Hydrogen Turbine Engine Patents: Top Filers & Trends 2026
- Filing has flattened, not grown. activity peaked at 16 families in 2023 and the 2022 midpoint sat at 10 — the curve is levelling rather than climbing into 2026.
- China leads receiving-office volume by a wide margin. 32 of the tracked filings were received in China against 9 in the United States, with Japan, South Korea, Europe and Russia trailing further behind.
- One coordinated filer pair anchors the densest claim cluster. a six-family co-assignee link between two General Electric-affiliated entities sits inside the crowded gas-turbine combustor space, while most other assignees file alone.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 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 52 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Where hydrogen combustion turbine patents actually sit
Hydrogen combustion for gas turbines is a comparatively small, recently-formed patent category: 52 families published between 2015 and mid-2026, with essentially no activity before 2018 and a peak of 16 filings in 2023. The claim density concentrates in conventional gas-turbine plant architecture (F02C) and combustion-chamber design (F23R), which together account for the large majority of records, while aircraft-specific integration, pure hydrogen internal-combustion engines, steam hybridisation and electrolysis-linked chemistry remain thin.
That combination — a young filing history, a dominant architecture class, and several thin adjacent branches — is the pattern of a field still choosing its dominant technical route rather than one that has already settled. China's receiving-office volume outpaces every other jurisdiction, but volume concentration and claim quality are separate questions; the co-assignee data shows only one clearly coordinated filing cluster inside the densest part of the space.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trends and technology composition
The filing curve and IPC mix below chart where hydrogen combustion and turbine-engine claims have actually landed since 2015, and which sub-technologies are carrying the claim density.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 16 in 2023, with the 2022 midpoint at 10 — a flattening rather than an accelerating curve. The most recent year is partial and, per typical 18-month publication lag, understates true 2025-2026 filing activity.
IPC subclass distribution
Gas-turbine plant claims (F02C, 39 records) and combustion-chamber claims (F23R, 23 records) dominate the corpus; aircraft integration, pure internal-combustion engines, steam hybridisation and electrolysis-adjacent chemistry each register in single digits, marking them as thinner, less-contested branches.
Shares are the percentage of the 52 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Hydrogen Combustion Engine Turbine Engine with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about hydrogen combustion engine turbine engine and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing worth reading in full
US20230265797A1 — Methods and apparatus to produce hydrogen gas turbine propulsion
Methods and apparatus to produce hydrogen gas turbine propulsion are disclosed. An example apparatus to produce propulsion in a gas turbine engine includes a fluid line to transport hydrogen from a hydrogen supply and an inert gas from an inert gas supply to a gas turbine combustor. The apparatus also includes at least one heat exchanger coupled to the fluid line to heat the inert gas and the hydrogen in the fluid line.Filed by General Electric Company, published 2023-08-24. The claim structure centers on a shared fluid line and heat exchanger for co-routed hydrogen and inert-gas dilution — see the chat analysis below for what this does and does not block.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JP2016098783A | Hydrogen gas turbine enclosure | 19 |
| 2 | US20230167788A1 | Hydrogen gas turbine | 16 |
| 3 | US20230265797A1 | Methods and apparatus to produce hydrogen gas turbine propulsion | 9 |
| 4 | CN117090804A | 一种氢燃气轮机轴流压气机射流预冷用喷水雾化结构 | 4 |
| 5 | US12327854B2 | Apparatuses and methods for carbon dioxide capturing and electrical energy producing system | 4 |
| 6 | CN118548507A | 一种纯氢低排放微混燃气轮机燃烧室 | 3 |
| 7 | CN116816601A | 一种基于压缩空气和制氢联合储能的风能电站系统及其工作方法 | 3 |
| 8 | CN117646676A | 基于氢燃机危险气体泄漏的保护方法及装置 | 2 |
| 9 | CN117588303A | 氢燃机回火监测保护方法及系统 | 2 |
| 10 | JP2024080498A | Combustor appropriate to hydrogen gas turbine, and its combustion nozzle | 2 |
Ranked by citation count within this searched corpus; older filings accumulate citations simply by being available longer, so treat this as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
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.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the filing data actually signals
Raw counts and citation totals need context. Here is what each figure in this dataset does — and does not — tell a reader deciding where to file next.
Growth has plateaued since the 2023 peak
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to 16 in 2023, then held near the 2022 midpoint of 10 rather than continuing to climb. Combined with an 18-month typical publication lag, the apparent 2025-2026 slowdown is partly a reporting artefact, but the multi-year plateau before that is a real signal that the field is not currently in an acceleration phase.
Combustor and turbine-plant claims carry the density
F02C (gas-turbine plants) and F23R (combustion chambers) together account for the bulk of the corpus, meaning the core architecture of a hydrogen gas turbine is the most heavily claimed territory. High density here signals occupied claim space, not settled or mature technology — later entrants should expect to design around, not simply file alongside.
China dominates filing volume, not necessarily deployment
China's 32 receiving-office filings dwarf the next-largest jurisdiction, the United States at 9. That volume gap is worth separating from commercial deployment signals — domestic filing strategy and institutional filing incentives can inflate receiving-office counts independent of where hydrogen turbine technology actually gets built and sold.
