ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,286,876, issued on April 29, was assigned to Trevelyan Trading Ltd (Surrey, Great Britain).
"Drain apparatus for a subsea pipeline" was invented by Laura Liebana Yeste (Surrey, Great Britain) and Lee Trevelyan Thomas (Surrey, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides a drain apparatus (200) for use in a subsea pipeline to remove liquid from a multiphase flow in the subsea pipeline. The drain apparatus comprises a first channel (20) for carrying a multiphase flow comprising liquid and gas phases; and liquid extraction means (11, 12, 14, 18) for extracting the liquid phase from the multiphase flow in the fi...