Appeal No. 1999-1738 Page 5
Application No. 08/854,516
operation, the valve 46 is closed and the valve 48 is open so that dirty air is delivered through
the heat exchanger 24, 26 or 28 which is then acting as the inlet heat exchanger to the
combustion chamber 22 and then passed out through the outlet heat exchanger. During a
cleaning cycle, the valve 48 is closed, thereby cutting off delivery of dirty air to the inlet
manifold 38 and the valve 46 is opened to deliver the dirty air directly to the combustion
chamber 22 via the alternate inlet line 44. Consequently, the air passing through the system is
raised to an unusually high temperature. The inlet and outlet valves 34, 36 of the heat
exchangers continue to cycle during the cleaning cycle (column 3, lines 65-66). The high
temperature air passes outwardly through the heat exchangers 24, 26 and 28 and through the
valves 34, 36 as they are cyclically opened, baking-out or oxidizing dried or condensed fluids
along the way. Klobucar, on the other hand, provides a separate air source 56 which is passed
through a burner 54 and then delivered to an inlet branch 32 leading to a heat exchanger 24,
26, 28. This hot air passes through the inlet heat exchanger, into the combustion chamber and
out through the outlet heat exchanger to bake-out or oxidize deposits therein.
As apparently recognized by the examiner, none of the references, Houston, Gross and
Klobucar, applied in rejecting the claims mentions a cool-down procedure for the incinerator or
oxidizer or discloses a step of increasing the cycle time of the open inlet and outlet valves to
rapidly cool the regenerative thermal oxidizer as required by independent claim 1 and claims 5
and 6 which depend from claim 1. Nevertheless, the examiner points out that "[t]he prior art
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