Appeal No. 2003-0094 Page 8
Application No. 08/995,786
the rejection of claim 21. The rejection of claim 24 as being unpatentable over
Singleton, Wolfe and Endres is not sustained.
In an alternative to the rejection of Singleton in view of Wolfe, the examiner
proposes to modify Singleton in the same manner by virtue of the teachings of
Hendriks, which is directed to a system for generating electricity by means of a turbine
driving a generator. With reference to the embodiment of Hendriks’ Figure 4,
pressurized gas for motivating the turbine is provided by a burner chamber 20 whose
intake is supplied with compressed air from a compressor 2 and the exhaust gas
issuing from a fuel cell 10. As was the case in Wolfe, Hendriks teaches that the fuel
cell generates electricity (column 2, lines 50-52). However, Hendriks also sets forth
other advantages for incorporating a fuel cell into the system along with the combustion
chamber:
The application of this [fuel] cell may cause an additional increase
in efficiency with the same air stream and a somewhat less fuel
consumption in the burner chamber. This effect is due to the waste heat
of the cell increasing the heat content of the burner chamber. When
applying a high temperature fuel cell (in the order of 1000° C., such as
with a solid oxide fuel cell SOFC) the burner chamber of the gas turbine
might even become virtually superfluous. Column 2, lines 40-48.
Thus, Hendriks instructs one of ordinary skill in the art that the use of a fuel cell in
conjunction with a combustion chamber in supplying motivating gas to the turbine
increases the efficiency of the system, perhaps even to the point where the combustion
chamber might not be necessary. Armed with this explicit suggestion, it is our view that
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