Centrifugal & Reciprocating Compressor Patents: Who Leads 2026
- Filings peaked in 2024 at 30 records then softened — the field is not accelerating, it is consolidating around established claim positions.
- F04D dominates with 473 of 484 records while positive-displacement (F04B) and separation (B01D) branches sit in the single digits, marking clear under-claimed territory.
- The most-cited patents date to the 1990s US5355691A and US5306116A still anchor surge control and variable-speed impeller drive claims decades later.
Filing growth compares 2021 (12 records) with 2024 (30) — 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 484 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 484 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 across centrifugal compressors, reciprocating compressors and process gas compressors, filtered to documents that address surge control, impeller design, valve reliability, polytropic efficiency or seal systems under IPC classes F04D, F04B and F04D27. The scope is deliberately narrow: it isolates the control and mechanical-reliability layer of compressor engineering rather than compressor design as a whole.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in any trend view understate real filing activity for those years. Family counts, not raw document counts, are used throughout so that multi-jurisdiction filing strategies do not inflate any single assignee's apparent footprint.
Filing trends and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC distribution for the corpus, drawn directly from the 484 families in scope.
A flat-to-declining trend after a 2024 peak
Filings rose from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 30 in 2024, with the 2022 midpoint at 10. That trajectory is not a smooth ramp — it suggests a burst of activity concentrated in the last few years rather than steady long-term growth, and the partial 2026 count (2 so far) reflects publication lag rather than a real drop-off.
F04D dominates; adjacent classes are thin
F04D (non-positive-displacement pumps, which includes centrifugal compressors) accounts for 473 of 484 records — effectively the entire corpus. F25B (refrigeration) and F01D (turbines) show meaningful secondary activity at 69 and 39 records respectively, while F04B (positive-displacement, i.e. reciprocating), F02C, B01D and F01K each sit below 25 records, pointing to comparatively light claim density outside the core centrifugal control space.
Shares are the percentage of the 484 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Centrifugal and Reciprocating Compressors with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about centrifugal and reciprocating compressors and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art and the newest filing
Anti-surge control for CO2 compressors in supercritical conditions
Filed by Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie, this application covers a centrifugal compressor arrangement working with CO2 in supercritical conditions, using flow measurement at the discharge side plus suction/discharge temperature and pressure to calculate CO2 density and drive anti-surge control via compressor maps.Published 2026-08-06 — right at the data cut-off, illustrating how the newest filings enter the record just as this snapshot closes.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5355691A | Control method and apparatus for a centrifugal chiller using a variable speed impeller motor drive | 135 |
| 2 | US5306116A | Surge control and recovery for a centrifugal compressor | 126 |
| 3 | US5553997A | Control method and apparatus for a centrifugal chiller using a variable speed impeller motor drive | 95 |
| 4 | US5145317A | Centrifugal compressor with high efficiency and wide operating range | 95 |
| 5 | US4156578A | Control of centrifugal compressors | 85 |
| 6 | US4464720A | Centrifugal compressor surge control system | 84 |
| 7 | US4248566A | Dual function compressor bleed | 83 |
| 8 | US3976165A | Lubricating and oil seal system for a high speed compressor | 80 |
| 9 | US20110048046A1 | Control system | 76 |
| 10 | US20090263234A1 | Centrifugal compressor with surge control, and associated method | 72 |
Citation counts reward older, widely-referenced records within this searched set — they signal historical influence on surge control and variable-speed drive claims, not current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once family counts, IPC composition and citation data are read together.
The corpus is almost entirely one IPC class
F04D captures nearly the whole dataset, meaning that centrifugal compressor control and impeller mechanics are the field's real centre of gravity. Reciprocating-compressor-specific claims under F04B are comparatively rare at 21 records, which is worth checking before assuming reciprocating designs face the same prior-art density.
Foundational surge control claims are decades old
The most-cited records in this set — including US5355691A and US5306116A — date from the early-to-mid 1990s. Any new surge control or variable-speed impeller drive filing needs to be checked against this vintage art first, since citation volume shows it still anchors the field's claim language.
