Appeal No. 1998-1067
Application No. 08/273,933
“para-selective”. The consequent reduction of the
non-aromatics would have been expected since the
same conditions and catalysts are used for the
aromatization of the non-aromatics.
This rejection cannot be sustained.
As correctly argued by the appellants in their brief and
supported by the section 1.132 Mulaskey declaration of record,
the applied prior art contains no teaching or suggestion of
step (b) recited in appealed independent claim 31. More
specifically, the applied references contain no teaching or
suggestion of using an acidic para-selective molecular sieve
catalyst in a disproportionation zone under conditions such
that the product contains a reduced amount of close-boiling
non-aromatics and such that at least 40% of the xylene
produced is para-xylene as required in this step. We
recognize that certain of these references disclose using such
a catalyst in a disproportionation zone for producing para-
xylene. However, these references contain no suggestion of
also reducing the amount of close- boiling non-aromatics as
here claimed.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007