Waste Heat Recovery Patents: Filing Trends & Top Companies 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 13 families and has declined toward a single filing by the midpoint of 2022, a pattern more consistent with a mature claim landscape than an emerging one.
- No tracked assignee filed in the latest year including the most active historical filers, which points to a field where incumbents are consolidating rather than expanding their portfolios.
- Steam and thermal power plant claims dominate appearing in all 119 records, while adjacent subclasses like heat-exchange apparatus and hot-gas engines carry a fraction of the filing volume.
What the patent record shows about industrial waste heat recovery
Industrial waste heat recovery sits at the intersection of steam power engineering, refrigeration and heat-exchange design. The dataset behind this page draws on 119 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026, filtered to records that explicitly address low-grade heat capture, working fluid selection, heat exchanger fouling, payback economics or thermoelectric recovery. Every record classifies under F01K (steam and thermal power plants), with meaningful overlap into water treatment, hydrocarbon refining and gas separation processes where recovered heat offsets process energy demand.
Filing activity is concentrated among a small set of assignees with multi-record portfolios, alongside a long tail of single-filing entrants. Because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months, the most recent years in the trend understate real activity, but the multi-year decline from the 2017 peak is broad enough that the understatement alone does not explain it.
Filing trend and technology composition
The filing curve and IPC breakdown together show a field that built out its core claim space early and has since narrowed to incremental filings around the edges.
Filings declined from a 2017 peak
Annual filings ran from 13 in 2017 down to 1 by the 2022 midpoint and again at the 2026 cut-off, a decline steep enough that normal publication lag does not fully account for it.
F01K anchors every record, with refining and separation as secondary clusters
All 119 families touch steam and thermal power plant classifications (F01K); water treatment (C02F, 25 records), hydrocarbon refining (C10G, 23) and gas liquefaction/separation (F25J, 21) form the largest secondary clusters, indicating recovered heat is most often claimed alongside a specific industrial process rather than as a standalone generic system.
Shares are the percentage of the 119 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Waste Heat Recovery for Industrial Processes with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about waste heat recovery for industrial processes and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
Integration of waste heat from charge air cooling into a cascaded organic rankine cycle system (US8650879B2)
The patent describes a waste heat recovery system built around a first and second organic Rankine cycle system linked by one or more preheaters, with charge air coolers serving as the preheat source feeding either or both Rankine loops.Filed by AI Alpine US Bidco Inc, published 2014-02-18.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20090179429A1 | Efficient low temperature thermal energy storage | 163 |
| 2 | US20120001436A1 | Power generator using a wind turbine, a hydrodynamic retarder and an organic rankine cycle drive | 151 |
| 3 | US6581384B1 | Cooling and heating apparatus and process utilizing waste heat and method of control | 133 |
| 4 | US20100071368A1 | Multi-level organic rankine cycle power system | 109 |
| 5 | US5555731A | Preheated injection turbine system | 88 |
| 6 | US20120285169A1 | Organic rankine cycle systems using waste heat from charge air cooling | 70 |
| 7 | WO2014124061A1 | Improved organic rankine cycle decompression heat engine | 54 |
| 8 | US20130318969A1 | Heat recovery using organic rankine cycle | 52 |
| 9 | US9745870B2 | Organic rankine cycle decompression heat engine | 49 |
| 10 | WO2008125827A2 | Organic rankine cycle apparatus and method | 46 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat them as a measure of influence on later filers, 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 trend and technology composition are read together: a stalled filing rate, a citation base anchored in older prior art, and a technology mix that rewards process-specific claims over generic recovery systems.
The core claim space was built out early
The drop from 13 filings in 2017 to a single filing by the 2022 midpoint, holding at that level through 2026, suggests the foundational architectures for waste heat recovery in this scope were claimed within a few years and have not been meaningfully re-opened since.
No tracked leader is currently active
Every assignee with recent-year momentum data, including the most cited historical filers, shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That is consistent with a field where incumbents hold existing portfolios rather than contest new claim territory.
