ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,263,549, issued on April 1, was assigned to Caterpillar Inc. (Peoria, Ill.).
"Carbide seat remanufacturing" was invented by Abel Noriega II (Corinth, Miss.), Curtis John Graham (Peoria, Ill.), Christopher Anthony Kinney (Iuka, Miss.), Connor J Docherty (Fort Worth, Texas) and Blake Messer (Weatherford, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Typically, fluids used in fracking operations erode valve seats in the fluid end of the reciprocating pump. Thus, these valve seats must frequently be replaced by new valve seats. Accordingly, a remanufacturing process is disclosed that successively cleans and/or grinds manually or mechanically at least...