Coordinated filing is the exception, not the rule
Only 10 co-assignee pairs exist across the full 52-family set, and the strongest of them — a six-family link between two General Electric-affiliated entities — stands well above the rest, which cluster around two shared families each. Most assignees in this space are filing independently, so a single coordinated filer pair can disproportionately shape the densest part of the claim landscape.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to hydrogen combustion engine turbine engine, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
No single assignee controls this space. Filing is split between Chinese institutional and corporate filers, Japanese and Korean industrial groups, and Western aerospace majors, with one coordinated filing pair standing out inside the densest combustor claim cluster.
Even the most active recent filer is slowing
Wuxi Mingyang Hydrogen Power Technology Co., Ltd. recorded 1 filing in the latest tracked year, down 67% year-on-year — the single positive recent-filing count in the momentum data, while every other tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year. That pattern is consistent with the broader plateau in the overall filing trend.
One GE-linked pair anchors the core combustor cluster
GE Avio S.r.l. and General Electric Company share 6 families, the strongest co-assignee link in the dataset by a wide margin over the next pairs, which share 2 families each. This concentration sits inside the already-dense F02C/F23R combustor space, reinforcing rather than diversifying the claim territory there.
State-linked power entities file steadily but not densely
Assignees such as SPIC Beijing Heavy-Duty Gas Turbine Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd. and several Korean power-generation companies (Korea Western Power Co., Ltd., Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), Korea Southern Power Co., Ltd., Korea South-East Power Co., Ltd., Korea Midland Power Co., Ltd.) appear in the dataset without dominating it, suggesting utility-linked R&D interest in hydrogen turbine retrofits without any single institution building a dense claim wall.
Individual inventors still hold notable claim pairs
馬場勝二 and 渡辺賢弐 co-file across 2 families, and Harbin Engineering University appears as an active academic filer, showing that university and individual-inventor filings remain part of this landscape rather than being crowded out entirely by corporate filers.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Wuxi Mingyang Hydrogen Power Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 | -67% |
| GE Avio S.r.l. | 0 | -100% |
| General Electric Company | 0 | -100% |
| SPIC Beijing Heavy-Duty Gas Turbine Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Toyota Motor Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Harbin Engineering University | 0 | -100% |
| Katsuji Baba | 0 | — |
| Korea Western Power Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to go from this landscape
This page charts filing trends and claim density from published data. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on the specific claims and assignees involved.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the F02C/F23R core
The densest claim territory in this dataset sits in gas-turbine plant and combustion-chamber classes, anchored by a coordinated General Electric-linked filing pair. Any new combustor design should be checked against that cluster specifically before filing.
Check claims in EurekaExplore the thin branches before assuming they're open
Low record counts in electrolysis-linked and steam-hybridisation classes could mean white space, or could mean the engineering is unpatented common practice. Verify against non-patent literature before committing R&D budget.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the assignees still filing
Most assignees in this dataset show zero filings in the latest tracked year; the few still active are worth monitoring directly rather than relying on aggregate trend lines alone.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaFrequently asked questions
This dataset identifies 52 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that meet the search criteria for hydrogen combustion engines and hydrogen gas turbines. Families, rather than raw document counts, are the fairer unit because they neutralise duplicate continuation and multi-jurisdiction filings from the same invention. The volume is modest compared to broader turbine-engine categories, reflecting that hydrogen-specific combustion is still a specialised sub-field rather than a mainstream filing category.
Filing activity is spread across a mix of Chinese research-linked entities, Japanese and Korean industrial groups, and Western aerospace and energy majors, with no single assignee holding a dominant share of the 52-family corpus. The strongest documented collaboration is a six-family co-assignee link between two General Electric-affiliated entities, which points to coordinated internal filing strategy rather than one company simply outproducing the field. Most other assignees in the recent-year momentum data show single-digit filings and negative year-on-year change, consistent with a field where activity is still forming rather than consolidating.
China accounts for the largest share of receiving-office activity in this dataset at 32 records, well ahead of the United States at 9, Japan at 5, South Korea at 3, and single-digit counts for the EPO and Russia. This concentration suggests Chinese applicants and institutions are the most active near-term filers by volume, though volume alone does not indicate which claims will prove commercially decisive. Receiving-office counts also reflect domestic filing strategy as much as global ambition, so cross-checking family-level international filing behaviour is worthwhile before drawing conclusions about export intent.
In IPC terms, hydrogen internal-combustion engines fall mainly under F02B, while hydrogen gas-turbine architecture and its combustion chambers fall under F02C and F23R respectively — and in this dataset the turbine-side classes (F02C at 39, F23R at 23) heavily outweigh the reciprocating-engine class (F02B at 3). That split matters for a freedom-to-operate search: claims written around fuel-delivery and combustor geometry for a turbine will rarely block a reciprocating hydrogen engine design, and vice versa. Anyone searching this space needs to decide up front which architecture they are actually building before scoping a prior-art search around either class.
It depends on which sub-branch is meant. The core gas-turbine combustor claim space (F02C and F23R) is comparatively dense with 39 and 23 records respectively and includes at least one heavily cited, deliberately layered claim structure from General Electric, so new filings there face real prior art. By contrast, branches like electrolysis-integrated hydrogen production feeding a turbine (C25B, C01B) or steam/thermal hybridisation (F01K) show only two to four records each with no dominant assignee, making them realistic white-space candidates for a first-mover claim — provided the underlying engineering is genuinely novel and not just unpatented common practice.
Research Hydrogen Combustion Engine Turbine Engine in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole hydrogen combustion engine turbine engine corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.