Appeal No. 2006-0349 Page 3
Application No. 10/293,727
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art, and to the respective positions
articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
following determinations.
With respect to the rejection of claims 1, 10-13, 21 and 22 as being unpatentable over
Amir in view of Hanna, the appellants have elected to argue all of the claims together as a single
group. Therefore, in accordance with 37 CFR § 41.37(c)(1)(vii), we have selected claim 1 as the
representative claim to decide the appeal of this rejection, with claims 10-13, 21 and 22 standing
or falling therewith.
Amir discloses an organic Rankine cycle wherein a pump P is used to circulate liquid
organic fluid, such as Freon, to a boiler 24 where waste heat is absorbed by the refrigerant to
vaporize the refrigerant, with the vaporized organic fluid passing first through a plurality of
nozzles (nozzle box 58 and nozzles 64) and then through a turbine 28, with the resulting cooled
vapor then passing through a condenser 38 for condensing the vapor to a liquid. The appellants
do not appear to contest the examiner’s determination that Amir discloses all of the limitations of
claim 1 with the exception of the refrigerant being R-245fa.
The examiner relies on Hanna as evidence that R-245fa was known in the art at the time
of appellants’ invention as a refrigerant for use in organic Rankine cycles. In particular, Hanna
teaches:
The organic working fluid is preferably either a halocarbon
refrigerant or a naturally-occurring hydrocarbon. Examples of the
former include R-245fa, while examples of the latter include some
of the alkanes, such as isopentane. Other known working fluids
and refrigerants, despite exhibiting attractive thermodynamic
properties, are precluded for other reasons. For example, R-11 is
one of a class of refrigerants now banned in most of the world for
environmental reasons [col. 3, ll. 42-50].
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