ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,241,335, issued on March 4, was assigned to Southwest Petroleum University (Chengdu, China).

"Backflow gas heating and throttling device, and surface throttling system" was invented by Jianxin Luo (Chengdu, China), Wang Yu (Chengdu, China) and Jun Chen (Chengdu, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A backflow gas heating and throttling device, and a surface throttling system, where the surface throttling system includes a Christmas tree, a backflow gas heating and throttling device, and a gas collection pipeline connected in sequence. A pipeline between the Christmas tree and the backflow gas heating and throttling device and the gas col...