Appeal No. 1999-2204 Page 6
Application No. 08/951,003
slotted plate through which the charged gas is passed to induct scrubbing water.
However, we agree with the appellants that there is a major difference in construction
which renders the examiner’s rejection fatally defective.
As best shown in Black’s Figures 5 and 6, the mixture of charged gas and
scrubbing water exits from each adjutage (15) into a chimney (20), the purpose of which is
to promote intimate contact between the charged gas and the scrubbing water (column 3,
lines 19-22). A vertical baffle plate (21) is positioned in each chimney, and the bottom of
the chimney is immersed in the pool of scrubbing water (column 3, lines 11-13). Upon
exiting the chimney, the mixture continues upward to contact a perpendicular water
eliminating vane (6), after which the water and entrained particles drop to the bottom of the
vessel (1) and the cleaned gas exits through the top. The examiner has defined each of
the chimneys in the Black apparatus as a “scrubbing chamber,” and on this basis has
concluded that the charged gas exits the adjutage directly into a scrubbing chamber. From
our perspective, this reasoning is defective. According to claim 1, the “scrubbing
chamber” not only must have a side and a bottom plate, but must contain a splitter
downstream of the adjutage that is perpendicular to the continuous flow of charged gas.
The only element in Black that meets this requirement is the water eliminating vane, and
that is located downstream of the ends of the chimneys. This being the case, the chimneys
cannot each be considered to be a scrubbing chamber. It then follows that since the
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