Activity peaked in 2024, not the present
The filing count climbed from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 30 in 2024 before easing. Combined with a recent-year momentum table showing several major assignees at zero filings in the latest year, this points to a plateau rather than continued expansion.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to centrifugal and reciprocating compressors, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground
Assignee activity in this corpus is led by a small group of industrial compressor and HVAC manufacturers, with co-filing patterns that reveal long-standing inventor teams inside at least one major assignee.
One assignee shows the deepest inventor continuity
Ingersoll Rand appears in the strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset, each linked to a named inventor across 7 to 9 shared families. That pattern indicates a stable internal team working the same claim territory over multiple filing cycles rather than one-off inventions.
Leading assignees have gone quiet in the most recent year
Several of the most active historical filers, including Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie, Carrier, Daikin Applied Americas and Praxair Technology, show zero filings in the latest year, with Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie down 100% year-on-year. Given publication lag, this understates true 2025-2026 activity but still signals a slower filing cadence from established players.
Filing activity spans US, Europe and China roughly evenly
The United States leads with 110 filings, followed closely by the European Patent Office at 99 and China at 62. A further 43 filings route through the WIPO PCT system, indicating that a meaningful share of applicants are still deciding on final jurisdictions rather than committing directly to national offices.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ingersoll Rand | 0 | — |
| Carrier Corporation | 0 | — |
| Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l. | 0 | -100% |
| Daikin Applied Americas Inc. | 0 | — |
| Nuovo Pignone Holding S.p.A. | 0 | — |
| Praxair Technology, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
| Johnson Controls Technology Company | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking or identifying open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against 1990s surge control art
Any new surge control or variable-speed impeller drive concept should be run against the highest-cited records in this corpus before drafting claims, since that prior art still shapes the field's language.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaTrack the assignees that have gone quiet
Several leading filers show zero activity in the latest year. Confirming whether that reflects a real slowdown or a publication-lag artefact matters for competitive positioning.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaExplore the under-claimed branches
Reciprocating valve reliability, dry gas seals and supercritical CO2 anti-surge control show lighter filing density than the core centrifugal control space, and may offer clearer paths to allowable claims.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The corpus shows Ingersoll Rand with the deepest co-filing activity, tied to named inventors across multiple shared families, alongside industrial and HVAC manufacturers such as Carrier, Daikin Applied Americas and Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie. Several of these leading assignees recorded zero filings in the most recent year, though publication lag of roughly 18 months means recent activity is likely understated. Anyone assessing competitive position should treat the most recent one to two years of data as provisional rather than final.
Citation counts within a searched patent corpus naturally favour older records because they have had more time to accumulate references from later filings. US5355691A and US5306116A, both from the early-to-mid 1990s, remain the most-cited documents here because they established core surge control and variable-speed impeller drive methods that later filings still cite as prior art. This is a signal of historical influence on claim language, not evidence that these are the most commercially relevant patents today.
Far less, in this dataset. F04D, which covers centrifugal and other non-positive-displacement compressors, accounts for 473 of the 484 records, while F04B, covering positive-displacement designs including reciprocating compressors, appears in only 21. That gap suggests reciprocating-specific mechanisms such as valve reliability may carry lighter prior art density than centrifugal surge control and impeller claims, though a lower count can also reflect narrower R&D investment rather than open opportunity alone.
Filings rose from 7 in 2017 to a peak of 30 in 2024, with a midpoint of 10 in 2022, indicating the growth was recent and fairly sharp rather than a long steady climb. The partial 2026 figure of 2 filings reflects publication lag rather than a genuine collapse in activity. Whether 2024 marks a durable plateau or a short-lived spike will only become clear once 2025 and 2026 data are fully published.
The lighter-filed branches in this corpus include reciprocating valve reliability under F04B39, dry gas seal systems, supercritical CO2 anti-surge control, and polytropic efficiency instrumentation. These sit outside the dense F04D core where surge control and impeller design claims are concentrated. A newly filed application in one of these areas would need to be checked against the specific art in that sub-branch rather than against the dominant centrifugal surge control patents, since the two claim spaces have developed largely separately.
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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.