Appeal No. 98-3297
Application 08/564,044
This is a decision on appeal from the examiner's final
rejection of claims 3 and 4, the only claims remaining in the
application. Claims 1 and 2 have been canceled.
Appellants’ invention relates to a method for
automatically triggering flushing of a urinal with water. As
explained on page 2 of the specification,
[w]ith the inventive method a flushing event is
triggered, independent of the respective absolute
temperature within the siphon and even for slow
temperature changes due to heating or cooling of the
ambient air, when the speed of the temperature
change, i.e., the change of the detected temperature
over time, exceeds a certain preset value, for
example, due to introduction of urine or waste water
into the urinal. Since with the inventive method it
is not the absolute temperature, but the temperature
increase over time that is detected with the aid of
the control and computing device, the invention
prevents extraneous flushing events which could be
caused by an increase or decrease of the absolute
temperature resulting from heating or cooling of the
ambient air and detected by the temperature sensor.
On the other hand, a relatively small change of the
temperature gradient, for example, a temperature
change of 0.2 C per second, is sufficient to triggerB
the desired flushing event because such a change of
the temperature gradient cannot be caused by heating
or cooling with ambient air, but exclusively by
introducing urine or waste water.
2
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