Appeal No. 96-0760
Application No. 08/051,210
means for analyzing said fluorescence to determine
presence or absence of aromatic hydrocarbon contaminants in
the sample.
The examiner relies upon the following references as
evidence of obviousness:
Bruening et al. (Bruening) 4,193,963 Mar. 18, 1980
Tanaka et al. (Tanaka) 4,469,946 Sep. 4, 1984
Thomas 4,541,269 Sep. 17, 1985
Tsuji 4,705,669 Nov. 10, 1987
Appellants' claimed invention is directed to a system and
method for sampling and determining the presence of nitrogen-
containing and aromatic contaminants in items such as
containers. The system entails a means for directing fluid,
such as air, into the proximity of the item to displace vapors
of the contaminants. According to appellants:
It is a discovery of the present invention that if
one doesn't first direct fluid jets at items such as
bottles, flaked plastic material or the like moving
along a conveyor that the processing speed is
substan-tially slowed because it would be necessary,
when applying suction alone to the item at the test
station, to apply that suction for much longer
periods of time in order to get a sufficient level
of gas to create a meaningful sample signal. [Page
3 of principal brief].
In addition, the claimed system employs the combination of a
chemiluminescence detector and a pulsed fluorescence detector,
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