ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,313,307, issued on May 27, was assigned to TRANE INTERNATIONAL INC. (Davidson, N.C.).

"Reversible heat pump" was invented by Yves Jacques Raimbault (Uxegney, France) and Qingnan Huang (Shanghai).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "There is disclosed a reversible heat pump system 100 and a method of operating a reversible heat pump system to control the temperature of a process fluid of a chiller system 500. In a cooling mode, a working fluid is circulated for co-current flow with a process fluid at a heat exchanger 104 functioning as an evaporator heat exchanger, whereas in a heating mode, the working fluid is circulated for counter-current fl...