ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,565,890, issued on March 3, was assigned to Edwards Technologies Vacuum Engineering (Qingdao) Co. Ltd. (Qingdao, China).

"System and method for cleaning a liquid ring pump system" was invented by Andries Daniel Jozef De Bock (Cologne, Germany), Bart Van Audenrode (Michigan City, Mich.), Xin Dai (Shandong, China), Xibo Liu (Shandong, China) and Kun Zhou (Shandong, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system comprising: a liquid ring pump; a separator coupled to an exhaust outlet of the liquid ring pump; a valve module, the valve module being coupled to the separator via a first drainage line and coupled to the liquid ring pump via a sec...