ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,529,431, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to NIKKISO Co. LTD. (Tokyo).
"Foot valve assembly and submerged pump system" was invented by Yasuo Tomita (Tokyo), Motoyasu Ogawa (Tokyo) and Masaaki Eguchi (Saitama, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A foot valve assembly according to the present invention includes: an adapter attached to a lower opening end of a pump column configured to accommodate a pump configured to be submerged in a handling liquid, the adapter accommodating a suction port of the pump; a disc-shaped valve disc including a flow path defining surface that is located below a lower end surface of the adapter and defines an i...