Claims cluster around process integration, not generic recovery
Every record in the dataset touches steam and thermal power plant classification, but the largest secondary clusters sit in water treatment, hydrocarbon refining and gas separation. That pattern favours claims tied to a specific industrial process over broad, process-agnostic waste heat recovery systems.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to waste heat recovery for industrial processes, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
Filing concentrates among a handful of multi-record assignees, with co-assignment pairs pointing to joint-venture or internal-team filing patterns rather than open licensing activity.
Joint filings cluster around a few relationships
The strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset links two Saudi oil-sector entities across five shared records, well above the next pairs at two records each, indicating a sustained internal filing programme rather than one-off collaboration.
US and EPO dominate, with PCT as the main multi-jurisdiction route
The United States leads with 38 filings, followed by the European Patent Office at 27 and WIPO's PCT route at 19. India, Canada and Austria each carry single-digit-to-low-double-digit counts, marking them as secondary but non-trivial filing jurisdictions.
Historical leaders are dormant, not dominant
None of the assignees with the strongest historical filing records, including major industrial and oilfield-services names, show filings in the most recent tracked year. That opens a window for new entrants to establish position without displacing an actively-filing incumbent.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | 0 | — |
| Heat Source Energy Corp | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| ROSENBLATT JOEL H | 0 | — |
| Ormat Industries Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Saudi Aramco Services Company | 0 | — |
| 20energy Systems Pty Ltd | 0 | — |
| ACME ENERGY | 0 | — |
Where to take this research
The trend and ownership data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio benchmarking or identifying acquisition targets.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the under-claimed branches
Thermoelectric recovery and fouling-resistant exchanger surfaces show thin filing density relative to the core steam-cycle cluster, which can mean genuine white space or simply that filers have not yet found commercial pull there.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack whether dormant leaders resume filing
Every historically active assignee shows zero filings in the latest tracked year; a resumption by any of them would be an early signal of renewed commercial interest in a specific sub-area.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaMap citations to current commercial systems
The most-cited records date back to earlier years and reflect influence within the corpus rather than current market relevance; validate against active commercial deployments before treating citation rank as a proxy for importance.
Analyse citation networks in EurekaCommon questions on waste heat recovery patents
Filing in this dataset concentrates among a small number of multi-record assignees, including oilfield-services and industrial power groups, alongside a long tail of single-filing entrants. The strongest co-assignee relationship links two Saudi oil-sector entities across five shared records, suggesting an internal filing programme rather than dispersed ownership. None of the leading historical assignees, however, show filings in the most recent tracked year, so current portfolio leadership and current filing activity are not the same thing.
Filing volume peaked in 2017 at 13 families in this dataset and has since declined to a single filing by 2022, holding at that level through the 2026 cut-off. Publication typically lags filing by about eighteen months, so the very latest year is always undercounted, but the multi-year downward trend is too broad to be explained by lag alone. That pattern is more consistent with a technology whose core architectures were claimed early than with one still expanding its claim space.
Every record in the corpus classifies under F01K, the steam and thermal power plant subclass, but secondary clustering is meaningful: water and wastewater treatment (25 records), hydrocarbon refining (23) and gas liquefaction and separation (21) are the largest adjacent categories. Heat-exchange apparatus and hot-gas external-combustion engines carry noticeably fewer records. This means most claims in the space are tied to a specific host industrial process rather than written as generic, process-agnostic recovery systems.
US8650879B2 claims a waste heat recovery system that uses charge air coolers as preheaters feeding one or both loops of a cascaded, dual organic Rankine cycle arrangement. It blocks that specific cascaded, charge-air-preheated configuration, but it does not cover single-loop organic Rankine systems, non-charge-air preheat sources, or working fluid selection strategies outside the described architecture. A design that avoids the dual-cascade structure or sources preheat from a different stream is a plausible path around it, subject to a full claim-by-claim review.
The technology composition data shows heat-exchange apparatus and hot-gas engine classifications carrying far fewer records than the core steam-power cluster, and fouling-resistant exchanger surfaces and thermoelectric recovery from low-grade streams show similarly thin coverage. Combined with a filing rate that has fallen to near zero across tracked leaders, this suggests claim space that has not been aggressively contested recently. That said, thin filing density can reflect weak commercial pull as easily as open opportunity, so any filing decision should be paired with a market and freedom-to-operate check.
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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.