Hydrogen Refueling Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 65.2% concentration. The top 5 of 43 ranked assignees hold 45 of all 69 records in scope — a tight core around dispenser and cooling-system claims.
- F17C dominates at 75.4%. Pressure vessel and gas storage claims sit under three-quarters of all 69 records, meaning most competitive activity is happening inside one subclass.
- Filing held up through 2024. Volume rose from 9 records in 2021 to 10 in 2024, +11% over that span, after peaking at 18 in 2022.
Filing growth compares 2021 (9 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 69 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent activity at the intersection of hydrogen refueling stations and the operational problems specific to heavy-duty fleet use: fill rate, precooling, dispenser reliability, station utilization, compressor duty cycles and hydrogen cost. It spans 69 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026, with publication understood to lag filing by roughly 18 months, so the final one to two years of the trend will fill in as more families publish.
Most of the technical weight sits in pressure vessel and gas storage design, with heat exchange and pipeline transport as the next-largest supporting classes. Filing is led out of China, which accounts for the largest share of receiving-office activity, with the United States, Europe, WIPO and Canada making up smaller but active filing corridors.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 69 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filing rose from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 18 in 2022, then settled to 10 in 2024 — up 11% from the 9 filed in 2021. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
F17C (pressure vessels & gas storage) appears in 75.4% of all 69 records, far ahead of F17D (pipeline transport, 18.8%) and F28D (heat-exchange apparatus, 15.9%). Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100% — the pattern shows where claim density concentrates, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 69 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Hydrogen Refueling for Heavy-Duty Fleets with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about hydrogen refueling for heavy-duty fleets and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative recent filing
WO2025113760A1 — A hydrogen refueling station cooling system
Filed by Cavendish Hydrogen A/S, this application describes a refueling station cooling architecture built around a chiller linked to a first heat exchanger on the dispenser flow path, plus a dry cooler and a thermal energy storage unit each connected to the chiller via separate switchable loops. A controller opens the relevant loop to manage precooling load without running the chiller continuously against ambient conditions.Filed 2025-06-05 — inside the window where publication is still catching up to filing activity.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6755225B1 | Transportable hydrogen refueling station | 211 |
| 2 | US20060180240A1 | Transportable hydrogen refueling station | 53 |
| 3 | CN109708000A | 一种L-CH2型加氢站热管理系统 | 24 |
| 4 | CN219013995U | 一种冷能回收型液氢加氢站加注系统 | 12 |
| 5 | CN112344207A | 一种基于引射混压的液氢和高压气氢联合加氢系统 | 11 |
| 6 | CN208735278U | 氢气输送系统 | 11 |
| 7 | CN115507296A | 一种回收BOG的液氢加氢站系统 | 9 |
| 8 | CN114893720A | 加氢站加氢预冷系统及方法 | 9 |
| 9 | CN112381325A | 一种加氢站规划方法 | 8 |
| 10 | CN117249390A | 一种氢气预冷加注系统、液氢加氢站及控制方法 | 6 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside any searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a measure 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.
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Three patterns worth acting on: where claim density already sits, how concentrated ownership is, and what the citation record says about which architectures set the terms of the field.
Ownership sits at the top, not evenly spread
45 of the 69 records in scope belong to the five leading assignees, rising to 88.4% once the top 10 are counted. A field this concentrated rewards either licensing around the leaders' core claims or filing distinctly outside their footprint rather than competing head-on in F17C.
Storage and vessel design is the crowded core
F17C's share dwarfs every other subclass tracked, including pipeline transport at 18.8% and heat-exchange apparatus at 15.9%. High density here means the claim space around vessel and storage architecture is largely occupied — new filings need a genuinely distinct mechanism to clear prior art, not a variant.
Early transportable-station patents still anchor the citation graph
The two most-cited records both describe transportable hydrogen refueling stations, one drawing 211 citations and the other 53. That pattern reflects age and foundational scope more than current commercial weight, since citation counts inside any fixed corpus favour older filings.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to hydrogen refueling for heavy-duty fleets, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
43 assignees are ranked in this dataset, from a leader with 13 records down to single-filing entrants. The bulk of remaining volume sits outside the top 10, in a long tail of one- and two-record filers.
