Large Heat Pump Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing jumped +600% in three years. Records rose from 2 in 2021 to 14 in 2024, the fastest sustained climb in this dataset's history.
- The top 5 assignees hold 68.4% of all filings. 78 of the 114 records in scope sit with just five organisations, with the ranked leader alone accounting for 28.
- F25B and C09K dominate, but overlap with batteries is real. 34.2% of records sit in refrigeration/heat-pump classes, yet 14.9% also touch battery and cell chemistry classes, pointing to shared thermal-materials claims.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (14) — 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 114 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the filings show
Large-scale and industrial heat pumps for district heating sit at the intersection of refrigeration engineering, working-fluid chemistry and thermal-network control. The search scope here covers 114 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, spanning natural-refrigerant compressors, cascade configurations and waste-heat recovery for district networks. Filing activity was negligible before 2021 and has since concentrated sharply: a small group of assignees now accounts for most of the activity, while a long tail files once or twice.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart are undercounts and should not be read as a slowdown. The clearest signal is the 2021-2024 run, which is complete enough to trust.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 114 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
From near-zero to a 2024 peak
Filings moved from 0 in 2017 to a peak of 14 in 2024, with 2021-2024 alone showing +600% growth. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
Refrigeration and materials classes lead, with cross-sector overlap
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) covers 34.2% of the 114 records, followed by C09K (misc. materials, 26.3%) and H05K (printed circuits/assemblies, 19.3%). Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100%; the presence of H01M (batteries, 14.9%) and H01L (semiconductors, 8.8%) alongside core heat-pump classes indicates thermal-materials and control-electronics claims are increasingly bundled with mechanical heat-pump claims rather than filed separately.
Shares are the percentage of the 114 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Large Scale Heat Pumps for District Heating with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about large scale heat pumps for district heating and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
High temperature industrial heat pump with novel method to make use of shallow low-grade geothermal energy
The system pairs a positive-displacement compressor, expander and recuperator around a supercritical CO2 loop, delivering compressor outlet conditions of at least 15 MPa and 120°C at a mass flow rate of 4.5 kg/s or more, for 1-10 MWth of thermal load. The recuperator recovers residual heat from the return flow to precondition the compressor inlet, drawing on a geothermal well thermosiphon as the low-grade heat source.Filed by Causeway Energies LLC, published 2025-08-12.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US10829913B1 | Hybrid potable water generator | 68 |
| 2 | US4532778A | Chemical heat pump and chemical energy storage system | 51 |
| 3 | US20100025260A1 | Upgrading waste heat with heat pumps for thermochemical hydrogen production | 42 |
| 4 | US20200205318A1 | Heat transfer fluids, methods and systems | 32 |
| 5 | US6631624B1 | Phase-change heat transfer coupling for aqua-ammonia absorption systems | 19 |
| 6 | US10221726B2 | Condensing heat recovery steam generator | 18 |
| 7 | US20140150475A1 | Thermal Energy System and Method of Operation | 16 |
| 8 | US20210025292A1 | Steam turbine power plant utilizing industrial heat pumps to preheat boiler feed-water | 12 |
| 9 | US20150377179A1 | Low Grade Thermal Energy Innovative Use | 10 |
| 10 | WO2020132335A1 | Heat transfer methods, systems and fluids | 5 |
Citation counts favour older records within the searched corpus and should be read as a signal of influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns worth acting on before drafting claims in this space.
Claim space is already occupied at the top
78 of the 114 records in scope belong to just five assignees, with the leading organisation alone holding 28. A new entrant filing broad compressor or refrigerant-cycle claims is very likely to run into prior art from this small group first.
Growth is recent and still accelerating into the data-cutoff window
Filing volume was near zero through 2020, then climbed from 2 records in 2021 to 14 in 2024 — the peak year so far. This is a young, fast-moving filing wave rather than a mature, saturated field.
