Plate & Compact Heat Exchanger Patents: Leaders, Trends 2026
- Filing already peaked. 2017 was the high point at 59 records; the 2022 midpoint of 54 shows the field has been flat-to-declining since, not accelerating.
- Sweden anchors the field. SWEP and Alfa Laval entities recur through the co-assignee data with inventor pairs repeating across filings, a sign of concentrated, long-running R&D teams rather than diffuse activity.
- Europe outfiles the US and China combined on receiving office share. EPO leads at 177 filings versus 159 for the US and 120 for China, meaning European patent offices remain the primary gate to clear.
Filing growth compares 2021 (54 records) with 2024 (36) — 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 865 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 865 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine plate, printed-circuit, or compact heat exchanger claims with specific mechanical or thermal features: gasket sealing, brazed plate construction, channel geometry, approach temperature, or compactness. The IPC scope is narrow by design — F28D9, F28F3 and F28D21 — so the dataset isolates exchanger-specific design claims rather than the broader thermal-management literature.
Two IPC subclasses, F28F and F28D, cover the large majority of records, confirming that most activity sits squarely in heat-exchanger construction rather than in adjacent refrigeration or welding disciplines, even though F25B, B23K and B01D each contribute a meaningful secondary slice.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC distribution for the 865 families in scope. Recent-year counts understate true activity because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Filings peaked in 2017 and have not recovered
The series opens at 59 in 2017, its peak, and sits at 54 by the 2022 midpoint — a flat-to-declining trajectory rather than a growth curve. The 2026 figure of 0 reflects the data cut-off, not a stop in filing.
F28F and F28D dominate; B23K signals brazing-process overlap
F28F (heat-exchanger details) and F28D (heat-exchange apparatus) each cover over 700 of the 865 records, effectively co-occurring on most filings. F25B, B23K and B01D form a secondary tier tied to refrigeration integration, brazing process claims, and separation/filtration applications respectively.
Shares are the percentage of the 865 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Plate and Compact Heat Exchangers with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about plate and compact heat exchangers and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe documents setting the citation baseline
US9395125B2 — Water temperature sensor in a brazed plate heat exchanger
A penetrating temperature probe senses the water temperature of a brazed plate heat exchanger at a particularly cold intermediate point between the heat exchanger's water inlet and outlet. The brazed plate heat exchanger has a series of corrugated plates stacked and brazed together to create an alternating arrangement of water and refrigerant passages in heat transfer relationship with each other.Filed by Trane International, granted 2016 — illustrates how sensing and instrumentation claims are layered onto standard brazed-plate architecture rather than replacing it.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6016865A | Plate heat exchanger | 112 |
| 2 | US6106229A | Heat exchanger system for a gas turbine engine | 110 |
| 3 | US5950715A | Plate heat exchanger | 98 |
| 4 | US20010030043A1 | Brazed plate heat exchanger utilizing metal gaskets and method for making same | 97 |
| 5 | US20050155749A1 | Brazed plate high pressure heat exchanger | 87 |
| 6 | US5913361A | Plate heat exchanger | 69 |
| 7 | US6695044B1 | Heat exchanger | 64 |
| 8 | US5291945A | Brazed plate heat exchanger | 61 |
| 9 | US20090107661A1 | End plate for plate heat exchanger | 54 |
| 10 | US6394179B1 | Plate heat exchanger | 50 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate references; treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of 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 the raw counts are put in context.
The field has plateaued, not accelerated
A 2017 peak followed by a flat 2022 midpoint indicates this is a mature claim space rather than an emerging one. New entrants are filing into ground others already occupy, which raises freedom-to-operate risk for anyone assuming white space where there is dense prior art.
Europe is the primary gate, not an afterthought
EPO filings outnumber both the US and China individually, with WIPO/PCT and country-level Swedish (SE) and Austrian (AT) filings adding further European weight. Any freedom-to-operate review that skips European search coverage is working from an incomplete picture.
Construction and apparatus claims are inseparable
The near-total overlap between F28F (heat-exchanger details) and F28D (heat-exchange apparatus) means most filings claim both the mechanical detail and the apparatus context together, so a search limited to one subclass alone will miss most relevant prior art.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to plate and compact heat exchangers, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the claim space still breathes
Recent-year momentum across the named assignees shows zero filings in the latest year for every entity tracked, consistent with the broader plateau — this reflects publication lag as much as any pullback in R&D.
