Appeal No. 94-0792 Application No. 07/943,795 subsequent to the final rejection. See Supplemental Reply Brief, Paper No. 15. Claim 1 is representative of the subject matter on appeal and reads as follows: 1. A process for recovering ,-caprolactam from nylon 6 carpet, comprising: a) providing a carpet made from nylon 6 fibers and having a backing containing one or more non-nylon 6 materials of polypropylene, jute, latex and fillers to a mechanical separator to prepare scrap containing both nylon 6 and non- nylon 6 backing materials, and a first auxiliary stream; b) feeding the scrap from the separator to a deploymerizing reactor to produce an ,-caprolactam containing distillate and a second auxiliary stream; c) separating ,-caprolactam in the distillate from other volatiles therein; and d) purifying the ,-caprolactam obtained after separating so that the ,-caprolactam is of sufficient purity for reuse as a starting material for nylon 6 intended for use in carpet fiber. The references relied on by the examiner are: Norris 4,028,159 Jun. 07, 1977 Dmitrieva et al. (Dmitrieva), “Regeneration of ,-Caprolactam from Wastes in the Manufacture of Polycaproamide Fibres and Yarns,” Khimicheskie Volokna, Vol. 17, No. 4, (July-August, 1985), 2Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007