ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,276,071, issued on April 15, was assigned to LLC ENERGY EFFICIENT BITUMEN TECHNOLOGIES (Moskow, Russia).
"Method for heating and dispensing asphalt in an aboveground asphalt storage facility" was invented by Sergey Sergeevich Saenko (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) and Yuri Yakovlevich Nikulin (Rostov-on-Don, Russia).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of heating and dispensing bitumen in a storage tank and bitumen terminal in that bitumen is heated in the storage tank and in a casing installed in the tank to a temperature of in-plant transportation of at least 80deg C. Bitumen is heated and maintained by heaters in the main storage tank volume...