A tight inventor-assignee cluster around Alfa Laval and SWEP
The strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset links SWEP with a named inventor across four filings, and two further pairs link Alfa Laval entities to individual inventors. This pattern points to a small, stable engineering team producing a steady filing stream rather than a broad distributed effort.
US-side activity sits on older, highly cited art
The most-cited records in the corpus, including two 1990s-era plate heat exchanger patents cited over 100 times each, set the technical baseline that later US filings from HVAC majors continue to build on.
A long tail of Chinese equipment makers
Numerous single-mention Chinese manufacturers and named individual inventors appear in the assignee list, consistent with a fragmented domestic supply base filing narrower, application-specific claims rather than platform patents.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Alfa Laval AB | 0 | — |
| SWEP International AB | 0 | -100% |
| ALFA LAVAL AB | 0 | — |
| Carrier Corporation | 0 | — |
| Alfa Laval Thermal Energy Company | 0 | — |
| Modine Manufacturing Company | 0 | — |
| Linde AG | 0 | — |
| APV PLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The landscape data points to specific next checks rather than a single conclusion.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on brazed-plate gasket claims
With F28F and F28D nearly fully overlapping and citation weight concentrated on a handful of 1990s-2000s brazed-plate patents, any new gasket or joint design should be checked against that specific cluster before drafting claims.
Explore brazed plate prior artMap the Nordic inventor network before entering that claim space
The repeated SWEP and Alfa Laval co-assignee pairs suggest a small group of named inventors controls much of the refined design space; identifying them individually will sharpen any competitive read.
Trace assignee-inventor pairsTest under-claimed branches with a scoped search
Printed-circuit channel etching and gas-liquefaction integration show thinner representation than the core subclasses; a targeted search will confirm whether that is true white space or simply classified elsewhere.
Search adjacent IPC codesCommon questions on this landscape
The dataset shows a concentration around Alfa Laval and SWEP entities, which recur both as top assignees and as the strongest co-assignee-inventor pairs in the corpus. US-based HVAC majors such as Trane and Carrier also hold prominent, highly-cited filings, particularly around brazed-plate construction. Beyond these, there is a long tail of single-filing Chinese manufacturers and individual inventors, indicating a fragmented base outside the top tier rather than a second cluster of large players.
Not on the filing-count evidence here. Filings peaked in 2017 at 59 records and the 2022 midpoint sits at 54, a flat-to-declining pattern rather than a growth curve. Remember that the most recent one to two years are always undercounted because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the true 2024-2026 picture will fill in somewhat once those applications publish, but the multi-year trend through the midpoint already points to a mature, not expanding, field.
Based on receiving-office share, Europe is the largest single gate at 177 filings via the EPO, ahead of the US at 159 and China at 120, with WIPO/PCT and Swedish and Austrian national filings adding further European weight. A filing strategy that treats the US as the primary jurisdiction risks under-covering the market where the most competing patents actually sit. Any clearance search should weight European databases and the EPO family tree at least as heavily as USPTO records.
US9395125B2, assigned to Trane International, covers a penetrating temperature probe placed at a cold intermediate point inside a brazed plate heat exchanger's corrugated-plate stack, between the water inlet and outlet. It does not claim the brazed-plate architecture itself, which is well-established prior art by the time of this filing. It blocks specific implementations of intermediate-point temperature sensing inside that stacked-plate structure, so designs using surface-mounted sensors, inlet/outlet-only sensing, or different penetration geometry would likely sit outside its claims, though a formal freedom-to-operate opinion should confirm claim scope against the granted claim language.
Relative to the dense core of F28F and F28D filings, areas such as printed-circuit exchanger channel etching, compact exchanger integration with gas liquefaction (F25J, only 11 records), and metal-gasket alternatives to conventional brazed joints show thinner representation in this dataset. This does not guarantee true white space — some activity may be classified under adjacent codes not captured by this search string — but it does flag these branches as worth a dedicated, narrower search before assuming either freedom to operate or an absence of competition.
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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.