Appeal No. 1998-0305
Application 08/385,110
direction (col. 2, lines 24-26). Thomson teaches that
deodorizing fats and oils requires a great deal of agitation
of the fats and oils by the stripping steam to tear molecules
of undesirable vaporizable material from the fats and oils
(col. 1, lines 50-54). Thomson uses a column having an
upwardly-increasing cross-sectional area because the large
volume of steam cannot be admitted to the bottom of a constant
cross-section column without the increased volume of steam
traveling toward the top of the column, where the vacuum is
the highest, causing flooding and excessive entrainment
(col. 1, lines 45-46 and 54-60).
The examiner argues that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art to use Thomson’s column shape
for Ohsol’s column because Ohsol wants to maintain uniform
mass transfer throughout the column (answer, page 4). The
portion of Ohsol relied upon by the examiner in support of
this argument (col. 2, lines 9-30) discloses benefits of
continuous stripping over batch stripping, the advantage
particularly relied upon by the examiner (answer, page 6)
being less foaming tendency due to steady pressures (col. 2,
lines 14-15). Thus, the examiner argues, in effect, that it
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