Appeal No. 2001-2151
Application No. 09/035,174
Appellant has elected to prosecute the invention described
in section “A” of claim 1 as a species of the generic metathesis
process encompassed by the claim. The elected invention relates
to the production of propylene from the metathesis of 2-butene
and ethylene in a distillation column reactor containing a fixed
bed of metathesis catalyst.
Appellant acknowledges on page 4 of his brief that elected
claims 1-7 stand or fall together for purposes of this appeal.
Accordingly, we focus our attention on section “A” of claim
1 which reads as follows:
(A) the production of propylene from the metathesis of
2-butene and ethylene comprising the steps of:
(a) feeding a first stream comprising ethylene to a
distillation column reactor containing a fixed bed
of metathesis catalyst,
(b) feeding a second stream comprising 2-butene to said
distillation column reactor,
(c) concurrently in said distillation column reactor
(i) contacting said 2-butene and said ethylene
with said fixed bed metathesis catalyst so as
to react at least a portion of said ethylene
with at least a portion of said 2-butene to
produce propylene and create a reaction
mixture containing unreacted 2-butene,
unreacted ethylene and propylene product;
(ii) separating the unreacted ethylene and
propylene product from the unreacted 2-butene
by fractional distillation and
2
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