Refrigeration Compressors for LNG Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The five most active filers hold 47.4% of the 274 records in scope, and the leading assignee alone accounts for 57 records — more than double the fifth-place filer's 11.
- Growth has cooled, not collapsed. Filings ran from 7 in 2021 to 6 in 2024, a 14% pullback over that span, after a 2018 peak of 31 — 2025-26 figures are still filling in under the usual publication lag.
- Mechanical classes dominate control classes. F25B refrigeration (32.8%) and F25J gas liquefaction (30.3%) each cover roughly a third of records, while H02K motor and H02P drive-control classes sit at just 7.3% each.
Filing growth compares 2021 (7 records) with 2024 (6) — 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 274 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This review covers 274 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine refrigeration compressor or driver technology — gas turbine drivers, LNG compressor drivers — with control and mechanical features such as surge control lines, antisurge valve response, impeller blade design, rotor dynamics, starter helper motors or variable frequency drives. The scope sits at the intersection of turbomachinery and process control, which is exactly where LNG liquefaction trains carry their engineering risk.
Filing activity peaked in 2018 and has settled into a lower, steadier band since; publication lag means the last one to two years understate true filing volume. Receiving-office data shows the United States as the dominant venue, with Europe and the WIPO PCT route each drawing a substantial share of filings from parties seeking multi-jurisdiction coverage.
Filing trend and technology composition
The two views below cover the same 274 records: one across time, one across IPC subclass. Both use the record as the unit, so a single filing can appear in more than one class.
Filing trend, 2015-2026
Volume rose to a peak of 31 in 2018, then eased. The 2021-to-2024 span shows a 14% decline (7 to 6), and 2025-26 counts are still incomplete given the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication — treat the most recent bars as a floor, not a ceiling.
IPC subclass composition
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) and F25J (gas liquefaction and separation) each touch close to a third of all 274 records, confirming that most filings sit on the thermodynamic and process side rather than the electrical drive side. F04D non-positive-displacement pumps (16.4%) and F02C gas-turbine plants (13.1%) form a secondary tier; H02K and H02P, the motor and drive-control classes, trail at 7.3% each — the smallest share of any subclass tracked here.
Shares are the percentage of the 274 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Refrigeration Compressors for LNG with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about refrigeration compressors for lng and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
Hybrid-power transport refrigeration systems (US20200189361A1, Carrier Corporation)
The filing describes a hybrid-power transport refrigeration system pairing a fixed-speed generator with a refrigeration compressor over a shared power bus, backed by an energy storage device that can both draw power from the generator in engine-operation mode and supply the compressor directly in battery-operation mode, with a DC/AC variable frequency drive sitting between the storage device and the compressor.Numbered references in the abstract correspond to the drawing figures in the original filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6116040A | Apparatus for cooling the power electronics of a refrigeration compressor drive | 267 |
| 2 | US8723344B1 | Energy harvesting system | 185 |
| 3 | US5743715A | Method and apparatus for load balancing among multiple compressors | 106 |
| 4 | US20080115527A1 | High capacity chiller compressor | 99 |
| 5 | WO2010135407A2 | Variable speed compressor | 89 |
| 6 | US20090232663A1 | Compressor-Expander Set Critical Speed Avoidance | 75 |
| 7 | US20100281915A1 | Pre-Cooled Liquefaction Process | 67 |
| 8 | US20060283206A1 | Method for efficient nonsynchronous lng production | 55 |
| 9 | US8935933B1 | Battery operated transfer refrigeration unit | 54 |
| 10 | US8156757B2 | High capacity chiller compressor | 54 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not as a measure of current 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 ranking, the trend and the class composition are read together: where claim space is already dense, where it thinned out, and which routes to commercial-scale deployment carry the deepest prior art.
A short leader group, then a long tail
The leading assignee holds 57 records on its own, and the top five combined hold 47.4% of all 274 records in scope. Below tenth place (8 records) the ranking thins into single- and double-digit filers, meaning most of the 87 ranked companies hold only a handful of records each.