A clear leader, but not a runaway share
The top-ranked assignee holds 13 of 69 records — meaningful but well short of dominating the field outright, which leaves room for the next tier to contest specific sub-claims rather than the whole architecture.
Institutional and corporate filers pair closely
The strongest co-assignee link in this dataset pairs a Chinese research institute with a state energy investment group across 12 records, suggesting joint R&D-to-deployment filing rather than independent parallel invention.
Leading assignees show no recent-year filings
Every assignee named in the recent-momentum data, including the leading co-filing pair and the individual inventors behind the transportable-station patents, shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That is consistent with publication lag rather than an actual pullback, but it means fresh filing activity from new entrants is easier to spot right now.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Beijing Low-Carbon Clean Energy Research Institute | 0 | — |
| China Energy Investment Corporation Limited | 0 | — |
| CAVENDISH HYDROGEN AS | 0 | — |
| ABELE ANDY | 0 | — |
| SIROSH NEEL | 0 | — |
| NIEDZWIECKI ALAN | 0 | — |
| Zhejiang Zheneng Aerospace Hydrogen Energy Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| CEEC Jiangsu Electric Power Design Institute Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The landscape points to a few concrete follow-ups depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, sourcing partners, or finding open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the F17C core
With 75.4% of records touching pressure vessel and gas storage claims, any new dispenser or storage design should be checked against this subclass specifically before drafting.
Run an FTO search in EurekaTrack the leading co-filing pair's next moves
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset spans 12 shared records between a research institute and a state energy group — worth monitoring for signs of renewed filing.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaScope the under-claimed branches
Station utilization data processing and electrolytic integration each sit under 6% of records — thin enough to support a first-mover claim with the right technical specificity.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The dataset ranks 43 assignees, with the leader holding 13 of the 69 records in scope. The top 5 assignees combined hold 45 records, or 65.2% of the field, and that concentration rises to 88.4% across the top 10. This is a full ranking returned by the data endpoint, not a curated top-50 or top-100 list, so the tail below tenth place is genuinely thin — mostly single- or double-filing entrants.
Pressure vessel and gas storage design, covered by IPC subclass F17C, appears in 75.4% of all 69 records, making it by far the densest area of claim activity. Pipeline transport (F17D, 18.8%) and heat-exchange apparatus (F28D, 15.9%) are the next largest, tied closely to precooling and thermal management needs at the dispenser. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these percentages overlap rather than summing to 100%.
Filing volume grew from 9 records in 2021 to 10 in 2024, an 11% rise over that span, after an earlier peak of 18 records in 2022. Figures for 2025 and 2026 appear lower in the raw trend, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than an actual drop in filing activity. The 2022 peak and the 2021–2024 growth are the two data points that should anchor any statement about momentum.
The lowest-density IPC subclasses in this dataset — C25B (electrolytic production, 5.8% of records), G06Q (station utilization and dispatch data processing, 5.8%) and C01B (non-metallic compound storage, 4.3%) — carry far fewer claims than the F17C core. That does not guarantee an easy grant, but it means less prior art sits directly in the way of a well-specified first claim in areas like utilization-data-driven dispensing logic or compressor duty-cycle control, both of which remain thinly claimed relative to vessel and storage design.
WO2025113760A1, filed by Cavendish Hydrogen A/S and published mid-2025, describes a refueling station cooling system with a chiller connected to both a dry cooler and a thermal energy storage unit through separately switchable loops, controlled to manage precooling without running the chiller continuously. It sits inside the F17C/F28D overlap that already carries significant claim density, so its value is less about opening new territory and more about a specific control-and-loop-switching approach to a well-known thermal management problem. Anyone drafting around dispenser precooling should read its independent claims closely before assuming the space is open.
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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.