 will keep revising upward as publications catch up. Re-check this trend on a rolling basis rather than trusting the newest year on its own.
Set up trend monitoring in Eureka →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
The field is fragmented rather than led by a dominant filer: the top-ranked assignee holds only 2 of the 81 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees combined account for just 12.3% of all records. The top 10 combined reach 24.7%. This means freedom-to-operate work has to check a long tail of single- or double-filing entities rather than a small set of blocking portfolios, and no one company's exit or licensing posture will materially change the field.
This landscape tracks 81 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from a search string combining air source heat pump terminology with two-phase, boiling and condensing flow language, restricted to F24F, F25B and F28D classifications. That count is a filtered, scoped figure, not a count of every heat pump patent; broader searches without the two-phase flow qualifier will return far more records covering unrelated aspects like controls or defrost cycles.
Filings peaked early at 8 in 2017 and did not return to that level in subsequent years, but the more reliable recent signal is the 2021-to-2024 window, where filings rose from 3 to 5, a 67% increase. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are necessarily incomplete and should not be read as a decline. Judging momentum on the last complete year, 2024, points to renewed rather than fading interest.
China's receiving office accounts for 60 of the 81 records in this landscape, far ahead of South Korea at 11, and Japan and the United States tied at 4 each, with Canada at 2. This concentration means most of the substantive claim language in this field is originally drafted in Chinese, so English-only prior-art searches will systematically undercount the field. Anyone doing clearance work here should budget for Chinese-language document review.
F25B, covering refrigeration and heat pumps generally, appears in 95.1% of the 81 records, confirming the core subject matter is refrigeration-cycle engineering. The next largest overlaps are F24F, air conditioning and ventilation, at 21.0%, and F24H, fluid heaters and water heaters, at 13.6%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed or treated as mutually exclusive categories.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Air Source Heat Pump Two-Phase Flow Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.