Appeal No. 1997-3785
Application No. 08/527,591
presented by the appellants on its face acknowledges the
presence in the prior art of all of the subject matter recited
in claim 1 except for the final step. The dispositive issue
in this case is, therefore, whether it would have been obvious
to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the prior art
system (represented in the examiner’s rejection by Greco) by
adding the step of raising the temperature of the clean gases
being used to purge the regenerators prior to their re-entry
into the regenerators as a purging gas. The examiner’s
explanation regarding this issue is as follows (Answer, pages
5 and 6):
. . . Cmejrek et al. sets forth a method for
cleaning residue off the surface of a regenerative
heat exchanger by passing a hot combustion gas over
the contaminated heat exchanger at a temperature
sufficient to remove the deposits off of the heat
exchanger surface (please see the English abstract).
It would have been obvious . . . to pass a hot
combustion gas over the residue coated heat
exchanger to volatilize off and remove the
contaminants from the surface . . . as set forth in
the improvement clause of the Jepson-type appealed
claim 1 and taught in the English abstract of
Cmejrek application into the process of the Greco
reference because of the taught advantage of being
able to avoid time consuming conventional wash
methods for cleaning the surface of a heat exchanger
(please see the English abstract of . . . Cmejrek et
al.).
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