Drive-control claims are comparatively open
F25B refrigeration and F25J liquefaction classes each cover close to a third of records, while H02K motor and H02P control classes sit at 7.3% apiece. That gap suggests the mechanical and thermodynamic side of the compressor train is far more heavily claimed than the electrical drive and control side.
Recent volume has eased from its 2018 peak
After peaking at 31 filings in 2018, annual volume settled lower; the last fully comparable span, 2021 to 2024, shows a 14% pullback from 7 to 6 filings. Years after 2024 are not yet complete due to publication lag and should not be read as a further decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to refrigeration compressors for lng, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the gate sits
Filing activity clusters around a handful of process licensors, compressor-control specialists and industrial gas companies, with a long tail of single- or double-digit filers behind them.
One filer well ahead of the rest
The leading assignee's 57 records are more than five times the fifth-place count of 11, marking it out as the dominant filer in this dataset rather than one of several comparable leaders.
A compact second tier
Places five through ten hold between 11 and 8 records each, together with the leader accounting for 63.5% of all 274 records — a workable shortlist of parties worth tracking for freedom-to-operate purposes.
Co-filing is limited and inventor-driven
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in this dataset, and the strongest links are inventor-level pairings within a single organisation rather than cross-company joint filings — collaborative patenting is not yet a defining feature of this field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Technip Energies France SAS | 2 | — |
| ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company | 0 | — |
| Compressor Controls Corp | 0 | — |
| Carrier Corporation | 0 | — |
| Aker Solutions AS | 0 | — |
| Edwards Vacuum LLC | 0 | — |
| Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Brooks Automation, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a few concrete next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing, or scouting for acquisition targets.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the drive-control classes
H02K and H02P sit well below the density of F25B and F25J. Before committing to a variable-frequency-drive or starter-helper-motor design, check whether the lighter claim density there reflects genuine white space or simply narrower claim drafting by incumbents.
Explore the white space in EurekaTrack the mid-tier filers for licensing or partnership signals
The five through tenth place assignees together with the leader account for 63.5% of all records. Watching their recent filing momentum is a faster read on where the field is heading than watching aggregate totals alone.
Monitor assignee activity in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The dataset ranks 87 companies, and one assignee leads clearly with 57 records, more than five times the count held by the fifth-place filer at 11 records. The top five filers combined hold 47.4% of the 274 records in scope, so the field is concentrated at the top but not dominated by a single monopoly position. Below the top ten, filing counts drop into single and low double digits across a long tail of companies, each typically holding only a handful of records.
Filing peaked in 2018 at 31 records and has settled lower since; the most recent complete comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a 14% decline from 7 to 6 filings. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as evidence of a continuing slide. A fair read is that volume has cooled from its peak rather than that the technology area is being abandoned.
F25B refrigeration and heat-pump technology and F25J gas liquefaction and separation are the two densest classes, each touching roughly a third of the 274 records in scope. F04D non-positive-displacement pumps and F02C gas-turbine plants form a secondary tier in the 13-16% range. Electrical classes covering motor design and drive control are comparatively lightly claimed, each sitting at around 7% of records.
The clearest gap sits in electrical drive and control technology: H02K motor design and H02P motor-control classes each cover only 7.3% of the 274 records, well below the roughly 30% density of the core mechanical and thermodynamic classes. Specific sub-areas such as variable frequency drive integration, starter helper motor sizing and antisurge valve response tuning show up in the search scope but are not covered by dense, overlapping claim sets. That combination — real technical relevance, low claim density — is what marks out white space rather than simple absence of interest.
This Carrier Corporation filing claims a hybrid-power refrigeration architecture that pairs a fixed-speed generator, a refrigeration compressor and an energy storage device on a shared power bus, switching between engine-operation and battery-operation modes through a DC/AC variable frequency drive. Anyone designing a hybrid or battery-buffered compressor drive for refrigeration or LNG service should check this claim scope closely, particularly around the shared power bus and mode-switching logic. Working around it generally means avoiding that specific bus topology or mode-switching structure while still meeting the underlying power-continuity requirement some other way.
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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.