Plate Heat Exchanger Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Ownership is concentrated. the top 5 assignees alone account for 64.8% of all 1,621 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 77.1%.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. activity peaked in 2019 at 156 filings and fell -71% from 2021 (133) to 2024 (39), the last year the data can treat as complete.
- The claim space is narrow but deep. F28F heat-exchanger details cover 74.9% of records, meaning most disputes will turn on detail claims rather than apparatus-level novelty.
Filing growth compares 2021 (133 records) with 2024 (39) — 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 1,621 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity naming plate heat exchanger designs and their fouling behaviour — chevron plate patterns, chevron angle, gasket grooves, channel maldistribution, fouling factors, pressure drop penalties and cleaning-in-place approaches. The scope spans 1,621 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from a search string combining core apparatus terms with the specific technical failure modes and cleaning methods that define this niche. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so figures for 2025 and 2026 will fill in as more records publish and should not be read as a slowdown.
The dataset sits at the intersection of thermal apparatus engineering and process cleaning technology, which is why classes outside core heat-exchanger codes — water treatment, dairy processing, refrigeration — still show up with real record counts. That spread matters for anyone assessing freedom to operate: a plate heat exchanger patent aimed at dairy fouling can block a refrigeration application built on the same gasket groove or chevron geometry.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,621 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim volume.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose to a peak of 156 in 2019, then declined to 133 in 2021 and 39 in 2024 — a -71% drop over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as continued decline.
IPC subclass composition
F28F (heat-exchanger details) and F28D (heat-exchange apparatus) dominate at 74.9% and 53.2% of the 1,621 records respectively. Smaller shares in B01D, C02F, A23C, F28G, F25B and A23L mark where plate heat exchanger claims cross into separation, water treatment, dairy, cleaning and refrigeration applications — each record can carry more than one class, so these shares add up to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,621 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Plate Heat Exchanger Design and Fouling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about plate heat exchanger design and fouling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative recent filing
Heat transfer plate and plate heat exchanger with gasket groove having a reinforcing pattern
A plate heat exchanger includes a plurality of heat transfer plates stacked on top of each other, wherein gaskets are positioned between adjacent heat transfer plates, wherein each gasket is arranged in a gasket groove formed in a heat transfer plate and a bottom part of the gasket groove defines a base level, wherein the gasket groove comprises a reinforcing pattern having a first recess at a first recess level and extending in a lengthwise direction of the gasket groove. The reinforcing pattern comprises a second recess at a second recess level extending in lengthwise direction of the gasket groove.Filed by Danfoss, published 2024-05-07 — illustrates how current claim drafting in this field targets gasket groove geometry rather than plate material or overall stack architecture.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20090120629A1 | Variable heat flux heat exchangers | 129 |
| 2 | US4635715A | Gasket arrangement for a plate heat exchanger | 107 |
| 3 | US6516874B2 | All welded plate heat exchanger | 91 |
| 4 | US9739546B2 | Heat exchanger plate and a plate heat exchanger with insulated sensor internal to heat exchange area | 79 |
| 5 | US6488900B1 | Method and apparatus for air purification | 76 |
| 6 | US4377204A | Plate heat exchanger | 66 |
| 7 | US5924484A | Plate heat exchanger | 62 |
| 8 | US20030000687A1 | All welded plate heat exchanger | 58 |
| 9 | US4911235A | Plate heat exchanger | 56 |
| 10 | US4995455A | Plate heat exchanger with glueless gaskets | 50 |
Citation counts are strongest as a signal of influence within the searched corpus, not of current commercial weight — older records accumulate citations simply by being available longer.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns worth understanding before drafting or searching in this space.
Ownership sits with a small group
The top 5 assignees combined account for 64.8% of all 1,621 records in scope, rising to 77.1% across the top 10. For a new entrant, this means clearance searches should start with those few portfolios rather than a broad field scan, and freedom-to-operate risk is concentrated rather than diffuse.
Activity has pulled back from its 2019 peak
Filings peaked at 156 in 2019 and fell to 39 by 2024, a -71% drop from the 2021 level of 133. That decline predates the publication-lag window, so it reflects a genuine pullback in filing activity rather than incomplete data — though it does not by itself indicate the underlying technology is exhausted.
