Appeal No. 1997-1551
Application No. 08/235,597
the wet scrubbing step is not efficient at removing SO3; and
the same gas would have damaged other equipment downstream.
The fact remains, however, that none of the prior art references or Aadmission@ cited by the examiner,
individually or in combination, teach or suggest the step of injecting dry sorbent particles into the flue gas
after particulate collection and before wet scrubbing, so that some of the dry sorbent particles react with
and remove substantially all the SO3 in the flue gas, followed by conveying the substantially SO3-free
gas, reacted dry sorbent, and unreacted dry sorbent particles to a wet scrubber means in which the
unreacted dry sorbent is available as a wet reagent to remove SO2 from the substantially SO3-free flue
gas during wet scrubbing.
Both Steag and Peterson teach a dry cleaning or sorbent process, but both also teach removal
of the particles downstream with a filter or electrostatic precipitator. The examiner argues that the
present claims have the term Acomprising@ which does not exclude the filter of Steag. Nevertheless,
the presence of a filter or electrostatic precipitator would undermine the requirement in the claimed
invention that the
unreacted dry sorbent particles are conveyed into the wet scrubber means to produce a wet reagent for
removing SO2. The examiner has provided no other evidence in the
prior art or in the general knowledge in the relevart art suggesting to one of ordinary
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