Molten Salt Storage Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (201 records) with 2024 (324) — 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 3,101 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the molten salt storage patent record shows
Molten salt thermal storage sits at the intersection of two patenting traditions: heat-exchange and thermal-power hardware on one side, and battery and electrochemical-cell claims on the other. The search covers 3,101 published records filed or published between 2015 and the mid-2026 cut-off, drawn from applications that name molten salt storage directly or combine molten salt and storage terms with thermal energy storage, battery or electrochemical-cell language. Because publication trails filing by roughly eighteen months, the most recent one to two years in any trend undercounts what has actually been filed.
The picture that emerges is a fragmented one. Filing activity has grown sharply through 2024, the technology splits fairly evenly across heat-exchange hardware, thermal power plant integration, solar collection and battery-adjacent chemistry, and no single assignee has locked up a dominant share of the record. That combination points to a field still being defined at the claim level rather than one already consolidated around a handful of dominant patent holders.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,101-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those records split across the IPC subclasses that define the technology.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings rose from 107 in 2017 to a peak of 324 in 2024, with 2021's 201 records growing 61% to reach that 2024 peak. 2025 and 2026 figures (62 so far for 2026) are still filling in as publication catches up with filing, so they should not be read as a slowdown.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
F28D heat-exchange apparatus (24.7% of records) and H01M batteries, cells and fuel cells (24.1%) are the two largest classes, followed by F01K steam and thermal power plants (13.7%), F24S solar heat collectors (10.7%) and F22B steam generation and boilers (10.4%). Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the 3,101 records in scope.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,101 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thermal Energy Storage: Molten Salt Storage Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thermal energy storage: molten salt storage patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Integrated energy storage system coupling thermal, liquid metal battery and cryogenic storage
The filing describes an integrated energy storage system that couples a liquid metal battery with a thermal energy storage unit and a cryogenic storage stage, using a control system that selectively transfers heat between the thermal store and the battery, and coordinates operation across all three storage modes.Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, published 2023-08-15 as US11728677B2.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150143806A1 | Quintuple-Effect Generation Multi-Cycle Hybrid Renewable Energy System with Integrated Energy Provisioning, S… | 268 |
| 2 | US20080127647A1 | Solar-Generated Steam Retrofit for Supplementing Natural-Gas Combustion at Combined Cycle Power Plants | 212 |
| 3 | US3679480A | Electrical cell assembly | 162 |
| 4 | US20180245485A1 | Dispatchable storage combined cycle power plants | 157 |
| 5 | US20020110739A1 | Non-flammable electrolytes | 157 |
| 6 | US20090121495A1 | Combined cycle power plant | 141 |
| 7 | US20120102950A1 | Solar thermal power plant with the integration of an aeroderivative turbine | 131 |
| 8 | CA2648972A1 | System and method for improved electric cars and/or electric car batteries and/or improved infrastructures fo… | 115 |
| 9 | US20120055661A1 | High temperature thermal energy storage system | 111 |
| 10 | US4290416A | Phase change energy storage panel for environmentally driven heating and cooling system | 104 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings and are a signal of influence on later work, not a measure of current commercial importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Four observations that matter more to a filing or freedom-to-operate decision than the raw counts alone.
The top of the ranking is thin
The leading assignee holds 126 records and the top 5 combined reach only 9.0% of all 3,101 records in scope; the top 10 add up to 13.5%. That is a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants rather than a market controlled by a handful of incumbents.
Filing activity accelerated sharply through 2024
Annual filings rose from 201 in 2021 to a peak of 324 in 2024, a 61% increase over that three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as complete; 2025 and 2026 figures will keep rising as publication catches up.
Hardware and chemistry claims are almost evenly matched
F28D heat-exchange apparatus (24.7% of records) and H01M batteries and cells (24.1%) are nearly tied for the largest technology class, meaning molten salt storage is being claimed as much through battery and electrochemical-cell language as through thermal hardware.
Filing activity is heavily weighted toward China
China's receiving office accounts for 1,385 of the tracked filings, well ahead of the United States (500), WIPO/PCT (254) and Europe (227). A freedom-to-operate review that stops at US and EP offices will miss most of the documented activity.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thermal energy storage: molten salt storage patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking or identifying open claim space.
Map claim language inside F28D and H01M
With heat-exchange and battery classes nearly tied at roughly a quarter of records each, the next step is comparing actual claim scope inside those two subclasses to see where hardware and chemistry claims overlap or leave gaps.
Explore in Eureka →Track the co-assignee clusters
The strongest co-assignee pairs in this dataset point to a small number of institutions filing jointly and repeatedly; watching how those clusters extend their filings is a faster signal than watching the ranked list alone.
Explore in Eureka →Revisit 2025-2026 filings once they settle
Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in this dataset will keep rising. Re-running this view in a year will give a more complete read on whether the 2021-2024 growth rate held.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions on molten salt storage patents
No single company dominates this field: the ranked leader in this dataset holds 126 of 3,101 records, and the top 5 assignees combined account for only 9.0% of all records in scope, rising to 13.5% for the top 10. That pattern indicates a fragmented field with a long tail of smaller and single-filing entrants rather than a market locked up by a few incumbents. Anyone scoping competitors should look beyond the top names to the wider ranked list, since most filing activity sits outside the leaders.
Filing activity grew sharply through the most recent complete year: annual filings rose from 201 in 2021 to a peak of 324 in 2024, a 61% increase over that span. Figures for 2025 and 2026 appear lower only because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so those years are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown. Based on the complete years available, the trend through 2024 is one of acceleration, not decline.
The records split across several IPC subclasses rather than concentrating in one area: heat-exchange apparatus (F28D) covers 24.7% of records and batteries, cells and fuel cells (H01M) cover 24.1%, with steam and thermal power plants (F01K, 13.7%), solar heat collectors (F24S, 10.7%) and steam generation and boilers (F22B, 10.4%) also well represented. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the 3,101 records in scope. This spread shows molten salt storage is being claimed both as thermal hardware and as battery-adjacent electrochemistry.
China's receiving office accounts for 1,385 of the tracked filings, substantially more than the United States (500), the WIPO/PCT route (254), Europe (227), the United Kingdom (99) and India (90). A review limited to US and European filings would miss most of the documented activity in this dataset. Teams doing freedom-to-operate work should treat Chinese filings as the largest single block to clear, not a secondary check.
US11728677B2, assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing and published 2023-08-15, describes an integrated energy storage system that couples a liquid metal battery with thermal energy storage and a cryogenic storage stage, controlled so that heat is selectively transferred between the thermal store and the battery unit. It is a system-integration patent rather than a molten salt chemistry patent: the claims sit at the level of how three different storage modes are coordinated by a control system, not at the level of a specific salt formulation. Anyone designing a multi-modal storage system that mixes thermal and electrochemical storage should read the claims closely rather than assuming they only touch batteries or only touch thermal storage.
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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.