Core refrigeration claims lead, but materials and electronics classes are close behind
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) is the largest single class, but C09K materials claims sit at 26.3% and H05K assembly/circuit claims at 19.3%, both large enough to matter for anyone drafting around compressor selection or waste-heat recovery.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to large scale heat pumps for district heating, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
27 companies make up the entire ranked list this dataset returns — not a top-50 or top-100 cut. Activity concentrates hard at the top, then trails into single-filing entrants.
One assignee holds roughly a quarter of all filings
The top-ranked assignee alone accounts for 28 of the 114 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 9. That gap suggests a single organisation has been filing systematically rather than opportunistically.
A workable mid-tier exists before the long tail starts
Between fifth and tenth place, record counts fall from 9 to 3, still meaningfully active. Below that the ranking thins into single-digit and single-filing entrants across the remaining names in the list of 27.
Collaboration is limited but repeatable among a few individuals
Only 9 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, with the strongest pairings repeating three times each around one common name. This points to small, stable inventor teams rather than broad cross-company joint filing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| S.A. Armstrong Ltd. | 1 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Rocky Research Inc. | 0 | — |
| Greenfield Master IPCO | 0 | — |
| Cockerill Maintenance & Ingenierie SA | 0 | — |
| SKYVEN TECHNOLOGIES LLC | 0 | -100% |
| CAUSEWAY ENERGIES LLC | 0 | — |
| ZAYNULIN DMITRIY | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to concrete next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy or technology scouting.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top assignee
With one organisation holding roughly a quarter of all 114 records, any compressor or refrigerant-cycle claim should be checked against that portfolio specifically before drafting.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaMap the white space in cascade and compressor-selection claims
Filing density is thin in cascade configuration control and compressor-selection logic relative to core refrigeration classes, which is where a first claim is more likely to clear prior art.
Explore white space mapping in EurekaTrack the 2021-2024 filing wave as it publishes forward
Publication lag means 2025-2026 filings are still arriving; revisiting this trend in a future quarter will sharpen the picture of whether the +600% growth rate is holding.
Set up filing alerts in EurekaCommon questions on large heat pump patents
The ranked list in this dataset covers 27 companies, with a single leading assignee holding 28 of the 114 records in scope — roughly a quarter of everything filed. The next four assignees combined bring the top-5 total to 78 records, or 68.4% of all filings. Below tenth place, filing counts fall to single digits and then to one-off filers, so due diligence should focus first on the handful of names at the top rather than the full list.
Filing activity was close to zero before 2021 and climbed sharply afterward: from 2 records in 2021 to 14 in 2024, a +600% increase over that three-year span, which is the peak filing year recorded so far. Because patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in the same dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as the trend cooling off. Anyone tracking this space should expect the 2024 wave to keep filling in for another year or two of published records.
Core refrigeration and heat-pump engineering (IPC class F25B) is the largest single category at 34.2% of the 114 records, covering compressor cycles and cascade configurations. Materials claims (C09K) follow at 26.3%, and printed circuit or control assemblies (H05K) at 19.3%. Because a single patent can carry several IPC classes, these percentages overlap rather than sum to 100%, which reflects how heat-pump claims are increasingly bundled with materials chemistry and control electronics rather than filed as pure mechanical claims.
Relative to the dense core refrigeration and materials classes, filing density is thinner in cascade configuration control logic, compressor-selection algorithms tuned to variable waste-heat sources, and district-network integration controls. These are the sub-areas flagged as under-claimed in this dataset. A first claim there would need to tie a specific control method or selection algorithm to a named waste-heat source or network condition, rather than claiming the general heat-pump cycle, which is already crowded by the leading assignees.
US12385673B1, filed by Causeway Energies LLC and published in August 2025, claims a supercritical CO2 heat pump system pairing a positive-displacement compressor, expander and recuperator, delivering compressor outlet pressure of at least 15 MPa at 120°C or higher and a mass flow rate of at least 4.5 kg/s, for 1-10 MWth of thermal output drawn from a shallow geothermal source. The claim is narrow to that specific combination of pressure, temperature, flow rate and geothermal thermosiphon source, so it constrains a specific high-temperature sCO2 configuration rather than industrial heat pumps generally. Designers working with different working fluids or lower-pressure cycles are less likely to be blocked by it directly.
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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.