Most claims sit in one crowded subclass
F28F absorbs 74.9% of the 1,621 records and F28D another 53.2%, meaning the bulk of drafting activity is happening in heat-exchanger detail and apparatus claims. Adjacent classes — cleaning (F28G), refrigeration (F25B), dairy (A23C) — carry single-digit shares each, which is where claim space is comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to plate heat exchanger design and fouling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where the gaps sit
A small set of assignees carries most of the record volume; the remainder is a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants, several tied together through named co-inventor pairs.
One assignee holds the largest single share
The leading assignee's 797 records dwarf the fifth-place figure of 59 and the tenth-place figure of 18, a gap that marks this as a field with one dominant portfolio holder rather than several evenly matched competitors.
Collaboration is narrow and named
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest pairing sharing 18 records. Most other filings are single-assignee, suggesting joint development in this field is the exception rather than the norm.
Even the leader has slowed recently
The leading assignee filed 2 records in the latest year, down 60% year over year, and several other tracked assignees show zero filings in the latest year. Read this alongside publication lag rather than as a signal the leader has stepped back entirely.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Alfa Laval AB | 2 | -60% |
| S.A. Armstrong Ltd. | 1 | 0% |
| Alfa Laval Thermal AB | 0 | — |
| ALFA LAVAL AB | 0 | — |
| Danfoss A/S | 0 | — |
| Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| SWEP International AB | 0 | -100% |
| Tetra Laval Holdings & Finance S.A. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The record-level view answers different questions than the summary above. Two directions worth pursuing next.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading portfolios
With 64.8% of records held by five assignees, a targeted clearance search against those specific portfolios will surface more actionable risk than a broad keyword sweep of the full 1,621-record set.
Search assignee portfolios in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches before they fill in
Cleaning-in-place control and fouling-factor sensing carry single-digit class shares today; monitoring new filings there over the next few publication cycles will show whether the gap is closing.
Set up a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee holds by far the largest share of the 1,621 records in scope, with a record count well above the next-ranked companies — the fifth-place assignee sits at 59 records and the tenth at 18. The top 5 assignees combined account for 64.8% of all records, and the top 10 reach 77.1%, so ownership in this field is concentrated rather than spread evenly across many filers. Anyone assessing risk in this space should start with the leading few portfolios rather than treating the field as fragmented.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 156 records and has declined since, falling from 133 in 2021 to 39 in 2024 — a -71% drop over that three-year span, using 2024 as the last year the data can treat as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those most recent years will rise as more records publish. On the evidence available, the trend through 2024 is a genuine pullback from the 2019 peak rather than a plateau.
US11976889B2, assigned to Danfoss and published in 2024, claims a plate heat exchanger where the gasket groove itself carries a reinforcing pattern — specifically a first recess and a second recess at different levels running lengthwise along the groove, on top of the groove's base level. It is a detail-level claim on gasket groove geometry rather than a claim on the overall plate stack or apparatus architecture. For anyone drafting in this area, it is a useful marker of how current claims are being drawn tightly around groove reinforcement rather than broader plate or gasket material innovations.
Core heat-exchanger classes F28F and F28D cover 74.9% and 53.2% of the 1,621 records respectively, making them the most heavily claimed. Cleaning technology (F28G), refrigeration integration (F25B), water treatment (C02F) and dairy processing (A23C) each sit at single-digit shares of the same record set, indicating comparatively open claim space where a well-drafted first claim has a better chance of standing clear of existing filings. These adjacent branches are worth checking before assuming the core apparatus classes are the only place to file.
Fouling-factor and cleaning-in-place terms were part of the search criteria that built this dataset, and F28G (cleaning heat-exchange surfaces) still only reaches 3.5% of the 1,621 records, similar to F25B and A23C. That suggests most current claims are still framed around plate and gasket geometry rather than cleaning cycle control or fouling detection methods, even though those methods are explicitly part of the search scope. It is a signal that fouling-mitigation claims, as distinct from the plate hardware they run on, remain a comparatively open area.
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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.